Did I trust Toxicwrath?
Yes.
As much as I was capable of trusting someone I didn’t know.
My secret hacker friend had proven himself a capable partner. Relying on someone else was difficult, but it helped to share the burden of my mission.
Toxicwrath was clearly talented. His cracking was top notch. Clean.
I had other targets. I could go back to doing things solo.
Or I could accept the help he offered.
00:36
I had made my decision. I’d trust Toxicwrath. He hadn’t led me astray yet.
00:37
Hashing attack? Toxicwrath wanted the passwords. But why? And an SQL integration was a little old school. I was confused.
00:38
Hashing was the encryption of passwords. My guess was a tech company like Virtuant would have heavy-duty encryption to prevent data breaches.
I felt a ping of alarm.
00:39
Bcrypt? Seriously? Decrypting those passwords would take years!
00:40
00:41
“Easy” was probably a bit of an overstatement, but I trusted in Toxicwrath’s abilities.
00:42
00:42
Wait. What?
Sell them?
00:44
00:44
For me it wasn’t.
I didn’t like this as a motivation.
Before I could express any further concerns, Toxicwrath allayed my fears.
00:45
I thought about Mason’s checks to the cancer foundation in his brother’s name.
I laughed. It would be kind of perfect.
I sent Toxicwrath the details.
There was no going back now.
Chapter 10
Mason
“I had a good time last night.”
I took a long drink of the coffee I had gotten earlier from Nan’s Coffee Shop. I was sitting at my desk, my email open, not able to concentrate on any of it.
Because of the woman I couldn’t stop myself from calling.
“Me too,” she said softly.
I could hear the sound of people talking in the background.
“You at work?” I asked.
“Yeah. You?”
I took another drink of coffee. “Yeah. Early morning. No rest for the wicked and all that.”
Hannah chuckled. “Me too. Including the wicked part.”
“When can I see you again?” I found myself asking.
Too eager, Mason, I chastised myself.
I didn’t care. I wasn’t playing games. I wasn’t going to pull some macho bullshit where I pretended to be aloof when all I wanted was to be around her some more.
Life was too short for that crap. And somehow I knew Hannah wouldn’t appreciate the pretense.
I thought about that moment when I had found her in my bedroom last night. There had been something in her eyes that had bothered me.
It had looked like fear.
It had confused me.
I had felt my own fear when I realized my work briefcase was on the chair. The agent in me had become instantly suspicious.
Had she looked inside?
Why was she in here?
What did she want?
I shouldn’t have brought hard copies of my case files home. It was a rookie move. Despite my cyber job, I liked paper in my hands. I needed to go over details in black and white and not on a screen. It helped focus me. Sometimes it provided insight I couldn’t get from staring at a computer.
And I hadn’t expected Hannah to find her way into my bedroom.
I had hoped, for obvious reasons, but certainly not expected it.
The questions had been forgotten when I kissed her. Maybe that was stupid, but I couldn’t let my innate paranoia ruin what was building with Hannah.
I had wanted only a distraction.
Hannah was proving to be more than that.
I just wasn’t entirely sure what yet.
“I’d say this weekend, but that probably makes me sound a little too eager,” she answered lightly, and I grinned.
“Maybe a little,” I teased.
My email pinged and I noticed a new message from Agent Garson in cyberforensics. He had been compiling a list of IPs to try to find the source of the botnet attack on Ryan Law. We knew it could take weeks to filter through the thousands of routers used in the attack.
I anticipated another run-of-the-mill email letting me know that he was getting nowhere fast.
But when I clicked on the email, I felt a pang of excitement.
From: Garson, Timothy
Subject: IRC monitoring
Date: March 7, 2016 09:45
To: Kohler, Mason
The IP source is untraceable due to the use of hijacked IP addresses. However, monitoring of IRC chats has yielded possible clues to origins of attack.
Multiple chat windows were utilized during the hours prior to the attack. Proxies were used and chat rooms involved a layer of encryption we haven’t seen before.
I’ve attached the list of chat rooms, highlighting the repeated uses of a name we both recognize.
At least we now know what to look for.
Regards,
Tim
I opened the attachment and saw the list of IRC chat rooms. Most run-of-the-mill.
But for one.
**bike for sale**—2 chatting.
It was time-stamped the night of the Ryan Law DDoS attack at 21:00.
It could be a coincidence. But something told me it wasn’t. The cyber team spent their days filtering through Internet traffic. They perused IRC chat rooms, looking for a digital footprint.
This could be it.
There was a pattern here that Tim had picked up on. It could mean nothing.
Or it could mean a break in the case. Finally.
My stomach clenched. I scrolled through the rest of the attachments and found this same chat room coinciding with a previous brute-force attack on Smacktown, a sketchy online porn operation that had also delved into more criminal ventures, including possible murder. Authorities had never been able to pin anything on it, no matter how much they had tried. Smacktown had been hacked. Its database destroyed.
