Deadly Pasts (Agent Nora Wexler Mysteries)

by CR Wiley

  “You ruined my life!” she yelled, collapsing on top of him and shaking him by his sweatshirt.

  “Nora, what are you doing here?” he asked. His panic-stricken face looked on the edge of being epileptic. His eyes darted sideways, then back at her.

  “You betrayed my trust, took advantage of my clearance, and made me lose my job,” she raved, continuing to throttle him.

  “You know I didn’t do anything, Nora. I’ve been talking to you about it!” he pleaded, his hands covering his face.

  “I haven’t said a word to you since Seattle!” she said.

  Suddenly she felt hands on her shoulders pulling her back. As soon as she was lifted off of Danny, he scrambled away around the side of the aisle. After one last manic look at her, he took off out the door, leaving her slumped on her side and breathing heavily.

  “It’s fine,” she said over her shoulder to the store clerk. By the time he let her up, Danny could’ve been anywhere. At least he didn’t do something crazy like steal her car too.

  The store clerk was a man of Latin descent with a distinct look of worry on his face. He may well have seen some guns pointed at him in here, or he thought Nora was liable to strike out at him as well.

  “Do you want the police to come over this?” she asked, her voice still louder than normal. The clerk, a middle-aged man of Latin descent, shook his head. “Good. Neither do I.”

  She brushed by him and left the store, ignoring the horns and trying to make it through the cars streaming around her vehicle in the middle of the lane. If Officer Plevy or anyone else from Berkeley PD had shown up about it, she didn’t know what she would do. Probably demand that they hurry up and analyze those fingerprints. Finally she got back in her car, closed the door, and took a deep breath.

  What was Danny doing in Berkeley anyway? And why did he think she knew he didn’t do it? The last thing she wanted from him were more lies. If only Travis would hurry up and prove he’d broken into the data center without her help, she’d be able to get back to work while he’d spend the rest of his life in prison.

  CHAPTER 17

  FBI FIELD OFFICE

  200 MCCARTY AVENUE

  ALBANY, NY

  The computer crimes unit was located in the basement of Albany’s FBI field office, and it was a place where Travis had never spent more than two minutes at any one time. He couldn’t have recalled the names of over half the guys down there if his life depended on it, leaving only one that he was minimally acquainted with who was also involved in the data center theft investigation. His name was Francis, a man who’d been working in this office far longer than Travis had, and he would have to be the one to clear a path for another illegal intrusion into the FBI’s most sensitive data.

  “Hey, I’m not late, am I?” Travis asked, having set the appointment with him earlier via email.

  “No, come on in and have a seat. What’s up?” Francis asked, all without taking his eyes off one of the three computer monitors on his desk. There were just as many computer towers stacked next to the desk in the small office, which was otherwise adorned with pictures of Francis’s family.

  “Any activity?” Travis got a deadpan look from Francis and marveled at how he could give away that he didn’t know what he was talking about in so few words.

  “No, there hasn’t been a single blip since the encryption was fixed, but we’re watching it around the clock anyway.”

  The way Francis leaned back in his chair and basked in the glow from the screens didn’t leave Travis with much to go on to continue the conversation, but he had to try anyway.

  “Francis, is there any way you can talk me through some of the details about how this intrusion took place?”

  “Sure,” Francis said, swiveling his chair away from the monitors. “The basics are that the Heartbleed bug affects the OpenSSL cryptography library related to the Transport Layer Security protocol, or TLS for short. The problem can be summed up as an improper input validation of the…‌do you really want to hear all this?”

  Francis nodded his head knowingly with an awkward look on his face. Travis rubbed his hands together. It was true that most of what Francis just said went in one ear and out the other.

  “Is there any way that you could show me? What about just showing me how you get in to monitor things on a daily basis?” Travis asked.

  “What are you trying to do here?” Francis asked. Travis put his head down and did his best “come clean” sigh.

  “Can I be honest with you? I’m in over my head here and have no reason being involved in this investigation. I’m sure you’ve seen how wound up Boffman is over all this, and after the credit card number I coughed up came up empty I have to find another way to contribute. He told me my job is on the line. Is there any way you can help me out, just show me what to look for? I could be another set of eyes.”

  Travis’s entreaty had an effect on Francis, but he wasn’t sold all the way yet.

  “This is sensitive material we’re talking about here, and we can’t be handing out authorization codes like candy. It would take you years to understand what you’re looking at well enough to notice an anomaly, and up until that point any random click you made could bring the entire system down,” Francis said.

  “I get that. Look, this is my career. I won’t click a thing. If I can just prove to Boffman that I’m learning and get through the next week, and you back me up, I’ll be in the clear. I’ll owe you big time.”

  Francis stared at Travis the same way he had stared at the computer screens. He put his hand over his mouth and bit his knuckle.

  “I’ll tell you what. If you want me to tell Boffman you’re doing something, you have to actually do something. We’ll give up our lunch breaks for the next week, and I’ll talk you through everything that you do. Your hand doesn’t move a muscle without my say-so. What do you say to that?” Francis asked.

  Travis smiled and reached out to shake Francis’s hand.

