Deep Dark Read Free Page B

floor. “I got you, you sick son of a bitch.”
    â€œ Laney .”
    She snapped her head up to see Tarek peering over the wall of her cubicle. “What’s up?” She rolled forward and started creating a backup file.
    â€œAre you coming with us or not?” he asked.
    â€œComing where?”
    â€œThe Door , Laney. God.”
    â€œWhat’s at the Door?”
    Silence.
    She lifted her gaze. He looked annoyed now, maybe even a little hurt, and she stopped typing.
    Tarek was one of the smartest programmers at the Delphi Center. He was tall and lanky and favored slogan T-shirts. Today’s said, “I’m here because you broke something.” Which tended to be true. Tarek was their fix-it man.
    â€œYou don’t remember a word, do you?” he asked.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThe Cedar Door, ten o’clock, with me and George. Alex is meeting us for darts.”
    â€œSorry, I’m out.” She resumed typing. “Someone’s waiting on this.”
    â€œBut you said you’d come.”
    She very much doubted it.
    Or maybe she had. She’d say almost anything to get people to leave her alone when she was working.
    â€œLaney, we need four people.”
    She studied her list, her pulse pounding now because it was more than she’d expected. Way more. Shegrabbed her cell phone and texted her contact: Execution complete .
    â€œLaney, come on.”
    â€œMan, show some respect.” Ben Lawson’s disembodied voice floated over from the neighboring cube. “Can’t you see she’s in the zone?”
    â€œHey, I wasn’t talking to you.” Tarek sounded ticked now, and she glanced up to see him glaring at Ben. “Whatever fed Laney’s working for isn’t waiting for a file tonight . I guarantee you he’s off getting tanked or boffing his girlfriend.”
    â€œWhat’re you working on, anyway?” Ben looked over their shared wall, which was lined with South Park bobbleheads. He glanced at her screen, and his mouth fell open. “Holy shit, you cracked it?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œ Wo ein Will eist, ist auch ein Weg .” Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Ben, like Laney, had double-majored in German and computer science.
    â€œI thought they had the firewall from hell,” he said.
    â€œI followed the money.” A tried-and-true strategy. “They take credit-card payments, so I sent a trojan in through the payment company, then established a back door and went from there.” She made it sound easy, but it had taken three days. The trojan alone had been a bitch to create. Criminals tended to be strangely paranoid about people poking around their networks.
    â€œWhat about their AV?” Ben got out of his chair and came over, keenly interested now.
    â€œThe antivirus was okay, but I used a good wrapper, so . . .”
    A text landed on Laney’s phone, and she picked it up. RU kidding??
    Encrypting now, she responded. Look for a list of IPs, ETA 10 min.
    Laney skimmed the file for anything wonky, but it looked clean. Three days of work, pretty much around the clock. In moments the file would be on its way to Special Agent Maya Murray in Washington, D.C. In minutes Maya would be writing up a warrant. And a short time after that—possibly within forty-eight hours—a team of agents would swoop down on a crew that had hacked its way into an American electronics company that made webcams, nanny cams, and other Internet-enabled devices. After stealing usernames and passcodes, they’d set up an underground website called RealityKidPr0n and started streaming live footage of children’s bedrooms to perverts across the globe.
    Laney spent a few minutes double-checking everything. When she was finally satisfied, she hit send. Then she leaned back in her chair and heaved a sigh.
    She glanced around. As always, she felt like she’d been in a time