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Nora Brooks fidgeted with the clasp of her necklace and wondered how much longer she had to endure the small talk. Nylah tossed her a pointed look, as if to say, don’t even think about ditching us. Nora and Nylah had come up through the academy together, but friendship only went so far—even friendship cemented in staving off national crisis.
The problem was that Nylah had found Curtis.
Curtis, in and of himself, wasn’t an issue. In fact, he was a member of the cyber task force, too—only on the tech side rather than the operational side. He and Nylah made a cute couple.
The problem with people in love was that they thought everyone else should be in love, or at least in a relationship, at least trying, as Nylah had so succinctly put it to her the night before.
Which was how Nora ended up in a five-star restaurant, sitting next to a guy who researched viruses, trying to make small talk about the Washington Nationals.
Nora didn’t care about baseball.
She had no interest in viruses—other than the computer kind.
And she absolutely hated small talk.
Nylah’s eyes widened, then she shook her head in disappointment.
At first Nora thought her best friend had read her mind, then she realized Curtis was watching someone over her shoulder.
Nora turned around to see Randall Goodwin striding across the restaurant, definitely zoning in on their table. She almost sighed with relief. From the look on his face they were facing a national emergency. Was it wrong to prefer that over the awkwardness of a blind date? Fine, then she was a terrible person. So be it.
She stood before he even reached the table.
Randall nodded at Curtis and Nylah before stepping closer to Nora. “The director is waiting outside.”
She knew she didn’t have to explain to her friends, and they would make up some excuse for her date—she couldn’t remember his name at the moment, but that didn’t matter.
She strode out of the restaurant with Randall.
“Nice pantsuit, Brooks.”
“Save it, Goodwin.”
The director’s Suburban was parked under the portico. His security personnel opened the back door. Nora and Randall hopped in and the vehicle pulled away, tires spitting rain from the wet DC streets. They were stuck in that gray space between winter and spring. Everything seemed cold, wet, and dreary.
Jason Anderson had recently turned fifty-three. He had short-cropped gray hair and a scar that ran from his left eye to his jawline.
Nora had heard rumors about how the director had earned the scar. The stories ranged from Soviet spies infiltrating the White House to homegrown terrorists he’d battled hand-to-hand on top of the Empire State Building. In each version, regardless the details, the perpetrator ended up on a slab at the morgue and the director ended up with the scar.
The director studied them both, then offered an apology. “Sorry to interrupt your evening off.”
“Actually, I owe you. Blind dates apparently aren’t my thing.”
Streetlights pierced the tinted windows enough for her to make out her boss’s features. If the job was taking a toll on him, she couldn’t tell. He seemed to live and breathe cyber security. Perhaps that was why he understood her so well. Though there was a pinched look around his eyes this evening, something that only occurred when he was extremely concerned about a situation.
“You’re both going to Dallas. A Level 4 event began six hours ago.”
“Why weren’t we told six hours ago?”
“You weren’t on rotation tonight. Taylor and Santos were. They were briefed and caught a domestic flight to DFW. The plane experienced a technical issue, and they were diverted to Atlanta. They’re trying to catch another flight out, but haven’t had any luck.”
Randall shifted in his seat. “Any chance their detour was related to the Dallas event?”
“You’re suggesting the cyberbugs were aware of our plans and had the ability to disrupt them—which before tonight we considered impossible. Now? Our analysts put that probability at 82%.”
“Tell me we’re not driving.” Nora didn’t mind driving, but DC to Dallas would take twenty hours. Whatever was happening in Dallas would be over before they got there.
“We’re putting you on a military transport. If they manage to infiltrate that, we have bigger problems than Dallas.”
An hour later they’d boarded a C-20 Gulfstream naval jet that would take them to the Grand Prairie Armed Forces Reserve Complex, a former naval air station.
“It’s a twenty minute drive to Dallas from Grand Prairie.” Randall made no attempt to stifle a yawn. “Better catch some sleep while you can.”
They were the only two passengers on the plane, a testament to the director’s pull. Randall put his seat all the way back and stretched his legs out in front of him. At six foot four, he usually complained about flying because he never had enough leg space.
He was young and cocky, which Nora thought came from his father. Michael Goodwin had enjoyed a long NFL career as a tight end. Randall assured her that both traits were from his mom, who’d managed to raise five boys on her own since their father was gone for months at a time. Dad had gone on to make a couple million in the stock market and now had his own consulting firm and Mom was a biochemist, so Randall’s superior IQ could have come from either parent. His skin was a light brown, and at twenty-seven his physique remained toned and muscular. Women seemed drawn to him. All those things did nothing to mitigate his cockiness.
“Have you studied this file at all?”
“Sure.”
“Looks like a cascading attack across transportation, communication, utilities, and medical.”
“Which is the reason it’s a Level 4.”
“Transportation could stop air travel, ground travel, all traffic cams and lights...”
“A real mess in a metroplex the size of Dallas. Then with comms out you have no cell service.”
“Which means no 9-1-1.” Nora suddenly understood the director’s concern. Most threats they dealt with hit one, possibly two sectors. They hadn’t seen anything this invasive. “Utilities means no gas and electric.”
