Exploited (Zero Day #1) Read online

  Though I had contemplated uploading kiddie porn to his computer and making an anonymous call to the police.

  I didn’t take his dick attitude personally, though. It was just how Chuck Bennett operated. He wasn’t a nice guy. Nobody liked him.

  And he didn’t care that he’d never be on anyone’s Christmas card list.

  “It was a pretty low-grade attack. Most likely some bored teenagers with nothing better to do with their time,” I said, silently berating Kyle and his immature need to play lamer.

  “Well, it’s obvious we need to up security. That is your job, right?” Chuck asked, his voice dripping in derision.

  “Well, actually my job is maintaining the network. Security is Todd’s job,” I reminded my boss, enjoying the brief moment of stunned silence at my gall. Chuck wasn’t used to anyone correcting him.

  “Oh, well, I’ll have to talk to Todd, but I expect you to collaborate with him on how to prevent these things from happening in the future. And if you can’t do it, there are enough people out there looking for a job,” Chuck threatened. I rolled my eyes heavenward.

  “Okay, then,” I replied placidly.

  “I want a follow-up by the end of the day,” Chuck blustered and then hung up the phone.

  I looked around the crowded floor, wondering why I bothered with a job I hated.

  Because my true passion doesn’t pay the bills.

  One day Chuck would get his too. There were so many skeletons in his deep, dark closet. And I would take joy in exposing them.

  Just not right now.

  Vengeance had to be prioritized.

  Tonight’s exploit was about frying bigger fish.

  Chuck Bennett was too small for my pond at the moment.

  But there would come a day when I’d give him all of my attention.

  I grinned.

  Happiness was fleeting but damn, it felt good.

  Chapter 3

  Mason

  I took a sip of my now-cold coffee and threw it in the trash.

  I briefly thought of the woman who had bought it for me.

  Hannah Whelan.

  That was a pleasant surprise for a Wednesday morning.

  Cute face. Nice tits. Great legs.

  Quiet but coy. Soft voice. Eyes that met mine and then looked away.

  A nice distraction.

  Lord knew I needed one of those.

  Because this job was going to fucking kill me.

  “Mason, you coming? Derek is starting the briefing in five.”

  I glanced up at the curvy, blond-haired woman standing beside my desk, a serious, no-nonsense expression on her otherwise lovely face.

  “I’m coming. Just finishing up this report I was supposed to have done last week.” I held up the thick file and gave my former fuck buddy a wan smile.

  “You’ll piss him off if you’re late again,” Madison reminded me. As if she needed to remind me that I lived my life on the bad side of the agent in charge, Derek Sanders.

  “I won’t be late. Just need to cross a few more t’s,” I said, still wearing that painful-as-hell smile.

  Madison pursed her lips and finally turned on her heel, walking away with the giant stick still firmly planted up her ass.

  I had been working in the Richmond FBI field office for only a little over six months. It shouldn’t have been enough time to mess things up so royally. But I was always known as an overachiever.

  Madison Armiger had been a mistake of the worst kind.

  The kind that you had to see. Every. Single. Day.

  Screwing a fellow field agent wasn’t the best way to make an impression. I hadn’t been after anything serious. Madison had seen me as her reason to settle down. It was safe to say that our needs hadn’t meshed.

  After I had cut things off with her, she had taken it like a stereotypical woman scorned.

  Not well.

  FBI agents may have a reputation for being serious and all business, but they gossip like ten-year-old girls when given a juicy piece of scandal.

  And the newbie fucking—and discarding—a senior agent was bound to get around the office and a surefire way to look like a dick. If not fired.

  I was just lucky that my superiors had either been ignorant of my indiscretion or chosen to look the other way. Otherwise a bad reputation would have been the least of my worries.

  I had been transferred to the Richmond field office from DC to assist in their backlog of cases in the cybercrime unit. I had been working as a special agent for a little over ten years, having been recruited two years out of college when I was working as an IT specialist for a large tech firm. My tech aptitude and hands-on expertise made me a prime candidate. I had jumped into the deep end without thinking twice.

