Security Breach by Vannetta Chapman

Author:Vannetta Chapman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cyber thriller, technological thriller, clean thriller
Publisher: Vannetta Chapman
Published: 2020-05-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

Nora woke to the sound of someone banging on her hotel door. Since she slept in shorts and a t-shirt, she didn’t bother looking for a robe. After checking through the peep hole to confirm it was Randall, she opened the door and stepped back.

“I found it.”

“Found...”

“The connection.” He sat on the side of her bed and pushed his tablet into her hands. “It’s all there.”

She sat next to him, trying not to be irritated that he looked fresh as the proverbial daisy. And was he wearing a designer undershirt? Good grief. She shook her head and turned her gaze to the tablet, trying to understand the connection he’d made. Her brain felt as if it was filled with cobwebs, and she kept blinking to more fully open her eyes. “I thought you were going to sleep.”

“I was, but then it occurred to me that the program Miguel Garcia was using to trace the IP address to a location...it doesn’t exist.”

“How’s that possible?”

“Exactly. It means he wrote it, or one of his students did.” Randal leaned toward her and pointed to the first window opened on the tablet. “These are newspaper clippings.”

“About Garcia and his protégés.” Nora scanned the articles he’d found.

“These kids are genius level. Probably Garcia was too. I checked into his background and found that several Fortune 500 companies were clamoring for him to come work for them. The Technical Institute here in Seattle considered it quite a coup when he chose to teach there instead of go into big business.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Not for the money, I can guarantee you that. It’s a public overflow high school that attracts students who have different aspirations.”

“You lost me.”

“They don’t go out for football or cheerleading or band.”

“Ah.”

“Instead they’re geeks or artists or even a few savants.” He took the tablet from her hands and began scrolling until he found the article he wanted, then he shoved it back toward her. “He’s had students go to MIT, Cornell, even straight to the upper echelons of Apple without any college degrees.”

“Okay.” Nora felt suddenly wide awake, but she closed her eyes and willed herself to put the pieces of this op together. She’d only grabbed four hours of sleep, but that was enough. She needed to catch up with Randall, and he was four hours and countless cups of caffeine ahead of her. She opened her eyes and slapped the magnetic cover closed on the tablet. “Talk to me.”

“The next window shows...”

“Randall.” She stayed his hand on top of the tablet.

He clamped his mouth shut and frowned at her.

“I don’t care what’s on that screen. Tell me what you found, what you’ve concluded, and where you think we should go from here.”

Randall loved his tech toys, and he still thought his greatest asset was his ability to find and manipulate information. But Nora understood that the reason he’d risen so fast in the agency, the reason he was her partner, was because of the way his brain was able to process that information.

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