Haylie pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, trying to get a better look at the papers lying in the open folder on the table. “You work for the TAO team?”
“No,” Agent Wilcox said, leaning forward. “I lead the TAO team.”
Shuffling in his chair, Agent Hernandez managed to get out a few nervous words. “Could someone tell me what—”
“TAO is the intelligence-gathering unit of the NSA,” Haylie explained, still staring down Agent Wilcox. “In the past, they’ve focused on incoming signals from terrorists and other bad guys outside of the U.S., but in the past few years that scope has increased.”
Agent Wilcox watched Haylie, not cracking her poker face.
“These days,” Haylie continued, “they’re also gathering intelligence on U.S. citizens, isn’t that right? Saying that the new threat is everywhere? That we must be vigilant in—”
“Our Cyber Investigation unit has increased its scope,” Agent Wilcox said. “If we don’t evolve with the times, if we don’t adjust as new threats emerge, our great country is put at risk. And I don’t know about you, Ms. Black, but around here, we don’t care much for risk.”
Haylie scoffed. “That’s dumb. And FYI, nobody says ‘cyber’ anymore. It was cool when William Gibson used it, but then people like you came in and messed it up.”
Clearing her throat, Agent Wilcox continued. “Two days ago, there was an attack on the Xasis Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. I am leading up that investigation.”
“A casino?” Haylie said. “What’s the big deal? That kind of stuff happens all the time.”
“It does, indeed,” Agent Wilcox said. “But not with this profile. This attack was different. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered you and plucked you out of your nice fancy college dorm room.”
“You’re the NSA,” Haylie scoffed. “You know everything about everyone, right? Rules don’t matter to you guys. Why don’t you just wiretap the whole city of Vegas until something turns up?”
“I don’t know what you’ve been reading in the papers, but we don’t work that way. We follow rules—”
“What do you want from me?” Haylie said, cutting the agent off, to her obvious dissatisfaction.
“I want you to help us catch whoever is behind this,” Agent Wilcox said. “If our experts are correct, this won’t be the last of these we see. A few gentlemen back in Washington are asking me to make sure this one goes away quickly and quietly, and that’s exactly what I’m fixin’ to do. With your help, I’d like to think we can do exactly that.”
Haylie could feel the weight of the ankle bracelet on her leg, scraping at her skin. Looking down at the folder, she saw a thick collection of documents not about the casino, but about her. There must have been hundreds of pages.
What’s in that folder? My chats. My phone calls. Everything from my hard drive. The NSA knows anything they want to know.
What’s worse—doing another year offline, or turning into something that you hate?
She stood from her chair.
“Hernandez, let’s get out of here.” She pointed a finger at Agent Wilcox. “I don’t want to work for you. I want nothing to do with the government—not now, not ever again. This deal I made was the worst decision of my life. I should have just gone with—”
“Your brother?” Agent Wilcox said, cracking her first smile of the day. “Tell me, have you seen him lately? Sending any postcards?”
The blood rushing through her veins. Haylie’s eyes turned to slits as she tried her best to calm her pulse.
“You know what he’d say if he were here? You know what he’d tell me to do with you and your file?” Haylie spat back. “He’d say the same thing as he always did when we were kids and I was about to do something stupid. ‘You and I—we’re better than this.’ You could learn a thing or two from him—if you had any idea of how to catch him.”
Haylie stood and bolted for the door, the anger welling up inside of her. She reached for the doorknob with her head hung low and twisted. It didn’t budge.
“You have a chance to do something smart here, Haylie,” Agent Wilcox said. “You’ll have access to technology, and more importantly, if you help my investigation in a substantial manner, you’ll be done with this—the FBI, the NSA, all of it. You’ll help us catch someone doing some very bad things, and who knows, maybe you’ll even like it.”
“That’s what you think?” Haylie shouted. “You think this is fun? Tracking U.S. citizens? Going after people’s machines without warrants, just in case you happen to find something interesting? You’re not on the right side of the law here, don’t kid yourself.”
Agent Wilcox stood, walking towards Haylie, the folder in her hand. “Now, I’m not perfect. I know that. And that goes for the agency I work for as well. But you knew all that before you walked in the door. So, let me ask you, what is it that you want? Why did you come all the way down to San Antonio and waste a perfectly good, God-given Texas morning with me?”
Haylie looked down and saw the blinking green light on her ankle bracelet pinging away. She thought back to London, to school, to Vector. She thought about Caesar, somewhere out there, on the run. Haylie released her grip on the doorknob, letting her hand fall to her side.
“I just…” Haylie stammered. “I just want things to go back to the way they were before.”
“I don’t know much, but I know your world will never be the same as it used to be,” Agent Wilcox said. “Things happen, and these things—they change our worlds. Your life is different now. Every day, I see people muck up the rest of their lives trying to get back to the way things were. Lots of people just can’t let it go, clawing and fighting their way back to something that’s not even there anymore. Now, I can help you to look ahead, to start building your new life. And here, with the Cyber Investigation team, you can do exactly that.”