  I had done pretty damn well for myself too. I had personally taken down over two hundred cybercriminals during my tenure. I was the guy you called when shit got tough.

  I had planned to come to Richmond, solve their hardest cases, and go home even more of a badass than I already was. I had been slightly deluded when it came to my hero fantasies.

  Things weren’t exactly going the way I had planned.

  For starters, I had caught a case of stupid in the week it had taken for me to leave my leased apartment in Reston and settle down in the state capital.

  Getting drunk on my first weekend in town with a group composed of my fellow agents hadn’t been my smartest move to date.

  But I had been flying high on my own self-importance. Only two months earlier I had busted a hacker responsible for a nasty bit of ransomware that had been making the rounds in corporate America for over six months. The man responsible had swindled more than $10 million from companies desperate to get their data back. No one could locate him. Three weeks after being assigned the case, I had Stanley Obermain of Wichita, Kansas, behind bars awaiting trial.

  So when I had been asked to lend a hand to the Richmond office, I had thought I was the big important agent coming down to teach these guys how it was done.

  Yeah, I was a complete jerk.

  Feeling untouchable, I had gone home with Madison, even though I had known better. Being drunk was an excuse that would never stick. I was an agent. She was an agent. It was a big no-no.

  One time was bad enough; continuing to sleep with her, knowing what a bad idea it was, launched me to level ten dumb-ass.

  On top of that, I quickly realized I wasn’t the big important agent I thought I was. I was only the guy pulled in to fill in the gaps.

  Now I was trying to backtrack. Find my footing after stumbling for the first time in my adult life. Screwing up wasn’t something I was used to. I was responsible. Competent. Together.

  Ego had gotten the better of me. I wasn’t going to let it drag me so low again. And I was determined to do what I had been sent to Richmond for: my damn job.

  I walked into the conference room ten minutes later. I was the last person to arrive so every single pair of eyes shot in my direction. I wasn’t a fan of laser-focused attention, but there was nothing to do about it.

  I slid into the chair closest to the door, wishing my boss weren’t giving me the look of death in front of all of the other agents. He could at least attempt to hide his disdain.

  I wasn’t entirely sure what I had done to make him hate me, but ever since I had arrived at the Richmond office, Derek Sanders had been treating me like public enemy number one. I got the shittiest assignments, the most hopeless cases. My amazing record of busts and convictions had dwindled into nonexistence. It was as if the jackass was setting me up to fail.

  And that irritated the shit out of me. Because I didn’t like to fail at anything.

  “Are we keeping you from something important, Agent Kohler? A pedicure, perhaps?” Derek asked, his lip curling as if I were crap on his shoe.

  I cleared my throat and swallowed my anger at being singled out so publicly. It was my fault for being late, after all. I should have known better.

  “No, sir. I apologize for b
eing late,” I responded, meeting my superior’s eyes directly.

  Derek’s brows knitted together and he quickly looked away, clearly disappointed that I hadn’t snapped my answer, giving him an excuse to reprimand me.

  I had learned the hard way with Derek Sanders that fighting back got me nowhere except in trouble.

  Agent Sanders turned to a whiteboard split up into a lined table with a list of familiar names. Names that every agent in the room should have known by heart.

  “We’ve been passed a few new cases, so it’s time to divvy them up. I know everyone’s caseloads are high at the moment, but these are now our highest priorities.” Derek circled the first name on the list.

  “Sayid Hanano, age twenty-two. Prominent member of the SEA. Wanted for cybercrimes, including conspiracy relating to a hoax terrorist attack in July of 2015. Also wanted for access device fraud and unlawful access to stored communications.” Derek turned around, his eyes roving over the twelve agents assembled in the room.

  My foot bounced in anticipation. I wanted the case. I had been tracking the Syrian Electronic Army—SEA for short—for the past three years. I had helped bring in Zaahid Moradi, a leading member and the person responsible for the CIA megabreach, just last year. It was my kind of case. The kind that could make me a hero.

