Caught in the Dark

by Ann Jensen

  Tek studied the troubling reports on his desk with a scowl. Two of the companies they provided security for were reporting possible breaches on the electronic front. The fact they both used Vallier’s premier services should make hacking close to impossible, but the evidence was piling up. He continued to keep his hands in certain projects, but the company had grown so much over the last few years it was hard to keep up. Maybe Hawk was right, and he should consider turning this stuff over to someone younger with more enthusiasm.

  He hated it, but for now he would need to clock in overtime to personally look into things. Just the thought made him tired. What he needed was a vacation, some downtime to get his creative-self working again. A distraction like the purple haired goddess from last night would be perfect.

  Those soft curves and playful yet submissive blue eyes would remind him there was more to life than just work and the Dark Sons. Getting the little stripper’s information from the Darklights’ computers would be the work of moments. Planning out his seduction of her would be stimulating.

  The way she had morphed from a schoolgirl into sexy secretary had been fascinating, to say the least. One of the reasons he had never settled for just one woman was how little time it took before he was bored. His quick mind and out of the box thinking had made his company such a success, but if it hadn’t been for the important work they did on missing people, he would have long ago sold out and started something new.

  This woman was perfect for some kinky roleplaying. She would hold his interest for more than the usual hour. He had already come up with several fantasies that had her right at their center. Would she take requests?

  “You busy, Boss?” Kane’s voice called from his open door.

  Kane was the head of the mercenary arm of Vallier Technologies and a longtime friend. His almost black hair and intense stare had most people too afraid to approach. Tek had been his SERE instructor back in the day, and the man was one of the few who had graduated the program with perfect marks. So, when Tek had expanded from digital to physical security, he had sought out and gotten the best and most honorable ex-military men he could find and paid them what they were worth.

  “Come on in. I’m just looking over some problems from the technology side.”

  Kane came in and shut the door behind him. At thirty-six, the man was still in prime shape and often led the most dangerous missions himself. The look on his face told Tek his day wasn’t about to get easier.

  “I thought you would be busy prepping your fresh meat speech. Practicing your speech to calm the little geeks down, so they can grow up to be nice little drones for your empire.”

  Tek snorted. “Yes, you know how much I love the rah-rah. Something important must be brewing for you to be in here instead of out there showing off your muscles hoping the new coeds will fall on your dick.”

  “Have I thanked you enough for not having a ‘no fraternization’ policy?” Kane sat down in the chair in front of his desk.

  “Since I don’t think there is a young single desirable woman at my company you haven’t fucked, you really should be sending me expensive scotch by the case. Now what’s up?”

  “I’ve been getting some interesting calls from old contacts for the last few days.”

  “Military?”

  “Not yet, but if there is an alphabet agency I haven’t heard from, I’d be surprised.” His fellow ex-ranger smiled. “Since you’re such a bastard when it comes to working with the government on anything but search and recovery, they are hoping I can smooth the way.”

  Tek leaned back and hit his head against his chair several times. The government always wanted glimpses into his customers’ systems. National security was a favorite catch phrase they loved to throw around. Tek had a strict policy, without a court order, he wouldn’t even give confirmation someone was his client.

  He had customers on the technology side of the house that were on the gray side of the law, including his MC the Dark Sons. He wouldn’t work for anyone who he thought was into drugs or human trafficking, but those were his only hard limits. It didn’t make him popular with Uncle Sam, but it was funny how quickly they changed their tune when they needed someone found and rescued on the ass end of the globe.

  “What company do they want us to turn on now?” Tek almost didn’t care since he knew his answer.

  “Not a company this time. They all want to subcontract one of our employees.” Kane’s face showed the puzzlement he felt.

  Vallier only hired the best, but to his knowledge they didn’t employ anyone so special a bidding war might start in the government. “Your side of the house or Lisen’s?”

  “Lisen’s. I haven’t even heard the name before. Angela Turner.”

  Tek racked his brain but couldn’t place the name. He didn’t know all the over five hundred employees who worked for him in one way or another, but he thought he was aware of the best. He pressed the intercom on his phone. “Karen, can you have Lisen come to my office and bring me the employment file for an Angela Turner?”

  “She’s waiting out here and says she has the file.”

  “Send her in.” Tek raised an eyebrow at Kane.

  He shrugged and smiled. “I gave her a small heads up.”

  Lisen opened the door and Tek admired once again that his CIO was what one would call the complete package. With dark exotic looks, which could be on any runway, she was also one of the smartest and most brutal businesspeople he knew. He might have even tried dating her, if it wasn’t for the fact she preferred her men and sometimes women on their knees and preferably wearing only a ball gag.

  She held up a slim file. “Okay, Kane. You trying to punk me?”

  He held up his hands. “I like my balls comfortably outside a vise. I wouldn’t dare.”

  She tossed the folder onto Tek’s desk with disgust. “Flyboy here pops in, says ‘we have a situation’ and that I should pull some woman’s file and get to your office. Imagine my surprise when the file is for an intern who hasn’t even got her login credentials yet. If this is about some booty call you two are planning, I will not be amused.” Lisen rested her hip on his desk and gave Kane a glare that would shrink most men’s spines.