Haylie looked back at the table, where Agent Hernandez sat at attention. He nodded, looking Haylie in the eyes.
“Fine,” Haylie said with an exhausted breath. “What do you need me to do?”
CHAPTER SIX
Wrigleyville Apartments, 4D
Chicago, IL
October 25th, 10:05AM
Pushing one thin, fragile strip of die-cut wood flush against another, Anthony Feist paused for a breath, commanding his hands to be still. He nudged the metal tips of the tweezers gently against the supports—we can’t have any blemishes or dents or scrapes, then we’d have to throw the whole thing out and start over—and pressed as tight as the wood would allow.
“What will they say, when the news breaks?” he whispered to himself with a half-smile. “I just wonder … Which words will they choose? Clever? Dangerous? Rogue?” He blew a breath of hot air across the model’s skeleton frame, watching strands of loose glue wave in the wind.
“Genius?”
He tilted his head to the side at a sharp angle, wincing as he kept a steady pressure on the wood. All he could see—and really, all that was there—was a mattress pushed into the corner and a small IKEA lamp, its neck craned over towards the floor-to-ceiling window covered in tin foil and thick curtains. There was nothing else on the dark hardwood floors, which echoed his hollow footsteps anytime he moved. Any time he walked. As he looked up at the single picture hanging on the wall, he saw a face staring back at him from behind the glass. He flashed a muddy smirk at the image, shaking his head to slide his bushy hair from his eyes.
“Almost done,” he said to the picture, reaching back to scratch an itch on his forehead with the butt of his bent wrist.
The scent of balsa wood mixed with wisps of glue hit his nostrils, making his piercing blue eyes squint through the fumes. He grimaced as he fought to keep his focus, clearing his mind, his fingers burning with concentration as he locked into the moment.
I have been here before; I will be here again.
I have been here before; I will be here again.
The mantra, rammed into Anthony’s mind long ago by his hack of a therapist, was the
only good thing that had come from years of sessions. That, and having his juvenile criminal record wiped clean while he played nice, acting out the part of the bad boy turned good.
“I have been here before; I will be here again,” he whispered.
He fought to clear his mind, pushing out the sneaky bits trying to wiggle back in through the corners and floorboards and swinging doors left open somewhere deep inside.
They’re all going to love you. They’re all going to wonder who you are and talk about you and it’s never, ever going to stop because you’re never, ever going to stop.
He felt his pulse begin to race, his hands shaking along with each rush of blood through his veins. He dropped the tweezers from his hands, closed his eyes and pictured a state of nothing. He gripped the tabletop with both hands, taking deep breaths and arching his back, his head pointed towards the ceiling, stretching out his neck, his Adam’s apple. He began to laugh, feeling his body shake and quiver.
Don’t let the fear take over.
No. No. That was the old way. That’s the weakness talking.
With the new way, you’re the fire. You’re the star.
I have been here before; I will be here again.
He released his grip, flexing his fingers in and out and stretching his arms to the sides. His heartbeat fell back to a normal rhythm, the sweat on his forehead began to dry. He opened his eyes, turning to face his laptop, and hit refresh on his News Alerts script.
SEARCH:>
“Xasis”
AND
(“hack” OR “exploit” OR “systems” OR “breach”)
There were no results—not yet. He had assumed that would be the case before he even hit the “execute” button, but he tried anyway. A secondary script was designed to ping him the moment something popped up on the news wires, but it never hurt to check. Sometimes, code didn’t work the way you thought it was going to work.
He wrung his hands together, feeling the foreign grit—small whispers of drying glue peeling from his skin. He rubbed his palms, watching the glue fall like snowflakes onto the wax paper below.
“Out of the shadows,” he whispered, “and into the spotlight. Right where you belong.”
He reached down to test the strength of the model, pulling gently at the supports to make sure the glue had set. The rest of the structure tugged along with the beam as Anthony nodded. Good, good.
He hadn’t built a model in years, ever since he was a kid. But with his recent run of activities, with the stress and the pressure building, he found himself running back to the only thing that had ever worked to calm the rising waves, back to days in the therapist’s office when the doctor would let him build any wooden model he asked for. With models, the doctor explained, a patient’s self-control could be tested. And it still worked—not to eliminate his rage, but to practice pushing it down deep inside.
An opportunity like Xasis didn’t come around every day. It wasn’t like Anthony hadn’t tried before, it was just that he needed a little nudge in the right direction. Just a little nudge.
They’ll fear me when the news hits. Experts will shake their heads in awe. Companies all over the world will fear the mention of my name. The press will line up, they’ll all want the story of the man behind it all.
The mastermind.
Anthony ran the news alert search again, scowling at the result.
“Why aren’t they talking yet?” he spat. “Why are they holding back? They know how big this is. They can’t IGNORE this ANY LONGER—”
He braced his hands against the desk, taking a deep breath. “Stop it, Anthony,” he whispered, closing his eyes for a few seconds of pause. As his eyelids flicked open, he focused back on the wooden slats of the model.
“I have been here before; I will be here again.”
