Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Natasha had showered and changed before they left for his hotel.
Wyatt remained quiet for the most part. She’d offered him the use of her shower, but he’d declined and grumbled something about how being naked while she was in the next room would probably knock his screws loose again, and he was, apparently, still trying to jam them back in place.
She’d chosen to keep her Hacker Girl alias in place by throwing on jeans paired with a white top beneath a pink hoodie with the Anonymous hacker group logo stitched to the back of the sweatshirt. One sweeping side braid and her Dr. Martens to complete the look.
Once in Harper’s suite, Wyatt jerked a thumb toward four muscular guys who stood upon their entrance. “I believe you met everyone in Algeria. I’ll leave you to get acquainted while I grab us some coffee.”
“Echo Team, huh?” Last night when Wyatt had given her a brief explanation about his top-secret job, he’d said there were ten guys in total, and it was Echo Team in Montreal.
“This is Captain America.” A guy with a Southern drawl threw an arm around the man who did indeed remind her of the movie superhero. She could see a resemblance in the face. Body, too.
“I’m Chris, and A.J. thinks he’s hilarious.” After a quick handshake, Chris plopped down onto the sectional couch and stretched his jeaned legs out, booted feet on the coffee table.
Her gaze moved to the guy on A.J.’s left, the man who’d been a buzzkill the morning in her villa in Ibiza, interrupting her and Wyatt just as they were about to have sex.
“Finn, right?”
“See, I made an impression.” Finn shook her hand, then took a seat on the other side of the L-shaped couch, its modern lines a fitting complement to the blue and purple Picasso-esque paintings arranged on the wall above it.
“Sure, brother.” A.J. tipped his head to the last guy in the room. “That’s Roman. He’s the quiet one.” True to A.J.’s description, Roman silently shook her hand and then sat next to Harper at the desk.
“And thank God we have someone like him to make up for the rest of these comedians.” Harper turned in her chair to face Natasha with open palms. “Welcome to the circus.”
Natasha grinned as her focus darted to Wyatt heading her way armed with two mugs. “Thanks.” She clutched the coffee in her palms, and he tipped his head before retreating to the wall of windows on the other side of the room.
“Thank you all for being here.” The guys probably expected her to kick things off, right? “I think having your team here will offer new insight into the case. It’ll be nice to work together.”
“We’re happy to provide an assist.” Harper smiled. “Also, it’s not that I don’t trust your instincts about The Knight being alive . . . I mean, you’ve been working the case for years, but I just needed to draw my own conclusions about it.”
“I was a bit high-strung last night, I’m sorry,” Natasha apologized. “For sixteen months, I’ve been told to let this case go. I guess I can get defensive.”
“Aw, you ladies need to hug it out?” A.J. grinned, and Wyatt was going to smack the wise-ass smirk off his face.
“But just so you know,” Harper said, ignoring A.J., “I matched up the code from some of The Knight’s previous hacks, and it’s identical. Could it be a really damn good hacker copycatting him? Yes, but I highly doubt there’s someone out there who could.”
“And does that mean we’re officially operating under the notion we’re dealing with the real Knight?” A.J. asked.
“I think so.” Harper surveyed Echo Team. “You guys?”
“I’m down with that,” A.J. announced before the rest of Echo followed suit and agreed. “Well, I guess that settles it, then.” He clapped his hands together and shot Natasha a mischievous smile
“So, you happen to pull anything of use off the camera or phone he left behind at the factory? And I assume you scanned everything to ensure The Knight didn’t leave behind any tracking devices?
” Natasha asked as she took a seat next to Chris, wishing Wyatt was beside her.
He still appeared a bit withdrawn, his mind on their conversation about Gwen, perhaps.
“No trackers. Everything was clean,” Harper said with a nod. “We traced the call back to the conference center, so he was there. Or at least, he wanted us to think he was.”
A.J. settled onto the couch next to Finn.
“Even though the hacker hoedown hasn’t officially started, there are currently two presentations by bigwigs in the tech industry going on there, plus registration is still open for the competition.
It’s like trying to find a virtual needle in a virtual haystack. ”
Chris smirked. “The hacker hoedown? A virtual haystack?”
“You know what I mean,” A.J. grumbled.
“Anyway,” Harper began, “as we expected, there wasn’t anything of use, but if he does call again, maybe we’ll get lucky. For now, we’re looking over all the case files.”
