Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2)

by Wallace, Pendelton

  Yves. That dirty bastard. Bohier was the arms dealer that sold the missile to the terrorists who attacked the Star of the Northwest. It was his fault that Meagan and Jack were dead. I hope he rots in hell!

  His head felt like it was going to split open. His breath came in short gasps, he felt sweat breaking out on his forehead. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

  He saw the Pegasus, pushing their sailboat into the giant whirlpool. He was sure that they bought it that time. Then the gun fight. Automatic weapons fire riddling Chris’ boat. First Jack went down, then Chris.

  Then the explosion. Flying through the air. Ted found himself floating with the other bodies in the water.

  ****

  “Hey, Hero, where you gettin’ off today, man?” The big bus driver shook Ted’s shoulder.

  Ted came out of his trance, his hands shaking, his palms wet. His shirt stuck to his skin.

  “Hey, man, you OK?” Garry shook Ted’s shoulder again. “Should I call 911? You havin’ some kind of attack?”

  “No . . . I’ll be fine. Where are we?”

  “We’re all the way to the University Hub. We’re way past your regular stop. This big black lady just gettin’ off told me that your eyes were glazed over and you were breathin’ funny. She thought you were having a seizure.”

  “You loopin’ back to South Lake Union?”

  “No, I'm headed back downtown. If you want to ride, just stay on ‘til we come back on the northern run.”

  “Thanks, Garry.”

  “Nothin’s too good for our hero.”

  Ted sat back in his seat and breathed deeply. Would it ever end?

  Chapter 6

  “Donna, I’ve got Bill on line one.” Julie never used the intercom. Shouting the short distance to Donna’s office was much more effective.

  “Thanks, Jules.” Donna looked up from her computer, took off her reading glasses and picked up the phone. “Hi, honey. How’s it going?”

  “It’s been a good day.” Bill’s voice had a note of caution. “I think I’ve solved the Active Directory problem. I worked on it until the kids got home. This should make our little surprise even more lethal.”

  “That’s great. When do you think we’ll have our bomb ready?” How was she going to break this to him? She knew how much Billy was counting on her being there.

  “I’ve still got a lot of testing to do. I’d say it’ll be a couple of weeks at least.”

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news. I have to work tonight.” She held her breath and waited for the explosion.

  “D, you can’t.” Bill’s voice was calm, but disappointed. “You know you have to be there for Billy.”

  “I’m really sorry. There’s nothing I can do.” She had to make him understand how much this meant to the business. He always understood business. “Paula called me and I can’t turn her down. Besides, it’ll give me a chance to get into Schmidt’s office. I can tap his surveillance camera tonight.”

  “Isn’t there someone else who can do this spook work for you?” His tone shouted condemnation.

  There was a long silence. This was a sore subject between them. They had had this conversation before.

  “You know I hate when you put yourself on the line.” She could hear the bitterness in Bill’s voice. “You’re the boss. You could assign anybody to the job.”

  “Bill you know that no one else can do the job as well as I can. Besides, all of our employees are young and well educated. How would it look for Minnie to apply for a janitorial job with her Angela Jolie figure and Stanford MBA?”

  Donna was middle-aged and frumpy with thick hips and a spare tire around her middle. When she dressed down and didn’t wear makeup, she looked the part.

  “Honey, this is the single most important client we’ve ever worked for.” She took a deep breath and explained it again. “Doing a good job for Alison Clarke could lead to a contract with Millennium Systems. We could do security reviews, penetration tests; we could sell them our anti-virus software for their network. We might even be able to convince Alison to put DigiGuard AntiVirus on every computer they sell. This one client could be worth millions.” She appealed to his sense of greed. “You know that boat you want? This could be it.”

  The thing that she didn’t tell Bill, but that he knew anyway, was that she was addicted to the thrill. She craved the adrenaline rush she got from sneaking in the wire taps, the listening devices, tapping into the video surveillance systems, hacking networks. This was more fun than sex, which was probably why Bill resented it so much. Not only was she outsmarting her opponents, she was physically invading their premises. And making a nice penny in the process, thank you.

