Chapter Nine
Jamie was interviewing Jake and Emily when a text came through from Aidan.
Topside, ASAP.
He had no idea what kind of trouble his partner had gotten into. After two hours coordinating with local authorities and first responders, then another three questioning the BSL-4 personnel who were at GNL today, Aidan had pitched a mini-tantrum about descending again into “that goddamn cave” to interview Dave’s team. Having just sustained a breach, Dave was reticent to excuse any extra manpower from the security hub, so Jamie had descended the stairs alone, leaving Aidan to follow up with Dr. Griffin.
“You need to get that?” Jake Young asked, a little too eager for Jamie’s liking.
The security engineer’s shifty green eyes would meet Jamie’s every few seconds before darting to Emily or focusing on a nick in the desk he worried with a nail. Sitting next to him, Emily Richards could have been his twin, in appearance and anxiety, but Jake’s nervousness seemed the cause of hers, not the interview itself.
“It can wait.” Jamie pocketed the phone and flashed his most disarming smile, hoping to put them at ease. “Now, you were about to tell me where you were at the time of each breach. Dave mentioned you two were on shift during the first one.”
“That’s right.” Emily brushed aside her long blond bangs. “The one early Sunday morning.”
“And you were both here—” he circled a pen in the air, indicating the cave “—during that incident?”
Jake glanced at Emily, as if seeking guidance. When she offered none, his attention came back to Jamie. “Yes, we were both here.”
“What about the breaches on Monday and Tuesday?”
“I was surfing Monday afternoon. At the gym Tuesday morning.”
“And someone saw you at both those places?”
Jake nodded.
“I’ll need their names,” Jamie said. “What about you, Emily?” She hesitated, and Jamie inched forward, bracing his forearms on the edge of the desk. “Where were you on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning?”
“I visited my father at an assisted care facility in Houston on Monday.”
“And Tuesday?”
“Home asleep. Alone.” The way she added that last word, making a point of it even though it meant she had no alibi, was not flirtation. Jamie read it as a need to protect someone’s identity more than herself. A bedmate? Jake maybe? That would explain the weird tension between them. Or was there someone else she felt she had to keep secret? Jamie knew the signs better than most.
His phone vibrated again.
Sensing he was onto something, he ignored the phone and sat back. “Had either of you noticed any unusual network activity in the days leading up to the first breach?”
“What do you mean, unusual activity?” Emily said.
“Off-hour logins by your colleagues, repeated requests for new access cards or reset codes, fragments of programming code where they weren’t supposed to be.” Both sets of eyes on him widened. Dave must not have told them he was an expert. Good, less chance they’d find the ghosts he’d left behind.
“I don’t recall seeing anything,” Emily said.
“Mike’s the one responsible for fragment sweeps,” Jake added.
The absent Mike was looking better and better as a suspect.
“Tell me about the process you go through to issue new access cards and codes.” The breaches so far had not been tagged to any active logins. Whoever was accessing the system was creating one-off logins, cloning orphan cards or codes, or skirting the logins altogether and diving directly into the system.
“You mean if someone forgets theirs?” Jake asked.
Jamie nodded.
“For the external access badges, they have to come to us to get a new one reissued.”
“Is the old one immediately deactivated?”
“Yes. No orphan cards should be out there. Same for the access keypads.”
“For the keypads, it works like resetting the PIN on your bank card,” Emily said. “Call or email us with the request and we reset it, except the code is randomized. The user has no say.”
“Is there email confirmation?”
“Only that it’s been reset. The actual code is provided on paper.”
“And who issues your access cards and codes?”
“Dave,” Emily answered.
“What happens if you forget your card or code?”
Jake looked positively offended. “You think we’d forget codes?”
Even Jamie had to laugh, holding up his hands. “Point taken. What about forgotten cards then? Surely someone leaves one at home every now and then.”
“In that case, a new card is supposed to be issued,” Jake said.
“Supposed to be?”
Jake looked to Emily, who, after a deep breath, answered, “Dave keeps a few spares in his desk drawer.”
