Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Emma
Monday morning, I drove to the office with a big grin on my face. Asher and I spent the weekend together. Chase installed a new battery, and my vehicle was purring like a contented kitten.
Asher had followed me home, then convinced me to go back to his place.
Not that it took much. I wanted to spend time with him. But I had my conditions. I was taking my car. That way I could leave from his house on Monday and not have to go home or ride with him. He agreed, and I packed enough.
Now it was back to the real world, rather than the little cocoon we’d built over the weekend.
Asher was waiting for me when I parked, and we walked into the building together.
I stopped at Daily Perks to get my usual coffee and muffin.
Asher was checking something on his phone and suddenly headed up to the office in a rush, saying he was needed, so I grabbed his coffee too.
He was on the inhouse phone when I walked into the office. I set his coffee cup next to him and went to my workstation, arranged my coffee and muffin next to my keyboard, and dropped my backpack under the desk. I’d get my laptop out later.
“How the hell did that happen?” Asher bit out.
Oh boy, that didn’t sound good. I reached over to switch on my computer.
“Emma, don’t.” He wasn’t yelling, but his voice stopped me cold.
“What?” I straightened and stared at him. I didn’t move to sit down.
“Don’t turn it on.” His tone left no room for questions.
He went back to his call. I watched him on the phone, and he actually looked somewhat pale.
“I’ll get started on this end. … Yeah, good move on the network.
I’ll call you as soon as I have anything.
You do the same.” He slammed the receiver down.
He was furious, and his features were tight.
“What happened?” I pulled out my chair and slowly sat down. I didn’t take my eyes off Asher.
He picked up his coffee and took a sip. “Thank you for this.”
“You’re welcome. Now tell me what’s going on.”
He grimaced. “There’s a high probability there have been multiple unauthorized attempts to access encrypted files on one or more of the servers.”
“Why didn’t they notify you?” My heart dropped. “How bad?”
“They didn’t find it until this morning because the security protocols weren’t tripped until about two hours ago.
Nothing pinged overnight, and just after the day shift came on, the alarm tripped.
Ben immediately pulled up the access logs and the keystroke logs.
He’s locked down the network so that only he and I can get on right now.
Even Boyd can’t log on. Luckily he’s not here yet.
Anyway, Ben sent out a nine-one-one to the team.
That’s why I had to bolt right after we walked into the building.
” Asher raked his fingers through his hair.
“The team’s not sure how bad this is yet; they’re still digging into the logs. ”
“That’s why you didn’t want me to turn on my computer.”
“Yes. We’re on our own subnet, and I can access the company mainframe from here. Ben did tell me that none of the firewalls were breached. He wasn’t willing to go into more detail. At least not yet.”
“I get that.” I pulled my laptop from my backpack. “Do you have a back door into the system?”
“Yes, but that’s not how they got in. Like I said, there was no breach.”
I could almost feel Asher’s frustration. There was even an overlay of anxiety. My mind was going full tilt, and I kept coming back to the same conclusion, the only scenario that made any sense at all. But there was no way I was going to reveal even a hint of what I was thinking until I was sure.
“Understood. But I can use a program I developed to go in through the back door to see if it can shed more light on the situation.”
“You can do that?” Asher dropped into the chair next to me.
“Can’t you?”
“I’ve never needed anything like that. My side hustle in undergrad and grad school was white hat hacking. Ben, me, and one other person were hired to break into networks to find their vulnerabilities. We never thought of developing anything like that.”
“Then let me show you.” I brought up my program on my laptop and then Asher connected me to the mainframe through the back door. Hopefully, because the app was running on Asher’s credentials, the system would allow the program to run without erecting any containment.
While I was setting the sniffer’s search parameters, Asher filled Ben in on what we were trying to do.
Ben authorized my laptop on the intranet and gave me a couple of lines of code that would allow the program unfettered access to the mainframe, and once the input was complete, I let the program off the chain.
If there was any kind of pattern that set off the intrusion alarms, my program would find it.
Three nerve racking hours later…jackpot. “Here.” I pointed to the screen. “Look at this. Activity on the R call his cell. ”
No house phone. Call his cell? Had Asher…
“We’ll be able to give everyone more details in the meeting. … Absolutely. I want to keep this as sequestered as possible. … You’ve got your hands full. I’ll make the calls. … See you in in a few. … I’ll definitely pass the word.”
Asher ended the call and stared at the screen. I wanted to take his hand, squeeze his shoulder, something to let him know I had his back, but it looked like he was trying to gather himself.
I sipped my now-cold coffee and took a bite of my muffin. He’d mentioned to Ben about me sending a file, so I went in and found the sniffer’s backup file and compressed it so that it would be ready to go. Just as I finished up, Asher gently grasped my shoulder.
“Thanks for your help, Emma. You probably saved us hours of scouring logs and trying to collate gigabytes of information. Ben said to tell you dinner and the best wine money can buy are on him Friday, anywhere you want to go.”
I rubbed his arm, then took his hand. “We’ll figure that out later.
I have the file ready. Where do you want it sent and how?
” While Asher was on the phone, I had more time to study the findings.
I was now nearly certain of my original hypothesis, but I decided to wait until the meeting and hearing Ben’s information.
Asher leaned forward, picked up his coffee, and drained at least half the contents. He put the cup down and laced his fingers on the desk, studying the desktop like it had all the answers he needed if he could just tease them out.
“I’ve heard that when you work for a company long enough, your co-workers become like a second family. It wasn’t until FI that I understood the truth behind that.” When he looked at me, his eyes looked infinitely sad. He’s figured it out. Oh, Asher…
“When a member of your family betrays you, for whatever reason, the first emotion is probably a mixture of disbelief and sadness, and they say the next emotion is anger. Kind of like the stages of grief in a really fucked up order. I have a feeling this is going to get a lot worse before it’s over. ”
I knew what he was feeling and no longer cared that we were in the office.
I stood up and put my arms around him. He embraced me and rested his head at my waist. What could I say?
Best to just be there. We held each other until he reached for my arms and took my hands in his.
I leaned over and brushed a kiss over his lips then on his forehead.
“We’ve got this, Asher, and I’ve got your back. Now where and how do you want me to send this file?”