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…particularskill 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 whocould bea 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—”
