Page 71 of Hacking the Holidays
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 thatsomeone 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 saidintruding—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.
