Chapter Eight
Sunday operated like any other day of the week at Galveston National Laboratory. People in white lab coats and biohazard suits moved behind sealed glass walls while countless others traveled the main hallways. Even with uniformed security guards outside the main entry to each BSL-4 lab, the sheer number of people circulating in and around GNL made Aidan’s head hurt.
How were they supposed to narrow down their suspect list?
He reached up to wipe a bead of sweat from his brow, only to whack his gloved hand against the plastic mask covering his face. He’d never experienced claustrophobia before. Sealed up tight in a biohazard suit, he imagined it felt a lot like this.
“As you can see, gentlemen, we’ve taken every precaution to secure these pathogens,” a tinny voice said from the speaker inside Aidan’s suit. Standing next to Walker, Henry Altman, GNL’s director, had one gloved hand on the breast pocket of his suit, activating the lab-wide comm system, while the other rested on the keypad lock of a vial cabinet.
“Excuse me.” Another suited scientist, this one a woman, brushed past Aidan to a different cabinet behind them, keyed in her code, and opened the door. She transferred a vial from the cabinet into a small box at the side of a large enclosed hood and air locks clicked in place. A robotic arm withdrew the vial from the box and moved it into the center of the hood, within reach of the black gloves she slid her hands into. Aidan suppressed a shiver as he wondered what deadly disease was uncapped inside the hood five feet away.
“These keypads are on the internal system behind the air gap, correct?” Walker asked.
“That’s right,” Altman said. “And so are the doors from the changing rooms further in. Each person with access has a unique badge and code assigned by GNL network security.”
“Can those badges or codes be changed?”
“Only by network security, and it’s not a frequent request. Most of us find it easier to memorize the first one they give us.” Altman walked ahead of them. “That being said, everyone’s badges were replaced and codes reset this past weekend.”
“It’s randomized. Less likely to be guessed or figured out.” Walker’s voice directly in his right ear caught Aidan by surprise, even though he’d been the one to suggest concealed comm devices that would allow them to speak on a private, closed channel. “Looks like they took our advice to increase security.”
“They’ve seen all the outbreak movies too. No one wants to be ground zero for an incident like that.” Aidan tapped his front pocket for the open mic. “Dr. Altman, who’s responsible for background checks on personnel with BSL-4 access?”
“Everyone goes through the same clearance process as CDC staff.”
“And the hiring decisions?”
“Lab supervisors,” Altman said. “Principal investigators, in a normal academic setting, which is one difference between CDC and GNL. Despite the shared terminology, we operate more like an academic institution, with students and academic researchers.”
“Isn’t that risky?”
The other suited scientist approached, the top of her head barely reaching Walker’s shoulder. “I assure you, these are the best of the best,” she said. “They’ll save us all one day, when an attack happens.”
“Though not from our facility,” Altman added.
“That’s what we’re here to ensure, Dr. Altman.” Walker extended his gloved hand to the woman. “Jamie Walker, and this is my partner, Aidan Talley.”
“They’re with the FBI,” Altman supplied. “They’re investigating the security breaches.”
“Dr. Naomi Griffin.” The woman’s sharp brown eyes assessed them through the plastic barrier. “Welcome to GNL. This is my lab, specializing in anthrax.”
Another chill raced up Aidan’s spine and by the quirk of Griffin’s lips, he didn’t think he hid that one so well.
“I also oversee the BSL-4 labs at GNL, including hiring decisions,” she continued. “I have the utmost confidence in my people.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” Jamie flashed the smile that had everyone eating out of his palm. “I have to ask, though, is there anyone with access to the BSL-4 labs who you don’t have final hiring say over?”
She glanced at Altman, who nodded. “Dr. Altman and his staff,” she said.
“Okay, anyone else?”
She paused a moment. “Network security and building janitorial, though the janitors don’t have access beyond the changing rooms.”
“You do the interior cleaning yourselves?” Aidan asked.
“Yes, each lab has two lab managers responsible for upkeep, ordering and general lab maintenance. They keep this place running.”
“Not an easy job.”
“That’s why there are two per lab.” She finally cracked a smile, and Aidan thought he might like this woman. She reminded him of Mel. All business and protective of her people.
“Were they included in the personnel files you provided our colleagues?” Aidan asked.
She nodded. “They’re professional lab managers, not students. They’ve had years of experience in other labs, and before starting here, they go through special training at the CDC.”
