Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Asher
The ringing phone brought me out of my dreams. I reached for the noise and shoved the receiver between my head and the pillow. “Yeah, what?”
“Ms. Palmer, this is your wake-up call.” Too cheerful for automation.
“Thanks.” I dropped the receiver and didn’t bother to raise my arm. I didn’t remember ordering a wake-up call, but it was a good thing. I’d passed out.
“Who was that,” Emma’s sleepy voice penetrated my consciousness.
Oh yeah, we’d spent the night in each other’s arms. In her room. “Wake up call.”
“What time is it?”
I turned my head on the pillow and opened one eye. I couldn’t miss the clock on the nightstand.
Eight o’clock.
“Shit!” I sprang out of bed. “It’s eight.”
How did that happen? I stared down at Emma. Her eyes drowsy and her hair mussed. That’s how it happened. And I wanted to crawl right back into bed with her.
“Well, that sucks.” Emma slid out of bed. “I guess we better get dressed.”
I was reluctant to leave her, but this morning wasn’t the time for bedroom antics. “Yeah. I’ll go back into my room and come get you when I’m ready.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Emma padded over to me and brushed a kiss on my lips. “Thank you for last night.”
It took everything in me not to pull her in my arms and really kiss her, but I wasn’t going to start something I couldn’t finish. I stepped through the connecting doors and shut mine behind me. No sense in tempting myself.
Seven minutes later, showered, dressed, and everything shoved back in the bag.
Was Emma ready? Maybe. Two more minutes and I’d shouldered my bag and was knocking on her door. I never move this fast before coffee.
“Good morning, again.” The rush was worth every second to see that smile. “Who ordered the wakeup call?”
“I did.” I turned to see Ben coming down the hall. “We said nine, but we all needed sleep. I figured eight would be enough time.” Ben’s gaze was assessing.
“Thanks, Ben.” Emma grinned at him. “I’d probably still be asleep.”
“You’re welcome.”
A quick look around. We were the only ones in the hall. “Where are Tim and Will? They stayed here last night, didn’t they?”
“They’re already at the office; they bugged out at seven.”
“Then we should go.”
“I’ll get my bag.”
I held Emma’s door open as she grabbed her bag.
“You look well rested.” I glanced at Ben who had a wide grin on his face. “You must have had a good night.”
I stared at him. “I did thanks.” Did Ben suspect I’d been with Emma? Did it really matter?
Emma appeared a second later with her bag. I took it from her, and the three of us made the short trek to the office.
We weren’t even off the hotel property before Ben and Emma began debating Avengers versus Justice League, which concluded with a promise to resume later just as we stepped up the curb to enter the FI building.
A friendly debate on a mutually enjoyed subject. So why was I even the slightest bit jealous? I couldn’t be that insecure. Could I?
“I need coffee,” Emma remarked as we entered the building.
“Me too,” Ben said.
“Someone is late today,” Amelia observed as we lined up for coffee and muffins.
“Late night,” Emma said.
“I heard.” She pegged Ben and me. “Thank goodness you guys put my system on a separate whatever you called it thing from the company’s.”
I chuckled. “It’s called a server. We did it because while you operate this fantastic coffee nirvana in our building, you aren’t a corporate division of FI. Makes the IRS and Accounting happy too.”
Ben and I gave Amelia our order. When we looked at Emma, she was barely moving, her gaze focused on something. I scanned the area, nothing unusual.
“Emma, you with us?” I prompted and waved my hand in front of her face.
She recited her order as if it was a second thought.
“Just something that popped into my head. I’ll explain upstairs.”
I’d seen this happen before. Distracted, deep in her head. The result was almost always a solution of some sort, be it to a problem or a better way to do something. The metamorphosis reminded me of cartoons I’d watched as a kid where a glowing lightbulb appeared over a character’s head.
Amelia brought our coffee and muffins. Ben raised his card.
“I’ve got this. I’m headed downstairs.” He looked a bit askance at Emma, shrugged, glanced at me and headed for the elevators, shaking his head.
Amelia watched us, her expression conveying a silent question. Emma’s mind was definitely elsewhere as she picked up her coffee and muffin then began walking to the elevators. I looked at Amelia, shrugged, and whispered, “She gets this way sometimes, usually when she’s cooking up some idea.”
She tilted her head and smiled. “No need to explain. I’ve seen that expression a lot around here and labeled it ‘coming attractions’. The idea vibe is strong with that one.” And nodded toward Emma’s departing back.
Emma said nothing in the elevator, and when the doors opened, she headed for the door to our office, definitely on the trail of something, and my curiosity quotient was rising fast.
Once inside, I watched as she set her coffee on the desk, dropped her purse and backpack, tapped her keyboard to wake the box, and turned on her monitor.
“Is keeping me in suspense deliberate, or is the plan to let me in on whatever’s going on in your head?”
She took a bite of her muffin followed by careful sips of the hot coffee, then raised a finger in a clear gimme a minute signal. I stashed my stuff and tapped the keyboard to wake the box. I was about to take a bite of my muffin when Emma spoke. The reveal…maybe?
“How much do you know about coders, not code, but about coders?”
“Probably not enough. I’ve been trying to decode you since I first saw you at that party. Why?”
“Ha, ha, ha. I’m going to remain a mystery.” Another bite of the muffin, the coffee chaser, a raised finger. I kept quiet. “Do you read a lot of fiction?”
Where’s this going, Emma? “Sure. And in answer to your likely next question, most of the genres. I’ve even read paranormal romance, if you can believe that.”
She giggled. “If you enjoy science fiction, why not PNR?” She switched gears in the blink of an eye, now all business.