**bike for sale**
What did it mean?
I rubbed at my temple, willing the pounding to subside.
I realized Hannah was talking and I tried to focus on what she was saying.
“So I shouldn’t ask if you have plans for Friday, then?” Hannah asked.
I closed the email that had my attention and returned it to the woman on the other end of the phone.
Or tried to.
My head was now full of the cracker making my life a living hell.
“Uh…”
I balanced the phone between my cheek and shoulder and opened my IRC client, searching the channels. Looking for something. Anything.
Nothing.
I knew that Freedom Overdrive wouldn’t make it that easy.
“I’m getting the feeling this is a bad time.” Hannah sounded strained and I instantly felt like a dick. I didn’t want to be that guy.
“Sorry. It’s just work—”
“No need to explain. How about you call me when things ease up for you?” Shit, I didn’t want h
er to think I was blowing her off.
I wouldn’t blow her off.
“I’ll call you this evening. We can make plans.” I cast a quick look around the busy office and dropped my voice so that only she could hear me. “I want to see you again. Soon.” I hoped she could hear how much I wanted that.
“Good,” she murmured in my ear. I liked the sound of her voice. It excited me. It soothed me. Then I wasn’t thinking about the hacker or what I needed to do to catch him. I wasn’t thinking about the possible break in the case that had been emailed to me this morning.
I closed my mind to everything but the woman I was talking to.
And it felt good.
Work had always dominated my life to the detriment of everything else.
I thought of Dillon.
Of how I had promised to visit him that last weekend. I was going to take him outside, whether his doctors wanted him to or not. I was going to put a basketball in his hands, maybe for the last time.
We were going to be brothers like we used to be.
Only I never made it. I was stuck on a case. Buried in codes and data. I didn’t make the twenty-minute drive to the hospital to see my dying brother, even though I had told him I would.
Dillon slipped into a coma a day later.
He died being disappointed in me.
But talking to Hannah, even for a few minutes, took me away from Freedom Overdrive. It took me away from the very things that had consumed me.
This “distraction” might prove to be exactly what I hadn’t realized I needed.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I said softly, hesitating before hanging up the phone.
“Bye.” Then she was gone.
“Do you think Freedom Overdrive could be one of us?”
I startled, not realizing that Perry was standing behind me. How long had he been there? Crazy, intrusive fucker.
I narrowed my eyes and willed myself not to throttle my partner so early in the morning. The momentary good mood I had felt from my conversation with Hannah was all but obliterated.
I got to my feet, needing more coffee. Caffeine was the only thing that could sustain me.
“Don’t sneak up on people. It’s a good way to get yourself decked,” I warned. Perry scurried behind me, his short legs trying to keep up with my longer strides.
I walked into the break room and grumbled in disgust at the sight of the empty coffeemaker. I grabbed the pot and filled it with water.
“Sorry. I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was just trying to be polite, waiting for you to finish your phone call. Who were you talking to? Was it a woman? I heard you making plans. Does Madison know?”
Shit. It seemed my dalliance with Madison was common knowledge. Even to my normally oblivious partner. Apparently even FBI agents gossiped like old ladies.
I gave Perry a hard look. “My personal life is just that, my personal life. I’m not in the habit of making it public knowledge. So I’d appreciate it if you kept your questions and comments to yourself.”
Perry’s cheeks flushed bright red. “I just wondered. I thought, you know, since we’re partners on this case, that we could get to know each other better.”
I clenched my teeth in frustration. “It’s better we didn’t.”
Perry looked away, clearly disappointed and maybe a little hurt. I saw the way the other agents treated him. He was dismissed. Maligned. At times openly mocked. Sure, he didn’t do much to make the situation better, but I didn’t have to be like everyone else.
Perry might be an idiot, but he was a harmless idiot.
“What were you saying about Freedom Overdrive?” I asked, trying to give him a smile, though it was a sorry excuse for one.
“It’s nothing. I don’t know why I even brought it up,” Perry muttered, clearly still smarting from my rebuke.
The coffee had finally finished brewing and I poured myself a cup. “You want some?” I asked, trying for friendliness.
Perry nodded. “Sure. Thanks.”
I grabbed one of the clean mugs from the drying rack by the sink and poured Perry a cup, handing it to him.
“I’m sorry if I jumped down your throat earlier. This case has me on edge,” I said. “I’d like to hear what you have to say.”
Perry’s face brightened. “Yeah? Okay. Well, I was just wondering whether our hacker friend could be”—Perry’s eyes darted around and he leaned in toward me, dropping his voice to a barely audible whisper—“one of us.”
I almost choked on my coffee. “What?”
