Exploited (Zero Day #1) Read online

  “Maybe I should help you. You’re really bad at this,” the boy suggested, frowning as Mason struggled to hold on to the penguin.

  Mason glanced at me and I hid my smirk behind my hand. “I think you should take him up on it, Mason.”

  “I’ve been skating since I was five. I’m eight now. I’m on the hockey team and everything. I’m really good too,” the boy professed, his chest puffed out with pride.

  “Well, it sounds like I couldn’t ask for a better teacher,” Mason agreed seriously.

  I held out my hand, waving them on. “Don’t let me stop you. I’ll be over here,” I said. Mason smiled softly, kissing me before being led away by the boy as he rattled off directives.

  He looked back at me periodically. I laughed when he fell, cheered when he stayed on his feet for longer than thirty seconds.

  I noticed the looks people gave him. The women who watched him. The men who envied him. They all wanted what was mine.

  Mine.

  Was he? Did I want him to be?

  Yes. I did.

  I grinned at Mason as he started to become more confident. The boy finally left him alone, obviously bored with playing instructor. Mason started to skate back toward me and I pushed myself off the side, out onto the rink.

  We met in the middle, my hands reaching out to take his.

  “It’s not so bad once you get the hang of it,” Mason stated as his legs scissored underneath him precariously.

  “You’re doing great,” I assured him.

  “Only because I’m trying to impress you.” He grinned. I kissed him. Because I couldn’t help it. Not kissing him wasn’t an option.

  “Consider me impressed,” I said.

  And then we skated together. Slowly and carefully, but together.

  And not once did I think about anything but Mason. And me. And how good it felt to be like this.

  Like a real couple.

  My heart felt incredibly full to the point of bursting.

  And then it cracked and started to break.

  It hurt to be with Mason in this way.

  To see what an incredible man he was.

  It was a painful reminder of all the ways I was a horrible person.

  My plans for him now seemed so callous. So wrong.

  The more time I spent with Mason, the harder it would be to extract myself from the life I was creating. The one where I was Mason’s girlfriend.

  The one where I was starting to fall for him.

  What was I going to do?

  Chapter 12

  Hannah

  “If you text someone this code, as long as it’s not in the conversation thread, it will reboot their phone.”

  I sent Kyle the text. His phone beeped. He opened his messages and instantly his screen went black.

  “Wow. That’s pretty cool.” He grinned as his phone restarted. And then it crashed again. He frowned. “Okay, so that’s not so cool. How do you fix it?”

  I sent him another message. When his phone beeped again, I took it from him and responded to the text.

  “There you go. That bypassed the bug,” I said.

  “That’s it? You just reply to the message?” Kyle seemed disappointed.

  I laughed. “Sorry if it’s too simple for you. But it’s only that easy if the person you sent it to is in the text conversation. If it’s in list mode, every time they try to open the message, it’ll reboot their phone.”

  Kyle stared down at his phone, chewing on his bottom lip. “But it’s not really a hack. It’s a bug in the OS.”

  I sighed and poured my coffee. “Technically yes. But you wanted to learn something new. So there, I taught you something.”

  My head was a conflicted mess. I was irritated at how quickly I was losing the plot. How easy it was becoming to forget everything.

  And I was gleefully exuberant as well. I felt like a teenager again, in the first throes of a romance.

  I was a damn fool.

  So when Kyle had followed me into the break room talking about a bad code he had tried to cobble together last night, my first instinct had been to snap at him. To tell him to get lost. But then I had remembered that it wasn’t Kyle’s fault my life was in chaos. So I had changed my demeanor and decided to show him something.

  Nothing major. He wasn’t ready for that. But I could give him a fun little glitch to annoy his friends with.

  Clearly he didn’t appreciate my efforts.

  The younger man’s stringy hair fell into his face as he squinted down at his phone. A few seconds later my phone pinged and I opened it, only to have it crash instantly.

  Kyle chuckled. “Okay, yeah, that’s pretty fun. It’ll totally piss off my mom.” He instantly sent the non-Latin string of characters to as many people as he could think of. “Though I wonder if you could use the bug to control more than the off function,” he mused.

  I raised my eyebrows. “I’m sure, if given enough time, someone could code something to do that.”

  Kyle passed me the box of doughnuts that someone had left out on the counter. “Think we could do that? Together?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say no. But Kyle wasn’t being too pushy, which was a pleasant change. What could it hurt to share some of the knowledge I had gathered over the years? It could be nice to talk to someone in the real world about the things I could do.

  “Sure. Why not? Nothing too malicious. We don’t want the coppers breathing down our necks for a dinky iPhone hack. But yeah, let’s see what we can come up with.” I took a bite of a powdered sugar doughnut and wiped my fingers on a napkin.

  Kyle looked ready to come out of his skin. “For real? That’s awesome. Maybe I can tweak this glitch a bit. Make it do something more…” His voice trailed off as he walked out of the room, engrossed in his new project.

  My phone dinged in my pocket and I pulled it out. My heart thudded. It flipped and tumbled.

  Good morning, Hannah. Should we try ice-skating again? Maybe I could redeem myself.