“After you, I’m guessing they know more about what goes on here than anyone.”
“You’d be correct.”
“Let’s make sure they’re on the interview list,” he said to Walker.
“Gentlemen,” Altman interrupted. “I’m supposed to deliver you to network security in ten minutes, and we still have to go through decontamination. If you’ll follow me, please.”
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Griffin,” Aidan said. “Are you available to meet later today for follow-up questions, after Agent Walker and I finish our interviews?”
“I’ll clear my schedule.” Her smile changed, became suggestive. “And please, call me Naomi.” He credited the woman’s age, closer to his own, as the reason he, instead of Walker, had caught her eye.
Ignoring her interest, he followed Altman and Walker through the decontamination chamber and into the locker room. He had a much harder time ignoring his partner showering on the other side of a half wall from him, even though his back was to him and he’d hadn’t once glanced Walker’s direction.
After their dance last night, and the landslide of guilt that had followed, he’d resolved to keep things with Walker strictly professional. It’d been only eight months since he’d lost Gabe. His husband deserved more, better, and Aidan had enough on his plate already. An ill-advised, destined to be ill-fated fling with his partner would unduly complicate matters. He’d keep things friendly, all aboveboard.
Not an easy task.
For someone determined to live life under the radar, Walker’s presence filled a room. It wasn’t aggressive or dominant, traits Aidan knew he often projected. Rather, everything about Walker was nonthreatening and inviting. His appearance, despite his size, his smile, despite the model quality of it, and the easy flirtation that drew out of Aidan a sense of youth and playfulness he recalled from the early days of his relationship with Gabe. And a worrisome streak of jealousy, if his adverse reaction to Torres’s interest was any indication. He chalked the former up to Walker’s age, the latter to partner possessiveness, and the lying-to-himself part of it to self-preservation.
Several stalls down, Altman turned off his shower and Aidan moved to do the same. Walker’s hand shot across the barrier and grabbed him by the wrist. His heart tripped over itself—a cresting wave of heat, a pulling undertow of guilt—and his eyes shot to Walker’s.
“Wait,” his partner mouthed. He jerked his hand back over the divider and stepped under the showerhead, right before Altman shouted, “I’m going to change and step into the hallway to make a quick call.”
“We’ll be right out,” Walker returned.
The shower room door snicked closed, and now that he’d been forced to turn Walker’s direction, Aidan couldn’t tear his gaze away. Walker punched off his shower and ran his hands over his face and hair, sluicing off water and flexing muscles. Aidan’s gaze was riveted on his exquisitely toned chest, on the sprinkling of light brown hair, on the interlocking N and C tattooed on his left pectoral. He should look away but his attention was transfixed on all the things he wanted to touch and taste, his body heating and hardening at the prospect.
That beautiful chest got closer, flexed bigger, as Walker braced his hands shoulder width apart on the dividing wall. He cleared his throat, and when Aidan’s eyes met his, they were the same darker shade of blue they’d been at the Tavern last night. “You can turn yours off now.”
No, I can’t, would have been the honest answer. Instead, Aidan grappled for any defense, falling back on sarcasm. “I’m sorry. I was distracted by your Baywatch audition.”
Walker rolled his eyes, reached across the wall, and shut off Aidan’s water. “I didn’t want Altman to hear us. We need to talk before we meet with network security.”
The case talk snapped Aidan out of his Whiskey-haze. “What are you thinking?”
“That our inside man might not be a researcher in one of the labs but a security tech.”
“Thought crossed my mind.”
“I don’t remember seeing those personnel files in any I reviewed. Were they in yours?”
Aidan shook his head. “I’ll text Todd. Have him add it to our list of requests.”
“Let’s not.” Walker handed him one of the plastic-wrapped towels from the ledge outside their stalls. “The files we received came from network security. We can’t be sure they won’t filter the files they send on themselves.”
Aidan struggled with the plastic wrap around his towel. “So we ask Altman?”
Walker ripped his open with one tug and tossed the plastic on the ground. “Uncontaminated, so to speak.”
“Very funny,” he grumbled.
Laughing, Walker tossed the unwrapped towel at his face and snatched the other out of his hands, getting it open by the time Aidan detangled himself.
