In Deep with the FBI Agent

by Lynne Silver

  “I need to ask a few questions about Montgomery Prep and its operations.”

  Immediately, she was on alert. Darn it. For once could she find a man interested in her and not her job? “I already told you yesterday we haven’t been hacked.”

  “Are you sure? Major corporations can have breaches for months without knowing a thing, and they have full information security teams. What do you guys have? One tech who’s responsible for every computer and printer on the campus?”

  Since he was right—as usual—and annoying in his accuracy, she stood. “Sam, you’re scaring me. I have to get ready for my next meeting, and I’m not the tech person around here. I can give you his name if you want.” Between the reunions and her goal of big donations, she didn’t have time for FBI investigations.

  He stood also. “Casey, wait. Please, sit. I’ll only take a minute of your time. I’m more interested in motivations right now than technical specifics.”

  She eyed him for a long second then sat. “Fine.”

  “Can you think of any reason someone, or a group of someones, would want to break into private school records? I’m asking because this is your area of expertise. I understand hacking into a bank or retail website. I don’t understand motivations here.”

  She thought about it for a second. “Well, there’s the obvious credit card and banking information. Families here have a lot of money and influence.”

  “We’re checking into that angle,” he said. “If parents at the schools start to see credit card fraud, we’ll know. But my sense is this wasn’t financial in motivation. That’s why I came to you. You know this world.”

  “You were part of this world too,” she pointed out.

  “Only for a few years, and never behind the scenes. My private school days were a long time ago.”

  “Ten years ago,” she said, with a slight smile. “You’re coming to the reunion, right?” She was surprised to discover she suddenly cared whether Sam Cooper was in attendance or not.

  “Ten years,” he repeated, ignoring her reunion question. “Any other reasons?”

  She stared at a blank space on the wall behind his head as she thought about it. “What about blackmail?”

  “Blackmail? How so?”

  “Well, we have a lot of information about people and their families. We also have several children of congressmen and other big D.C. politicos here. Imagine if you had dirt on them. You could wreak some serious havoc.” Casey wasn’t sure she liked the look of admiration on Sam’s face. “What?” she asked.

  “You have a nefarious mind. I like it,” he was quick to add. His expression grew thoughtful as he considered her angle. Then he frowned. “That would explain the two schools that have been hacked in this region. We have one school in Santa Barbara and another in Miami. No political motive there.”

  “Unless it’s local politics,” she said. “Big money means big power. And these private school parents have both.”

  “That’s a good thought. I’ll look into it. And now I’ll let you get back to work.” Sam stood. “Good seeing you, Casey. Maybe we could meet up and catch up over coffee sometime.”

  “That’d be good,” she said, surprised to actually mean it. Who would have thought she’d actually one day want to spend time with Sam Cooper in public.

  “You know who to call if you get hacked.”

  Sam strolled out of her office, trying to maintain his composure. As usual, two minutes in Casey Cooper’s presence had him sweating. She looked amazing. When she’d come around her desk for a hug, he’d wanted to cling to her and breathe in the scent of her shampoo, but she’d pulled back too quickly to get more than a tantalizing, teasing whiff.

  It was weird being back on campus as an adult. He hadn’t been back since graduation, and it was exactly the same and yet totally different. For one, the students lounging in the hallways and parking lot on his way in had been slyly checking their cell phones. When he’d gone here, they’d had phones, but not smart ones.

  As he turned the corner from Casey’s office to the main entrance, a flashy flyer caught his eye. It was for an online tutoring service, promising a big boost in GPA and at least a hundred points higher on the SAT. He laughed, thinking he would have loved that when he was in school. All his friends had gone for private SAT tutoring, which was something out of his parents’ budget, but it would have been nice to have that kind of support.

  Twenty minutes later, he was back at his desk to make some calls to other field offices and police stations around the country.