  I wanted to massacre the butterflies running riot in my belly. There was no place for them here.

  I wanted to call him up and tell him, Yes I want to go ice-skating with you again! I wanted to throw caution to the wind and embrace the madness that he evoked inside me.

  But I couldn’t.

  Because of the plan.

  Always the goddamned plan.

  It was essential to gauge my reactions to him carefully. I had to think about what would make him want me. What would make him view me as the woman he could tell his secrets to.

  I needed those secrets.

  They were integral to everything.

  But…

  I found myself liking him. The way he laughed. The way he asked me about my day. The way he listened when I spoke, as if what I had to say was the most important thing to him. The way he had let the boy teach him how to ice-skate, holding on to that silly plastic penguin for dear life, without caring if he looked stupid.

  There was more to Mason Kohler than being an FBI agent. Than being incredibly good-looking and smart.

  There was a heart to the man that moved me. A depth of character that intrigued me.

  He hid his pain carefully, letting it out only when he felt safe to do so. And he felt safe with me.

  I wasn’t sure I could abuse that power. Whether it was expected of me or not.

  And that was risky. Because I didn’t want to like him.

  I could be attracted to him. Lust after him, even. But never like him.

  That was not part of the plan.

  Being dishonest wasn’t hard. I had lived a double life for a long time. My mother and Charlotte had no idea the lengths I went to in order to get justice for us. To make the right people pay for crimes they had committed.

  My coworkers didn’t realize that they sat in the same room with a woman who could destroy them if she so chose.

  Wearing a smile while I plotted vengeance wasn’t new for me.

  But using Mason felt di
fferent. I didn’t get a thrill from kissing him with a mouth that spewed lie after lie. It was difficult to look into his blue eyes and assure him I was genuine. To bleed deception disguised as sincerity felt wrong.

  This was the path I had chosen. The course I had devised and designed.

  But the real and the invented were starting to become blurred. Mason wasn’t black and white. Not anymore.

  Yet I had made my choice.

  Hadn’t I?

  Good morning, Agent Kohler. I’m not sure either of us is up to another round of kissing the ice. Maybe we could think of something else to do.

  It was just coy enough to tease him. Flirty enough to draw him in.

  Is it too soon to make plans for the weekend? No ice-skating, then.

  I buzzed with excitement.

  No. Not soon enough. Maybe a movie. Your place. We can order in.

  Was that too forward? I didn’t want to come across as easy, but I wanted him to think I wanted him.

  I did want him.

  Discomfort froze me.

  I wanted Mason. Of course I did. My denial wasn’t strong enough.

  I enjoyed talking to him. It was simple. Uncomplicated.

  I was being tricked by the deception just as easily as he was.

  His reply was immediate.

  Sounds perfect.

  I turned off my phone before I could freak out any more.

  “Hannah, there you are. I’ve been calling your desk for the last fifteen minutes.” A man not much older than me, with a hipster beard and trousers too tight for his muffin top, appeared in the doorway to the break room looking slightly harassed.

  “Hi, Todd. Uh, is everything okay?” I asked in confusion. I rarely spoke to Todd Perkins outside of emails. Sure, our jobs overlapped at times, but that never required us to have an actual face-to-face conversation. And I was okay with that.

  Todd scratched at his beard and I tried not to make a face as a piece of food fell from it onto the floor. Yuck. “There’s been some activity on the local firewall. Evidence that our security is being compromised.” He pulled at the waistband of his pants. He looked incredibly uncomfortable in his clothes. The look of a man trying to be cool and failing miserably.

  I frowned. “Okay. Well, I don’t do security. That’s your department.”

  Todd gave me a look of complete exasperation. “This is a big deal. Chuck told me to pull you in. Whoever is attacking our firewalls knows what they’re doing. We need all hands on deck.” He gave me an annoyed look. “I don’t need to explain what it means for an IT company to be taken down by hackers, do I? How that could destroy our credibility and result in loss of business?”

  He was speaking to me as if I were a child. A really small and stupid child. I wanted to slap him.

  Sure, my interest was piqued. I could probably solve their ridiculous security problem in a matter of minutes. But that was well above my pay grade. And not what I had been hired to do.

  I couldn’t make it too obvious that I could walk my way through their security systems with my eyes closed.

  “Okay” was all I said. Though “Go fuck yourself” was on the tip of my tongue.

  Sipping my coffee, I followed Todd into a conference room, where Chuck and five other stereotypical IT guys were tapping away at laptops.

  “Helen, glad you could finally make it,” Chuck piped up, barely looking at me as I entered the room. I curled my lip slightly in disdain but otherwise didn’t respond.

  Stay unassuming. Quiet. Blend into the background…

  “There’s been suspicious activity on the firewall. I’m getting alerts and notifications that there have been some efforts to gain entry to our network….”

  Todd droned on and on. I barely listened. I logged on to the network, and with a few taps I could see exactly what Todd the bore was talking about.

  I frowned. These weren’t “attacks.” This wasn’t an attempt to tear things down. Cause chaos. Destroy everything. This was subtle. Probing. Looking for vulnerabilities.

  While Todd and his IT cronies were running around trying to plug the hole, whoever this was had already slipped in. Poking around. Checking things out.