“Segregating information sources to check for tampering,” he said, toweling off. “Good instincts. I’ll speak to Altman on the way out. How do you want to handle the initial meeting with security?”
“We don’t let on that we suspect them, obviously.”
Aidan rested back against the far dividing wall. “Thank you, John Madden.”
Walker resumed his flexed position on the half wall between them, and Aidan thanked all that was holy for the extra-large towel around his waist. “You’ll need to distract them long enough for me to upload the monitoring program.”
“How do you propose I do that?”
“Ask them to repeat everything in plain English. It’s damn annoying.”
“Tell me how you really feel.”
Walker’s gaze drifted down Aidan’s body. “Don’t think you want that either.”
* * *
Aidan flipped through the binder of GNL network security’s standard operating procedures while Walker peppered Dave Fuller, head of network security, with questions.
“I’ve reviewed the access logs, and Dr. Altman showed us the physical locking mechanisms. He said all the badges and access passwords were changed over the weekend.”
Dave nodded. “As of midnight last night, all personnel with BSL-4 access were assigned new access cards for the external doors and new codes for all the internal keypads.”
“Any issues?” Aidan asked.
Fuller rubbed his beady black eyes with the heels of his palms. A portly middle-aged man with scraggly dark hair, he seemed a genial fellow, if a bit overworked. “Other than supposed geniuses forgetting their new passcodes and flooding the help desk with calls, no issues.”
Aidan chuckled. “Absent-minded professors.”
Fuller laughed with him. “You have no idea.”
Walker asked about GNL’s encryption system, and he and Fuller dived back into technobabble. No, lingo. Aidan tuned out, taking in his surroundings instead. They were in another fucking cave, only this one actually was in the basement. Located in the center of the building, it had no windows or immediate exits to the outside. A claustrophobic’s worst nightmare. Were all cyber nerds predisposed to vampirism?
A booted heel collided with his shin and Aidan feared he’d said that last bit out loud, but then he remembered Walker saying that would be his signal to play dumb.
Not gonna be hard.
He looked up from the SOP binder, scratching his head for effect. “Can we back up a second?”
Two sets of eyes turned to him.
“I’m sorry, but could you please explain those security specs to me, in plain English?”
Walker rolled his eyes, harder than usual, and Aidan considered kicking him back. Before he got the chance, Walker rose. “If you don’t mind, Dave, I’m going to use the restroom while you enlighten my Luddite partner.”
“No problem. Wife’s a lawyer. I have to plain English the TV remote to her.”
“That sounds about right for Talley here.”
He couldn’t reach his shin, but Aidan rammed his heel down hard on his partner’s toes.
Walker shot him the bird behind the desk so Fuller wouldn’t see, then asked for a visitor’s pass to get in and out of the security hub.
“A visitor’s pass won’t get you in here.” Fuller pulled his ID card off the lanyard around his neck. “Take mine.”
Did Fuller give his access card to just anyone?
“I’m guessing use of another’s access card is prohibited?” Walker said, on the same wavelength.
Fuller shrugged. “If you can’t trust the FBI, who can you trust? Besides, I’ll hold your Luddite partner hostage until you give it back.”
Walker took the card and tucked it in his pocket. “Fair trade.”
“Hey!” Aidan gasped in mock outrage, which drew laughs all around and a just-kidding shoulder bump from Walker before be left.
“So, Agent Talley,” Fuller said, “You want to understand the encryption we use?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
Fifteen minutes and several diagrams later, Walker rejoined them. “You got it now?”
Aidan crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands in his lap. “Yeah, in fact, I do. Dave’s a much better teacher than you.”
Walker flashed him an indulgent grin as he flipped through diagrams. “These are good.”
Fuller’s face lit with pride. “I teach at the community college. Introduction to Cryptography. I find drawings always help the noobs.”
Aidan ignored the slang he recognized from decades of gaming. “How many nights a week do you teach?”
“Three.”
“And there’s always someone on staff here when you’re not?”
“At least two. Night shift used to be just one of us. We’ve upped that since the breaches.”
“We’d like to meet with each member of your staff, starting with the teams who were on during the breaches.”
“Bruce, who you met when you came in, was here with me during the two day-shift breaches. He went up to one of the BSL-2 labs on a service call. You can talk to him when he gets back. Emily and Jake will be in at six. They were on during the first early morning breach. Our other team, Mike and Colin, will be in tomorrow. They’re the lucky ones; missed all the action.”