  “Can you start today? I’ll even cover your lunch,” Travis said. Remembering an authorization code would be no harder than remembering a credit card number, and then Danny would be all set to look around the system under the guise of Travis learning the network.

  An hour of embarrassment and ineptitude was a small price to pay for the code he needed to gain access to the system. Francis was a patient teacher and a thoughtful guy. Travis hoped he’d understand what the deception was for when they discovered who was actually behind the breach.

  The desire to get back home and hand it over to Paulk burned in Travis’s gut. He thought Paulk should enter the authorization code around the same time Travis and Francis were settling in to another lunchtime training session, masking its usage. But if it came down to it, Paulk could go in right away and Travis could manufacture a story about trying to practice at home.

  All Travis needed was for the rest of the afternoon to go smoothly enough for him to stick to his routine and get through it. He should’ve known that was too much to hope for.

  “Conference room, now!” Boffman said, briefly sticking his head into Travis’s office. Between the apoplectic look on Boffman’s face and the vein bulging around his temple, Travis prepared for the worst.

  He rushed through the halls with other members of the team investigating the data breach. In the conference room, a few techs hastily established video links on the large screens. Suddenly Meron and the grizzled countenance of assistant to the FBI Director Guy Bompart appeared before them. Both had an air of thinly veiled rage to them, like their giant floating heads were prepared to jump off the screens and eat people whole.

  “We’re all here. What’s the situation?” Boffman said.

  “Data from the leaks is starting to surface in the form of anonymous emails to journalists. We’ve already had to call off one operation in Texas that was compromised, and at this point we’re just waiting for more bad news to come. Either they’ll keep feeding journalists piecemeal, or this will lead up to a big dump posted all a
t once online somewhere that will sideline us completely,” Meron said.

  Travis was taken aback at the gall of torturing the FBI this way.

  “Can someone please tell me we have a lock on Paulk and are bringing him in this instant?” Bompart raved. Spittle from his mouth hit the lens in front of him.

  Boffman threw a blistering glance back at Travis before looking up to the assistant director’s face.

  “He’s dropped out of sight completely. There hasn’t been a whiff of other OpenSwordsed ringleaders since the initial move on Paulk. We’re still trying to discover where he could’ve gone with that stolen car, but right now we haven’t got a trace,” Boffman said.

  Bompart leaned back and took a sip of what looked like bourbon.

  “We’re already getting calls from some congressional committees demanding to know what the situation is and how that information got out. After another article or two it’ll be impossible to maintain that these confidential details were independently acquired. The cat is getting out of the bag on this one,” he said.

  “What’s our next move?” Meron asked. His face had some level of expectation to it. He was waiting for something, and it wasn’t just marching orders.

  “I’m going to have to fall on my sword for this one,” Bompart said. “We acknowledge the breach, I take full responsibility for the failure to spare Director Wade, and you nail these guys to the wall after I’m gone.”

  Calls of protest came from the conference room and from those with Meron. Even Travis got drawn in, hating to see that kind of unwarranted sacrifice. If only he and Paulk could figure out who was doing this, and stop them. Clenching his fists, he imagined Paulk working his computer magic and zeroing in on the real culprits within fifteen minutes.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that,” Meron said. “The data center is under my domain and I’m the one who should take responsibility for its mismanagement. I’ll step down.”

  Travis blinked, surprised and impressed that Meron would risk his career. In an instant Meron managed to gain a measure of respect he’d previously lacked.

  Bompart pursed his lips and shook his head.

  “That means something to me that you would try to take this bullet, but it would never work. Johnson stepped down for the exact reason you said, but losing another Special Agent in Charge won’t be enough for Capitol Hill. If I don’t take the blame for this, it’ll be the Director’s head on a plate, and Wade is the best the bureau has had in generations.”

  Boffman tapped his fingers on the end of the computer stand near the front of the conference room.

  “Nobody needs to lose their jobs over this. We place the blame where it belongs, on OpenSwordsed, a group with unmistakably terrorist intentions. Now that these articles are starting to appear, we can go after these guys more directly. Let’s lose the secrecy, bring in local law enforcement, the banks, and the tech companies. We can still root them out and give them the kind of justice they deserve.” Boffman said, but it had much less of an impact than what Meron had said. Bompart nearly rolled his eyes. “You do that. I’ll start writing my letter of resignation.”

  After the meeting, Travis escaped without having Boffman chase him through the halls to breathe down his neck. It wasn’t necessary anymore because he already knew he was under the gun. As long as bits of the leak continued to end up in the public eye, the FBI would be dragged through the mud and Travis’s working life was going to be perilous.

  By the time he got home he was so anxious to reach out to Paulk that he hadn’t taken two steps inside before pulling out his phone to post another message in the chat room.

  “I can get you in. Get back to me ASAP,” he wrote.

  After kicking off his shoes and settling in next to Dingo, he checked to see if there was a response. Nothing. A half hour, and then an hour passed without any messages from Paulk.

  Travis choked down a quick fried egg sandwich as he considered what was going on. For a second he wondered if Paulk had been caught, but he definitely would’ve heard about that. Maybe Paulk wasn’t online. The slim odds of that almost had Travis laughing. By 9 p.m., Travis zeroed in on the unsettling conclusion that Paulk had been spooked and had to cut off all communication.