  Reading emails.

  Becoming a voyeur. A shadow that didn’t belong.

  Whoever it was was already here.

  My heart hammered in my chest. I didn’t like being snooped on. Not when I was used to doing the snooping.

  This all felt so familiar.

  The sneakiness. This was being done with skill.

  “Whoever it was didn’t hack the system. My firewalls are too strong,” Todd preened. His chest puffed out with self-importance.

  The dumb-ass had no idea.

  “We need to monitor the situation. Harriet, perhaps you can help out Todd’s team and set up new notifications.”

  I opened my mouth, ready to explain that the system was already compromised. Ready to share my knowledge. To do the right thing.

  “Oh, that’s all right, Chuck. We have the best people on it. No sense in muddying the waters.” Todd gave me a patronizing smile. “I’m not sure Hannah knows how to architect an environment. I don’t have the time to teach her, I’m afraid.”

  Dick.

  I closed my mouth. No way I’d tell him about the obvious hacker presence in the network now. Let the whole place fall apart for all I cared.

  “Yep. Don’t want to take up any more of your time,” I muttered, getting to my feet. I turned to my boss. “I’m going to get back to work, since it seems Todd has everything under control.”

  Chuck waved a hand in dismissal. “Sure. That’s fine. But we may need you again.” He still hadn’t bothered to look at me.

  I walked back to my desk, wondering about the hacker who had compromised Holt’s network. What were they looking for?

  Sitting down, I fired up my VPN and started to poke around. Looking for something to identify the culprit. I was better than most at finding the trails, but the average IT lackey would never be able to find where the vulnerabilities lay.

  I frowned as I saw what this anonymous individual was looking through.

  Emails.

  Specifically mine.

  What the hell?

  Upon closer inspection I realized that my desktop security had been dinged. They hadn’t broken through because my layers were vastly superior to what Holt IT employed, but the evidence was there.

  I swallowed thickly.

  This hack was personal.

  I glanced around the room, suddenly feeling on display. Exposed.

  Violated.

  This is how your targets feel.

  My conscience needed to shut up already.

  A flare of fear swept through me.

  Was he onto me already?

  Were the Feds finally closing in?

  For years I hadn’t given much thought to what the authorities were doing. Not that I wasn’t worried about getting busted. There was always the underlying concern that one day I wouldn’t cover my tracks enough to stay invisible. That one day someone just as good as I was would figure me out.

  But that was part of the thrill.

  The fear kept it exciting. From those first days I had been full of overconfidence about my own skill. I thought I was too smart. Too good. No way would a bunch of technically inferior federal agents ever be able to find me.

  So as time went by, I had gone about my work, not giving much thought to whether I was being hunted.

  Getting intel on a possible investigation into my hacker alter ego hadn’t been on my radar.

  Until Toxicwrath brought me back down to earth with a bone-shattering thud.

  23:22 There’s a file on you. An open case. Did you know that?

  I dismissed it initially. I sat at my computer in my dimly lit kitchen and rolled my eyes.

  23:22 Yeah, okay, so what? It’s not like they can trace my IP. I’m careful. You know that.

  I had probably even smirked, feeling full o
f myself.

  23:23 Minotaur20 was busted two days ago. He’s been arrested and charged.

  My smirk dropped instantly.

  Every cracker knew Minotaur20. He was one of the largest contributors to the Tor network in the world. It was rumored that he had helped found the Lomaxians, one of the biggest and most prolific hacktivist groups in operation. A group that I used to have a close, personal tie to.

  He had been around since the dawn of the Internet. Everyone had thought him untouchable.

  My email dinged and I opened it to find an email from Toxicwrath. It was a newspaper article detailing the arrest of Jonathan Lambert of Winchester, Virginia, for cybercrimes going back fifteen years.

  Shit.

  My throat seized and my palms began to sweat.

  23:23 You’re on their radar. This is serious.

  For the first time I took the warning seriously.

  23:24 How serious?

  23:25 Very. They’ve been looking for you for years. You have their attention.

  I wasn’t stupid. I knew that my questionable deeds had caught the eye of the authorities. Several times I had even made the news, which had been a nice bump to the ego.

  But it had been months since my last exploit. I figured they were off looking for bigger fish to fry.

  So I had continued to plan. Lay the groundwork for my next takedown.

  All the while not sparing a thought for the possible consequences.

  I was so naive.

  23:26 They haven’t found me yet. I’m safe.

  I typed those words with more bravado than I felt. A confidence that was beginning to erode.

  23:27 They haven’t found you yet. But they’re looking. Trust me. I need to know we’re not going to get caught. I have contacts. They tell me your case has become a priority. What are you doing to cover your tracks?

  I became defensive. Angry. But it was a secondary emotion to cover the terror that now gripped me. Going to jail was not an option for me.

  I couldn’t do that to Charlotte.

  Or to my mother, no matter how strained our relationship.

  With shaking fingers I began to detail all the ways I was maintaining my anonymity. But for Toxicwrath it wasn’t enough. He seemed to know things. Intimate things about how the FBI worked. He knew the agents. The protocols.