Title: HACKING IT
Author: Kimberly Dean
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 200
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Author: Kimberly Dean
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 200
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Independent software developer Kylie Grant is on top of her game in
the world of IT. She has loyal clients, a good reputation, and a
prestigious membership in technology giant Afire Industries’ small
business accelerator. Things are going well until she stumbles across an
innocuous issue with the lighting in the building where she rents
space. When she digs into the problem, she discovers something
unexpected—a hack.
The incursion doesn’t affect her, but Kylie leaves enough clues to fix the problem. That earns her a visit from Luke McAllister, Afire’s chief security officer. Luke is handsome and rugged and everything that Kylie likes in a man, but she soon finds that he is blaming her for the security breach. Before long, the two are on a collision course, but also secretly looking at more than each other’s digital footprints.
When a fluke accident sends Kylie to the emergency room, Luke fears that the beautiful developer is in danger beyond the online world. Little does he know that she is also hiding a secret that threatens to jeopardize their now sizzling relationship.
Can Kylie fix Afire’s problems without falling victim to the hacker? And can Luke learn to trust her and keep her safe before their enemy strikes again?
The incursion doesn’t affect her, but Kylie leaves enough clues to fix the problem. That earns her a visit from Luke McAllister, Afire’s chief security officer. Luke is handsome and rugged and everything that Kylie likes in a man, but she soon finds that he is blaming her for the security breach. Before long, the two are on a collision course, but also secretly looking at more than each other’s digital footprints.
When a fluke accident sends Kylie to the emergency room, Luke fears that the beautiful developer is in danger beyond the online world. Little does he know that she is also hiding a secret that threatens to jeopardize their now sizzling relationship.
Can Kylie fix Afire’s problems without falling victim to the hacker? And can Luke learn to trust her and keep her safe before their enemy strikes again?
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Prologue
It was too danged bright in here again. Kylie Grant
pushed back from her desk and glared at the overhead fluorescent lights. It was
a subtle change, but, like most developers, she preferred her working space
darker. She spent her days staring at a computer screen writing code. The last
thing she wanted was more artificial light waves hitting her eyeballs.
Grumbling, she grabbed her laptop and headed for the seating area by the
fireplace.
This was the
third time this week that she’d noticed the change. She tended to stay later than
most people at Start ’er Up, and the sun had already set over Puget Sound. That was when the glare
became most noticeable. Still, she was surprised that nobody else seemed to be
bothered by it.
She stopped
at the grab ’n go area for some trail mix and a cappuccino. She liked the
coworking space where she and a group of small business owners gathered every
day to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. She didn’t want to have to go back
to Starbucks, where she had to listen to college kids moaning about their love
lives or hipsters strategizing about how to get ahead in the corporate
workplace. She’d been there and done that—and gotten precisely nowhere.
She shuddered
a bit as she sank onto the sofa. The idea of returning to the cubicle
environment or, worse, the open-office land of chaos? No way. If she had to
deal with a little glare, she could do it. She used the remote to turn on the
gas fireplace and relaxed against the cushions.
Still, she
squinted.
She blew out
a breath of frustration.
Josie stuck
her head around the corner. “I’m heading out.”
“Okay. Have a
good night,” Kylie said. She was the last one here, as usual. She was a night
owl who didn’t do mornings, but she wasn’t concerned. The building where Start
’er Up was housed was fitted with all the bells and whistles of a “smart”
building. The doors operated on a badging system, cameras monitored all
entries, and even the shades on the windows operated on a set timetable. Right
now, they were down tight. Still, they were in the heart of downtown Seattle. The women here looked
out for one another.
“I’ll be here
for a little while longer,” she said. She had a website template due for a
client tomorrow. It wouldn’t take her long to finish it up, but there were a
few other things she wanted to putter around with.
“Hey,” she
said after a moment’s thought. “Does the lighting in here seem off to you?”
Josie paused.
“Not that I’ve noticed. What’s wrong with it?”
“Too bright.”
But maybe not as bright as Kylie thought. She’d seen devs scatter like rats
when a light switch was thrown, while the business types just looked at them
strangely.
“Let’s check
it out.” Josie pulled her laptop out of her bag and took a seat on the puffy
chair at the end of the coffee table. She tucked her legs up underneath her as
she opened the software for the building system controls.
Josie was the
office manager, people connector, and general idea machine of Start ’er Up. She
ran the place, but was actually an employee of Afire Industries, the tech giant
next door that supported the small-business accelerator. Kylie had never met
someone whose brain functioned on all cylinders in so many different areas. Her
own mainly functioned in the land of Java and Python.
“It looks
like everything is set correctly,” Josie said as she paged through the lighting
controls.
Kylie glanced
over her shoulder at the screen and scrunched her nose at the page design. The
2000s were calling; they wanted their styling back. “Can you send me that
link?”
Josie lifted
an eyebrow. “Do you need me to make you an administrator?”
Kylie
shrugged. She’d see.
The corners
of her friend’s lips quirked upward. She went ahead and added Kylie anyway.
“Don’t stay too late.”
“I won’t,”
Kylie murmured. She was already mulling over how a bug might be the source of
her discomfort.
There was
nothing a developer despised more than a bug.