  “What about Julie? No one would suspect her.”

  “That’s because Jules couldn’t tap a video surveillance system to save her life. I’m sorry, Bill, it has to be me. They would question it now if I sent someone else. Can you make it okay with Billy for me?”

  “What do you want me to tell him, double-oh-seven? That his mom’s letting him down again?”

  “Tell him I’ll take him shopping for that X-box this weekend. Tell him that I’ll make it up to him. We can eat lunch at Red Robin.”

  “Don’t you think that buying your kids off is getting a little old? D, they need their mom to be there for them.”

  “Bill, make it right for me. I’ve gotta go. Bye.”

  She let out a deep breath and hung up the phone. Bill could be so temperamental sometimes. He could be harder to deal with than a woman.

  Her eyes fell on the plaque on the wall, awarded at the 2002 Computer World Expo. DigiGuard was the first anti-virus software to meet the Armageddon Virus threat. A grateful technical community honored her for sharing the inoculation with her competitors so that their customers would be safe.

  She smiled. The Armageddon Virus brought Internet commerce to a halt. The first truly global multi-attack virus, it invaded corporate systems world-wide. Hard drives filled up, servers crashed. Zombies went wild. Traffic on the Internet was so great that e-commerce sites went off-line. When Kay-Bee Toys crashed on the eve of the Christmas rush, the technical community knew they had a full-fledged crisis on their hands.

  Electronic commerce virtually stopped for forty-eight hours while the world’s anti-virus vendors struggled to solve the riddle. Most corporations shut off their Internet access to protect their networks. Business ground to a halt. It had cost billions of dollars.

  It was her finest hour. She was first to offer a solution.

  The fact that she and Bill had written the Armageddon Virus helped. They had an inoculation ready and waiting when the virus was unleashed. They waited a decent period of time, then announced that DigiGuard AntiVirus would combat the invader. Fortune 500 companies lined up to buy her software.

  When the other vendors didn’t come up with a solution in the next couple of days, Donna magnanimously announced that DigiGuard would share their secret in the interest of protecting the whole community. She was perceived as a selfless hero, a champion of open source code.

  Now, with the new malware she and Bill were preparing, she would be thrust back into the spotlight. If only her family could see her as a hero. If only they could see how important her work was.

  ****

  Sarah had just left for class. Chris hobbled to the kitchen and grabbed a Henry’s out of the fridge. Damn, it hurt. Just moving around was painful. He picked up the bottle of Percocet off the counter, re-read the label, then put it down. It wasn’t time to take another pill yet.

  He looked at the bottle of beer in his hand. What the hell. He twisted open the top.

  The trip to the kitchen, the DVD player and back to his chair winded him. Fuck. He had no stamina.

  Picking up the remote control, he turned on the TV. Today would be a Lonesome Dove marathon. He intended to watch the whole mini-series from start to finish in one sitting.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Now what?” He pulled himself to his feet a
nd shuffled to the door. “Yes?”

  An attractive woman in sweats stood before him with a black case in one hand and a mat tucked under the other. In a glance he took in her long, light brown hair, brown eyes and slender figure. His heartbeat increased.

  “Mr. Hardwick? I’m Amy Beecher.”

  “Yeah?” He didn’t mean to be rude, but his tongue automatically locked up whenever he met a beautiful woman.

  “Your physical therapist? Didn’t Doctor Schultz’ office tell you? I have a 12:30 appointment.”

  “Oh . . . yeah. I guess I forgot.” So much for the Lonesome Dove marathon. “Come in.” Chris pulled his bathrobe tighter and stepped aside.

  “You must be pretty important. We usually don’t do PT outside of the clinic. Who do you know?” Amy set her case and mat down and surveyed the living room.

  “Don’t you watch TV? Read the newspapers?”

  “I really don’t pay much attention to the news. Why?”

