Page 39 of Hard Wired

Chapter Thirteen

“We don’t have to do this right now. We could wait until morning.” Max stood in front of his desk with his arms crossed. He must’ve had a client meeting today because he was wearing a suit, though he’d discarded the tie.

He’d already put his jacket around Sylvie and brought her a cup of coffee, but she couldn’t stop trembling.

“No. I need to.” She rested her head against the cushion of Max’s couch. It was ten o’clock at night, and the windows were dark. She was exhausted and starving. And she still had so much work ahead of her.

A storm of emotions kept rolling through her. Terror at being under attack—both her person and her computer. Shame that she’d left herself vulnerable. Dismay at seeing Dominic yanked from the floor by officers in SWAT gear, as if he were the one who’d threatened them.

“Okay, then walk me through what happened earlier. Because I still don’t understand.”

Even she was still struggling to make sense of it. Sylvie forced herself to back up to the beginning.

“It started with my computer. I was on Crane’s network, running diagnostics on his security system. I hadn’t been able to identify any anomalies in my code, and a scan for known malware hadn’t turned up anything either. Then notifications started going off. My firewall had detected suspicious packets, information it didn’t recognize, trying to get into my system.”

Sylvie had written the firewall herself. It was unique to her machine, not something that would run on the typical Bennett Security laptop. She preferred an extra sense of security, even with the headaches that came with it.

And thank god she did, because otherwise her computer wouldn’t have detected the intrusion.

“When exactly was the first sign that something was wrong?”

“I’ll have to check my logs. I’m not sure. I might’ve been…distracted.”

Max eyed her. “By what?”

“It’s not important.” She was never going to admit how monumentally stupid she’d been.

She’d have to create a mirror of her hard drive for analysis. She needed to uncover exactly what sort of code had invaded her system. But she suspected a bundled attack, one that could’ve compromised the Bennett Security intranet once she returned to the office. It would’ve been a disaster, and she’d only narrowly avoided it.

If the attack had come a few minutes later, she would’ve been caught in an even worse position with Dominic. Maybe even naked and underneath him. She might’ve ignored her computer altogether.

“My best guess? Someone installed a back door in Crane’s home network that affected the security system. He said the problem occurred mostly at night. Maybe that’s when they were accessing his network, tracking what he’d been up to. But when I connected my laptop, it must’ve triggered some sort of a notification on their end. They tried to load their malware onto my system.”

“You think this could’ve been an attack on us specifically? On Bennett Security?”

“Probably.” If these people had access to Dominic’s security system, they could’ve seen her on the video. There were cameras on the front door, inside the entryway, and along the exterior sides of the house.

“Our network here at headquarters would be a very attractive target,” Max said. “Especially for people like the Silverlake Syndicate.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.” As Bennett’s resident cyber security expert, Sylvie had all sorts of useful tools black-hat hackers would love to get their hands on. Not to mention sensitive client information.

Max stopped his pacing and stared at her. “Wait a minute. Could Crane have had something to do with this? What if he made up the story about these ‘glitches’ to lure you—or some other employee—to his home so this malware could get onto our network?”

Nausea twisted through her. She didn’t want believe it. After the time she’d spent with him today, did he really seem like that sort of person?

If he’d truly lured her there to gain access to her laptop, then he’d been trying to seduce her as a distraction. Every single thing he’d said and done would’ve been pure calculation. But if Dominic had been playing her? She’d made it easy for him.

“Sylvie. I need an answer. Do you think Crane had something to do with this?”

What else could explain the perfect timing of this attack?

“It’s possible Crane set us up.”

And there was the shame again, crashing over her and threatening to pull her under.

Max closed his eyes. “Fuck. And I walked right into it.”

“So did I.”

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