The Heart Wants Ch. 10-13

"I'm... uh... I'm sorry... I just realized, you probably don't give a shit what I'm talking about."

"Waitwaitwaitwaitwait... back up!" Her voice was urgent, full of sudden urgency, "What did you just say?"

"I said, I'm sorry to have bothered you..."

"No, before that!" she nearly shouted.

"I... uh... said that the memo in the front of the book is inaccurate. The way the network was breached. It was a brute force attack, not a keylog attack." Confusion was starting to set in, "Why does it matter?"

"Hold on a second!" her voice was urgent, "Damon! Come here, come here and listen to this."

Her voice came back on the line, "Link. I've got you on speaker. My boss, Damon Grace, one of the senior partners at my company, is here with me, repeat what you just said please."

I was still trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about, but figured I'd play along, "I said this wasn't a keylog attack, it was a brute force attack. This memo is completely wrong. I mean... I don't know why the hell that would matter, in fact, I feel stupid for even bringing it up..." I paused, feeling the embarrassment of what I was saying, how I was wasting her time pour into me, "Look, I'm sorry, I realize you guys probably don't care..."

A man's voice came on the line, urgent, "Rachel, who is this guy?"

I could sense the hesitation in her voice, "Um... it's my friend, uh... Link." I could hear her suddenly stop herself mentally, "I mean he's my boyfriend."

"And he just happens to know how to read an event log from the hacking of a multi-billion-dollar company?" his voice was filled with suspicion, but something about the situation must have been a little drier than I had originally thought, "Look. You know what, we need this. Link?"

"Uh..." I said nervously, "Yeah?"

"You want to earn some money?"

I raised an eyebrow, "Uh... sure?"

"So, if I fly you in here tomorrow, can you meet with this client, give them a presentation and set the record straight for them?"

I was so shocked, I just sat on the line, "I, uh... I mean... uh... yeah, I can, but uh... I mean, I'm not the best choice, for uh..."

I heard a heavy sigh, "Look, kid, I get this is unorthodox, but the truth of the matter is, you are already way ahead of anybody else I could pull in on this and this client is getting ready to drop us like a hot potato. That information, the security information in that memo, it was provided by a competing firm. If I can bring someone in here that can show that, maybe I can get them to drop them, and hire us. We'll pay you five thousand dollars for a day's work and all your expenses..."

Being honest, I could really use the money, but I also needed to make sure I was completely upfront. I wanted to help, and I could use that money, but I also needed to make sure that I didn't make Rachel look bad...

"Sir, I appreciate the offer, but uh... look I'm not sure I'm the best choice for this. Yeah, I figured this out, but I've only been looking at it for a few minutes..."

His voice was filled with authority, straight to the point, "Kid. Are you weaseling now because you are unsure of what you're saying, or are you trying to ensure that Rachel doesn't get in trouble if you screw up?"

I smiled, "The screw up one. I know I'm right."

His voice took on a tone of stone on steel, "Then let me put it to you this way. Rachel left what was supposed to be a secured company document out and you went diving in. You have no non-disclosure agreement. You aren't an employee of our company. Which do you think is more likely to get her in trouble, you bailing on us here, and me flipping out on her about her lack of information security, or you coming here, being put on our payroll and losing a client we are going to lose anyway?"

"So, um..." I swallowed "looks like I need to book a flight?"

"No. I'll arrange to have the company jet pick you up and bring you here. I need you at Caldera Aviation tomorrow at seven in the morning. Can you do that?"

I nodded, "Uh... sure..."

"Perfect. I'll have someone meet you at the hangar when you get here and bring you to me."

The phone hung up suddenly.

I could feel the panic rising in me. I grabbed the book back up and started flipping through it, desperately trying to figure out how I had was going to get Rachel and myself out of this mess...

Chapter 12

I got off the very nice, very expensive jet the next morning, yawning as the sudden sunlight smashed into my exhausted eyes...

I suppressed the sudden urge to yawn. A hand dropped on my shoulder suddenly, and my head snapped back, looking at the pilot, a tall, skinny man named Sydney as he gave me a toothy smile, "Okay kid... here's what you got to do." He pointed to a building a couple of hundred yards away, "head straight through that building, someone's supposed to be waiting for you."