And shot straight to the top of Aidan’s suspect list.
“Do you have any theories about what might be going on?” Walker asked.
“Well, seeing as it was a hack on the exterior firewall, I’m thinking they either don’t know about or don’t have access to the interior one. Since they haven’t tried again in almost a week, I’m hoping it was just some hacker punks.”
“Is there a CompSci program here?” Aidan asked.
“Not at UT Med. Only at the community college.”
“Could you provide a list of crypto students you think capable of this level hack?”
Fuller hesitated. “I’ll have to check with the dean. Don’t discount the med students here. Some of them are pretty tech savvy and they’ve all got God complexes. What’s a little hack on the building with the deadly viruses for someone with an ego that big?”
“Why not just walk out of the building with it?” Aidan said. “Why bother hacking in at all?”
Walker glanced over at him. “Like Dave said, ego, and to cover their tracks.”
“Something we should look into.”
No sooner had the words left Aidan’s mouth than alarms began to sound all around them. On the bank of computers behind Dave, on the phone and tablet lying on the desk, on the phone in Walker’s pocket.
“What’s happening?” Aidan asked.
Dave had already spun to face the bank of computers.
“Intrusion alert.” Walker perched on the edge of his seat. “Another breach.”
“Right now?”
Walker nodded and Aidan, recalling he’d tampered with the security system, mouthed, “Did you do this?”
His partner shook his head and stood, peering over Fuller’s shoulder.
“Shit! They’ve breached the exterior firewall around two of the labs,” Dave said. “Looks like they’re going for three and four. Where the fuck is Bruce? He should be back by now.”
Bruce got added to Aidan’s list as well.
“I can help.” Walker circled the desk and pulled up a chair in front of the second bank of computers. “Log me in.”
Dave reached across, and with a few quick keystrokes the screens in front of Walker came to life. A Matrix-like maze of numbers and diagrams flashed across the computer screens and technobab—techno-speak flowed between Walker and Dave, faster than Aidan could keep up with. Even from this angle, he could see the rapt attention in his partner’s frame, in his eyes reflected on the screens. Aidan got lost in his head for a moment, wondering what it would be like to have all that attention focused on him in a decidedly unprofessional context. But then Dave and Walker’s voices escalated, snapping him out of it.
This breach was different than the others.
“They’ve breached the air gap,” he heard among the directives slung back and forth.
Aidan flew out of his chair and crouched by Walker’s side, one hand on the computer desk for balance and the other on the back of Walker’s chair. “Can you shut them down?”
Not sparing a glance, Walker moved his fingers over the keyboard faster.
After what felt like an hour but was probably closer to two minutes, Walker pushed back from the keyboard and cracked his knuckles. “It’s done. They’re out.”
Aidan released the breath he’d been holding and moved his hand from the chair to Walker’s shoulder. “Good job, partner.”
Walker graced him with a wide smile, and Aidan’s heart did that lovely-awful tripping beat again, before Fuller’s voice cut in.
“I’ve got a back trace running to the source.”
Aidan stood, hands on his waist. “So we might have this solved by tonight?”
Walker looked less than hopeful. “If they’re good enough to hack this far, they’ve probably got countermeasures in place.”
“He’s right.” Grim-faced, Fuller rose and stretched his creaking joints. “I’m going to call in Emily and Jake. Mike’s out of town until he’s on shift tomorrow, but I’ll get Colin down here now. All hands on deck.”
He ducked into the hallway, phone to his ear, and Aidan skirted behind Walker to collapse in Fuller’s chair. “He’s awfully trusting of us, with his space and his access cards.”
“I noticed that too. Sure made planting my bug easier.”
“And you’re certain that had nothing to do with what just happened?”
“Positive.”
“Okay then, explain to me what just happened. What did they breach?”
“That’s the odd part. They flipped the switch on one of the doors from the decontamination chamber to a BSL-4 lab.”
Aidan snatched a pen off Dave’s desk, spinning it around his thumb. “How’d they skip the shower door? And why not flip the switch on one of the vial cabinets first? None of this is worth it if they can’t access the toxins.”
“If that’s the target at all.”
“This is like a fucking game of Mouse Trap.”
“Welcome to Hacker 101.”
Aidan glared. “I’m gonna need a lot more coffee for this.”