  It fell to Sam today to inform all the field offices and local law enforcement agencies that he was consolidating the files and looking for connected cases of possible private school data breaches. He struck out at the first few offices, but hadn’t expected much there anyway. The offices were in smaller, more rural areas and didn’t have prestigious private schools in the jurisdiction.

  His next step was to do a search on the top fifty private schools in the country, and then cross-reference them with the FBI field offices. He hit pay dirt. The news wasn’t good, but it was what he expected. At least four other field offices had received phone calls from private schools that they’d been hacked. Given their limited resources, and since the hacks didn’t involve threats to national security or deal with major amounts of money, they were destined for the never-gonna-happen pile.

  But the cases were all connected; Sam could taste it. He requested all the files from the field offices, who were only too happy to pass off the case. Now to report in to Ted.

  From what he was seeing, it was pure luck these schools had noted their data intrusions at all. In most cases, the intrusion had come from someone who either knew or guessed the password. Casey’s hypothesis that the hacks were occurring to steal data that could lead to blackmail was sound, and he made a note to look into local police jurisdictions to see if any of the parents of the school’s students were reporting being blackmailed. But his gut said it was identity theft, not blackmail, and the hacker had picked his targets well. Information security experts went to work at high-paying jobs in the tech sector, not at nonprofit private schools.

  The FBI was helping the handful of the schools make their breaches public to their parent communities according to state laws. While Sam understood the necessary evil of going public that personal data had been breached, sometimes he wished they could keep things quiet for at least a week. As soon as most hackers thought the breach had been spotted, they moved on to their next target, making it harder to catch them. If he could have more time, his job would be easier.

  A few days later, with no leads on the private school hacking front, Sam had taken a break to head to brunch with some old friends. He felt a bit like the odd man out among all the lovey-dovey couples, but when Valerie had emailed him inviting him to brunch, he’d agreed. He wanted to meet up with his old alumni friends, and he genuinely liked their husbands.

  It was funny how friendships changed as you aged. He’d been somewhat friendly with Arianna and Valerie back during his Montgomery Prep days, but mostly they’d kept to themselves, and he’d been with the other computer-crazy boys. Lately, though, he’d been spending more time with them because Ari had hooked up with Lance, a Secret Service agent. Though Sam and Lance hadn’t had the opportunity to work together on any cases, there was a lot of crossover in their jobs.

  They were at a round table overlooking the Potomac River in the new waterfront area near the Nationals baseball stadium. Sam liked the ambience and the food. He made a mental note to add this to his roster of date restaurants, not that he’d been going on a lot of dates lately. Work had been hectic, and that was before he’d taken the lead on the private schools hacker.

  “Going to the reunion?” Valerie asked with a quick side glance at the infant sleeping in the stroller parked next to her chair.

  “Absolutely,” Arianna said. “I want to show off my man.” Her hands ran over Lance’s forearm. Sam watched his friend accept the public display of a
ffection with a smile and reciprocate with a kiss to Arianna’s red hair.

  Ari’s hair was about three shades bolder and more vibrant than Casey’s softer, more subtle red.

  “I’m going to the reunion also,” Sam announced, making a sudden, firm decision. He’d been waffling back and forth since seeing Casey, but he was decided now.

  “You are?” Valerie and Arianna chorused.

  He nodded. “Why do you sound surprised?”

  “I remember you saying you never wanted to go back one or a dozen times over the past ten years,” Valerie said.

  “My animosity has faded.”

  “Or,” Lance said, with a knowing look, “he wants to see the girl that got away.”

  “What girl?” Arianna was practically lying on the table in her eagerness to hear his response to Lance’s conjecture.

  “He’s wrong. There is no girl,” Sam said. How the hell was Lance so smart?

  “Bullshit,” Jason called.

  Sam had only recently met Valerie’s husband—a firefighter, who also did search and rescue—but he liked his no-nonsense and laid-back approach to life. He was a good guy to have at your back, and he made Valerie happy, something she deserved. “It’s not bullshit. I never had a girlfriend in high school.”