I nodded, losing my battle against that yawn as I lifted my bag's strap over my head and started out across the got blacktop...

Opening a door, I passed through a little office and headed out the front door only to find Rachel standing out front, leaned against a jet-black Lexus, smoking a cigarette. She had on a very smart looking black pantsuit, high, black heels, and expensive looking sunglasses. She took a drag off of her cigarette and blew the smoke out in a long hazy stream as I walked towards her, looking sexy as hell the entire time...

I stopped in front of her, smiling as I looked at her...

Okay, I'll be honest... I once again caught myself staring right down the front of her very impressive cleavage...

She gave me a lazy smile as she took another drag, catching me staring at her, "Hey there sexy..."

I smiled at her, embarrassed to have gotten caught, but so exhausted I could barely bring myself to care...

I gestured to her cigarette, "I didn't know you smoked."

She held the cigarette up, pinching it between her thumb and middle finger, "I don't."

She stopped, rolling her eyes, "Laurel made me quit. I only do it when I'm really stressed. Don't tell her okay? I mean..." I could see shame flash through her eyes, "I just don't want her to worry."

I took the cigarette from her and taking a deep drag pulled the smoke deep into my lungs. It was like breathing in fire, and while a part of me wanted desperately to cough it out, another part of me rejoiced at the burning sensation deep within.

I blew the smoke out as Rachel gave me that drop dead sexy smile she always seemed to have for me, "There. See? Now we have a secret to keep for each other."

She smiled at me as I took a second drag off the cigarette and I felt the sudden, irrational urge to push her back and kiss her...

The feeling surprised me...

It was so much different than what I felt for Laurel, but still so powerful. Rachel was the only other woman that seemed to be able to reach inside me and just make me was to lose control...

The feeling was different for Rachel though. I knew I was in love with Laurel, and what I felt for her was a longing, a deep need to share myself with her, to have her share herself with me. To know every inch of her as I shared the same with her. With Rachel, it was something absolutely different. What I felt for Rachel was pure, unadulterated lust. I wanted to take her... not violently, but to still haver her. To feel the way that she would move beneath me, to watch as she rode me, to feel her moan as I took her from behind, to feel her push back against me as I thrust into her...

I found myself staring at her tits as I took my third drag on the cigarette I had taken from Rachel...

I forced my eyes back up to hers, seeing a tired smile spread across her lips. "We should get going."

Nodding, I held the cigarette back up to her.

She shook her head, "No thanks, finish it if you want."

I took a final drag off of it, leaving it about half unsmoked and flicked it away.

Dropping my exhausted body into the passenger seat, I pulled the door closed behind me, dropping my bag between my feet. Rachel jumped in, buckled up, and started the car, giving me a smile.

I grabbed her hand as she set it on the shifter to shift from park. "Hold on, just a second. I owe you an apology... I... uh..." embarrassment rushed back into me, "I'm not making excuses, but you are one of the sexiest women I have ever met... and I..." I searched the corridors of my mind, trying to find a way to say what I was thinking, trying to get past the embarrassment of what I was feeling, "Look. I have no right to eye fuck you every time I see you. I'm sorry, and I'll do better."

She looked at me, that sexy smile, this one filled with such joy and life it was staggering, "Let's get something straight..." her hand locked in my shirt, pulling me closer. She licked her lips, the corner of her mouth ticking upward, "Laurel told me about her and you."

Panic flooded through me...

And then her mouth was on mine, her tongue in my mouth as she pulled me to her...

I lost myself to the raw sexuality of what she represented. Lost myself to the feeling of her body on mine...

I felt her hand slide down the front of me, finally settling on my crotch, her hand rough and urgent on me.

She pulled out of our kiss, a wicked smile on her lips. My eyes didn't want to focus I was so turned on by her in that moment...

"You don't need to be embarrassed. Just stop. Laurel told me you're having trouble adjusting to this whole thing. I'll respect that, but I also want you to know, if you want me, you can have me. I want to have you. So just stop worrying so fucking much and enjoy your life a little."