Why hadn’t Dave given him one of those spares earlier today instead of his own card? Because he didn’t want the FBI knowing he had them? In his gut, Jamie didn’t think Dave was involved, but the evidence placed him a solid number two behind Mike on the suspect list.
“Agent Walker.” Colin, who he’d already interviewed, poked his head around the server racks from his and Mike’s workstations one row over. “Your partner called the main number. He requests your presence upstairs. Immediately.” By the distressed look on Colin’s face, the message had not been delivered quite so politely.
Jamie checked his phone, seeing another five text messages from his partner. The last one read, WHAT PART OF ASAP IS FUCKING HARD TO UNDERSTAND?!
“I need to get going.” Rising, he pulled two business cards out of his wallet and handed one each to Emily and Jake. “Please call if you remember anything else or see any unusual activity in the system. As I mentioned to Colin and Bruce, the FBI would appreciate you staying in town until this matter is resolved. I’m sure Dave would appreciate the extra hands too, in case another breach occurs.”
“We’ll be here,” Jake said.
Emily nodded.
“Thank you both.”
After a quick goodbye to Bruce and Dave, who were at the main bank of computers, Jamie took the stairs two at a time to the main level, finding his partner in the hallway outside Dr. Griffin’s office, looking furious and desperate.
Aidan grabbed him by the arm. “What if I’d been in a shoot-out up here?”
“If you’d been in a shoot-out, you wouldn’t have been texting me.”
“If I tell you to be somewhere, as my partner, I expect you to be there.”
“Then text SOS,” Jamie snapped. “I understand ASAP just fine. It means ‘as soon as possible.’ I was onto something with Emily and Jake, and I thought it pertinent to our investigation to finish interviewing them first.”
Jamie had him there and Aidan knew it, judging by his frustrated glare.
“I don’t have time to explain.” Aidan tugged him toward Dr. Griffin’s office. “Follow my lead.”
He opened the office door, and it was like someone flipped a switch. Aidan’s hand, which had been wrapped tight in anger around his biceps, smoothed down his arm to lightly grasp his elbow. Ushering them from the bright hallway into the dim office, Aidan shut the door and moved his hand to the small of his back. Biting back a surprised gasp, Jamie hoped the low light in Dr. Griffin’s office would hide the blood rushing to his face.
Wait... Low light.
Jamie almost laughed out loud when it hit him. He wasn’t the cause of Aidan’s fury and desperation. It was the fifty-something woman behind the desk who had her office lights dimmed, a bottle of bourbon on her desk, and her eyes locked on Aidan’s hand on his back.
Some emergency. A senior FBI agent caught in a cougar trap.
Jamie swallowed his amusement as Aidan directed them to the visitor chairs across from Dr. Griffin.
“Doctor, why don’t you tell my partner—” Aidan laid an arm over the top of his chair “—what you told me about Director Altman’s lab staff.”
There was no mistaking the impression Aidan projected—that the two of them were more than work partners. Jamie should protest. To do so, however, meant losing the warmth of Aidan’s arm across his back. He struggled to focus on Dr. Griffin’s response instead.
“As I mentioned earlier, Director Altman hires his own staff. While most of his day is filled with administrative tasks, he does maintain a small operating lab. There’s been a lot of turnover and accusations of nepotism.”
“Is the turnover related to the alleged nepotism?” Jamie asked.
“There’s nothing alleged about it, and no, the turnover’s because he’s a bad scientist and worse mentor.”
“Yet, he’s the director,” Aidan said.
“He’s a politician in a lab coat. He knows how to play well with the higher-ups who continue to promote him. The turnover’s because the little science he still does is suspect at best and no student can get his attention long enough to graduate in a timely fashion.”
“And the nepotism?” Jamie said.
“His niece, who somehow did graduate with her PhD in five years, and his son, Terry, occasional lab manager, when he’s between jobs.”
“I thought you said all lab managers went through CDC training?”
“Except Terry. In fairness—” she shifted in her desk chair, crossing her legs more slowly than called for “—Director Altman’s very small lab doesn’t deal with anything above BSL-2 pathogens, and Terry is a PhD dropout, so he’s had some training.”
