Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
ZARA
What Sam and I were engaged in went far beyond everyday hacking. This was a duel between masters, a high-stakes digital chess match where every keystroke carried weight, every breach attempt was a calculated gambit, and every successful defense became a silent declaration of dominance.
And the delicious irony? We were both sitting there in the quiet conference room, sipping coffee, and pretending absolutely nothing was happening between us.
It was the most exhilarating morning I’d had in years.
Just seconds ago, Sam launched another intrusion attempt from across the table—his tenth in the last two hours. I swatted it down again before he’d even gotten past my firewall.
I had to hand it to him; he was persistent.
Most people would have given up after the second or third shutdown. Not Sam. He kept probing, kept testing, kept looking for that one weakness he could exploit.
Too bad for him, I didn’t have any.
To be fair, Sam had breached my defenses once, for all of five seconds. And that was only because I’d been distracted by Chloe’s text about Agent Thorne being on the warpath.
My heart had actually stopped when I’d seen the intrusion alert. For one crystalline moment of pure panic, I’d thought: He’s going to see everything. My real name. The FBI files. The surveillance logs.
Then training kicked in, and I booted him out so fast he probably got digital whiplash. But those five seconds had felt like five hours, and I’d been checking my system, paranoid ever since, making sure he had left no breadcrumbs behind.
My screen flashed with another alert.
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT.
There he was again.
My fingers danced across the keyboard, executing a script that would trace his entry point, isolate it, and slam it shut before he could pull anything useful from my system. The entire process took fifteen to twenty seconds max.
ACCESS TERMINATED.
INTRUSION BLOCKED.
Sam’s shoulders tensed slightly, just enough for me to notice. But this was the first time I’d actually heard him let out an audible breath of frustration.
You’re going to have to try harder, Sam.
I bit back a smile and took a sip of my coffee, then winced when I realized it was cold because it had been there, untouched, for too long. I had been having so much fun that I had completely forgotten about it.
But there was something deeply satisfying about knowing I could defend myself against intruders, that all those years of training and paranoia and careful preparation hadn’t been for nothing.
I was impressed that Sam had orchestrated this entire facade with the precision of a seasoned operative.
The convenient “network issues and upgrading computers” excuse opened the door for the request for me to bring my laptop.
Then there was the task designed to keep my attention occupied while he tried to go fishing through my files.
It was actually kind of brilliant.
Too bad for him, I didn’t fall for it.
Could I blame Sam for trying? Not even a little. I probably would have done the same thing in his position.
Another alert popped up on my screen.
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT
This man will not quit.
I pulled up my security dashboard, ready to shut him down again, but this time something was different.
INTRUSION NOT LOCATED.
The alert was there, clear as day, but when I ran my diagnostics, everything came back clean. I couldn’t pinpoint his entry vector.
No active intrusions. No suspicious traffic. Nothing.
The alert kept flashing like a neon sign screaming that someone was in my system. Which meant one of two things: either my security software was malfunctioning (unlikely—I’d built most of it myself), or Sam had found a vulnerability I didn’t even know existed.
My pulse quickened, then absolutely spiked.
I ran another scan, fingers flying faster now.
What had I left exposed?
What could he see?
I glanced over at him.
Sam was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, watching me with a satisfied grin. Like a cat who’d not only caught the canary but had also figured out how to open the cage.
“Is everything okay over there?” His tone was light, innocent, but his eyes were dancing with something that looked an awful lot like victory.
I forced my expression to remain neutral, willing my racing heart to slow down. “Absolutely perfect. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You just look …” He tilted his head, studying me like I was an interesting line of code. “Tense.”
“I’m focused,” I corrected. “There’s a difference.”
Sam held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, sorry for intruding.”
The way he said intruding—with just a slight emphasis, a barely there pause—put me on alert.
“How are you two doing?” Eleanor said as she entered the conference room, her reading glasses perched on top of her head like a makeshift headband.