I smiled, exhausted once again as I nodded at her, thinking about how what she said matched up so perfectly with what Laurel was telling me not so long ago.

Her hand came up, suddenly filled with tenderness, touching my face, "You look so tired..."

Just her saying it made the wave of exhaustion crest over me, driving my eyes shut. My body went very limp and I finally allowed my head to drop back against the seat, "I am. I was working on this thing all night. I only managed to get about an hour of sleep on the flight..."

She pulled my face over and kissed me once again, this one filled with gentleness and compassion, just her lips, lightly playing on mine. When she finally broke it off she looked at me, "Thank you Link. I know you don't owe me anything... I just want you to know, no matter how this thing turns out, I appreciate you trying to help me."

I wrapped my hand in hers, squeezing her delicate fingers between my own beefy ones, "No problem."

She smiled at me once again, this time giving my face a playful scratch, "And I appreciate it. Also, you look like shit."

I smiled, holding my hands out, realizing I was wearing jeans and a long sleeve thermal shirt. "So, you're right... well... I'm a computer nerd, right? We're supposed to be quirky!"

Shaking her head, she gave me a small smile, "We're not looking for quirky. We're looking for more, expert in his field..."

Smiling at her I shook my head, "After what I found out last night... we may not."

Chapter 13

Sitting at the table all I could think about was how uncomfortable these fucking clothes were...

Rachel has insisted on buying me a new suit. I had agreed, being an idiot. In the end, I ended up with suit, tie, shirt, pants and some new, incredibly uncomfortable shoes that squeaked every time I took a fucking step. I hated how restricted they made me feel. I hated the fucking tie that made me feel like I was being slowly strangled...

"And this, is Lincoln Morgan. He's a cyber security consultant we've brought on to help handle your account." Damon began, before he was rudely interrupted by an old man, in this case, an old man named Dillon Harper, who was the COO of PharmaComm. He was flanked by the CIO, two lawyers and several assistants...

"Look, this is all well and good, and we appreciate the fact that you're working as hard as you are is nice, but we don't think you're firm is big enough to handle this emergency. We've had several competing offers, from some much larger firms, firms that have inhouse security, PR, cyber security consulting, all the things we need in order to not only address the issue at hand, but also to ensure that we have no further issues." The tone was friendly, open even, but there was no question, he had made up his mind pretty quickly about what his decision was going to be.

Damon folded his hands on the table and gave the old man a toothy grin, "We know you've gotten competing offers. The reason we're here today is that the 'support' you're being given by those firms is inaccurate. Yes, those firms are bigger, and on the surface, they provide better support, but what we're finding right now is that the support they are giving you shows they don't care about your company. To them, you're just another number on a spreadsheet. To us, you're a hell of a lot more." Damon held his hands out, "Look, we're here, and until you sign with us, we're not costing you a penny. Take the information we give you, free of charge, and if it doesn't change your minds about us, what are you out?"

The old man's eyes narrowed, "Okay," his eyes speared into me, "Mister Morgan? Proceed."

I looked the old man up and down, letting my mind go to that place it went when I was assessing people...

I held the book up, the event log, "Do you have one of these?" My tone was abrupt, bordering on the edge of rude.

His eyes narrowed as he shook his head, starting to take umbrage at my tone...

I felt the corner of my mouth tick up, realizing I was moving him exactly where I wanted him to go...

Standing, I held my arms out, "See these fancy clothes?"

Mister Harper nodded his head.

I pulled the coat off and threw it over the back of my chair dismissively, "This isn't me. I'm not about fancy clothes or fancy things, boardroom politics or any of that other bull." I pulled at the tie around my neck, unfastening it and throwing it across the back of the chair.

Mister Harper's eyes narrowed even further, and I could see Damon's mouth drop open. I felt a surge of confidence as I realized that they had both reacted exactly the way I wanted. I needed both of them off their feet. Needed both of them paying complete attention to me if I was going to pull this off...

Pushing the chair to the side I grabbed the book up, and giving it a little flip let it fall with loud slap on the table. It slid the last little bit, stopping perfectly in front of Harper, "There. You can borrow mine. I'm done with it anyway, and I don't need it anymore."