Aidan crossed his own legs toward Jamie, tilting over the armrest into his space. “Let’s see what we can find on Altman the Younger.”
Jamie nodded, all the while watching Dr. Griffin out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t like her now doubly interested look. “I’ll get on that.” He rose and offered Aidan a hand up. “First, we have to get back to the field office for a debrief with Gary and his team.”
There was no meeting. They just needed an escape route.
“Yes, we better get going or we’ll be late.” Aidan stood, hand lingering in his. “Dr. Griffin, thank you for your time.”
“I’m happy to help.” Hips swaying, she glided around her desk. “If there’s anything I can do for you two, you’ll let me know.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jamie followed Aidan’s swift retreat out the door.
He made it all the way to the Benz before the laugher bubbled out of him.
* * *
Using extra-long kitchen tongs, Jamie pulled the last golden-brown piece of chicken out of the bubbling fry oil and laid it atop the mountain of chicken on the platter by the stove. After spooning scoops of string beans and stewed greens onto a separate plate, he turned off the burners, circled the kitchen island, and slid the two dishes between the place settings on the dining bar.
Aidan stared at the food, eyes wide and longing, practically drooling. “All for me?”
“I did not go through all this trouble—” Jamie twisted to grab the basket of steaming corn muffins “—just for you.”
“Well, that sucks.” Aidan gave him a mock pout that morphed into a smile, as he began dishing food onto their dinner plates. “Where’d you learn to cook like this?”
“Soon as I could get a job, I bused tables at the diner where my mom worked.”
Jamie came out from behind the kitchen bar and climbed onto the stool beside Aidan. “It was run by this five-foot nothing slip of a black woman named Regina. She referred to herself, in the third person, as ‘the Queen.’”
“Sounds scary.”
“She was, but the Queen could cook, better than my own mama.”
“Don’t let your mama hear you say that.”
“Nah, Mom would be the first to agree. No better fried chicken in the South.”
They dug into their food, and it wasn’t until after Aidan killed a drumstick and wing, that he asked, “So, you hung around and learned all the Queen’s secrets?”
“I was there in the mornings before school, when she made the muffin batters and fry coating, and each afternoon, after I got out of practice.”
“And she let a scrawny white boy steal her recipes?”
“Same scrawny white boy who convinced her to open a second location in Chapel Hill that tripled her profits.”
“Well played.” Aidan raised his glass, and Jamie tapped his against it. “You liked it there, in Chapel Hill? I always wondered what it would be like to go to school in a real college town.”
“Palo Alto doesn’t count?”
“Hardly.” He grabbed another muffin from the basket. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“It’s hard to describe. All that energy contained in a four-by-five block on top of a hill.” Jamie stared ahead, not seeing the mess he’d made in the kitchen but the big green lawns and towering trees of Carolina’s main quad, the two-century mishmash of buildings around it, and the throngs of people filling its crisscrossing sidewalks. “Coming from a small town, I’d never been exposed to anything like it. The architecture, the diversity, the freedom.”
“I’m sure that was quite liberating for a gay kid from the country.”
“Yes and no.” He spooned the last bite of beans into his mouth and washed it down with sweet tea. “Carolina’s a huge state school, so an average person can fade into the crowd, enjoy all those things, and live their life without anyone noticing.”
“You weren’t the average student, though.”
Jamie gave him a small, resigned smile. “No, I wasn’t.”
Aidan’s eyes went soft with sympathy. “Jamie.”
It was the first time Aidan had called him by his first name, and he liked the sound of it. Too much. Before his partner’s raised hand reached his arm, Jamie slipped off his stool and rounded the bar. He opened the fridge and pulled out the pitcher of iced tea. “Stanford was different?”
“It didn’t feel like a college campus at all. Grad students outnumber undergrads, and so many of the students are local or intend to stay local after graduation. It’s preschool for Silicon Valley moguls.”
Jamie reclaimed his stool and refilled his glass. Aidan was sipping his slowly; probably too much sugar. He often forgot not everyone was raised on sweet tea. “Did you live on campus?”
