Security Breach

by Vannetta Chapman

  “Where’s your sidekick?”

  “Your guy got him. Old guy, long hair—he was yours, right?”

  “I wasn’t sure if Travis would have the wherewithal to see this through. He was a newer recruit.”

  “You planned this carefully.” She was inching slowly closer, praying that Randall was remaining down and out of sight, that he’d follow orders and not try to be a hero. Actually, she needed him to be a hero, just not yet. If things went south, and something told her they might, she needed him to pick up the pieces.

  “You’re wasting your time, Agent Brooks.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’re not going to distract me by appealing to my sense of pride.”

  “I wasn’t aware that was what I was doing.” She nodded toward his laptop. She was now close enough to read the digital countdown that dominated his screen. “We have ten minutes. Might as well talk about something.”

  “If you shoot me, you still won’t be able to stop the program.”

  “Can’t blame me for trying.”

  “If I shoot you, I’ll still be here to watch the cumulative differential of my work.”

  She slid into the booth across from him, placed the Sig Sauer on the table, then dropped her hands into her lap. Her backup piece was strapped to her ankle. Shooting him wouldn’t work, though. Nora wanted answers. “So let’s watch it together.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re not the type to give up.”

  “Whose giving up? I just climbed fifty-six flights of stairs. Takes a lot out of a person.”

  “You’re tenacious. I’ll give you that.” His eyes danced with adrenaline...and perhaps something else. Perhaps he’d needed a little chemical assistance to see this through. Or it could be the fire and passion and certainty of the touched, the only one who understood, the person who was going to set the world straight. And Quinn understood firsthand the cost of technology gone awry.

  It was the true believers that Nora always feared most of all.

  But it wasn’t fear that Nora felt now. It was a calm acceptance. She would stop him, and if she had to give her life to do that, so be it.

  Good people had died for far less.

  Her mind flashed back to her previous partner, Tate, and his lifeless body in a small town called Shipshewana. There was no shame in giving your life for your country—for the families and the kids and the unborn who had a right to experience all that she had.

  Her grandparents’ house, her father’s hand holding hers, her mom setting a plate of food down in front of her.

  Ben Lapp explaining prayer over a home-cooked breakfast.

  The way the stars had looked outside the C-20 Gulfstream. Nylah and Curtis and Randall. The director. Governor Abbott. All good people who would carry on, but only if she succeeded in stopping the madman across from her.

  “Nine minutes, agent. What’s your move?”

  “Explain it to me, so I can appreciate it. You had four coders—yourself, Travis...who else?”

  “Used two international sources. I could have done it myself, but I knew you’d be able to track a single coder faster. As things stand, the code is all in place and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  “What happens next?”

  His grip tightened on the pistol, but his finger remained next to, not on, the trigger.

  She thought he’d ignore her request, but who else did he have to talk to? And the geniuses always wanted to enlighten those beneath them.

  “The grid is designed to come back online slowly. When I turn it on all at once—and yes I can override Abbott’s supposed firewall—”

  “The substations will explode—all of them at once.”

  “A series of explosions actually. It will be like dominoes falling one after the other.” His voice softened, and he glanced toward the window. “It will be beautiful.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s bound to happen eventually. Better to control the when and where and how.”

  “Fatalistic.”

  “No less true.”

  “Why is it bound to happen?”

  “You know why.” He leaned forward, his left hand still on the keyboard. The hand on the pistol raised slightly to make his point. “The Internet of Things—it’s them or us. You should be thanking me.”

  “You’re doing this for your daughter. You blame the IoT for her death.”

  “The IoT will do more damage than I ever could.” He laughed—a hollow, mirthless sound. “Very good. You figured it all out.”

  She could no longer see the countdown clock, but she’d always had a good sense of time. Seven minutes until Quinn tapped the key that would activate the code. Two minutes until Randall made moved in. She watched for movement reflected in the glass windows behind Quinn. Randall would be coming from the side, aiming toward the windows. She needed both hands free to grab the laptop. She had to keep Quinn from using it as a shield.

  “Your move, agent.”

  “I still don’t have one. We both know that.”

  “You have a refreshingly honest way about you.”

  “There isn’t really time for lies.”

  “We could have used you on our side.”

  “I would never be on your side.”

  Anger clouded his features, and then he reached for his Glock.

  Every fiber in Nora’s body screamed out for her to grab her Sig Sauer, put an end to the man sitting across from her, but she ignored that instinct.

  Quinn palmed the Glock and flipped the safety off at the same moment that Nora caught Randall’s reflection in the glass. She grabbed the laptop and dropped across the booth’s seat with the laptop under her.

  Time slowed.

  Ben Lapp’s words came back to her, almost as if he were whispering them in her ear.

  No one is born believing.

  We all have to work out our own faith, in our own way.

  It might be a foxhole prayer, but she wasn’t proud. The fact that she was desperate and scared didn’t stop her. She prayed. She called out to God. She prayed they would stop this, that she hadn’t activated any fail safe when she’d slapped the laptop’s lid shut.

  Four shots rang out.

  She thought one was from Quinn, but she couldn’t be sure and she didn’t want to sit up until she knew it was safe to bring out the laptop. Wind whistled through the broken glass, and then Randall was there, pulling her up and taking the laptop from her.

  She looked over at Quinn, or what was left of him. Randall’s three shots had all found center of mass.

  “He talked about the IoT.”

  “I heard him.” Randall was sitting at the adjacent table, the laptop opened before him. His fingers flew over the keyboard. He hit a combination of keys. The countdown clock, now at three minutes, twenty-eight seconds minimized to the bottom of the screen. The screen itself was a stream of code.

  Nora jumped to her feet, pulled out her new SAT phone to call the command center, then realized the phone wasn’t showing a signal. Maybe it had been damaged in the fire fight. Or maybe Quinn had planned for that too.

  She glanced out over the skyline—still dark, still waiting. There was nothing she could do but wait with them, wait on Randall, pray that he could crack the code, pray that they’d be given another chance. She wasn’t sure how much she believed in divine intervention and God and foxhole prayers, but she prayed anyway. It mattered that much. There might not be anyone listening, but if there was...

  “I’ve got it. At least, I think I’ve got it.”

  She rushed around to stand behind him. The clock read forty-two seconds until midnight, until the dominoes began to fall, until Quinn’s destruction was set into motion.

  Nora collapsed into the chair across from Randall. He looked up at her, his finger hovering over the enter key, his eyes asking if she was sure.

  “Do it.”