Exploited (Zero Day #1)

by A. Meredith Walters

  Kyle laughed. “You know how it is when you’re working on stuff. You don’t always remember to sleep.”

  “Yeah, I know how that goes. Why don’t we go and hit the cafeteria. Let me buy you a sandwich. It looks like you need it.”

  “That’s cool of you, Hannah, but you don’t need to do that.”

  I pulled him to his feet. “Come on. Let me. I can’t take staring at this computer anymore right now anyway.”

  “Is he treating you right?” Kyle asked as we got into the elevator to go to the ground floor.

  “Who?”

  “The man you’re seeing?” Kyle clarified.

  Why was he asking about Mason? It was weird. And very much out of the blue.

  “Yeah, he’s fine.” I tried to be offhanded. I didn’t want to talk about this with Kyle.

  “You’re my friend, Hannah. I just want to make sure I don’t have to bust anyone’s kneecaps,” Kyle remarked, pretending to punch his palm.

  I chuckled. “No busting of kneecaps required. Promise.”

  I changed the subject. Badly. “What kind of sandwich do you want?”

  Kyle rolled his eyes. Then narrowing them, he said, “You don’t want to talk about him. He must be special.”

  I gave him a tight smile but didn’t respond. Kyle stared at me a little too closely. It was as if he was looking for something.

  “I hope they have those chicken and stuffing sandwiches. I love those,” he said after a while, and all talk of Mason was, thankfully, over.

  “Me too. We should start a petition to have them every day,” I suggested with a chuckle.

  “Changing Holt IT one chicken sandwich at a time,” Kyle joked, and we were both laughing, the awkwardness gone.

  We got off the elevator and made our way to the cafeteria. It was empty. Probably because it was only ten-thirty in the morning. Everyone else was actually doing their job.

  My phone started to buzz in my pocket and I had a brief moment of elation, thinking it might be Mason.

  I pulled it out and looked at the screen, my jubilation dissipating instantly.

  I handed Kyle a twenty-dollar bill. “Go get a sandwich, and I’d like a Danish. I’ll just be a minute.”

  Kyle frowned. “Everything okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”

  I slipped out into the courtyard and answered the call.

  “Why are you calling me again? I thought we had said everything we needed to say last time,” I snapped.

  “I told you I’d do some digging. I thought you’d want to know what I found out,” Rose responded nastily.

  “I can do my own digging, Rose,” I snarled into the phone.

  “Chill out, Han, seriously. I’m just trying to be helpful given what’s at stake here. Remember, in the chaos you have to find calm.” I hated Rose’s fortune cookie bullshit. It had always pressed my buttons, now even more so.

  And that particular line of garbage annoyed me. She seemed to wheel it out whenever she wanted to seem extra poignant.

  “Well, I looked around and I didn’t see my name anywhere. How is it that you’re seeing something that I can’t find? I think it’s a little strange.”

  “What exactly are you accusing me of, Hannah?” Rose demanded.

  After Rose had told me about my name being mentioned in relation to Freedom Overdrive, I had asked Toxicwrath about it.

  22:01 I’ve seen nothing like that. Who told you this?

  22:01 A friend. She says it was during an encrypted chat.

  22:02 I’ll look around. But I wouldn’t believe it. If you don’t want to be found, no one can find you.

  Neither of us found any indication that my real name was floating around the Web. Which made me question what Rose was up to.

  She had always been unscrupulous when it came to holding on to me. I had thought she would have moved past that after all this time.

  “I just think it’s strange I can’t find any mention of Hannah Whelan anywhere. That you happened to call me after years of no communication to tell me this pretty huge thing that you happened to stumble upon. Where did you see this?” I challenged, keeping my voice low, even though I was alone in the courtyard.

  “I told you it was in an encrypted chat. You wouldn’t see it, now would you? I know you think you’re the queen of the crackers, but I can assure you that there are still some tricks you’ve yet to learn.” Rose sounded angry. I was glad to hear it. I hated her emotionless.

  “So what did you find out, Rose?” I asked heavily.

  “Look, I’m telling you the truth. Whoever is spreading your name around the deep Web is covering their tracks. They are virtually untraceable—”

  “So why call me at all?” I interrupted.

  “Because I think you’re dealing with someone really skilled. And this person seems to have a personal vendetta against you. They want you discovered. They’re encouraging people to share your name. I’ve been able to shut this person out of the chats, disproving their allegations, but it’s only a matter of time. Who the hell have you pissed off?” Rose asked.

  “Besides you?” I countered.

  “I wouldn’t tell anyone about you. No matter what you’ve done to me.” She was emphatic. Maybe too emphatic.

  “What I’ve done to you? I wasn’t the one who left without a word,” I reminded her.

  “And I wasn’t the one who shut down an operation we had been working on for months just because you were worried I was taking all the credit.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “Wow, definitely not going there with you.”

  “I don’t want to go there either, Hannah. That’s not why I’m calling—”

  “Are you riding to my rescue, Rose? Is that what you want to do? Swoop in and save the day? I know you like that,” I hissed.

  “Man, you really have a high opinion of yourself.”