Perry opened a file he had in his hands and pointed to the list of names on the piece of paper. I recognized a few as coworkers from Quantico. Another was an agent I had collaborated with on a megabreach last year. What in the hell was Perry getting at?
“I was looking over all the agents tasked to cybercrimes in the last year. Are you aware that the Bureau is full of black hats? Some very questionable individuals, if you ask me. Carlos Hernandez in the Baltimore office was charged with cybercrimes. The charges were dismissed, but still—”
I raised my hand, silencing him. I shook my head. “It’s a well-known fact that the Bureau hires people with a…particular skill set. We need to think like hackers to find a hacker. You know that, right?”
Perry pointed to the names again. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t do it. Really, any one of us could.” Perry lowered his voice, even though we were completely alone. “It could be any of them. Think about it.”
“So you’re telling me that you think Freedom Overdrive could be an agent?” I asked slowly, carefully. Perry’s eyes were bright. He nodded a little too enthusiastically.
“What proof do you have, other than a list of names of people who could be a hacker?”
Perry cleared his throat and shuffled through the papers in the file. “I just think we can’t rule anything out.”
I took a deep breath and mustered my limited patience. I was trying. Seriously. But Perry’s conspiracy theories were the last thing I wanted to indulge when I was already feeling my back against the wall.
“I get that. I do. But we need to be sifting through the botnets. Monitoring Internet traffic. Looking for patterns. Code words. It’s time-consuming. But that’s our best bet to find this asshole. Not nosing around our coworkers.” I finished the rest of my coffee and cleaned the mug. “I appreciate you thinking outside of the box, though.”
“What about this guy? He worked as an independent contractor a year and a half ago. He had a high-level clearance. He helped tighten security on the network. He had an incident with another contractor and was subsequently let go. Since then he’s fallen off the grid—”
I took the file from Perry’s hands and closed it with a snap. “Seriously, Perry, enough.” I dropped it in the wastebasket. Perry started to protest, but I cut him off. “Tim sent over some intelligence about a channel on IRC that looked interesting. That’s where we need to be focused. Not on this craziness.”
“Yeah. Okay. Fine,” Perry huffed. He pulled the file out of the trash and hurried from the break room.
A headache blossomed and I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes.
“Bad day?”
I dropped my arms to my sides and looked warily at Madison as she entered the break room. “It’s all right,” I said cautiously. I had to watch everything I said to her. Every. Single. Thing.
Madison grabbed a doughnut and took a small bite, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “I heard you’re stuck wading through ISPs in that botnet. Must be tedious.”
I pushed myself away from the wall and crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s your point, Madison? Do you want me to admit that it sucks being saddled with the shit case? With the shit partner?” I retorted.
Madison took another bite of her doughnut. She was a meticulous eater. I had never noticed that before. Though I hadn’t been particularly focused on much about her in our brief time together. My head hadn’t been on the little things.
Hannah at
e with gusto. She enjoyed her food. She didn’t care about dropping crumbs on her lap or eating too much. I appreciated that about her.
“I’ve been with the Richmond office for fifteen years,” Madison stated, balling up the napkin and throwing it away.
What was with the personal history lesson? I knew this already.
“Right. Okay,” I said slowly.
“Derek is a good friend. A good boss,” she went on. Not quite looking at me. Examining her nails. Picking at a spot on her sleeve. “We’re a tight group. We look after our own here. I’m sure you understand that.” Her demeanor was placid. Her voice neutral.
Only an observant sort of person would have heard the hint of an edge beneath the surface.
I didn’t say anything. Because I understood what she was implying.
My time at the Richmond field office wasn’t going to be easy.
Madison was going to make sure of that.
She had Derek Sanders, the agent in charge, on her side. I was the outsider.
“Look, Madison, maybe we should work on developing a good working relationship. I think that’s important.”
Madison looked at me, her face hard, her mouth unforgiving. It was obvious she didn’t care about our working relationship. She was angry.
“Good luck with the Freedom Overdrive case,” she said with such insincerity that I couldn’t help but smile. Her mouth set into a grim line. “You’ll need it.”
I had no doubt what she meant. The Freedom Overdrive case was one I wasn’t expected to solve. It would be the nail in my career’s coffin. I would be left pushing papers until I retired. Derek Sanders and his crony were going to make sure of that.
There was no point in apologizing to Madison again. It was obvious she didn’t want to hear it. She wanted something else from me.
My failure.
Well, fuck that.
She wasn’t going to have it.
—
“Hey.” One word. That’s all she said, but the sound of Hannah’s voice uncoiled something inside of me.
I felt my muscles loosen. My shoulders relaxed.
I needed this.
Just conversation.
Someone to listen.
With Hannah I was only Mason. Not Agent Kohler. That separation was important.
Exploited (Zero Day #1) Page 11