  Tek flipped open the file and found a one-page resume and the forms for the basic background check they ran on all interns. No red flags on the top page. Twenty-six with a PhD in Psychology from Harvard and ScD in Computer Science from MIT. Both earned before she turned twenty. Her employment history was sparse, only containing internships at several of the leading Tech companies in the country. HR stated they had contacted them all and each company had given her glowing recommendations and had indicated they would hire her back.

  It made no sense. Those degrees alone would have made her a prime candidate for employment at any major corporation. Tek typed her name into an internet search engine. Hundreds of articles popped up with her name in the headline. Most were over two years old, but the number alone was impressive. why hadn’t he heard of her? The most recent headline read: Millionaire Prodigy Vanishes After Father’s Tragic Death. “Well, that’s interesting,” Tek mumbled.

  “What?” Lisen snapped.

  “Someone in HR is either getting a bonus or fired.”

  He scrolled through the search pages, reading the highlights. Lisen and Kane came around and looked over his shoulder.

  “This girl is one of the pioneers of data mining algorithms and she took a 27k job here doing scut work for data security? We sure it’s the same person?” Lisen’s eyes narrowed as he settled on a link. The woman had a Wikipedia page dedicated to her.

  Tek shrugged as he compared the resume to the tiny entry on the screen. “If it’s not her, then it’s someone using her credentials.” He clicked back and hit the images button. The only pictures he found were of a young teenage girl in a cap and gown with her face turned away from the camera. “Do we have a photo of her?”

  “She should get her badge today or tomorrow, but I doubt we have anything yet.” Ka
ne moved back to the chair he had been sitting in. “So, there is an undercover millionaire genius working as an intern. There has to be more to her story if the government wants her so bad. Both the NSA and CIA hinted they would pay in the six-figure range for just a few weeks of her time.”

  Lisen pulled out her phone. “I’ll make some calls and dig around a bit. See what I can find. Do you want me to pull her aside?”

  “I don’t want to spook her before we know why she’s here. Put key logging software on any computers she has access to and keep our exposure to a minimum until we learn what’s going on. It says here she had a company reference from Joshua Witten.” Tek closed his eyes for a second thinking. “I know that name.”

  “Jojo?” Lisen had laughter in her voice. “Oh, if Jojo aka Joshua is her reference then I can definitely get the scoop.”

  “Is he the one who did the tribute to a generation of Divas at last year’s Christmas party?” Kane asked.

  “Yup, and he/she is one of the best encryption specialists we have.”

  Tek considered what his CIO was saying. “So you’re saying she’s the real thing?”

  “No, I’m saying if he asked me to hire a hamster to work in legal I would probably do it just to keep him happy and most of HR knows that. So they probably didn’t check too deep into her background. I’ll talk to him and see what he says about her.”

  Tek swore and closed the folder. “Fine, we’ll watch for now. Both of you see what you can find out and get me a picture of her before my ‘get to know you’ meeting with the interns this afternoon. We’ll meet tomorrow and figure out a game plan. If she’s some sort of prodigy, I’m not going to have her working on GUI bugs for our credit check program. If she’s a fake, I want her gone before she can do any real damage.”

  This company may have strayed from his original vision, but there was no way he would allow a liar or government spy to infiltrate his company.

  Chapter 7

  Some people just need a high five… In the face… With a chair.

  The headache building behind her temples had one of two causes; the monumental force she was using to keep her mouth shut or the sound of the stupidity Rick was spouting off. Either way, if she didn’t get away from him soon, she would probably explode. The slight break she had gotten when someone from HR had shown up to take her picture for badging hadn’t been nearly long enough.

  He had sat her at her new desk in the open environment workplace and then went on about how important his team was and how they rarely got ‘stuck’ with interns. She looked around at the five other programmers who made up his team and noticed not a single one had looked up from their terminal the entire time this windbag talked. It was interesting he hadn’t introduced any of them or ever given credit in his stories of their brilliant achievements to anyone but himself. Rick asked several insulting ways what her connection to Joshua was or if the connection was elsewhere. He was currently telling her how he doubted she could keep up, but he would do his best to mentor her. His tone on that subject made her want to throw up a bit.

  “Okay, Angie, let’s figure out what skills you have so I can best figure out how to use you.” He winked. Her brain froze for a moment and then confirmed, yes, he had just said that.

  “D-did you know studies show most women dislike being called a n-nickname by someone they don’t have a positive emotional connection with? And th-that most men use nicknames to create the appearance of friendship when it d-doesn’t exist?”

  Rick stared at her blankly, then gave a fake chuckle. “Okay, Angela.” He drew out her name like it was a joke. “What programming languages are you familiar with?”

