“The only Wonder Woman shit you’ll see is her logo on mycoffeemug.”
As Lucas shakes my hand, a small piece of my world rights itself once more. My momentary jubilation fades as my thoughts travel unbidden to West. If only righting that ship were thissimple.
* * *
Two hours later,Royce carries boxes of pizza into the conference room while I hook my laptop up to the projection screen. Orion and Abby huddle around Lucas as he flags line after line of code we need to strip out of the card controlmodule.
“How do youseeall that, man?” Orion says as Lucas highlights a whole function that needstogo.
“Easy.” He glances up at me and winks. “Cam’s got a signature. You work with someone long enough, you learn theirtells.”
“Which is why I never play poker with him,” I add as I snag a slice ofpepperoni.
Orion rubs his bald head. “Yeah, but you said you never worked on this module. I don’t see any difference between those twofunctions.”
As Lucas throws my code and the hacker’s side-by-side and launches into a detailed comparison, Royce offers me a cold beer. “How are welooking?”
“Better than I expected. With their help, Oversight’s code could be pristine by tomorrow. Then we just need to figure out how to keep her that way.” The crisp lager soothes my nerves, though despite my outward confidence, I have no idea how the hacker accessed the code in the firstplace.
“Hey, Lucas?” Al leans against the conference room door jamb, his Mariner’s ball cap half-crushed in his hands. “What’s the schedule fortomorrow?”
Lucas pushes back from the table and motions for me and Al to follow him out of the conference room. I give him a subtle nod when he looks to me for approval and let him lead—both physically andprofessionally.
“Cam found a glitch in Oversight. Until we fix the code, she needs me here. Can you direct the crew tomorrow on twenty and therooftopdeck?”
“Yeah.” Al runs his fingers through his short-cropped hair, and a tattoo peeks out from hissleeve.
“I didn’t know you’d served.” I shrug off my sweater and show him my unit’s tattoo. “What’dyoudo?”
“Radar. Not something I like to talk about.” He presses his lips together, tugs his sleeve down, then glances back into the conference room. “That must be some epicglitch.”
“You have no idea.” I rub the back of my neck. “We’re damn lucky the system didn’t go live like this. Once we’re done, though, no one will ever touch heragain.”
* * *
Alittle past ten,I interrupt everyone. “Go home. We can finish cleaning up the code tomorrow. Show up with any and all ideas to make sure whoever fucked with Oversight can’t touch heragain.”
Abby, Orion, and Royce take off, but Lucas hoofs the pizza boxes and beer bottles out to the dumpster while I copy all of Oversight’s code onto an encrypted flash drive, then secure the drive in theofficesafe.
Picking up my laptop bag, I meet his gaze. “Have a drink with me?” I don’t want to go home, and while we’re solid enough for him to help debug Oversight, I don’t yet know if he’ll stay once the project is done. He hasn’t been his usual animated self this evening, and I’m worriedabouthim.
We end up at ZigZag, one of the quieter—and better—bars in the city. Over glasses of Irish whiskey, we try to figure out how the hacker gained access to Oversight in the firstplace.
“LaCosta sent all of the old system’s camera footage from the past week to SPD this afternoon. The hacker had to access Oversight from Coana’s server room. We’ve had our card reader module on that door all week, though, and the only people swiping in and out were you and me, Coana’s head of security, their IT manager, andRoyce.”
Lucas sits back in his chair, the glass of whiskey cupped in his large hands. “What do you know about the guys Al brought in to help with thecabling?”
The whiskey warms me, and I roll my head from side-to-side. “Nothing. Royce handled all ofthat.Why?”
After a sigh, Lucas drains his glass, then motions to the server for another round. “I was pretty messed up when I got kicked out of the army. My mama couldn’t work anymore, and I needed to make some fast cash to pay for her health insurance. When I fell in with the Guild Crew down in Los Angeles, all my money woes disappeared. They used thehotels,too.”
“You don’t talk about thattimemuch.”
“One of these days, honey, we’re going to get smashed and then there won’t be any more secrets between us.” He toasts me, though his words still sting. “A couple of days ago, I couldn’t find my keycard when we moved from sixteen to seventeen. Al told me to go on ahead and he’d have Zach check thecrawlspaces.”
“Youthink…”
“Al said Zach found my card outside the service elevator.” Lucas stares into his second whiskey. “I was so pissed at you that afternoon. TechLock had just laughed in my face. I took the damn card out of my wallet and almost snapped it in half. But I swear I putitback.”
