“From what I can tell by the dates on the list”—Cole flipped through the papers—“it looks like there were additional entries made after her initial discovery.”
He slid them over to Hawk and pointed at them. Sure enough, there were six additional inputs made to the data after the first time she accessed it.
“Sammy, why do you think they waited so long to move that file?” Hawk asked.
“It looks like the only reason they found out about the breach was because of a prescheduled, automatic system status check that ran four days ago.” That lined up with Charlotte’s timeline for when strange things began happening. “And from what I could see, that report is shared with HRA’s board of directors and their head of corporate security.”
“What do we know about them?” The leather squeaked when Cole sat back in his chair and propped an ankle on his opposite knee.
“Right now, all I have are their official bios from the website and Pennington’s from his time at the White House, but Casey is helping me do a deeper dive on each of them.”
Casey Mattox was another IT genius who worked for Jeffrey Burke, the powerful head of the National Security Agency.
“Burke loaned Casey out?” Before heading the Dark Ops division, Cole spent years working deep undercover for Burke.
Burke had been the one to convince Beck O’Halleran to create OSI after he left the FBI. He was also the godfather to Jonathan’s daughter. The man was very entrenched with the O’Halleran family.
“He said he owed us one for helping with his daughter.” A few months ago, the team had played a part in rescuing Burke’s daughter. “As soon as he saw the list of names in that file, he volunteered Casey. But he can only spare him for a couple of days.” She clicked more keys. “I did find out that HRA’s head of security, Vincent Kimball, has a reputation for being an overly aggressive asshole. He brought in his own crew of thugs, and they all answer directly to him. There are a lot of rumors floating around that Kimball has even killed to protect his boss.”
“His boss at HRA?” Cole sat forward.
“Not from what I’ve found so far, but I want to keep looking.” She continued, “Oh, and someone else accessed that file multiple times after Charlotte, and each date coincides with an entry on that list of donations. The last one was three days before the system status was run. Unfortunately, all I have is a passcode—no name—and I couldn’t find that information during my search. Which makes me think that information is kept on an internal server.”
“Are you saying you won’t be able to get to it?” Cole asked.
“There might be a way for Charlotte to find out whose passcode that is,” Sammy said.
“How?” Hawk asked.
“I can be on the phone with her, giving her a series of computer commands that should give me access to the internal server. Thing is …” She hesitated. “She’ll have to go into the office to do that.”
“What if she has her HRA laptop?” Knowing how conscientious she was, she probably took it home with her every night. “Can she access it that way, without having to physically be in the office?”
“Unfortunately, no. Her laptop has to literally be plugged into the system.” There was regret in Sammy’s voice. “I’m sorry. It’s really the only way.”
“Okay, go ahead and send what you have. We’ll let you know what we decide about the passcode,” Cole said. “Good work, Sammy.”
“Thanks.” Once again, keys clicked furiously in the background. “I’ll let you know when I find out more.”
“Sounds good.” Cole tapped the screen to end the call.
“I don’t want her going back there,” Hawk said. Especially now that they had confirmation that someone knew she’d accessed the file.
“I get that, but whoever else accessed that file is a part of this.” Cole set his elbows on the table and threaded his fingers together. “We need to know who they are. All of them.”
“Shit.” Hawk knew Cole was right, but he wasn’t letting her go alone. “Then I’m going in with her.”
“And just exactly how will you explain your presence?” His scarred brow lifted.
“I don’t know. I’ll say I’m her boyfriend.”
Cole seemed to ponder the idea. “Actually, that’s not a bad plan.”
“There’s a chance they’ve cut off her access to the facility.” A selfish part of Hawk hoped they had.
“Could be.” Cole tapped his index fingers together. “Or, if that security guy is as big of an asshole as he sounds like, he’s probablyeagerfor her to show up there again.”
Yeah, that was exactly what Hawk was afraid of.