  “Yeah, but you had a crush on one,” Lance said. “Am I right?”

  He said nothing, but stared steadily at his so-called friends and took a sip of ice water. Meanwhile, Ari and Valerie started listing every girl they could think of off the top of their heads from their class. They named nearly twelve girls but not Casey yet, though it was only a matter of time, and he couldn’t guarantee his poker face would remain.

  “It’s a work thing,” he interrupted. “There’s a case that may involve Montgomery Prep.”

  That brought stunned silence to the table.

  “Montgomery Prep?” Valerie finally managed. “What happened?”

  “Nothing specifically there, and I’m not at liberty to talk about anything else.”

  “You could tell Lance,” Ari suggested. “He’s got super top secret clearance, right, baby?”

  Lance looked amused. “Just because I guard the president doesn’t mean I get every state secret. Back off of Sam, okay?”

  “You’re the one who started it with your talk of high school love,” Arianna said. Then she turned fully to face her fiancé. “Did you have a high school love? Is she the one that got away?”

  Sam watched with interest now that the spotlight was off him and firmly on Lance, who was shifting in his seat and reaching for his water.

  “I had a girlfriend in high school,” Lance started, “but I have no burning to desire to see her again. You’re all the fire I need, baby.” He leaned over to plant his lips on Arianna’s, a move Sam both admired and didn’t really want to see at the brunch table.

  “Get a room.” He flicked a breadcrumb at Lance, who didn’t notice, being wrapped up in a passionate kiss.

  Valerie wasn’t even turned toward Jason, so secure was she in his love for her. “You liked Casey,” Valerie said softly to Sam.

  His grip on his water glass tightened, and he looked away from her before taking a breath and turning back. “What makes you say that?” Nice. He sounded relatively calm and indifferent.

  “Because you let her walk all over you in school. Anyone who looked at you or breathed at you the wrong way got a tongue lashing that was snide and eloquent; most people didn’t realize they’d been insulted until you were ten feet away. You used to let Casey say anything to you and you took it.”

  Damn, Valerie was way more perceptive than he’d given her credit for. He shrugged. “She was hot in high school.”

  “She still is,” Arianna volunteered, having broken away from Lance’s lip lock. “I had lunch with her a while back, and I may have volunteered to be on the reunion party committee after she sent flowers when I got engaged.” She turned to Valerie. “By the way, I signed you up too.”

  Valerie groaned, but didn’t look too bothered by her longtime friend’s presumptuousness. “Please tell me Casey Cooper is nicer than she was in high school. I don’t have the time or patience for drama.” Another pointed glance at her baby.

  “She’s nicer,” Sam said before thinking and gained all eyes back on him. “What?” He stared them down. “I also saw her recently.”

  Silence.

  “It was for work.”

  More silence.

  Valerie looked smug. “You liked her then, and you still like her.”

  Because this wasn’t high school, Sam manned up. “I’m thinking of asking her out.”

  Valerie clapped while Arianna’s eyes narrowed. “You’re too nice for Casey.”

  “Not true. I carry a loaded weapon for a living. How nice a guy can I be?”

  “Very nice,” Valerie said.

  “Well, if you ask Casey out, make it for a movie, not dinner. The woman never eats. She and I met for lunch last year. I swear, she ate two pieces of lettuce, no dressing.”

  “Whatever she’s eating is working,” Sam said. “She looked great when I saw her. Speaking of eating,” he said to change the subject, “when are we grabbing hot dogs at a Nats game?”

  Mission accomplished. Subject changed.

  That night, Sam lay in bed, his laptop balanced on his thighs while he engaged in one of his favorite futile behaviors. It had started when he’d announced at brunch that he was thinking of asking Casey out. He had to make sure she was still single.

  Roughly every six months, he indulged his curiosity and looked up Casey Cooper on social media. For obvious reasons, he had a throwaway email for a mostly blank Facebook account, but it didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy scrolling through other people’s profiles.

