AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He’s not a hacker”—well, that was a white lie, because Gabe absolutely was a hacker, just not in the sense that the police officer meant—“he’s a pen tester too. We both are. He handles the digital side, I do the physical stuff. Companies hire us to try to break into their systems, then we report back and tell them what they could be doing better. Look, read this.” I held out the letter Gabe had handed me this morning, and he shone the torch over it.
“ ‘To whom it may concern: this is to confirm that I have authorized Jacintha Cross and Gabriel Medway of Crossways Security to conduct a physical and digital penetration test at the offices of Arden Alliance,’ ” he read aloud, and then shrugged, looking across at the security guard. “I mean, what do you think? Is that company paper?”
“I’ve got no idea, mate,” the guard said. He looked like he was thoroughly bored of the whole thing and just wanted to go back to his desk, rather than stand around in a windy car park. “They subcontract out night security. I’m employed by Baxter Bland. Looks okay to me, I mean it’s the same logo on all the signs, but she could’ve printed that off the internet for all I know.”
“And this Jim Cauldwell…” The police officer tapped the signature at the foot of the letter. “He’s the—what did you say? The Cisco?”
“The CISO,” I repeated patiently. “The chief information security officer. We’re here at his request, and that’s his personal mobile number. Look, could you call your boss?” I asked the security guard. “I appreciate you’re not employed by Arden Alliance, but Jim said he’d cleared this with the on-site security firm, so someone on your end should be able to confirm I’m legit.”
“You’re joking, ain’t you?” The security guard looked at me like I was insane. “It’s gone midnight on the weekend. No way I’m calling my boss on his home number, even if I had it. He’d have my guts for garters.”
I suppressed a groan. We’d picked a Saturday for the pen test deliberately because Arden ran only a skeleton staff that day, just customer service operatives and the bare minimum of security and IT. Sundays they were closed completely, which meant that with luck Gabe would have had all weekend to poke around in their systems before IT got back on Monday and discovered what we’d been up to. Now that choice seemed like a very, very bad idea. Evidently Jim Cauldwell had clocked off for the weekend along with the rest of his colleagues.
“I’ll try this CISO guy again,” the police officer said with barely disguised annoyance. The subtext of I should be out catching real criminals was very clear. “But if I can’t get hold of him this time, you’ll have to come down to the station with me.”
I sighed. This was turning out to be a long night.
* * *
SOME TWO HOURS LATER WE were at the police station. Jim Cauldwell still hadn’t picked up (I was going to have to talk to Gabe about putting some kind of penalty clause in the contract in case this happened again; it was the second time this year) and the officer was starting to talk about arrest. Fuck. I could take a night in the cells—I’d had worse—but if things really spiraled and we had to get lawyered up, this was going to get expensive.
“Can I please call my husband?” I was trying to keep the panic out of my voice, but it was there, a little tremulous edge that somehow had the effect of making me sound less than legitimate. “Honestly, this is all a huge misunderstanding. He may be able to get hold of someone else at the firm.”
“Sure,” the police officer said wearily, and he pushed a phone across the desk. My bag, complete with what the officer had dubiously described as “computer equipment, lockpicks, and tools for housebreaking,” had somehow been left at the front desk, along with my phone. Even if I wasn’t actually under arrest, it felt pretty close to it.
Fortunately I knew Gabe’s number by heart, and I dialed it now, the telephone keypad sticky with overuse under my fingers. It rang… and rang. The knots in my stomach tightened, and I found I was twisting my ring round and round my finger, the chipped stone flashing in the light from above. This was… weird. Jim Cauldwell might have forgotten to change his do-not-disturb settings before going to bed; this wasn’t exactly a normal nightly occurrence for him. But Gabe? He’d never have turned off his phone while I was still out on a job. On the other hand, I had told him I was already at my car, and it was… I looked up at the clock above the desk. Jesus, it was nearly two a.m. Maybe he’d fallen asleep?
“He’s not picking up,” I said now, not trying to keep the groan out of my voice. I put down the phone and the officer looked at me as if he knew exactly how I felt. “Look, I’m sorry—what did you say your name was?”
“PC Williams,” the officer said.
“Look, PC Williams, I know this is a huge waste of your time, and I’m really sorry. I don’t know what else to say. We were asked to break into the building, and the CISO can confirm that. We were told that number would be manned twenty-four hours when we set up the contract, but clearly the idiot who hired us forgot and turned his phone off.”
“And there’s no one else you can call?” PC Williams said. “No one who can confirm you are who you say you are?”
“You’ve got my ID, but if you mean is there anyone who can confirm I’m a real pen tester, not some nut job with a can of compressed air, then no. Not until office hours.” I put my head in my hands. The adrenaline of the chase had worn off and I was so tired I felt close to tears. “At least…”
Oh God. No. The knots were back.
Not him. I’d rather spend the night in the custody suite.
“At least?” prompted Williams, and I bit my lip.
“Never mind.”
No. There was no way I was calling him. Not even if it meant getting arrested.
“Just do it,” I said now, resignedly. “I get it—you have to do your job. Arrest me.”
The officer sighed and shook his head, but not as if he was denying what was going to happen—more like a world-weary acknowledgment of the inevitable. I knew he didn’t want this any more than I did—the paperwork, the hassle, the very likely possibility that this would all be sorted out in just a few hours when the CISO got up and saw the reel of missed calls on his mobile.
On the other hand, I had been found breaking and entering, with a backpack full of fake paperwork and badges, alongside some pretty shady tools. I would have arrested me too.
“Let me go and speak to my colleague,” he said now, pushing his chair back with a painful screech, and I nodded.
As the door closed behind him, I slumped down in the plastic seat, letting my head hang back as I stared at the ceiling tiles. They looked solid. More solid than the one I’d snapped, anyway. I thought about my life choices, about how much I hated Jim Cauldwell in that moment, and about Gabe, who was—inexplicably—apparently snoring his head off right now instead of doing what we’d been paid to do, which was get inside the mainframe of Arden Alliance and do as much poking around as we could before we were detected. It was incredibly unlike him to just shrug and go to bed. Normally it was me who came home, shoved a takeaway down my throat, and collapsed, worn out by climbing over walls, ducking under cameras, and picking locks with my adrenaline pulsing the whole time. Gabe was typically still going when I woke up the following day, hunched over his desk, testing and poking and probing the limits of the security systems the company had in place.
Getting caught was, in some senses, what we both wanted. Red-teaming, acting the attacker, was fun, but presenting the report to the security team afterwards never was—running them through everything they’d done wrong, all the mistakes they’d made and opportunities they’d missed to put a stop to the hack. What you wanted—what the client was hoping to hear—was “This part of your security held up—your guys did a good job.”
