Page 1 of Face

Chapter 1

Hacker’s Paradise

I twirled the pencil nervously between my fingers as the multiple lines of code stared back at me from the monitor. I was determined to figure out how these damn hackers got through to our servers. Even more concerning was that I hadn’t told Viper—or anyone—about the breach. Don’t get me wrong, I would eventually, but the way I saw it, if I told him now, he’d just tell me to handle it. I did, however, think it was time for me to solicit some help.

“What’s up?” Jemini asked as she popped her head into my office in response to my text to meet me here.

I indicated the chair in front of my desk. “Have a seat.”

She sat and frowned, presumably at the look on my face. “What’s wrong?”

The thing about Jemini was… she was very intuitive. I knew she had a mother for a witch but was never a practicing one before she was turned against her will into a vampire, but I tended to think there was some kind of psychic thing going on with her—and part of me wondered if she even knew she had it. It was like women’s intuition on steroids.

“We’ve been hacked, and I need your help,” I replied.

Her eyes widened. “Oh no. When did it happen?”

I set the pencil down and folded my hands together on the desk. “About a week ago.”

“Show me,” she said, coming around the desk.

I had four computer monitors set up and I pointed to the one on the right. “See this here? It’s some kind of malware.”

She nodded. “You’re correct, it looks like spyware.” She looked down at me. “The antivirus software isn’t booting it out?”

“No, it only detects it,” I said, shaking my head. “Look.” I ran the software and showed that it failed to get rid of the bug. “It’s already wormed into our comms, even after I put patches on everything and updated the firewall.”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “Not good.”

“I can’t manually remove it, either. I tried.” I raked my hand through my hair.

“Obviously, you’ve tried Googling it,” she asked.

“Yes, but I’m not getting anything useful. Results pop up mostly for personal PCs. This isn’t the most complex system, but it’s way more than a simple operating system, and this bug is more than a dumb trojan horse.”

She laid her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. Let me call one of my former coworkers, Mack. I’ll be vague. He’s got a pretty big brain.”

“Thanks, Jemini,” I murmured as she walked out, typing on her phone.

I looked back at the screen and blew out a breath. It wasn’t like the answer was just going to pop out at me, no matter how long I stared at it. If Jemini’s friend didn’t have any solutions, I might have to consult the Dark Web, which I really didn’t want to do. Accessing it a few days ago may have been what caused the malware to begin with. I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t downloaded anything suspicious, nor had I even plugged in anything external like a USB. I had backup drives always plugged in, so it couldn’t have come from those. I had only accessed a human trafficking site I’d stumbled on recently. I sometimes sent anonymous tips to the local police whenever I found illegal stuff on the Dark Web. This particular site I was tracking carefully, watching when they’d move their operation location. When they eventually came to New Orleans, there would be no police involved. Nighthawks would be taking care of that, BSI be damned. Those humans weren’t going to continue to get away with that shit.

“Knock, knock.”

I looked up to see Kalissa standing in the doorway. “Come in, take a load off.” I pointed to her large, swollen belly and then to the chair.

“Thanks,” she replied, slowly taking a seat.

I stopped breathing in through my nose in hopes I could tamp down the hunger that rallied in me whenever she was around.

She held up her cell phone and said, “Can you help me with something?”

“Sure,” I said, taking it from her. “What’s wrong?”

“Whenever I access the browser, it just keeps closing on me. It’s frustrating, especially when I’m trying to buy something and have to start over.”

As I located the icon for the browser, I said, “I’ve been meaning to set up a small PC station in the clubhouse for people to use for whatever they need. You’ve motivated me to get that done this week.” I tapped the icon and went to a major online shopping retailer. I put some stuff into the “cart” and sure enough, the browser shut down. “Let me make sure you don’t have a virus, first.”

What was it with me and computer viruses today? I ran a quick scan and found nothing. Then, I logged her out of the browser, uninstalled it, then reinstalled it. I handed the phone back to her and told her to log in and try again.

---