Gil had been kicked out of his own house. Emily told him she’d text him when he could come home.
So instead of spending Saturday night with Ivy, talking about things that absolutely needed to be discussed, he was back at the office with Zane and Luke. They’d ordered pizza. Talked about Ivy’s mess, divvied up the investigative tasks, and then returned to their desks.
If it were anyone but Ivy, someone they knew mattered to him, Luke and Zane would not have been at work on a Saturday night. None of them would have. They worked hard and working weekends was hardly a novel concept to any of them, but their caseload was fairly light at the moment and their weekends had been mostly free for the past few months.
He’d always gotten along well with his fellow agents, but after they lost three of them in the space of a few weeks last spring,their bond had solidified. So while it wasn’t normal for them to be working on a Saturday night, it wasn’t unusual for them to be together.
Three weeks ago, their entire team spent the weekend on the Outer Banks. Emily drove down from DC, and Faith’s sister, Hope, joined them. They made the most of the last weekend of summer and had a blast. And two weekends ago, they all worked a protective detail when the vice president came to town to make a speech.
Then last Saturday, Gil, Zane, and Luke went to Carrington to dive with their sheriff’s office dive team. Tessa and Faith were learning to dive but weren’t as experienced, so they hung out with Leigh Parker and Sabrina Campbell. When the official training session was over, Faith, Tessa, Sabrina, and Leigh joined the others for some fun diving in Lake Porter.
Would Ivy want to learn to dive? She might. But if she didn’t, she probably wouldn’t mind hanging out with Sabrina and Leigh.
Gil grabbed a baseball, one of several on his desk, and walked the hall. He had to stop thinking of all the ways Ivy could seamlessly slide into his life when everything went back to normal and focus on why someone wanted into her office computers.
Ransomware.
The idea was lodged in his mind, and he couldn’t shake it. The other thing he couldn’t shake was that he’d never seen a ransomware case like this one. And he’d seen a lot of ransomware.
Ransomware wasn’t typically a personal crime. Anyone—all the way from an individual to a nation-state—could perpetrate it. But with the exception of nation-states, who might have more nefarious reasons, the goal was to score the ransom, and it was rare for anyone to resort to physical violence.
Due to the crime’s digital nature, the bad actors who set the ransoms might not even be located on the same continent as theirvictims. They didn’t usually have a personal vendetta against the businesses they attacked. They simply wanted the money.
But this was personal. It was as personal as you could get. These people had broken into Ivy’s home and tortured her for access to her computer. They must have known that breaking into the office wouldn’t be enough. That her system was too secure and the only way they could get in was to have the passwords.
So why not pressure an employee? Luke had volunteered to look into Ivy’s employees, but Gil didn’t think that would pan out. It was possible the people behind the attack had already tried, and maybe they’d already been successful in getting something from an employee, but even if they had, it wouldn’t have worked. They needed Ivy’s passwords and the level of access to the system that only she had.
Except she wasn’t the only one who had access.
He went back to his cubicle, dropped the baseball in its basket, and pulled his phone from his pocket.
A few clicks later the phone rang, and he waited.
“Campbell.”
Wherever he was, it was loud. “Adam. Gil Dixon. Got a minute?”
“Sure. Hang on a sec.” Gil heard a whoop and a groan and the dull roar of a football game on a TV, then silence. “Sorry about that. What’s up?” Adam was all business, and Gil could imagine why. They were friends, but Gil had never made a habit out of calling Sabrina’s husband to shoot the breeze.
Luke and Zane had both come around the corners of their cubicles and stood at his doorway, not trying to hide their eavesdropping.
“Need to put a bug in your ear.” With broad strokes, he explained the situation with Ivy. “She told us Sabrina set up hersystem, and Sabrina sometimes tries to hack into it. I don’t have any reason to think anyone knows about Sabrina’s involvement, but I didn’t want to leave her hanging out there without someone keeping an eye on things.”
“Appreciate it.” Adam didn’t sound grateful. He sounded ticked. “You got a handle on who these guys are yet?”
“Not even close. This case is barely twenty-four hours old, and it’s already a mess. We’ve got counterfeit money deposited into her account that makes no sense. People torturing her for her computer password, which also makes no sense. Today someone tried to snatch her from a Mexican restaurant. I can’t prove anything, and I need you to understand I don’t have any verifiable reason to think Sabrina could be in danger.”
“Don’t need one. I’ll take your gut instinct any day.”
“Thanks.”
“How much can I tell Bri?” Nobody except Adam called her anything other than Sabrina or Dr. Fleming-Campbell.
Had anyone besides him ever given Ivy a nickname?
“I’m sure Ivy isn’t planning to keep it a secret, but it’s all pretty fresh. Let me talk to her tonight and find out if she’s said anything to Sabrina and what she’s comfortable with me sharing. I’ll get back to you before I crash.”
“You aren’t with her?” Adam’s concern was obvious.