  “That’s okay. I like it better this way anyway.” If she didn’t recognize him from the news, he could just be Chris. He was fed up with all of that hero bullshit.

  Chris’ flea market furniture embarrassed him a little. A hand-tied rug covered much of the hardwood floor. An old couch and miss-matched overstuffed chair sat in front of built-in book cases on either side of the window on the side wall. A life-sized cardboard cutout of Spiderman, left over from Ted, stood in the corner and Sarah’s pink lawn flamingos framed the stone fireplace.

  “Can we move this coffee table so we have room to work?” Amy asked.

  “Yeah, sure.” Chris started to bend down to move the table, then straightened up again in pain.

  “Here, let me do it.” Amy unzipped her jacket, dropped it on the couch and moved the table out of the way. “You might want to put on some shorts and a T-shirt.

  Chris admired Amy’s svelte body through her tank top. She wasn’t what he would call curvaceous, she didn’t have an ounce of fat on her.

  Something clicked on inside of him. Since the terrorist attack, he had felt numb, dead inside. Watching Amy’s butt as she moved the table ignited a spark.

  “My…clothes are upstairs. I usually don’t go up unless my sister’s here to help me.”

  “That sounds like the first thing we should work on then.” Amy opened her case and took out a sling of some sort. “Here, let’s show you how to use the banister to help yourself up the stairs.”

  Amy’s smile lit up the room. She turned and walked towards the staircase.

  Chris shuffled after her. She might be a couple of years older than him, but what the hell.

  He grabbed the banister and started up. “Ahh.” Pain flooded through his chest.

  “Okay, mister. Let me put the safety strap around you, then I’ll help.”

  How’s she gonna help? She had to be nine inches shorter than Chris and at least a hundred pounds lighter.

  Amy looped the strap around Chris’ waist and pulled it tight in her right hand. They were standing face to face. His heart stopped. He couldn’t breathe. He hadn’t been this close to a woman since Meagan . . .

  The world collapsed in around him. He felt dizzy, engulfed in darkness.

  “Mr. Hardwick?”

  He heard a soft voice from way far away. A lifeline in the night.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what just happened.”

  She took his wrist and felt his pulse, then a gentle finger lifted his eye lid. Her cool touch felt so good.

  “You seem all right, Mr. Hardwick. Do you need to sit down?”

  “Chris. Call me Chris. And no, I’m okay. Let’s just do this.”

  Amy stared at Chris for a moment, then made up her mind. “Okay, Chris. Grab the banister with your right hand and put your left foot on the next riser.” She lifted his leg with her left hand.

  Chris hated being treated like a child, he hated feeling helpless. But Amy got him to the landing halfway up the stairs.

  “Slack off.” Chris held onto the banister and gasped. “I need to catch my breath.”

  “Let’s keep going, mister. No pain, no gain.”

  “Who are you, the PT Nazi?”

  “Get moving.” She flashed her perfect teeth at him. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Chapter 7

  Ted thought back to his orientation. Justin said he didn’t believe in making people work in cloth covered boxes. Was this any better?

  The brick-walled bullpen contained eight large tables. At each table, four workstations, most with at least two monitors, a tower computer under the table and one or more laptops at each station, consumed every inch of the table top. Old coffee cups, pizza boxes and cardboard takeout containers littered the space between the hardware.

  The towers were all identical, but Ted knew that the laptops displayed their owner’s personal preferences. The developers were divided almost evenly between Macs and PCs. There was an ongoing friendly argument (Maybe sometimes not so friendly.) over which was best. No one ever convinced a Mac owner that a PC was superior and vice versa. Ted snickered to himself. Kid stuff, the argument over Windows vs. Linux is all out warfare.

  He yawned, stretched and glanced up towards the special “natural” light neon tubes in the ceiling fixtures. A huge, glass-doored refrigerator stocked with bottled water, pop, energy drinks, fruit and healthy snacks dominated one end of the room. A pool table sat at the other end.

