“All right,” Kurt said. “Maybe you’re on surveillance for another week for nothing, but stay sharp.”
“No problem.” So far, the gig had been a piece of cake. It was his first undercover assignment since he started at Steele Security in June—a nice change from security consulting and playing bodyguard. His cover story as a trainee for one of Aggressor’s covert, government-funded terrorist-hunting teams was a perfect fit for his background. “This is my thing.”
“Which is why I put you on it,” Kurt said.
“It’s been a good chance to refresh my skills, especially in an urban setting.” As a former Marine scout sniper, tracking a target without being seen was right in Scott’s wheelhouse, but doing it outside of the desert was an interesting challenge. “Can’t wear a ghillie suit in the concrete jungle.”
“Youcould,” his boss said, “but you wouldn’t exactly blend in.”
Scott chuckled and agreed to check in the next morning. Time to follow Valerie to work.
Early the next morning, Valerie sat forward in her desk chair and rubbed her eyes. The words on her computer monitor didn’t change. Her cursor blinked happily next to the prompt—a line of text on the screen—the virtual doorway to Westgate’s secrets.
They’d done it!
She glanced at the digital clock on her desk. Was it really three? In the morning?
If Duncan hadn’t assured her that he’d identified and dealt with the source of the leak weeks ago, she’d be worried about her success. But apparently, he’d fixed everything, making some kind of reparations to the affected companies. In typical fashion, he wouldn’t tell her how he’d convinced them to stay quiet about the hacks—Aggressor’s livelihood depended on it—but she was glad she didn’t have to worry about her work making their clientsmorevulnerable.
She’d been itching to tell Jay about the hacks, but Duncan had threatened her job if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. It chafed not to be able to talk to her partner about what had happened.
At least she had good news for him now. Jay had dozed off in the chair next to her, and unable to hold back a smile, she poked him in the arm and waited for him to rouse.
“Hey.” He sat up and gave her a grumpy look, wiping a trickle of drool from his cheek.
“We’re in.”
“We…” His face transformed from post-nap confusion to a brilliant grin as he hopped up and came to stand behind her, looking over her shoulder at the large flat-screen monitor. “You did it!”
“Wedid it.” This assignment was their trickiest yet. The two of them had spent weeks using a combination of phishing schemes and well planned social engineering ploys to break in.
This euphoria, this high that came from doing the impossible, was the only thing that had kept her going. That and a jumbo bag of Skittles. She could feel the excitement radiating off Jay behind her. No longer tired, her fingers raced across the keyboard as she entered the commands to take her wherever she wanted to go in the system.
Together, she and Jay had managed to get full administrative privileges to the computer network. She might as well have been sitting inside Westgate Defense’s IT department.
She gave a thumbs up to Harry, the graying, overweight computer operator on the other side of the glass wall in front of her. He grinned and returned the gesture.
Everyone at Aggressor called their office the “Fish Bowl” because it was completely encased in glass so they were always on display. Duncan said the transparency of the room encouraged honesty. He loved his hackers—they brought in lucrative contracts—but their backgrounds were often dubious.
Trust came hard.
She understood. Her papá might have started her down this path as a black hat, but she’d chosen the high road.
And now, she was about to ruin Westgate’s network admin’s day. Poor guy. She didn’t envy being on his end of things. Or John the security guard. Her fake boyfriend Brian must have realized the birthday decorations weren’t just a coworker’s prank, because at some point, he’d removed the device she’d planted. But he hadn’t done it in time to stop her and Jay from getting what they needed to infiltrate the servers.
And it wouldn’t matter even if he reported the breach to security. Ultimately, Westgate was paying Aggressor to find their weaknesses. She had a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Jay signed out of his computer and swiveled toward her. “I wasn’t sure we were going to get this one,” he said, his dark eyes shot through with red.
They’d both been pulling crazy hours for this op, while having to put in time on other contracts—like Janus—as well. “Your code was the key,” she said.
He stood and grabbed his messenger bag, slinging it over his head so it crossed his chest. “But you got us access.”
Yeah, she had. Since she signed on at Aggressor three years ago, her skills had grown exponentially. “We make a good team.” She smiled.
He looked away and gave a jerky nod, focused on wrapping a plaid cashmere scarf around his neck. Unlike most hackers she knew, Jay had a keen sense of style. Whereas she usually wore jeans and a T-shirt—the typical geek uniform—he routinely wore slacks and oxford shirts with shiny leather shoes. He donned a long, wool coat, still not meeting her gaze.
“Hey.” What was behind his sudden change in demeanor? “What’s wrong?” He was acting the way she did around Scott Kramer, Aggressor’s newest field operative. Flustered, awkward…except Jay didn’t think of her that way.
