Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2)

by Wallace, Pendelton

  Chris sat next to him. “He doesn’t even know that I exist. I’m just a humble paralegal. He’s dad’s client. As a matter of fact, he’s probably never even met the Dragon Lady who’s the lead attorney on the case.”

  “So, who is this guy? What’s his beef?”

  “I can’t tell you details. All I can say that he’s the chairman of a big computer company and his CEO is trying to blame him for being way over budget on this R&D project.”

  Ted’s spider sense tingled. “Dude, what kind of R&D project?”

  “I don’t know. It’s something about a new kind of computer.”

  “Shit, ‘mano. You’re working for Millennium Systems. The R&D project is called ‘Delphi,’ isn’t it?”

  Chris’ mouth dropped open. He sat and stared at Ted for a minute. “How did you know that?”

  “Dude, I’m working for the CEO. We’re on different sides of the same case.”

  The two friends stared at each other in silence. Chris got up, started to walk away, turned and sat down next to Ted again. “You know I can’t talk to you about this case, don’t you?”

  “Ditto.”

  “So what’re we gonna do?” Chris took another swig of water.

  Ted saw the confusion in his friend’s eyes. “I got a bad feelin’ about this. Cat is askin’ me to do something I don’t agree with. Now, I find out that you’re on the other end. If you and your dad’re on the other side, I must be workin’ for the bad guys.”

  Ted agonized over the right or wrong about what he was doing. Cat had a client who needed her help. Ted could provide special skills to help resolve her problem. But what if Alison was a crook? What if he was on the wrong side of the fight?

  “I’m not too sure about that amigo.” Chris got up and beckoned Ted to follow him. “I’ve seen my client’s files. This guy’s not a new born babe. I’ve been thinking that I should talk to Dad about what I’ve been finding out.”

  “Shit, dude,” Ted lowered his voice as they entered the busy locker room. “If they’ve both got their hands dirty, how do we know who’s in the right?”

  “We don’t.” Chris dialed the combination lock on his locker. “We don’t talk to each other about this case. We do our jobs and keep out butts down.” He stripped off his gym clothes and strode towards the shower.

  “Caramba.” Ted sat and stared into space. He had a bad feeling about this.

  ****

  The door slammed shut with a thud. Catrina slid into the seat next to Ted and offered him a cup of coffee. She hadn’t been able to resist the Caffe Ladro on the corner.

  This battered white delivery van was Catrina’s Batmobile. Plastic cartons held any number of disguises, paraphernalia and who knows what else. While Catrina stepped out for the coffee, Ted rummaged around in a stack of magnetic signs in the back of the van and brought out two that said Magnolia Floral Delivery. It was only a moment’s work to stick the signs on the side of the van.

  The delivery van sat parked in front of a large old house in Seattle’s upscale Magnolia neighborhood. Hundred year-old oaks and maples burned with bright fall colors. A few marigolds and other fall flowers clung precariously to their vines. Most houses had lawns above the street level and stairs leading up to front porches.

  “Explain to me again why we couldn’t do this at the office?” The twinkle in Catrina’s gray eyes told Ted that she was just playing with him.

  Ted took a sip of the hot coffee. “We don’t want to leave any incriminating evidence. If we hack in from your office, we’ll leave behind your IP address. If anyone ever traces the attack, it’ll lead them to your servers.” He slipped out of the driver’s seat and made his way to the back of the van.

  He flipped open his laptop and booted up. “We’ll hijack a residential wireless network and spoof the IP address. If they ever trace the hack, they’ll come back to one of these home networks.”

  Ted brought up his wireless network connections screen. “Most people using wireless networks at home don’t use secure passwords. I’ve got three networks in range right now.”

  He selected the network called “Montgomery Family” and clicked on “connect.” The progress bar moved along the bottom of the screen, then the Montgomery Family network changed to blue and the screen said “connected.”

  At the bottom of his screen, a white box asked for his pass code. Ted clicked on the Cracker icon on his screen. In seconds he got a green light. Cracker had hacked the password.

