“And the other,” Ash said, focusing on Donovan—even though Donovan wasn’t looking at Ash. He was still peeking at his phone. It was probably his girlfriend, Kate. He spent more time on that phone, texting her and sending and receiving pictures than he did anything else these days.
“…the other,” Ash continued, “is a CEO who believes someone has breached the security system at her company.” He opened the file folder and glanced through it. “She has reason to believe someone is purposely targeting her company because they own and run several popular social networking and dating sites. She’s concerned that someone could gain access to their system and steal client information.”
That caught my attention, despite myself. I didn’t want to care what he was talking about. I had my job, and I was good at it. I just wanted to concentrate on that. But this…my mind was already working the angles, finding holes in a system I never even seen.
“This CEO, Ricki Dennison, wants to—”
“Ricki Dennison?”
Ash shot me a look that made his irritation at my interruption pretty obvious. It was coming off of him in a flood. However, this was the first time in months he’d said anything that truly interested me.
“You do realize who she is, right?” I asked.
“She’s a client.”
“She’s a fucking genius! She creates the most elegant computer code I’ve ever seen. Some of her code changed the way hackers look at the simplest…” I stopped because I could already see everyone’s eyes glaze over the way they did when I talked computers. And Ash was getting even more annoyed. “Let’s just say she’s a genius,” I finished lamely.
“Someone’s fangirling,” Kirkland said.
“Hardcore,” Donovan agreed.
I tilted my head slightly. “You have your celebrity crushes, I have mine.”
“Wonder if she looks anything like Blake Lively,” Kirkland said. “If she does, then I could understand.”
“Sometimes there’s more to a woman than looks, Kirkland,” I said.
“Really? Since when?”
Joss tossed a crumpled up piece of paper at Kirkland, a hard scowl on her face. He held up his hands in a surrender gesture.
“Sorry, Jossie.”
“Are we done acting like children?” Ash asked.
I just crossed my arms over my chest again, focusing on Ash with a hard stare. What difference did all this make to me? It wasn’t as if I ever did anything but sit behind my monitors and send out the teams that saved all their asses.
“As I was saying,” Ash continued, “Ms. Dennison feels there’s been a breach in her system and she wants us to find out if there was one, how bad the breach was, and attempt to identify who did it.”
“Why us?” I asked. “Hasn’t her IT team already isolated the breach?”
Ash focused on me again. “She has reason to feel she can’t trust her own team.”
“Paranoid much?” Kirkland asked.
“Apparently, Ms. Dennison has upset quite a few people in recent months when she announced that she plans to discontinue the employee compensation program she had in place. She thinks this could be some sort of revenge for that. For that reason, Donovan, she’d like for us to send someone in—undercover—to try to figure out which of her current employees might be out to sabotage the company.”
Donovan nodded as he stood and took the file folder from Ash. “In the IT department?”
“Yes. I figured you know enough about computers that you could fake your way through.”
Donovan was an explosives expert. He knew how to blow shit up. How the hell was he going to fake his way through this sort of technology-based job?
Ash leaned back against the wall and studied me. “I want you to meet with Ms. Dennison with Donovan,” he said. “We need you to find the breach and trace it back to the source. Ms. Dennison has agreed to give you access, but only if you do it from her office. She won’t authorize remote access.”
Adrenaline suddenly rushed through my body, my heart beginning to pound and my muscles tightening.
“Me?”
“Of course. You’re our tech guy.”
“Looks like you get to meet your hero, Davey boy,” Kirkland said.
“I don’t go to client sites, Ash. You know that. And you know why.”
There was no sympathy in Ash’s eyes. “It’s time for you to stop hiding behind your monitors, David.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t care how important the case was or that it had Ricki Dennison standing on the other side. I couldn’t leave this compound.