  “No, I just have a really low opinion of you.” I could see Kyle watching me from the cafeteria. “Look, I’m at work. I’ve got to go.”

  “Hannah, don’t be stupid just because you have some ax to grind with me,” Rose implored.

  “The truth is I don’t believe you, Rose. You’ve given me no reason to trust anything you have to say. Leave me alone, please. I’m quite fine without your rescuing.”

  Trust.

  It hurt when it broke.

  I knew that all too well.

  “Seriously, Hannah—”

  “Bye.” I hung up the phone.

  “Whoa, whoever you were talking to needs to watch out,” Kyle said with a laugh when I rejoined him.

  “It was nobody important with nothing to say.”

  I couldn’t afford to obsess about her warnings.

  I had other things to focus on.

  Chapter 17

  Mason

  “I thought you were coming home this weekend to see your mother.” My dad’s accusatory tone didn’t have the same power it normally did.

  “I have plans I can’t change,” I told him, anticipating the guilt trip that was about to be unloaded on me.

  And not really caring.

  Because I was happy.

  It had been a long time since I had felt anything like contentment in my personal life. I had been convinced I didn’t deserve it. That it wasn’t fair for me to be happy when Dillon wasn’t alive. It felt like a betrayal.

  I knew it was stupid to think that way. Dillon would never want me to self-flagellate to the point of martyrdom. But my parents had done a damn good job of reinforcing my misery.

  My job and random hookups had been my only way out.

  Now there was Hannah.

  And things were suddenly very, very different.

  She had bought us tickets to a musical. She called me every single day. She showed up at my apartment in the evening with takeout and a movie.

  We had entered into an intimacy I hadn’t expected but found I was enjoying.

  She’s al
most too perfect.

  The voice of uncertainty hadn’t gone away. In fact, it had grown louder the closer Hannah and I became.

  Part of me thought I should be listening to my instincts. The voice was yelling at me for a reason. I had been trained to pay attention when it spoke.

  But it was that voice that had insisted I follow a lead instead of keeping a promise to my dying brother.

  It had been that voice that had left me alone and hardened for most of my adult life.

  I hadn’t realized I had lost trust in the voice until it made me question Hannah.

  She had come along at a time when I was just starting to become aware of how truly lonely I was.

  I had tried to fill the void with Madison and it hadn’t been right.

  Hannah was right.

  Is she?

  Yes, I convinced myself.

  “Plans that are more important than seeing your mother? She just got out of the hospital! She’s in a very precarious state right now, Mason. You owe it to her to be here. When you moved away, you broke what was left of her.” Dad’s voice shook and I sighed.

  “Dad, it’s my job. I can’t very well tell the agent in charge I can’t relocate because of my mother.”

  “That job is why you weren’t there for Dillon either. Don’t you forget that,” my father snapped, attempting to plunge the knife in deep.

  I should never have attempted to unburden myself of guilt by telling my father about my last conversation with Dillon before he died. Because he used it to hurt me whenever possible.

  “I can’t come this weekend, Dad. I’m sorry,” I said, not rising to the bait, his barb deflecting, not hitting its intended mark. For once his words didn’t bruise.

  I was flying high. Not just because of Hannah but because of work too.

  Things were lining up so damn perfectly.

  Two days ago I had gotten my first break in the Freedom Overdrive case.

  I knew it was only a matter of time until I cracked it completely.

  —

  Perry and I had been monitoring the IRC chat room **bike for sale** for the last week, waiting for some movement. Watching Internet traffic is probably the most mind-numbing job out there. Cataloging script. Sifting through data logs. It’s boring as shit.

  And it was going nowhere fast. All had been silent, and then everything seemed to open up. Quite by chance, through a routine database scan, I was suddenly able to access chat records that had been buried under mountains of encryption.

  When I saw the hacker’s handle I almost lost it.

 

  I noted that the chat records went back only a few days. But it was something, at least. The first shred of hard information that took me that one step closer.

  The records showed an ongoing conversation between Freedom Overdrive and another cracker with an unreadable moniker. A series of numbers that was vaguely familiar.

  I stared at the handle for a long time. How did I know the numbers?

  06050900.

  I got a pen and paper and wrote out the numbers in a different order.

  06050009.

  00000659.

  And then it hit me.

  I pulled up the information retrieved from the Ryan Law exploit. The embedded signatures, one belonging to Freedom Overdrive.

  The other I hadn’t been able to decipher.

  Until now.

  06050900.

  A separate signature.

  As I read through the transcripts I found what I had suspected all along. Freedom Overdrive was working with someone else. He had found himself a partner.

  And they were plotting.

  Ryan Law was only one of their crimes.

  There had been others.

  There would be more.

  I had been right.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” I called out loudly.

  Perry’s head popped up from behind his monitor, his thinning hair sticking out in all directions. His eyes were sunken and he looked as though he was coming off a three-day bender. His pasty complexion looked shiny beneath the lights. He had been glued to his computer for days and it was showing.

  “What? Did something happen?” he asked, appearing startled.

  I waved him over impatiently and he hopped up and all but ran to my desk.

  “Check this out.” I pointed to the screen. Perry leaned over my shoulder and I could smell his body odor through his cologne.