“Okay, just like people’s signatures are unique and authors’ styles—some call it voice—are unique, coders are the same.
Work with them long enough, and you can recognize their coding style, signature, if you will. ”
Emma must have picked up the change in my expression.
Code signing. Adding an encoded signature, kind of like a copyright.
Ensured the work was genuine and hadn’t been tampered with.
Coders, developers, and ethical hackers signed their work, just like any other writer-slash-composer.
The black hats prided themselves on their anonymity, but analyze their work often enough, and their style, as unique as any signature, could be described, cataloged, and used as a tool to expose them.
Sure there were others who tried to duplicate original works, but there was always something ‘off’ about the duplicate, forgery, if you will, that set it apart from the original.
And the cyberspooks, a kind of artist in their own right, were excellent at identifying and cataloging those patterns.
Once the pattern was identified, it was only a matter of time before the cyberspooks matched the style to a username.
No one could hide forever, but you had to give them credit, even respect, for trying.
“You know…” She licked the sugar from her muffin off her fingers, and my mind went places it had no business going right then, especially under the current circumstances.
Must ignore temptation. “… like jewel thieves and the methods they use regularly. If you’ve watched the true crime shows, the serial killers always leave some repeating clue.
In a lot of cases, that’s how cops catch them. ”
The pieces were falling into place, but I wanted to see where Emma was going with this. “I understand that, but we haven’t found the ghostware, and we haven’t locked down the credentials yet.”
“True.” She waggled her eyebrows. “For now. I need some stuff from you.”
“Anything. Fire away.”
The wagging eyebrows and evil grin immediately gave way to business Emma.
“Can you think of anyone who might have a grudge against you or anyone else in the IT department? And just because you might be thinking of someone but the circumstance would be unlikely, don’t discount them.
I also want the names of anyone who left FI and the reason or reasons why.
Exit interviews, discipline documentation, whatever.
Even if they started here and x amount of time later decided FI just wasn’t a good fit. ”
“I’m ahead of you. I asked Ben to find the names of everyone who’s left the technology department for any reason since day one. He sent the list to HR last night.”
“Is that going to be a long list?”
“Not really. We’ve got excellent retention stats, remember?”
“I do. And Asher, I want their entire employment records including the findings on their background checks. Everything.”
“In process if not already done.”
“We need to meet with John and the guy from Legal, the one who wrote my contract, Nick Costanza. Is there any chance you can make that happen today?”
“Mind if I ask why?”
Emma turned in her chair to face me. “I’m going with my gut. Legit creds. What’s weird is that we can’t identify them, as in who they belong to…yet…but that will probably happen today. We also traced to a local ISP. My gut says this is definitely an inside job and the perp is a current employee.”
“I agree with everything you’ve said. We’re going to have to turn this over to the feds and soon. Once we’re outside the FI firewalls and in the wild, we’ll hit roadblocks only the feds can get past.”
Emma twirled a pencil through her fingers. “Yep. If we put together as much information as we can gather before we go to the feds, that gives them a leg up. It also makes the cyber insurance guys happier. Shows we’re not sitting on our butts wringing our hands. They like that.”
As we were talking, I kept having this prickly feeling that something was right on the edge of my memory, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
A little like walking into a room but forgetting why you were there.
Not surprising in a way because, at the same time, I was trying to remember everyone who’d left my department.
Our turnover was extremely low. Maybe six people in the ten years since John started FI.
“Hey, Asher, are you with me?”
Blink. Blink. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to check out on you. There’s something in the back of my mind that’s bugging me, and I…”
Emma tilted her head. “And you…” she prompted.
There it was. But was it even plausible?
Maybe. My first impression of Emma was that she was extremely shy, even an introvert.
But was she shy, or was she keeping her head down to get ahead.
What was it like for her at Tri-O-Tech? She’d alluded to differences between FI and Tri-O-Tech, but she’d used pretty general language.
She’d also told me about the stigma of being Roger Palmer’s daughter and the assumptions and insinuations that came with it.
I’d seen some pretty underhanded stuff women had to deal with in undergrad and postgrad.
Even today, women still had to deal with the ‘boys will be boys’ attitudes.
Which brought me to the here and now.
“Hey, Asher…” Emma reached across the space between us and tapped my knee. “What’s going on?”
Yeah, it was plausible, even probable, but I wouldn’t know unless I asked. I turned my chair so I could face Emma full-on. She’d leaned back, watching me, her brow furrowed, expression confused.
“You asked me about disgruntled former employees and current employees that might have grudges…”
“Yes. We—you, Ben, Will, Tim, me—are going to turn over all the stones to see what’s underneath. Did you come up with something else we should consider?”
If we were going to examine the probable, then the improbable was something we had to consider even if for no other reason than to explicitly rule it out.
“I have to ask you the same question: Is there anyone you’ve worked with in the past and/or currently who might have even the slightest grudge against you?”
The changes in her expression were subtle. If an observer didn’t know her well, they would’ve missed the surprise, disbelief, cynicism, disbelief again, then full-on skepticism. And with that, Emma raising the emotional walls and armor.
The slightest squint, tilt of her head, first right then left, and pursed lips.
“Me? You really are grabbing at straws. But for an instant, let’s say that’s a real possibility.
Why would whoever they are come at me through a company that, until the last not quite a month, I’ve never been associated with?
” She turned away and focused on her monitor, then lowered her head into her raised hands.
“Emma, as convoluted as it—”
Three raps on the door and I turned to see Ben poking his head in.
“What’s up, Ben?” He looked at me then at Emma. I followed his gaze. Her head was up, watching Ben as he stepped into the office, his hand still on the doorknob.
“Need you both downstairs.” Judging by his vibe, this wasn’t going to be good news.