  “That’s the first step. We have a network connection.” Ted felt a pang of doubt in his stomach. “Next we connect with MS.” He opened Outlook and searched for an email from Alison Clarke. “Here we are.”

  The email contained a spreadsheet attachment. Ted opened the attachment and scanned down the spreadsheet. “I planted a Trojan Horse on her personal computer. When she opened that flash drive I gave her with the terrorist attack pictures, it loaded a bot on her system. My little bot hijacked SMS and crawled the MS network. I’ve got all of their IP addresses here.”

  Ted logged onto the MS domain controller and was challenged for a password. “Let’s see how good YTS’s password cracker is.” Ted held his breath.

  A popup window, with a progress bar and a label, flashed onto the screen.

  Please wait.

  Attempting to crack password.

  The speakers from his laptop played a tinny version of the Jeopardy theme song. “That’s Bear’s sense of humor.”

  It took forever. “They must have strong password naming standards.” Ted wiped the beads of perspiration from his brow. Finally, the dialog box flashed a green light and a new window opened.

  A surge of adrenalin coursed through Ted’s system. This was the high that hackers were after. He beat the system, but was he doing a good thing? Catrina was asking him to commit a felony. Did the ends justify the means? Did the cops really need for him to break the law to find out who killed that Harrison woman? Wouldn’t they solve it on their own? But this wasn’t really about the murder was it? It was about the boardroom leak. He was putting his ass on the line over a bunch of rich people squabbling for control.

  “We’re in.”

  “You’re sure they can’t trace you?” Catrina looked more nervous that Ted felt.

  “That’s why we’re going through all this trouble. Most hackers get caught because they get sloppy. Justin didn’t allow any sloppiness in his organization.”

  “This is all new to me. I’m used to breaking and entering. I’ve just never done a virtual B&E before. Seattle PD would love to catch me at something like this. I’ve been such a pain in their butts that they’d love to put me out of business.”

  Now that he was in, Ted breathed easier. “We have the keys to the kingdom.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ve just logged in as sysadmin. I own their network.”

  Catrina patted Ted’s back. “OK, what do you see?”

  “Let’s start by looking at their CFO’s files. It looks like their Finance department is on its own sub-net, behind a fire wall. We’re going to have to hack through that.”

  ****

  Rickie Freeman couldn’t have articulated why he hated his dad. Maybe it was because his dad was so dominating, controlling Rickie’s every action. Maybe it was because his dad was an authority figure. Rickie hated authority. Maybe it was because his dad was always right. Whatever it was, Rickie resented his father in a way that few sons ever did. He wanted to show him up. He wanted to prove that he was as good as the old man. Now he had the chance.

  At the age of fifteen, Rickie had been planted in front of a video device for most of his life. When he was little, it was the TV. His mom plopped him down in front of the electronic babysitter and shoved a video tape into the VCR. As he got older, he became addicted to video games. From Nintendo he graduated to PlayStation, then on to WII.

  Now he was into computers. Or more accurately, he was into hacking. His buddies at Redmond High School got him started, but he quickl
y outclassed any of them. He had a God-given talent for breaking and entering. There wasn’t any system he couldn’t get into.

  His computer teacher at school made them watch a lame News Front TV segment on some old dude named Jason something or other who hacked systems for a living. It was actually kinda cool. But Rickie had a much deeper desire: he was going to hack into his dad’s network and show the whole world what a fraud he was.

  Rickie had the big McMansion to himself. Mom and Dad were both at work, like they were every afternoon. He danced down the twisting staircase and through Mom’s living room. He hesitated at the door to Dad’s office. It was forbidden territory.

  When he slipped the key into the door, it turned smoothly. He wasn’t allowed in here often and never alone. The blonde oak desk looked out through French doors into Mom’s garden. Behind the leather swivel chair was a matching credenza with a bunch of framed pictures.

  A wicked smile crossed his acne-scarred face as he picked up the silver framed picture of the old man and him on a fishing trip. He’d given the picture to his dad for his birthday last week. He insisted that Dad keep the picture on the credenza in his home office.