He put his hands on it, his fingers drumming as he ground his jaw at me...

Full of nervous energy, I began to move around the room, "In the opening memo you'll see that whoever the dumbass was that did the security analysis is totally off the mark. They identified it as a keylog attack, when the truth of the matter is it was a brute force attack. Now that miss is huge and it shows a lack of professionalism on their part, but the worst part of it is, if you trust that analysis you are putting yourself in the position of sitting right back at this table in a couple of months when someone does the exact same thing to you again."

I saw that got their attention, "How much did your stock crater on this? Thirty points? What will it be on the next one? Will you recover from it?"

I saw panic on their faces...

Pressing on, "You see a keylog attack needs a completely different response than a brute force attack. In fact," my eyes drifted over to their CIO, who was responsible for dealing with this kind of situation, "your network is still wide open to this kind of attack. If I pulled my laptop out now I could be in each and every one of your email accounts within the hour. Any dedicated, network reliant systems you have, destroyed. You name it, and I could take it apart and I wouldn't have to write a single line of code."

Harper's face was a mixture of anger and curiosity, "What proof do you have of this?"

I smiled at him, knowing I had him, "Open to page eleven please."

He opened the book.

"See where I highlighted? That's where the attack begins. That is the first piece of network traffic and it shows a null login, essentially, someone tried to log in and guessed the password wrong."

Putting my hands in my pockets I smiled at him, "Flip through the next hundred pages or so and you'll see pretty much the same thing. Whoever designed the infrastructure of your network set it up in such a way that allows the user to guess as many times as they want. That's stupid. It allowed them to attack your network over and over until they succeeded."

Harper looked at Damon in shock, "He's quite direct, isn't he?"

From looking at Damon's face, I could see he understood what I did, we had him. "He is, but he's very good."

Time to drop the bomb, "Oh... and also, the attack was an inside job."

The room went deadly silent...

Harper finally managed to find the presence of mind to clear his throat, "And how do you know that?"

"Page eleven." I pointed to the book again, "They targeted a single account. Not yours, not even your CIO's. That account. They knew what they were looking for, and they went straight to that account."

Harper spread his hands, "Our information shows that over a dozen accounts were accessed in the hack."

I put my hands back in my pockets, "That is true. Problem is when you look at the code once the account is breached. A search algorithm is run, most likely looking for a certain phrase. Page two-two-four they find it. Then the attack breaches out, identifying the accounts contained in the email and targeting those for attack. Once they are breached, same deal as before. They targeted three other specific accounts, once they breached them, they had what they needed."

Harper flipped through the book, noting the passages I had highlighted, "Four accounts, why would they access the others?"

"If I broke into your house tonight looking for your laptop, once I had it, I'm going to steal a bunch of other stuff and then I'm going to break a bunch of stuff to hide I was after a specific thing."

He nodded, seeing the sense in what I was saying...

I held a finger up, "And now, I'll turn it over to Damon, because he's going to explain to you why you're going to want to hire his firm."

Harper looked at Damon incredulously...

Damon just smiled as I took my seat. Rachel, who was sitting next to me, took my hand, giving it a hard squeeze. I squeezed it back, realizing how good it felt.

Damon cleared his throat, "We know who did it, the mole inside your organization. Link managed to track them down last night."

Harper looked first at me and then at Damon, "And let me guess, if we hire your firm, you'll be glad to tell us?"

Reaching into my bag I pulled out the string of documentation I had managed to pull together last night. The reason I had not slept...

This time, I got up and walked around the table, politely handing the report to Harper, "The person who leaked the initial report was well intentioned, but off the mark. They posted on an internet chatroom about the situation, asking for help. It was pretty obvious what happened after that. I managed to track the person leaving the original message through a combination of social media analysis and IP address tracking. All the pertinent information is in that file."

Harper looked at Damon, his face a complete reversal of what it had been, "And this is the level of service we can expect from your firm, full time?"

Damon smiled, realizing the argument was already over, "Yes. If we don't have the resources to fix your problem, we will find them. I can assure you. No matter what you need, we will find a way to deliver it."

Zackman, Zackman and Grace managed to get the account...