“Yeah, but home was ten minutes away. Family dinner each week, at least until I told them I was wasting the business and law degrees they’d paid for on a career with the FBI.”
“You were expected to go into the family business?”
Aidan nodded but didn’t say more.
“Why didn’t you?” Jamie asked between bites.
Aidan returned his earlier resigned smile. “Aced criminal law, almost failed tax.”
Jamie chuckled. “There must be more to it than that.”
Rather than answering, Aidan stretched over the bar and grabbed the unopened bottle of Maker’s Mark. He cracked the red wax and poured a generous shot into his tea. He offered the bottle to Jamie, who waved it off. Aidan set the bottle back on the other side of the bar, swirled his drink, and took a long swallow despite his previous hesitation.
Jamie grew wary of the answer to his question. Before he could dismiss it, though, Aidan cleared his throat. “I could have gone into the family business, helped rebuild the empire here in the States, but I was nursing a two-decades-old grudge.”
“Against the IRA?” Jamie recalled Aidan’s comment last week about car bomb-induced nightmares.
“My family didn’t discriminate. We were equal-opportunity employers and business partners. That didn’t make us popular with militant IRA factions.” His gaze drifted over Jamie’s shoulder to the darkness outside. “When my older brother, Sean, was killed by the car bomb, we got out.”
Food forgotten, chest aching, Jamie clasped his partner’s shoulder. How much had this man lost in his life already?
Aidan didn’t pull away, accepting the sympathetic touch Jamie had shirked earlier. His gaze remained unfocused, his mind far away. “My first big bust with the FBI was an Irish gang trafficking in illegal arms. Funding what’s left of the cause, so to speak.”
“I’m sure your family understands now.”
Aidan’s eyes came back to his, and the sadness there robbed Jamie of words.
“They do.” Shrugging off his hand, Aidan slid from his stool and moved into the kitchen. He grabbed a bowl out of the fridge, a small pot from a lower cabinet, and began cooking something on the stove. Curiosity getting the better of him, Jamie collected their empty plates, dumped them in the sink, and peered over Aidan’s shoulder.
“What are you making?”
“Reheating. Arroz con leche. Mexican rice pudding.”
Jamie ran soap and water over the dishes, pretending to wash them for several minutes, as the sweet mix of cinnamon and vanilla filled the air. “For an Irishman, your cooking repertoire is suspiciously Hispanic.”
“Gabe’s dream was to open a restaurant.” The smile in Aidan’s voice eased the lingering tension from their previous exchange. “His family owns several in Miami.”
“Can SAC Cruz cook too?”
Aidan let out a strangled noise—half cry, half laugh—something clattered to the floor, and he cursed, his Irish accent bleeding through.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
Bent over, ass in the air, Aidan rescued a wooden spoon from the floor and tossed it to him. “Never let that woman near a stove. The Cruz food gene somehow skipped her.”
“You two seem close.”
“Academy classmates. We wrapped training a week before Carnival, and she took me home to celebrate. We’ve been tight ever since.”
“What happens in Miami, stays in Miami?”
Aidan chuckled and clicked off the burner. “Something like that.”
“Was that when you met Gabe?”
“Love at first sight,” he said, voice wistful.
Jamie shut off the faucet, wiped his hands on a dishtowel, and boosted himself up on the island. “How long were you two together?”
“Ten years.” Aidan opened the drawer next to Jamie’s dangling legs, pulled out two spoons, handed him one and set the other on the opposite counter.
Jamie tapped the utensil against his thigh as he did the math in his head. “You weren’t together right away?”
“No.” Aidan split the steaming pudding mixture between two bowls. “He was still playing football, and I was still playing the field.”
“You weren’t always a one-man man?”
“Far from it.” He handed Jamie a bowl, then, with his own bowl in hand, grabbed the other spoon and hopped up on the opposite counter. “Mel wouldn’t let me near him until I was celibate for at least a year.”
“How’d that go?”
Aidan blushed, his pale cheeks flaming an attractive red. “Embarrassing. Mel and I were in the San Francisco office already. Gabe blew out his knee, retired, and moved out to get his MBA at Stanford. We were inseparable since.”