She didn’t
even hear Josie leave as she began exploring the software. Building control
systems were all the rage these days. They saved money on energy, increased
safety, and provided a ton of data on building usage. When she left here
tonight, the swipe of her badge would let the building know to turn down the
heat and shut the lights off entirely. Maybe a setting Josie hadn’t noticed had
gotten bumped or a sensor that monitored ambient light was going bad.
Kylie felt
her curiosity start to bubble. The final touches on that website were going to
have to wait.
She fell into
the zone. Being added as an administrator saved her some time. She quickly
checked out the most obvious possible causes, but soon, she was poking here and
prodding there. She downed her cappuccino and munched on her trail mix. She was
well into her second helping when some cross-site scripting opened a door and
begged her to enter.
“Well, hello
there.”
She sat up
straighter when she realized what she’d uncovered. This was no bug. The
building control system for Start ’er Up had been hacked.
She worried
her teeth against her lower lip as she assessed how bad it was. The
infiltration was clever. Whomever had hacked the system had gotten in by way of
the Internet of Things—all those computer-chip controlled devices that were
hooked together to make operating the building easy. Anything with an IP
address could be hacked. That meant the routers, the printers, the smart
phones, and potentially even the coffee maker were susceptible to cyberattacks.
She’d secured her own devices the moment she’d bought them, but Start ’er Up
had obviously been vulnerable.
And they’d
been breached. By somebody pretty good, she had to admit. They’d tried to cover
their tracks, but she could still see the path they’d taken. From what she
could tell, they’d only made one mistake. Her lights.
“They’re mine
now,” she said as she fixed the glitch in the lighting system.
She secured
the network in a matter of minutes. There was only one problem.
The hacker
was already in. By now, they’d made other entryways.
She crossed
her legs at the ankles atop the coffee table and stared into the flames jumping
in the fireplace before her. What to do… What to do…
The hack had
been on Start ’er Up, but who’d want to hack a group of small potatoes like
them? All the small companies here had potential—well, some of them—but most
were still struggling to get off the ground. The hack could have been made by a
green hat (a hacker just cutting his teeth), but those types usually started
with the Wi-Fi systems of the neighbors next door.
No, there was
a much more obvious reason why Start ’er Up had been chosen: Afire.
The
innovative giant owned this space. The building, the computer network, and even
the sofa on which she was seated were its property. Afire supported the
entrepreneurial ecosystem by providing a coworking space for fresh thinkers,
but by doing so, it had left itself vulnerable.
What to do…
What to do…
Kylie rubbed
her hands over her face. This wasn’t her problem. She was just a renter here.
It wasn’t her fault that Afire’s security team had 1) left a back door open and
2) hadn’t noticed the breach. She didn’t even like Afire.
Well, it
wasn’t so much Afire Industries, per se. It was that whole hotshot
male-dominated tech industry. She’d given too many headache-filled hours to a
company just like that and been discounted, overlooked, and basically taken for
granted. It was why she’d set off on her own. She was her own boss now, primarily
making websites and databases. And doing other odd jobs… It paid the bills. She liked setting her own hours and
working with her own clients, and her aching head felt so much better.
The ceiling
in the tech industry wasn’t made of glass; it was made of titanium.
Her sensitive
eyes had led her to find the hack, and she’d fixed the lighting problem. She
wanted nothing to do with any more of this.
But Josie…
Kylie groaned
and dropped her head back against the sofa. She didn’t want her friend to get
in trouble for this, and, darn it, she was still a recovering good girl. As
much as she wanted to just walk away, she couldn’t. The temptation to follow
the hack was too strong. How deep did it go? How much havoc had it caused?
“This isn’t
your fight,” she warned herself. Afire could protect itself or pay the price.
Still, her curiosity had been roused.
“Drat it
all.” Deciding that sleep wasn’t going to happen tonight, she returned to the
grab ’n go area for another cappuccino before diving back in.
Her fingers
flew across the keyboard, and, soon, it wasn’t caffeine that had her mental
juices flowing. She found the knothole where the hacker had moved from Start
’er Up into Afire’s systems. Time flew as she followed them behind the firewall
into areas where she wasn’t supposed to be. Keeping an eye out for security
flags or trapdoors, she followed the hacker, learning more and more about Afire
and the hacker himself as she went. More than once, she had to remind herself
that this was a scouting mission only.
It was well
after midnight when she finally backed her way out. She closed the lid
on her laptop and stretched to pop the kink in her back.
“Ahh,” she
said with a sigh.
The
infiltration was like a cobweb branching out across Afire’s massive network.
She’d been tempted to dig even deeper, but in the end, she’d decided to just
leave breadcrumbs pointing out the breach to the people who were supposed to be
watching for those kinds of things. Maybe that would light a fire underneath
them.
She chuckled
to herself. “Good one.”
And she’d
been good for as long as she could stand. She turned off the fireplace and
gathered up her things. Her work was done. Afire’s so-called security “experts”
would have to take it from here.
When taking the Myers-Briggs personality test in high school,
Kimberly Dean was rated as an INFJ
(Introverted-Intuitive-Feeling-Judging). This result sent her into a
panic, because there were no career paths recommended for the
personality type. Fortunately, it turned out to be well suited to a
writing career. Since receiving that dismal outlook, Kimberly has become
an award-winning author of romance and erotica. When not writing, she
enjoys movies, sports, traveling, music, and sunshine.
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