  And I really liked being the hero.

  Derek’s eyes rested on me and I thought that maybe he’d actually give me a case that mattered, instead of handing me something I had no chance of solving.

  But no luck. His eyes continued to float around until he zeroed in on Madison Armiger.

  “Madison, you and Chaz will be point on this one. You’ll need to collaborate with Quantico. It’s believed Sayid is in Richmond. This is a time-sensitive case.”

  Madison and Chaz Edwards, a douche in a bad suit, looked ready to burst. It was a big case. One that could make your career and set you up for promotion. Everyone knew it.

  “Yes, sir. We’ll get this guy,” Chaz enthused like the loser he was. Madison was excited, even though it was kind of hard to tell. She didn’t emote like normal people. Her emotions were all buried under a mountain of repressive seriousness. Which made her kind of fucking creepy.

  “I know you two are the right ones for this case,” Agent Sanders responded. Why did I feel that was a jab at me?

  Probably because it was.

  Derek turned back to the whiteboard and went down the list of four more names. Each one would have been a great case to work on. Each one was given to someone else.

  Until Derek came to the final name on the board.

  No. Please don’t give me that one….

  “Agent Kohler, you and Agent Winston will work on the Freedom Overdrive case.” Derek wrote my name beside Perry Winston’s on the whiteboard. I wanted to groan in frustration.

  “I thought Quantico had closed that case.” I said.

  Agent Sanders cocked an eyebrow and gave me a grim smile that I imagined held a hint of malicious glee. “He’s been active again, it seems. Took credit for a big DDoS attack on Stanford Pharmaceuticals just last month. Quantico has bumped our favorite hacktivist up to high priority.”

  Our favorite hacktivist, my ass.

  Freedom Overdrive—or Freed0m0v3rdr1v3, as the cracker was known in online communities—had been a thorn in the Bureau’s side for almost four years. He came to prominence after a massive data breach involving thousands of confidential files belonging to a well-reputed pharmaceuticals company that was known for its progressive work in developing new cancer-fighting drugs. These files, which were posted online, showed that this seemingly trustworthy organization was in fact using monies meant for continued research to fund the CEO’s fancy beach house in the Bahamas, as well as crazy weekends in Vegas for the board. The company’s “great” work in providing needed medications to millions of people turned out to be completely bogus; in truth it was systematically gouging customers. Setting prices that made the medications unaffordable to the people who needed them most.

  The breach caused the company to shut down in the face of public outrage. Clearly Freedom Overdrive had done what he had set out to do. And deep down I wasn’t too cut up about it.

  But this hacktivist was a criminal. He had broken the law. And the Bureau had used a lot of resources trying to bring him down. But he had always stayed a step ahead. Almost taunting us.

  “If we haven’t caught him yet, what makes them think we ever will?” Perry muttered under his breath, but Agent Sanders heard him as clearly as if he had shouted.

  The senior agent’s face turned an unhealthy shade of red and his eyes popped. “Agent Winston, if that is your attitude, you have no business being in this building. You have no business carrying that badge. If you really think that, I’d like you to rethink your career choice and not come in tomorrow.”

  Perry swallowed audibly and I could only shake my head. Sure, we all had those thoughts, but most of us weren’t stupid enough to say them out loud. Being an agent required you to perfect the art of biting your tongue.

  “No, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” Perry exclaimed quickly.

  “Well, if there aren’t any further comments from the peanut gallery…” Agent Sanders looked at me, as if waiting for me to chime in with my own complaints.

  But I wouldn’t. I gave him a cheeky smile. One that I knew wouldn’t be returned.

  Besides, I wouldn’t give the jerk the satisfaction of thinking he had one-upped me.

  Although I was not happy about being assigned the case that no one in the department wanted, I also believed that if anyone could bring this guy to justice, it was me. So I’d rise to the challenge. I’d track this fucker down and make sure he paid.