The earlier tension rushed back in and Jamie was too far away to offer more than shared sympathy. “I know it’s not easy, getting over a broken heart.”
Aidan’s eyes shot to his, begging the question.
He hadn’t intended to get into his own past, but Aidan had shared and Jamie felt he owed him a tiny bit of his own story. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you. My situation was different. I had control over how things ended.”
“You were the one who walked away?”
Not exactly walked. Jamie recalled that bright summer day outside the rehab facility in Charlotte. His entire body had hurt from a grueling PT session, but no joint, no limb, no ligament, had hurt as bad as his heart when he’d limped away, on crutches, from the love of his life. “I do know what it feels like to lose your other half.”
“The media got wind of the relationship?”
“They were closing in.” He picked up his bowl and finished off the pudding. “Derrick, my boyfriend, was a new professor at a conservative college nearby, Mom had a steady job, and my little sister was head of the high school cheerleading squad. Everything was good, everyone was happy. A news story like that would have disrupted all our lives.”
“So you sacrificed your career, your own happiness?”
“I loved Derrick and I loved playing ball, but I wasn’t happy. And I had no interest in being a poster boy for gay athletes in the NBA. I realize that’s selfish, that I should have taken a stand, been out and proud, but I was so tired of being the center of attention. It’s like the media latched on when I was a kid and never let go.”
“That’s why you like Cyber, why you stay in the cave?”
He nodded. “I like the anonymity behind the screen. I’d been in front of it for so long. And I aced Crypto, almost failed Political Science.”
Aidan laughed at the flipped phrase and slid off the counter. He took the bowl out of Jamie’s hands, his countenance serious once more. “You can’t hide forever. That’s no better than being back in the closet.”
“I don’t see you getting out there.”
Aidan dumped the bowls in the sink. “You sound like my sisters.”
Jamie let him get away with that deflection, seeing as he’d done the same earlier. “Irish, Southern, we’re from the same stock.”
“I think you might fit in better with my family than me.”
“They sound like a fun bunch.” Jamie hopped off the island as Aidan headed for the dining table where their case materials were spread out in Jamie’s typical disorganized fashion.
“Back to not fun.” Aidan rounded the table and took a seat on the far side. “What do you make from the interviews this afternoon?”
Jamie seated himself across from Aidan. “Dr. Griffin is in the clear. Director Altman too, though I want to dig into his son.”
“Agreed.” Aidan pulled Griffin and Altman’s files out of the leaning stack of personnel files and tossed them on the floor.
“I think we can also exclude the lab manager with the ancient laptop. Between his antiquated hard drive and million cables, I’d say he’s a member of the Luddite camp with you.”
Aidan glared across the table, but dug out the lab manager’s file and tossed it on the floor with the others. “That leaves two dozen scientists and students, seven lab managers, Altman’s son, and—” he slid another haphazard stack of files between them “—GNL network security.”
“If you can do a prelim review on those—” Jamie nodded to the network security files “—I’d like to examine the back trace I ran after the hack today, and dig deeper into persons we flagged already. With GNL, you should focus on Jake, Mike, Emily and Dave.”
“Dave?”
“I don’t think he’s involved, but that stash of extra key cards gives me pause.”
“On it. What are you looking for?”
“Online aliases, hacker histories, the like.”
“How’s an FBI agent going to do that?”
“An FBI agent isn’t. StickyHeel12, on the other hand...” He’d created the alias in college, a play on his alma mater’s mascot and his jersey number.
“Very clever. And I don’t want to know any more. What do you need for this hack-a-thon?”
“A full pot of coffee.”
“I can do that.” He moved to stand, and Jamie caught him by the wrist.
“It’s not the same, you losing Gabe and me losing Derrick, but I think, I hope, for both our sakes, that it gets easier. The heart’s a resilient beast.”
“I hope so too.” Aidan’s eyes met his, the warm brown swirling with a little bit of sadness and something else Jamie couldn’t identify.
Something that stoked the hope in him and had the beast in his own chest stirring again.