  If the moron had bothered to read her resume, he wouldn’t need to ask. Time to channel her father. When asked a stupid question, be sure not to give a stupid answer. “Imperative or Declarative?” She gave herself a pat on the back at the confused look on his face. “I mean technically there are languages like Assembly that might be considered both dependent on the usage. But come on, who uses those anymore except for d-direct hardware manipulation? But to answer your question I have p-programmed or analyzed code in over 40 languages but most companies need people who can code in Java, Python, or Ruby. Which I can. Doesn’t it feel like after the 10th or so language it is only a matter of syntax not really a new language?”

  A laugh, that was immediately covered by a cough, came from somewhere in the room. She tilted her head as if considering. She continued, “But m-my specialty is optimization algorithms. Hey, you might know the answer to something I’ve been dying to learn. Do your current data mining programs use Round Robin or FCFS scheduling when running through data?”

  Rick stood and left like his pants were on fire. “Sounds like you will be fine. I’m sure Chaz can answer any questions you have on specific problems. Read over your new hire packet, login to all your accounts to make sure they work and don’t forget you have orientation later at the conference room I showed you earlier.”

  Angela tried not to smirk, but it was hard. She looked around the room for a second, took a deep breath, and asked, “Uhm so which one of you is Chaz?”

  A thin man in his late thirties waved from a few desks down, his smile almost busting off his face. “Name is Charles. That was epic. Though not the smartest move since our lord and master likes to hold grudges.”

  She winced but had already figured that. “G-Good to know.”

  “Oh and as you probably know we use both Round Robin and First Come First Serve dependent on the workload and performance required.”

  Angela gave a thumbs-up to Charles. She couldn’t bring herself to say anything since that info was something only a newbie wouldn’t know. The question was to test Rick. His non-answer stated loud and clear he was not the expert he claimed.

  She took a deep breath. Getting through the mind-numbing account set up would be easy. One hour and she would finally get to meet the mysterious man behind the company. Joseph Vallier, the only man who might be harder to get a picture of than herself. She had barely resisted the urge to hack the DMV to get an image. Some mysteries were worth the wait.

  Chapter 8

  The geek is strong with this one.

  Tek toggled off the video feed, shaking his head. Every security camera could record sound, though usually the microphones were turned off. Listening in on his employees felt wrong, but the technology came in handy at times like this. The angle of the camera was from the ceiling and only showed the tops of their heads. So, he hadn’t gotten a better look at this mystery woman.

  “That guy Rick is an ass.” Kane stated the obvious.

  “Yeah, but he gets shit done.” Tek rubbed his neck and pulled up the photo HR had sent of Angela Turner.

  “How, by pissing off his staff so bad they work faster to make him go away?” Kane looked at the picture and whistled. “And I thought my badging photo was bad.”

  Tek couldn’t argue with either of his comments. In the picture Angela looked sort of like a bad caricature of Morticia Addams with squinty eyes. Her black hair was covering half her face, and she looked washed out. There was something about the shape of her face which nagged at him. She looked almost familiar somehow.

  “The geek talk smack down was kind of hot.”

  “And means if she isn’t Angela, then she is someone who knows what she is talking about. If it is her, we need a plan to keep her.” Tek had spent most of the morning avoiding thinking about the potential issue with security and researching Angela.

  Her published papers were nothing like the usual dry academic ego stroking. Her theories on using psychology of the designers to predict the strengths and weakness of design within systems were groundbreaking. He knew he was only scratching the surface of her ideas.

  Kane raised an eyebrow. “What makes her so special?”

  “On paper she is just another talented, well-educated programmer. But when you dig deeper, there is a pattern that is impossible to discount. Look at this.”

  K
ane came around the desk to look at his monitors. “I see lines and numbers.”

  “It’s cute when you try to play dumb. These are the stock prices for the companies she worked as an intern for. Several months after she left each, they had a massive jump that correlates with the release of an upgrade to the software product she worked on.” Tek gave Kane a moment to glance over the numbers before switching screens. “These are the patents she holds and these are the government contracts she was listed on as a subject matter expert. If I was looking at the number of patents alone, I would assume she was in her late fifties. But she is only twenty-six. Think of what she could do.”

  A notification popped up from the software he had monitoring Angela’s computer. Tek clicked and a window on his screen opened that mirrored her monitor.

  “Going to watch her set up her accounts?” Kane raised an eyebrow.

  They watched as her e-mail program popped up.

  * * *

  To: TechnicalSupport@VallierTechnologies.com

  Subject: Possible security breach

  To whom it may concern,

  While installing the programs directed in the new hire packet, I noticed several processes running on my desktop that are outside what I would expect from a fresh install. After doing a trace-back, it would appear that there is key logging and monitoring software installed on my computer. If this is expected, please let me know. I have attached the trace-backs and process names for your confirmation.

  Regards,

  Angela Turner

  Intern Vallier Technologies

  * * *

  Kane burst out laughing and hit Tek on the shoulder. “Guess the stealthy approach won’t work.”

  Tek couldn’t help but chuckle. This woman was sharp and a puzzle he wanted to figure out. “Guess not.” His phone beeped an alarm. “I’ll have to try the more direct approach. Time to welcome the new hires.” He stood smiling. “I’ll just have to talk to her myself and see what I can find out.”