  The wall with arched windows, looking out over Pioneer Square, was natural brick. The other three walls were floor to ceiling whiteboards. As in the conference room, the whiteboards were covered in computer code, diagrams and occasionally Bear drew a caricature of one of his co-workers. These typically were photographed and displayed on the company’s wiki.

  The room was deserted, except for Ted and Bear, hunched over a monitor on table three. A wooden sculpture of a bear rose between the jumble of monitors, cables and equipment on the table. Ted didn’t know how long they’d been working, but it was well into Wednesday morning.

  The team leader at Ted’s table, Bear’s real name was Dave Jones. Ted could see why everyone called him “Bear.” His stocky build, wild hair and beard fit the nickname. His grumpy temperament matched a bear just coming out of hibernation.

  “Hold your breath.” Bear waved a hand at Ted, who was sitting in his swivel chair just off of Bear’s shoulder, watching his every keystroke. “We’re almost there.”

  Bear typed in a command at the C: prompt on his screen. A popup window with a progress bar and a label flashed onto the screen.

  Please wait.

  Attempting to Crack Password.

  “Easy . . . easy . . .” Bear’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  This was the tricky part. They had to break the password without tripping their target system’s security features.

  “Okay, we’re in!” Bear shot both fists into the air over his head. “Good work, Higurea.”

  Ted beamed. He had spent almost two weeks modifying Cracker, YTS’ password breaking software. This was the final test. If they could break into Justin’s account, they could bust any system.

  “You did it. You get the coup.” Bear pushed back from the keyboard, double-fist bumped Ted and allowed him to drive.

  “What should I do?” Ted knew that he was supposed to leave some kind of signal to the big boss that he had hacked his system. He just wasn’t sure what was appropriate.

  “When Irena broke in, she sent an e-mail to the entire staff inviting them to lunch at the Met in Justin’s name. He paid up too. He said that anyone who could break into his account deserved to name their own reward.”

  Ted looked up at the big wall clock. “Dios mío. Look at the time. I had no idea it was getting so late.”

  “What, did you have a date with J-Lo?”

  Suddenly, Ted was overwhelmed with hunger. When was the last time he had eaten? And he was tired too. He could use a few hours in the sack.

  “Has a
nybody else done it? Has anyone besides Irena ever cracked Justin’s account?”

  “Nope.” Bear covered a yawn with a big paw. “This is only the second time. So, what’re you going to do?”

  “Let’s take a look at the payroll data. I’m thinking that I deserve a big raise for this.”

  ****

  Donna wheeled her cart through the corridors at the Millennium Towers. It was getting to be old news. The thrill, the adrenaline rush wasn’t there, just a mundane part of a mundane job.

  Then her heart rate sped up. She stopped in front of a new door. She had never been in Jackson Schmidt’s office before. What secrets did it hold? What incriminating evidence of malfeasance would she find?

  She wished Bill was here. It would be the ultimate coup to swipe everything off of Schmidt’s desk and fuck right there. Security cameras and all.

  She brought her breathing back under control as she unlocked the door. Schmidt’s office was vastly different from the office of Jack Metcalf, her other major assignment.

  Where Metcalf’s office was the definition of boring, with plain walls and no shrubbery, Schmidt’s office had a homey feel. There was the requisite “bragging wall,” with pictures of Schmidt with all sorts of important business and political figures.

  How much did he pay for the picture with the president? She wondered. On the credenza were the usual pictures of his family. Hmm, a gorgeous young blonde wife, for a homely scarecrow like Schmidt. I guess money matters.

  She dusted and cleaned. She organized and tidied. Then the good stuff. She couldn’t break into his computer and files that would come later. But she could install the mini-DVR she had in her uniform pocket.

  She moved her cart under the security camera and took down her step stool. Climbing up on the stool, she dusted the camera and lifted the ceiling tile above it.

  Being careful to keep her hands out of the camera’s line of sight, she lifted the mini-DVR over her head and secured it to a cross beam with Velcro strips. Then she took two wires out of her pocket and threaded one end of each wire to the device. The other ends had alligator clips on them.