  He brushed his long hair out of his eyes, turned the picture frame over and slipped open a concealed compartment. From the compartment he removed a flash drive and replaced it with another.

  “Smug bastard,” Rickie said to himself. Dad never even examined the picture frame. It was a nanny-cam Rickie found on the Internet, the same place where he got the nanny-cam that he concealed in his parents’ bedroom. The flash drive contained up to seventy-two hours of footage. During that time Dad surely must have logged into his work system. Dad spent more time in his home office logged into the computer than he did with the family.

  Just getting into Dad’s office had been a challenge. Dad kept it locked twenty-four- seven. Rickie had stolen Dad’s keys one night while Mom and Dad were making God-awful noises in their bedroom. He got an imprint and made a key from a blank he shoplifted from Lowe’s.

  Rickie replaced the nanny-cam and locked his dad’s office, then bounded up the stairs to his bedroom. He plugged the flash drive into his MacBook Air and fast-forwarded through the boring stuff until Dad entered the picture. This was Rickie’s third attempt. He had to re-position the picture frame twice so that it could get a better shot of the keyboard.

  The picture on his screen showed Dad sitting at the desk. He turned on his computer and his fingers went to the keyboard. Rickie froze the action. There was the first letter, a capital “R.” He carefully wrote down each key stroke until he had the password. “R1cK1e#1.” What bullshit. Dad used Rickie’s name for his password.

  From his desk, he used the home wireless network to log onto his dad’s computer. Dad would have a cow if he knew that Rickie had set up a wireless network. He was always bitching about how insecure they were. Rickie’s secret network allowed him to work from his room, just in case his parents came home early.

  He found the VPN icon on the screen and double clicked. He entered the password as he had seen his father do on the video. The screen flashed a warning, then the Millennium Systems logo came up. His heart leapt. He was into the best protected network in the world.

  Chapter 19

  What the hell? Richard Freeman Sr., still smarting from the public humiliation administered by that damned Justin McCormack on News Front, stared at the report for the hundredth time. These numbers don’t add up.

  Freeman brushed his hands across his salt and pepper military-style haircut and pondered the report. There were fifty seconds of unbilled time on his computer network this month. Fifty seconds? What did that mean? How could the system skip almost a full minute? That was an eternity in computer time.

  A big man, Freeman sat ram rod straight at his desk. Once a Marine, always a Marine. He hit a few keys on his keyboard and brought up last month’s report. No missing time. Not the month before either. Or the month before that. Fifty seconds.

  He went back to this month’s report. He clicked on the little “+” sign next to the detail line. It opened up even greater detail. There it was. Thirty seconds. Then ten seconds, then another ten seconds. Three distinct events. All late at night. The domain controller processed a request, went blank for a few seconds, then went merrily on its way.

  What the hell was going on? A hacker! Someone was hacking in. They were using that unbilled time to worm their way into the system, then, if his experience was right, they assumed a legitimate user’s ID. His system was under attack.

  There, in the log files, were the user ID’s of people logged on when the attack occurred. He dialed the phone.

  It rang once, then: “Millennium Systems IT, this is Sandra, can I help you?”

  “Sandra, Richard Freeman in Security. I have a quick question for you. On Wednesday morning, at about one am, were you logged into the system?”

  “One am? Are you nuts? Even I’m not that dedicated. I was sleeping like a baby. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing to worry about.” He had hit pay dirt on the first try. “I’m just looking into some irregularities in the system logs.”

  He hung up without saying ‘good bye’. It took seven more attempts to find the next person who was not on the system when their ID was used late at night. The third person frightened him. Jackson Schmidt, Millennium Systems CFO. Schmidt had the keys to the kingdom. If someone could hack in with his ID, they could do inestimable damage.

  “Goddamn it,” Freeman said to himself. “Nobody hacks in to Millennium Systems.”

  No one in MS Security would get a moment's rest until he knew the hacker's name. And then, God help them.