“Not as big a deal as it might be in the north. No one is going to freeze to death in Dallas, even in January.”
“And medical. How does that fit in? It seems...like an overreach.”
“Most hospitals are hooked up to the grid like everyone else. Tonya told me—”
“Tonya, the girl you dated exactly twice?”
Randall flashed her a smile. “The same. She was a pharmacist at Johns Hopkins. Told me they can’t dispense a pill on their own. It’s all done through a giant computer. Doctors put in their codes and the machine dumps out the meds.”
“They must have a backup plan in case the system goes down.”
“They have a generator.”
“Which won’t help a bit if our perp has hacked into the actual system.” Nora’s mind scanned the list of cyber-terrorists they’d encountered over the last ten years. Most were behind bars, but it seemed that for every one they arrested, two more sprouted up. “I can’t think of a single cyberbug who has the ability to do something like this.”
Randall stuffed the small airplane pillow behind his head. He was really going to go to sleep. She couldn’t believe it.
She nudged him with her foot.
“Any idea what we’re facing here?”
“You’re the experienced agent on our team. What do you think it is?”
She scanned back over the three pages, then closed the file and stared out the window. “No single group has the capability of doing something like this.”
“Which means...”
“Which means it’s a coalition. Something has prompted our cyberbugs to work together.”
“All the more reason to get some sleep.”
Ten minutes later Randall was snoring.
Sometimes she envied his ability to shut everything off.
It didn’t work that way for her. It never had.
🙛
Randall woke when they began their descent. He walked to the back of the plane, used the lavatory, and splashed water on his face. Then he snagged two cups of coffee from the galley.
Nora hadn’t slept. She never slept on planes. They’d once been sent on assignment to China. She’d stayed awake through the entire flight.
He’d joined the agency four years ago, and he’d risen quickly because he understood both the technical and operational sides of cyber security.
Learned to code before turning ten years old.
Received offers from MIT and Caltech.
Randall wasn’t a genius, but he wasn’t that far from it. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, computer code was like a language he’d spoken from birth. After joining the agency, he lasted less than a year on the analytical side. He never had been able to abide sitting behind a desk. Operations had an opening, and he jumped at it.
He’d been assigned three different partners in four years, and Nora Brooks was by far the best.
Randall understood code.
Nora understood people.
She had an intuitive nature that put her ahead of everyone else. Or maybe she was just able to think like a criminal. Whatever the reason, the woman was quickly becoming a legend within the agency, and she didn’t even know it. She seemed to have no life other than stopping the next cyberattack. Her thoughts were always on the cyberbugs.
He’d almost laughed when he saw Nora sitting at the elegant table. Not that she wasn’t elegant—in her blue pantsuit and heels, and with her short red hair cascading around her face....Nora belonged anywhere she wanted to. No, it was more that sitting at the table crowded with china, she’d reminded him of a caged jaguar.
“Why did you change your clothes?” He asked as he pushed the cup of coffee into her hands.
“Seriously?”
“I didn’t even know you owned anything other than black.”
“Well, I didn’t see any reason to make you privy to the contents of my wardrobe, Randall.”
“Wardrobe. Ha. That’s funny. I don’t think you can call five identical pairs of black pants and five black tops a wardrobe.”
He liked to dress well. Not too well, no need drawing attention to yourself, but pressed slacks, medium starch in his shirts, high-end quality. Dolce & Gabbana was currently his favorite brand.
“This came in while you were catching your beauty sleep.”
Randall accepted the tablet from her.
DFW Metropolitan Area
Level 4 Cyberattack: Code Name Artemis
0300 Update
Motor vehicle accidents up 12%
9-1-1 response time delayed by an average of eight minutes
Rolling brown outs across municipal grid
Medical systems compromised
“How bad is the media response?”
“They don’t know yet.”
“How can they not know yet?”
The plane hit an air pocket and bounced. Randall reflexively grabbed the arm rests. Nora didn’t seem to notice.
“They’re scrambling. Everyone’s scrambling, so they haven’t put it together.”
“My granny would notice a 12% increase in car wrecks caused by traffic lights not working.”
“Nope. Your granny would be in bed.”
“Granny has some issues sleeping.”
“Granny would be playing solitaire, maybe, but she wouldn’t be out cruising the streets of Dallas.”
Randall frowned at the tablet. “I thought cyberbugs wanted to make the biggest bang for the buck—the most chaos for the code. Why do this in the middle of the night when apparently no one is noticing?”
“Because this is the warm-up.”
Nora took the tablet and stored it in her backpack. Only Nora could make a black backpack look cool. Randall wondered how it would look with his $400 poplin dress shirt and quickly dismissed the idea.
“Still no ransom?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then it’s some psycho, like the bug in San Francisco who thought it was his job to help push California over into the ocean...as if a cyberattack could move land mass. That guy was a nut and so is this one.”
“You’re showing your prejudice, Randall. No one said this was a guy.”
“I was using the term generically.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Women can be psychos, too, and they can be cyberbugs.”
“Equal opportunity.”
“Exactly.”
Nora flashed him a smile, and Randall enjoyed the fleeting thought that this was going to be fun.
Then the captain came over the speakers. “Folks. We have a problem.”
🙛