Page 368 of Hell Hath No Fury
And it all happened to me at motherfuckin’ Christmas when I spotted the second of seven swans.
CHAPTER ONE
Finnegan
“I know it’s a hassle, ma’am, but you’re in good hands.”
Mrs. Herald made a noise of distress in her throat. “You’re such a dear for being so patient with me.”
If only she knew.
Gertrude Herald didn’t have a problem with her VPN, but it was easy enough to convince her that she did. She was a resident at Haven Community Homes in a swanky neighborhood in Vancouver. Her children were too busy to visit her, let alone give her lessons on the brand-new computer they’d bought her in order to keep in touch wirelessly.
She was just a sweet old lady left to die a lonely death and she was starved for attention.
So, I gave it to her.
This was the reason hacking was so damned easy.
Social engineering and phishing were simple tactics with profound results. It wasn’t just about hacking code, it was about hacking human minds.
Mrs. Herald wanted to tell me all about her family, those absentee children too busy to visit her whom she was still so proud of. The brain surgeon in Seattle and the lawyer at a top five firm in Vancouver.
Most people used combinations of family member’s names and birthdays for their passwords and security codes. Failing that, pets and childhood staples like schools and street names.
Mrs. Herald gave me all of it.
She thought I was some geeky, goody-two-shoes in a corporate office downtown wearing the requisite suit and glasses.
The reality would have shocked her.
I wasn’t Bob Hobbins, twenty-three-year-old customer service representative of Humboldt Telecommunications.
I was Finnegan Ramsey, nineteen-year-old orphan sitting in a McDonald’s parking lot hunched over my computer in the front seat with a joint caught between my teeth and my black hood pulled up over my flaming red hair. My fingers flew over the keys, cold grease smearing across the board from the French fries I’d demolished earlier. My breath fogged up the windows, but I refused to turn on the heat because the cold gave me clarity. No music either, it was a distraction and I needed the focus.
I was close.
Poor Mrs. Herald, widowed seven years ago, born and raised in Kitsilano, mother to two sons, was my golden fucking ticket.
Before you pass judgement on me for stealing from an old woman, you should know, the accounts I was hacking into using her date of birth and middle name weren’t her own.
They were her son’s.
That prestigious lawyer with a corner office downtown.
Dermott Herald.
“He’s such a good boy,” Mrs. Herald was saying into my Bluetooth earbuds as I scrutinised her son’s financials. “You know, he has flowers sent to me every week. This time, they were daisies.”
I swallowed my derisive snort.
Dermott was not a fucking ‘good boy.’
He was an exploitive piece of shit who provided legal counsel for one of the biggest illegal prostitution networks in North America.
Of course, that was just conjecture until lovely Mrs. Herald answered the phone and provided me with all the information I needed to hack into Dermott’s accounts.
The flash drive attached to the computer flashed as it transferred his data into my possession forever.