  ****

  Chris was feeling stronger every day. He was back to bench pressing two hundred pounds and his runs with Amy were up to two miles a day.

  “Twenty-two, twenty-three . . .” Amy gently wiped his brow with the towel around her neck as she spotted Chris’ curls. “Two more, c’mon. Don’t stop now.”

  Chris had never been in better shape. He was driven to excel for her. He always had to do just two more reps for her.

  “Twenty-five.” He dropped the free weights and blew out a long breath.

  Amy stood toe-to-toe with him. He looked down into her brown eyes. She didn’t flinch, didn’t move. He watched her chest expanding and contracting with each breath.

  “Good job. I think that’s it for today.” She still didn’t move.

  Their faces were inches apart.

  Chris felt his heart beating in his chest, felt her closeness. He moved his face slowly forward. There was a strange look in her eyes. Was it fear? She turned her head up to meet his lips.

  He took her face in his hands. He still dreamed of Meagan every night. He couldn’t put himself on the line again. He never wanted to go through that kind of pain, ever again.

  Chris turned away. “I'm sorry, Amy. I can't do this. It's too soon.” He turned and headed for the locker room.

  ****

  “You what?” Ted unrolled the chimichanga and added shredded lettuce on top of the flap. “Are you loco, amigo? The chica clearly digs you.” He sprinkled shredded cheddar cheese over the lettuce and reached for the guacamole and sour cream.

  Wednesday night dinners at his apartment had become a new tradition. Chris came over every week after his workout at 24-hour Fitness, which was only a few blocks from Ted’s building. Ted used Chris’ workout time to cook. Cooking always grounded him, made him feel close to his family, no matter that they lived fifteen-hundred miles away.

  “I think she wanted me to kiss her.” Chris paused setting the table. Okay, it was really a breakfast bar. Finally, he reached in the fridge for a couple of Coronas. “Jesus, Ted. It’s wrong on so many levels.”

  Ted looked up from the counter. His tall blond friend leaned against the breakfast bar, a hang-dog look on his face. Wasn’t he ever going to get over Meagan? Ted still had the nightmares, but he had moved on with his life. These weekly sessions were beginning to fee
l like some kind of girly talk show. Guys didn't talk this much about their feelings.

  “She’s a professional, you know.” Chris took a pull on his Coronas. “It’s unethical for her to get mixed up with her clients." He spoke in a quiet monotone. "And I’m just not ready.”

  “Okay, dude, so why're you hangin’ out with her? You don’t need her anymore. Shit, man, I can hardly keep up with you anymore when we run. You don’t need no physical therapist.” Ted passed a plate with a chimichanga, frijoles and arroz to Chris.

  Chris took the plate. “Goddamn, Ted. This looks amazing." His voice perked up. "You’ll make someone a good wife someday.” He broke off a piece of the deep-fried flour tortilla and plopped it into his mouth. “I don’t know. . . I just like being around her. She kind of fills up a hole in my life, I guess.”

  Ted slathered homemade chipotle salsa over his chimi. “Look, dude, either shit or get off the pot. I’m no Doctor Phil, but even I know that it ain’t right. If you’re interested in her, you’ve gotta let her know. If you're not, then it’s not fair to string her along.” He took that first bite. Heaven. Just as good as the chimis that Papa made. “Ask her out." Ted spoke around a mouthful of food. “Take her on a date; see if she’s really interested.”

  ****

  “Mr. Chung, I’m Dorothy Robinson, Department of Homeland Security.” Catrina flashed her ID. “And this is special agent Washington, FBI.” She tilted her head towards Jonathon Jefferson.

  Good, Catrina thought, he couldn’t be more surprised if we stepped off of a flying saucer.

  She noticed the manager glance around the bank’s posh two-story lobby to see if anyone was watching the interchange.

  “We need a few minutes of your time. Can we go into your office?” Catrina saw a lavishly-appointed office behind the door through which Chung had just stepped.

  “What’s this all about?” Beads of perspiration appeared on the manager’s bald forehead.