  “Okay, not that close. Back up a little,” I told him.

  “Oh, sorry,” he muttered, moving over a few inches. He peered at my computer. “What am I looking at exactly?”

  Instead of growling in frustration, I held on to my patience. I had been paired with Perry because no one else wanted to work with him. Agent Sanders expected me to find it difficult. He hoped I would.

  I wouldn’t give him, or anyone else, the satisfaction of seeing me lose it. So I was learning to find ways of dealing with Perry. And that involved lots of deep breathing and a good dose of self-control.

  “That right there.” I tapped on the screen with my fingernail. “Recognize the name?”

  Perry’s eyes widened. “Shit, it’s Freedom Overdrive! What is this? An email?”

  “Nope. It’s transcripts from an encrypted chat. Read it and tell me what you think.”

  Perry scanned the fragmented words and text full of acronyms. “Uh, it sounds like they’re planning something.”

  I nodded, smiling. “Very good.”

  Perry frowned. “But wait a second. There are two people here. Freedom Overdrive and someone else.”

  Don’t roll your eyes, Mason, I thought to myself.

  “Yes, Perry, there are two people. That’s the point of a chat room.” I couldn’t stop the sarcasm.

  Perry flushed at my derision. “I just mean it looks like Freedom Overdrive has a partner.”

  I patted Perry on the back. “Bingo. That’s exactly what’s going on.”

  Perry grabbed my shoulder. “Damn, Mason, this is a big deal! This is a really big deal!” He turned back to my computer and pointed to a name on the screen. “And that’s the name of their target, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, grinning at my partner. “Yep. I think it is.”

  Perry laughed, slapping me on the back. “I can’t wait to see Chaz’s face when we report this in debriefing.”

  I chuckled. “Me either, man. It’ll be sweet.”

  I felt gloriously vindicated. Like maybe I hadn’t lost my touch. I had felt off my game since moving to Richmond. I could admit I had been floundering.

  Not now.

  Now I was getting somewhere.

  I was eager to announce my findings in the status update meeting on Monday. It would feel great to prove Derek wrong in his dismal assessment of me as an agent.

  —

  “We’ve been able to track down Internet chatter between Sayid and Shameem Edris, another known affiliate of the SEA. Agent Armiger was able to isolate their location to a town outside of Damascus that is a well-known hub. We’re liaising with several assets in the area to determine whether they are indeed there,” Chaz reported smugly, his arms crossed over his bony chest with importance.

  “What a douchebag,” Perry muttered under his breath, and I had to stifle my laughter.

  “That’s great. Well done, Agents Armiger and Edwards.” Derek regarded the rest of the agents in the room before looking across at Perry and me. “And this is how you get a job done. I don’t have to tell the rest of you that anything less than success isn’t acceptable.”

  Agent Sanders zeroed in on me. “Agents Kohler and Winston, any updates in the Freedom Overdrive case? Is it still a dead end? Do you need another agent to step in and help out?” His words were clipped and hard, our failure expected.

  Perry and I glanced at each other.

  “Would you like to share or should I?” I asked my partner.

  “You go right ahead, Kohler,” Perry said, barely able to con
tain his glee.

  He was practically bouncing in his seat. I gave him a sharp look and he stilled, crossing his legs and setting his face in grim lines. His attempt to be serious was humorous.

  I held up the printed transcript. The other agents spoke quietly among themselves, not paying me much attention. The Freedom Overdrive case wasn’t hot news. It barely registered on anyone’s radar. Too much time had passed with little development. No one expected much to change.

  This was going to be good.

  “I was able to decrypt layered communications between Freedom Overdrive and another hacker who he appears to be collaborating with.”

  The room went instantly silent. Agent Sanders cocked an eyebrow. “Freedom Overdrive has a partner? That seems unlikely.” He didn’t believe me. He didn’t want to believe me.

  Because then I would be proving I was good at my job.

  “That was my initial thought as well. Everything we’ve known of Freedom Overdrive up to this point is that he works alone. But things have changed. It’s all right here. In the conversation they make reference to the DDoS attack on Ryan Law. Some basic self-congratulation. A bit of ego stroking, but it’s there. It seems they collaborated on the attack. Freedom Overdrive may even have a personal interest in taking the law firm down.”

  I finally had Agent Sanders’s full attention. “A personal interest? What makes you say that?”

  I glanced down at the chat record. “They don’t spell it out per se. But there’s insinuation here that they chose their targets based on personal connections.” I pointed to the paper in my hand. “Here they mention a publicly traded mutual holding company called Bradfield Financial. This other hacker writes that it follows the code. The code is referenced several more times. So clearly these two have some sort of criteria that their targets have to meet.”

  “But that doesn’t necessarily point to a personal connection. It could be like Anonymous. They’re going after companies and individuals they deem corrupt,” Chaz argued, clearly enjoying the chance to try to tear down my idea.

  “It’s what Freedom Overdrive says here,” Perry piped up, grabbing the paper from my hand and scanning it. “He writes, ‘Let them burn for hurting those they think can’t retaliate. They messed with me once. It will be the only time they get away with it.’ Mason and I both believe that shows a personal vendetta.”