  The cybersecurity expert in him cringed at the quantity of data people posted on the public forum. Come on, people were giving away everything: their birthdays, their kids’ names, their pets’ names.

  It was a hacker’s paradise, which was why he rarely got on unless the urge to get an eyeful of Casey grew too strong. He hadn’t been on in eight months, because the last time he’d checked, her profile listed her as in a relationship. He’d clicked off and vowed to stop obsessing over his high school crush. It was ridiculous since at the time he’d been in a relationship too. A good one, but two days after seeing that Casey was in a relationship, he’d picked a fight with Maggie, the woman he’d been seeing, and broke things off.

  It was as if he couldn’t let himself be happy. He told himself he was checking tonight because he was thinking of asking Casey for coffee and maybe more. He didn’t want to make a move if she was still in a relationship, but he hadn’t noticed a ring on her left hand when he’d seen her. After eight months, if she didn’t have a ring, that meant fair game to him. If he had a woman like Casey Cooper in his bed, he’d lock it down. Fast.

  His laptop screen flickered, and he smiled when he saw her picture. It was a different picture than last time. The last photo had been an obvious professional headshot done for work, the same photo he’d seen on the Montgomery Prep website. She’d looked gorgeous as always, but stiff. This newest photo showed Casey smiling widely in front of Buckingham Palace in London. She’d gone abroad for a vacation sometime over the last year. Summer, by the look of her outfit in the photo. He was glad she’d taken the time to go on a vacation. He got the sense that she was a woman who always put her career first and would forgo vacation days.

  He should know, being one of those people himself. Other than the few odd sick days here and there, he’d never taken time off to travel or gone abroad. His friends had all traveled extensively. Arianna’s and Valerie’s parents had had the money to give their daughters trips to Europe and junior years abroad. Lance’s family likely had pieds-à-terre, chalets, and flats in every major European destination. Jason hadn’t traveled until recently, but with his new position on the urban search and rescue team, he’d been all over the world.

  Sam narrowed his eyes, clicking
through the thirty-plus photos of Casey’s London trip, and made a decision. He’d never made the effort to travel because he’d made the excuse that work was too busy. The truth was, he hadn’t wanted to travel alone. He’d wanted a good traveling companion, preferably one who warmed his bed after a long day of hiking around touristy spots. But he was missing out on the good stuff life had to offer. He made up his mind that this summer, in a relationship or not, he was going on a vacation. To where, it did not matter, but he was getting a stamp on his passport—a passport he kept renewed, despite never having used it.

  He also made the definite decision to ask Casey out the next time he saw her, and he’d make a point to see her. Was it a conflict of interest, since she worked at a private school and he was investigating private schools? He gave it a moment’s thought and decided it wasn’t. To be sure, he’d run it by Ted on Monday.

  Monday morning, icy water bottle in hand, Casey headed into the weekly administrative staff meeting. As soon as she entered the conference room, she knew something was up. Head of School Nancy Clinton was huddled with Dan Polk, who was the systems administrator for the school. He ran the school network, and if anyone needed IT help, they called on Dan. It was odd that Nancy herself would be meeting with Dan instead of having her admin deal with any IT issues.

  At nine-thirty, Nancy called the meeting to order and everyone found their seats. Instead of going through the agenda and ticking off last week’s action items as she usually did, Nancy started the meeting with a bang.

  “Dan is here because we heard about other private schools having data breaches, and we are taking preventative measures,” she said bluntly, and glanced in Casey’s direction at her loud indrawn breath.

  “Something you need to share, Casey?”

  Casey shook her head. “No, go on.”

  “Dan is here to ask you to change your passwords, and he’s going to go over some of the new rules about password requirements.”

  Dan took the floor and went into agonizing detail about capital letters, numbers, and do’s and don’ts of passwords, and then handed the meeting back to Nancy.