  If only to piss Agent Sanders off.

  “Hey, Mason. Sorry for being an ass about the case back there.” Perry grimaced as we left the conference room.

  I gave him a brisk smile. “You didn’t say anything that the rest of us weren’t thinking. Don’t worry about it,” I assured him. Perry looked relieved.

  “Okay. Well, good. I guess we should get to it, then.” I didn’t know Perry that well. But I knew his nickname with the other agents.

  Agent Dumb-ass.

  It was whispered that he had been hired out of the academy as a favor to his well-connected daddy. No one really liked him and his obvious ineptitude didn’t help matters.

  Given Derek Sanders’s obvious dislike for me, I wasn’t surprised that I had been given the shittiest agent as my partner on a dead-end case.

  “I’ve got a few phone calls to make. Let’s sit down after lunch and have a look at the files that Quantico sent over,” I suggested.

  “Files. Right. I should find those!” Perry exclaimed, already looking frazzled.

  I gritted my teeth hard enough to break bone. “Yes, Perry, that’s probably a good place to start.”

  I was the senior agent. That made Perry my bitch. So the skinny guy with a headful of bright red hair nodded enthusiastically. “Sure. Yeah. I’ll do that. After lunch. I’ll come to you, okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed, hating Sanders more and more for this bullshit he had just thrown at me.

  Freedom Fucking Overdrive.

  What the hell?

  “You don’t look happy,” Chaz piped up, flashing me a cheap smile that matched his crappy suit.

  Who the hell names their kid Chaz? It wasn’t short for anything. Except maybe Assface.

  “I’m fine,” I replied evenly.

  “So you’ve got the Freedom Overdrive case. That sucks. No one has been able to sniff him out for years. Sounds like a nonstarter to me.” Chaz smirked, enjoying himself.

  I clenched my fists, reminding myself that punching coworkers would be severely frowned upon.

  “Yeah, well, it’s a good thing Sanders likes to stroke his favorites, isn’t it? Or were you the one doing the stroking, Chaz?” I gave him a shit-eating grin and walked off feeling just a little bit better.

  —

  I
unlocked the door to my apartment a little after nine. The place was freezing, and as I fumbled to turn on the lights, I tripped over a furry lump just inside the entryway.

  “Damn it, Tigger!” I groaned, rubbing the knee that had collided with the coffee table. The indifferent ginger tomcat barely glanced at me and sure as hell didn’t move from his spot in the middle of the floor.

  Despite the throbbing in my leg, I leaned down to scratch the ornery cat behind the ear. On cue, he hissed, swiped at my hand, and took off down the hallway. Most likely to shit in my slippers.

  “Fucking cat,” I mumbled to myself, kicking off my shoes and turning on the lamp beside the couch.

  Tigger and I had a coexistence built on barely contained derision. Tigger had been my brother Dillon’s cat. Dillon had raised the fluffy asshole from the time he was a kitten. Tigger had loved my brother and no one else.

  And the animal had made his preference very clear, resulting in multiple scars on my hands and arms.

  But after Dillon’s death a year ago, there had been no one to take him. Our parents could barely take care of themselves and Dillon’s girlfriend, aka “the bitch,” refused the honor. And I hadn’t wanted to see the old guy go to the shelter, no matter how nasty he could be.

  Tigger was in some ways my last link to Dillon. And I wasn’t going to lose that.

  So now we were uneasy roommates.

  Or more like the cat allowed me to inhabit his space.

  I walked across the tiny apartment to the kitchen and dropped my keys and bulging briefcase on the small table I had shoved against the far wall.

  It had been a crap afternoon. Perry and I had pored over the case file for Freedom Overdrive until my eyes began to burn.

  From what I could gather, there had been an increase in chatter in all the usual hacker chat rooms. There were references to a possible attack but very few details. The cybercrime unit had been poring over pages and pages of communications looking for something. Anything. But I knew better than to expect my target to make things simple for me. My favorite hacktivist was smart. Too smart.

  That was the problem.