“I’d say we have had a pretty productive morning so far,” Sam said, then he glanced at me. “What do you think, Rose? Did anything give you trouble?”
I scoffed at the question. “Not at all.”
Sam grinned. “That’s what I like to hear, because there’s nothing worse than surprises.”
“I thrive on surprises,” I said, holding his gaze. “It brings out my competitive side.”
“It also teaches you where your weaknesses are. That’s valuable information too, don’t you think?”
“I suppose it depends on what you plan to do with that information,” I said carefully.
“Or what you don’t do with it,” Sam said.
Eleanor looked between us, clearly confused but smiling. “You two are talking in some kind of tech language I don’t understand, aren’t you?”
“Something like that,” Sam said, but he was still looking at me.
“Okay then,” Eleanor said. “Well, I just wanted to get the contact forms from the Santa event last night.”
“I’ll grab them. Be back in a jiffy.” Sam pushed back from the table and headed to his desk.
I watched him go, then turned back to Eleanor with a smile, wondering why she wanted the contact forms when the Santa events were his projects, not hers. I found it a little odd.
“He’s just amazing, don’t you think?” she asked, looking like a proud mom instead of a coworker.
I had a feeling she was going to remind me he was Leavenworth’s most eligible bachelor, but I still answered. “Yes. He certainly is.”
“Have I mentioned that he’s single?” she asked, right on cue.
I nodded. “Yes, a few times, actually.”
“He seems to have his eye on you.”
“Maybe he doesn’t trust me.”
Eleanor beamed. “Why wouldn’t he? You are just the sweetest thing.” She placed her hand on top of mine. “I know you mentioned last week that you were too busy for relationships, but you need to find the time. Life is short, and regret is a hard pill to swallow.”
Before I could respond, Sam returned with the contact forms, then eyed us both. “What is this? Female bonding? I can come back later.”
Eleanor smiled. “We’re just talking about men, that’s all.”
Sam gestured to her. “Watch out for her—she’s always trying to play matchmaker.”
I nodded. “I’m very aware of that.”
“I just like to give moderate nudges when I can,” she defended. “Sometimes, people don’t even know the best thing is sitting right under their noses.”
“Like these contact forms,” Sam said, looking like he was ready to change the subject. “Here you go.”
“Great—thank you,” Eleanor said.
“I wasn’t aware you handled the contact forms for the events,” I couldn’t help saying. “I thought that was Sam’s thing.”
“It depends if the families are requesting help,” Eleanor said, already flipping through the forms. “Sam’s a wiz with financial assistance, whereas my forte is making sure they get connected with holiday meal assistance, winter clothing drives, toy donations, that sort of thing. It’s my way of giving back.”
“Eleanor knows the community partners better than anyone,” Sam added.
I nodded slowly, wondering if Eleanor knew he was Good Sam.
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was a strange formality to how Sam had retrieved those forms, then gave them to her.
The locked drawer, the careful handoff. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but were they a team somehow? It would make sense.
“I should get back to work—have fun,” Eleanor said, smiling and leaving the conference room.
“I guess we should, too.” Sam got comfortable in his chair again.
“Sounds good,” I said, since I probably needed to get ready for another onslaught of intrusion attempts from him.
Right on cue, just thirty seconds later, I got another one.
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT
I executed the script and slammed the door in his face.
ACCESS TERMINATED.
INTRUSION BLOCKED.
Sam glanced over at me.
I smiled.
He smiled back, but it was forced.
Just then, a thought crystallized in my mind, sharp and opportunistic.
Sam’s main computer at the library—the desktop at his desk—was sitting over there completely unguarded while he focused all his energy on me and my laptop in the conference room.
Oh, Sam. Rookie mistake.
Time for a little counter-offensive.
Operation: Hack Sam’s Desktop Computer.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
My fingers moved on instinct, launching a remote access protocol aimed at the library’s internal network. If Sam’s desktop was connected—and of course it was—I could slip through the back door while he sat four feet away, completely oblivious.