There was still a lot Natasha needed to fill them in on, and she was glad Harper and Jessica had done some speed reading. It would certainly save them time.
“Jessica and I were talking earlier, and we started looking into Felix Ward.” Harper pushed up the sleeves of her red long-sleeved shirt and typed something into her laptop before flipping the screen around to show Natasha.
“The seed vault, the data center, and the weapons facility, they were all clients of Cyber X Security.”
“You think The Knight is targeting Cyber X,” Natasha stated. “It’s possible.”
“Half the world’s major companies have hired Cyber X at some point in the last few years, which is why I find it so interesting that out of all these attacks,” Harper began while pointing to the long list of names on the screen The Knight had hacked, “none of Cyber X’s clients were ever hit.
It’s like they were immune to The Knight. ”
Natasha was impressed at how quickly Harper and Jessica were assembling the puzzle pieces.
There had to have been a stack of case files a mile long.
She set her mug on the coffee table in front of her and leaned forward, waiting for Harper to explain to the team what Natasha already knew but hadn’t had a chance to get into with them last night.
“You saying the guy who runs Cyber X is better than The Knight?” A.J. asked. “Because based on what happened to two of his clients this week, I’m gonna say no.”
“Cyber X wasn’t really well known until twenty-seventeen,” Natasha told him.
“Felix founded the company in twenty-thirteen, but he declared bankruptcy in twenty-fifteen. However, a year later, things began to turn around.” Her gaze moved to Wyatt as he stood with a firm stance in front of the window, a slice of light from the parted curtains creating a halo around his body.
She blinked, resetting her focus back to the others in the room.
“His company hit a billion in revenue two years ago, and he even published a book, From Bankrupt to Billionaire in Five Years. It released this past November.”
“How’d he manage to pull that off?” Wyatt crossed the room to join the team and discarded his mug on the TV stand.
“Cyber X acquired a lot of new customers because of The Knight’s hacks.
Many of the companies ditched their cybersecurity because of the massive breaches.
Eventually, Cyber X began to snatch up the business.
Not all of them hired Felix’s company, but many did, and he quickly established himself as the premier agency since his clients appeared to be the most secure from hackers.
” She offered what was usually a long-winded explanation in as few words as possible.
“The CIA didn’t make the connection until twenty-eighteen. ”
Since Harper hadn’t worked the case during her time at the Agency, she wouldn’t have been made privy to the classified details. It’d been “need to know” to reduce leaks.
“The FBI placed Felix and his wife under surveillance. Plus, every other employee. Since the Cyber X headquarters are in Seattle, we couldn’t operate there.” Turning the investigation back over to the FBI had been brutal. She’d hated being left out of the loop.
“Guessing it was hard to nail him on anything since the FBI’s always constrained by the pesky U.S. Constitution, having to get warrants for those wiretaps and all,” Chris said, humor in his tone.
But he was right. The FBI often turned international cases over to the CIA because the Agency had more freedom and funding than they did.
“The FBI believed Felix was actually The Knight, and he was hacking other companies to drum up business as a last-ditch effort to save Cyber X from going completely under. The timeline was a match, too. The Knight’s activity started not too long after the company declared bankruptcy. ”
“And with Cyber X benefiting from The Knight’s attacks, I can see how that’d draw attention to him.” Finn looked Natasha’s way. “But why’d it take so long to see that pattern?”
“Because, in the beginning, Cyber X was a blip on the radar in the industry. It took years to see the trend. And since not all companies went straight to Felix’s, it only became glaring later on that something was up since Cyber X was still the only company never targeted,” Natasha admitted.
“Felix claimed The Knight probably tried to hack his clients but due to Cyber X’s superior systems design, had failed.
Like The Knight, Felix’s ego requires its own zip code. ”
“Since Felix isn’t in prison, I’m guessing the FBI’s theory was a bust?” Wyatt asked, and Natasha directed her attention to him.
“When The Knight hacked a facility or company, he sold the intelligence or data on the Dark Net. Sometimes, I think he even sold it back to the originating companies,” Natasha said.
“But the money could never be traced back to Cyber X. To anywhere, in fact. There were no discrepancies in Felix’s books, no offshore accounts, nothing out of the ordinary.
He and his wife had alibis for several of the hacks as well. ”