  The thought of losing touch with him made Travis flinch. Not only would Nora be out of the FBI for good, but now it would inflict additional harm on the bureau as they chased the wrong guys and got hammered in the press. Travis imagined telling Boffman and Meron that OpenSwordsed wasn’t behind the attack and getting laughed out of the room because he had no evidence other than Paulk’s own words.

  The phone rang. It was Nora.

  “You’ve been talking to Danny,” she said.

  “How did you know?” he asked. Nora was smart, but this seemed borderline psychic.

  “And you’ve pretended to be me.”

  “He trusts you. It was too convenient to pass up,” he said. It crossed Travis’s mind that perhaps he’d been communicating with Nora and not Paulk from the beginning. “But really, how do you know?”

  “You should’ve passed it up and told him the truth. You’ll never hear from him again. Is that how you were planning to find out if I’d aided the attack, by reaching out to him?”

  Travis sighed, feeling caught in a bind. He didn’t want her to know the risk he took, or the fact that the leaks were bleeding into the papers.

  “Nora, tell me how you know this.”

  There was a pause on the line.

  “I ran into him.”

  “What? There in Berkeley?” Travis gasped. He couldn’t believe that Nora and Paulk had actually crossed paths.

  “Yes, I roughed him up in the back of a convenience store. He looked terrible, like a rabid animal on the verge of starvation. At first it seemed like he was expecting me to arrest him, but later I remembered him saying how he’d already told me. I figured it out that you’d managed to pose as me online,” she said.

  “You have to find a way to get him back immediately,” Travis said.

  “Why? And besides, he’s already long gone,” Nora said. Travis hoped that wasn’t the case.

  “Maybe not. He knows that everyone is on the lookout for him, but I believe him when he says he didn’t do it. There was something about the way he said he would never do that to you that rang true. Plus, it’s way outside of what OpenSwordsed does,” Travis said, though he’d be kicking himself if he found out later that Danny had sent the anonymous emails to those journalists.

  “I don’t know if he’s still here, but I don’t have time to find him,” she said. That wasn’t an answer Travis could live with.

  “Nora, please, it’s incredibly important that he gets back to me.”

  “Why? What are you doing with him?”

  “I just need to talk to him one more time.”

  “That’s a blow-off answer and you know it!” she said, making Travis cringe. “Why are you trying to leave me in the dark on this one?”

  Travis clenched his jaw and put his head down.

  “I can’t tell you. Can you trust me that it’s better this way? You have to find him, and as soon as possible. If he gets taken in or a week goes by, we’ll have no shot at finding out who really did this and you’ll never have your job back,” he said, sharing as much as he could. Anything more, and she’d have a full picture of the laws he was about to break and the prison time he could face if it all went wrong. The risks were great, but so were the rewards if he could find out who really infiltrated that data center.

  “Travis, you can trust me with anything,” she said. He wondered if she was going to press him further, something he didn’t know if he could take. “I’ll do my best, but if he doesn’t want to be found then nothing I do will make a difference.”

  “Thank you,” he said, knowing that she was going far beyond what he would do without a reason behind it.

  “I also was going to tell you that I finally tracked down the man who took Maria away the night she was killed
. He works at a company in San Francisco. I went to see him—it was weird standing there next to him without him recognizing me after I’d been burning the image of his face into my memory all these years—but I got his fingerprints and I’m waiting to see if there’s a match,” she said.

  “That’s impressive.” Travis was jealous that she had closed in on her suspect while he was still struggling to identify his.

  “Thanks, but what’ll be really impressive is what I’ll do to the guys in the PD here if they don’t call me tomorrow with the results. I swear they’re dragging their feet just to torture me!”

  Travis chuckled. “It’s going to work out. Just keep at it.”

  When the call ended, Travis still felt uncomfortable about keeping so much from Nora. He tried to rationalize it by reminding himself that not knowing would put her in less danger if it all blew up on him, but it all rung hollow. He wanted to tell her everything.

  Travis took another look at the chat room and considered what he might say to lure Paulk back, now that he was suspicious. He realized there was nothing he could say. It was all on Nora.

  “I’m sorry about the omission, but this is the only way you can clear your name. If you won’t listen to me, listen to her.”

  CHAPTER 18

  1428 SPRUCE STREET

  BERKELEY, CA

  Sparing a thought for how to track down Danny was too much for Nora, who spent the next day staring at her phone, waiting for a call from the police. Even during the meeting with Chip and Lauren in preparation for the Disciplinary Review Board hearing, she found herself hopelessly distracted.

  “Isn’t that right, Nora?” Chip said, snapping Nora out of her thoughts. She fought the urge to give an uninformed answer.

  “I’m sorry. What?” Nora asked. In his black suit that stretched over his muscles so nicely, Chip appeared ever so slightly disappointed.

  “I was saying that even if pinning Preston Lowery for sexual assault is out of the question because of the video, we should still try to get him penalized for reckless endangerment or disorderly conduct.”