A couple of clicks. A few commands. Credential spoofing. Exploiting the trust relationship between networked devices.
Bingo.
I was in.
My expression remained perfectly calm, but inside I was doing cartwheels. Olympic-level gymnastics. Victory laps around my brain.
This was it—the holy grail. Sam’s work computer, where he kept everything related to his Good Sam operation.
The files and communications that are too risky to store on anything portable.
The evidence I needed was right there, waiting.
Even the gateway to his files in the cloud started at his desktop.
A few more clicks, and the three folders on his desktop appeared: Santa, ProjectGive, and BadBoys. I’d seen these folders the day he’d talked me into being his elf for the first time. I had no interest in the first two folders, but BadBoys?
That was surely the jackpot.
I was almost positive it was his hit list of corrupt targets he was stealing from. Everything I needed to either save him or bury him.
My pulse hammered as I moved the cursor.
I double-clicked.
My screen went black.
I blinked, then tapped the touchpad.
Nothing.
No. No, no, no.
I jiggled it frantically.
Had my laptop frozen?
Had Sam pulled a trick out of my playbook?
Out of nowhere, a message appeared on my screen, typing out one character at a time, like something straight out of a thriller movie:
YOU ARE TRESPASSING.
My heart stopped.
This wasn’t possible.
How was Sam guarding his desktop computer while simultaneously hacking my laptop? He couldn’t be doing both.
There was no way—
SECURITY PROTOCOL INITIATED. YOUR FILES AND CONTACTS HAVE BEEN COPIED. YOUR COMPUTER WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN 60 SECONDS.
The words punched the air from my lungs.
This was a joke, right?
A countdown timer appeared.
00:60, 00:59, 00:58 ...
This isn’t real.
This can’t be real.
But what if it were?
My fingers flew across the keyboard—escape, control-alt-delete, tap, click, tap, click. I tried everything I could think of.
Nothing worked.
00:50, 00:49, 00:48 ...
“You look a little tense again,” Sam said in an amused tone.
My heart nearly stopped.
I jerked my head up.
He was watching me with that maddeningly relaxed expression, one eyebrow raised.
“Never been better,” I managed, but my voice came out strangled.
00:40, 00:39, 00:38 ...
“I find that hard to believe.” He tilted his head. “What’s going on? Did you get into a little trouble? Maybe I can help.”
“I’m not in trouble!” I practically yelled.
“I think you are.”
00:30, 00:29, 00:28 ...
My mind raced. What had he copied? My browsing history? My files? The encrypted folders with names like “cookie_recipes” that were actually surveillance logs?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
I tried another keyboard command.
It failed again.
“The truth shall set you free,” Sam said.
I swallowed hard, my throat tight.
“Don’t be stubborn. Tell me your real name.” His voice was gentler now. “I’m giving you a chance to tell the truth.”
“I’m Rose Thompson. You know that.”
00:19, 00:18, 00:17 …
Sam sighed, and there was something almost sad about it. “We need to have a serious talk. Zara.”
The world tilted.
He knew my real name.
This was a nightmare.
Did he also know who I worked for?
That would be a thousand times worse.
00:10, 00:09, 00:08 …
This was it.
I had run out of options.
And time.
“Fine!” My palm shot up. “Please. Just stop this.”
Sam’s fingers moved across his keyboard.
00:02 … 00:01 …
The timer froze with one second left.
I let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in my lungs for hours. This was exactly how people had heart attacks. I was sure of it.
The timer disappeared from my screen, and the desktop came back to life, as if nothing had happened.
Sam stood and reached for his jacket with the same casual ease he’d use to suggest getting coffee. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“What?” I stared at him, still trying to catch my breath. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere we can talk privately.” He pulled on his jacket, then looked at me—really looked at me—and I couldn’t read his expression at all. “We have a lot to discuss, Agent Mazini.”
My name from his mouth landed like a slap.
Sam knew I was FBI as well.
How long had he known?
It didn’t matter.
I was exposed.
Done.
Kaput.