It made no sense. He had read on all the hacking forums that the FBI always took at least a day to investigate a crime before going public with the news, but that mark had passed a few hours ago. They should be going full force now—using the press to help them fish out their suspects. Especially with a hack that was a big deal.
And this was a big deal.
“Stop it,” he whispered, his eyes pressed closed. “Focus. Finish what you started, Anthony, always finish what you start.”
He reached out for the final piece of the model, flipping it over and sideways through his fingers, inspecting it for flaws. Grasping the crisscrossed handle of his X-Acto knife, he balanced its weight as he carved away a few stray splinters. He placed the knife down carefully on the tabletop, holding the wood with both hands and placing it a few millimeters above the top of the model. He held his breath, keeping the angle steady, and released.
He leaned closer to examine his work. I have been here before; I will be here again. The wood formed a perfect seal; the connection held strong and was stable, no residual glue or fibers to be seen. A relieved smile flashed across his face. He removed his glasses with both hands and gently placed them on the table. The biplane model was complete, the bottom pair of wings supporting the uppers with an intricate array of small, toothpick-wide supports that formed a maze of patterns, angles, and shadows. He gently cradled the craft to inspect the undercarriage and placed it back down on the wax paper.
And that’s when he heard the ding from his laptop.
He flew over to the keyboard and clicked on the result, reaching back for his glasses to read the full text. The script had returned an article from the Las Vegas Herald, from their “Local News” section.
LAS VEGAS – Breaking news from the strip, multiple eyewitness accounts from the Xasis Casino reporting an issue with the power systems last night. According to their spokesman, a power outage caused minutes of confusion for a few lucky visitors.
What authorities are calling a “systems anomaly” took many of their systems offline, while others overloaded. Visitors reported seeing a few banks of slot machines shooting coins out into the halls of the casino.
The Xasis fixed the problem minutes later, but not before handing out free breakfast coupons to everyone affected by the outage. It seems that in Las Vegas, everything can be a moment for marketing.
Anthony’s hands shook as he slid his palms down to his sides.
I have been here before; I will be here again.
Wincing with anger, he turned back to the model as the voices rushed into his head. They’ll never know you. He closed his eyes, praying for silence in his mind. You’ve never been good enough. Sweat ran down his brow and his hands trembled as he tried to fight his way back to the calm.
You’ll never be more than you are right now.
Slamming his hands down, Anthony’s eyes snapped open as something pierced his flesh, shards and splinters were flying in every direction, the core of the model’s corpse mashed into a ball of wood and glue. Pain searing through him. The X-Acto knife had cut clean through his palm, leaving a trail of blood and forming a smeared mix of crimson dots that pooled on the wax paper below.
He lifted his hand to eye-level, inspecting a splinter wedged deep under his fingernail. As his hand throbbed, he stood, brushing the broken remnants of the plane off the desk with one quick sweep, and turned to the framed photo on the opposite wall.
“There she is. That famous, bright shining star.”
He walked towards the picture, blood dripping down off onto the floor. He took slow, careful steps, tilting his head to get a better view past the lamp light reflecting off the glass.
“They’re going to talk about me,” he whispered, “they really are. They’re going to talk about me the way they talk about you.”
He smiled as the face in the picture became clear through the darkness: Haylie Black, her chestnut hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, her glasses hiding her hazel eyes. She was surrounded by images of computer code and screens. It was just one of the many magazine covers that had appeared since she had stumbled her way to greatness. Since she had become the reluctant hero next door.
The
headline, printed below her chin, read:
Haylie Black is Crash
The Hacker who Just Saved the World
He reached out with his hand, trails of blood running down his sleeve, and planted his palm on her face, smearing the glass with red.
He traced his bloody finger on the empty wall next to the frame, chuckling as he spelled out the only word that made the pain go away.
ENDLING
He stepped back and read the word again and again.
It calmed his racing heart.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NSA Texas Cryptologic Center
San Antonio, TX
October 25th, 10:21AM
“Sign here, here, and here,” Agent Wilcox said, pointing to three different lines on the top sheet of the thick stack of paperwork.
Haylie snatched the pen off the tabletop, quickly scrawling her name across each line.
Agent Hernandez tried to move into her view. “You should probably have a lawyer look at the details of—”
“Let’s get started,” Haylie said. “I want to get this over with.”
Pulling the papers in her direction, Agent Wilcox nodded and opened the folder. “All right, now, let’s start at the beginning. The Xasis casino is the largest in Las Vegas—matter of fact, their holding company owns twelve of the twenty-eight major casinos on the strip.”
“That would give them a huge security budget,” Haylie said. “How did these guys get past their defense tech?”
“The Xasis has properties across the country: Tahoe, Reno, upstate New York, Pennsylvania,” Agent Wilcox said. “My team identified an attack vector that originated on the web servers of one of the properties on the East Coast. The hacker started by attacking the VPN for a few hours—basic dictionary attacks, that sort of thing—but he didn’t have any luck. Not at first.”
“Did that trigger a warning for the security team?” Agent Hernandez asked.
Crash Into Pieces (The Haylie Black Series Book 2) Page 5