Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2) (11 page)

Tommy and his mom
gathered their tray of fish and chips, stopped at the pop machine to draw a Diet
Coke and a Coke, then made their way to the tables overlooking the water.

It didn’t take
long to fill Tommy up. Soon he was antsy. He got up, walked around, looked down
into the bay. He occasionally saw tiny fish swimming around the pilings. He saw
some sea anemones growing; on the bottom he saw a crab. Then he noticed
something very different. A large white blob nudged gently against the piling
with the waves. Was it some kind of white seal? Then it dawned on him what he
was looking at.

“Mom. Come here. Hurry.”

“Just a minute,
honey. Let Mom finish her lunch.”

“No, Mom. You need
to come now.”

His mom took
another bite of fish, then grabbing a couple of fries in her hand; she walked
over to the railing.

“Look, Mom. Right
there.” Tommy pointed at a thing floating around the piling.

“OH MY GOD!” His
mom screamed. The fries fell to the ground. “Somebody, call 911!”

****

Ted glared at his
computer screen. Then he stood and stretched. All around him the detritus of hard
labor at the office marked the end of the day. The group at the next table left
a stack of pizza boxes. He smelled the sharp garlic aroma from Thai takeout
containers at another table.

Someone had placed
a pair of lacy panties on top of the wooden bear’s head at his table. Bear
seemed to take it in stride. If you can’t take a joke at YTS, he said, you
won’t last long.

Bear was the only
other person still in the office. Their co-workers melted away into the evening
while Ted’s attention was focused on his target.

He'd spent the
whole day trying to hack into an insurance company’s Web site. He’d tried SQL
injection attacks, carefully crafting SQL code in the page’s text boxes hoping
to gain control of the database server. He tired cross site scripting, using a
little known Internet Explorer security hole, he added his own Java script to
the page in an effort to take control of the site. He tried hacking their
global.asx file, their web.config. In the end, after a full eight hours of
brain sweat, he had to pronounce them hack-proof. Ted was not happy.

Bear wasn’t
satisfied. He thought he could hack any system. When Ted left work, Bear was
still tied to his workstation, trying to hack in. Ted knew damned good and well,
that what little sleep Bear got that night, would be at YTS. Bear was
legendary. Once he sank his teeth into a Web site, he wouldn’t let go until he
was in.

In a way, Ted
hoped that Bear would fail. It wouldn’t look good for Ted if Bear succeeded
where he couldn’t. On the other hand, he kinda liked Bear, in an odd-ball sort
of way, if you could like someone who was that moody and grumpy. Anyway, Ted
wished him well and headed home.

Ted walked the two
blocks to his bus stop in Pioneer Square with his head still immersed in the
problem. Had he missed something? Would Bear find some vulnerability he didn’t
know about yet? Could he learn anything from Bear’s success?

Stepping in a
puddle, in the cobble stone paving of the Square, brought him back to the
present. Walking on those rough stones, when they were wet and slippery, needed
his full attention and now he had a wet shoe to deal with. The evening mist
dripped from the iron pergola covering the corner. At his bus stop, he looked
across to Magic Mouse.

He loved the
quirky toy store. He could let go of his thin veneer of adulthood when he
roamed their aisles. He’d even bought a kite to fly at Gas Works Park this summer, if summer ever got here.

“Hey, hero, how ya
doin’?.” The burly bus driver greeted him as he climbed aboard the MT66.

When was it
going to end?

He stepped off of
the bus at Eastlake and Stewart. He was far enough north of down town that the
sky scrapers faded to six and seven story buildings. Everywhere he could see,
construction cranes heralded new buildings going up in his neighborhood. According
to Chris, the construction crane was the new state bird.

Ted limped the
four blocks to his apartment. His cracked ribs made everything harder. Still, he
was glad he hadn’t bought that new car. He hadn’t driven his old Mitsubishi
since the fight. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to fix his car. Every time he
walked by it, the smashed door reminded him of his humiliation. The boot prints
in the rear panel only added insult to injury. The ugly yellow and green Metro buses
were more convenient for getting around downtown anyway.

Turning his key in
the door, he said, “
Hola, señorito
,” as he picked Oscar up and rolled
him onto his back. Oscar went limp and emitted a loud purr. His small studio
was just as he left it. No barf or hairballs on the carpet today. He’d check
his loft bedroom later. His bed was Oscar’s favorite place to leave him
presents. Oscar hadn’t tipped over any plants or torn down the curtains on the
big sliding glass doors. “Musta been a quiet day,
gato
. No signs of
raping and pillaging.”

Ted leafed through
his mail. Two new Net Flicks movies waited for him,
Patriot Games
and
the original
Bourne Identity
with Richard Chamberlin. He hadn’t more
than taken his wet shoes off, when his Blackberry buzzed in his pocket. He
didn’t recognize the number.

He took a chance
on answering. “Hello?”

He hated
telemarketers. He usually just hung up. That was when he wasn’t feeling
cantankerous. On those occasions, he’d argue with the poor telemarketer for
half an hour or so before they gave up on him.

“Mr. Higuera? This
is Catrina Flaherty.”

Catrina
Flaherty? Oh yeah, my angel.
“Hello, Ms. Flaherty.”

“Call me Catrina,
please. Am I calling at an inconvenient time?” Her voice had that same husky,
commanding tone he remembered from the hospital.

“No, this is fine.
What can I do for you?” He wandered into his kitchenette, pulled a bottle of
Henry’s from the mini-fridge and twisted off the cap. Oscar brushed against his
damp socks.

“I’d like to see
you, Ted. Do you have time to meet with me?”

Ted’s heart rate
sky rocketed. “See me? What do you want to see me for?”

“I thought we
should get to know each other a little better.”

Caramba.
So
what if she was Mama’s age. Ted had visions of her well-filled-out blouse and
long legs. The blonde hair and gray eyes didn’t hurt either. Maybe she thought
Ted was older.

“Can you meet with
me after work tomorrow?” she asked. “Say at Doc Maynard’s?”

You betcha.
“I’ll be there.”

****

Ted made it a
point to wear slacks, a turtleneck sweater and a sports jacket to work that
day instead of his standard T-shirt and jeans. He spent the day fending off the
teasing by Bear and the rest of the crowd. “Got a job interview today?” they’d
ask, or, “Hot date tonight?”

He didn’t want to
tell them that he did, in fact, have a hot date. He wasn’t sure what he
thought. Catrina was much older than him, but she was in prime shape. Was she
one of those cougars he heard about who liked younger men?

If so, why was she
interested in him? He’d love to jump her bones, but what did she want?

He didn’t need a
mama. He already had one. But, on the other hand, if it’s offered, take it.

Five o’clock
couldn’t come soon enough. Ted’s pulse raced and his breathing was shallow as
he raced out the door. He hadn’t felt this nervous since his first date with
Jenny Rodriguez in the eighth grade.
Oh yeah, those were good times.

That was the day
Ted discovered that he was attractive to women, well girls at least. Since then,
he never had a hard time getting a date or at least a piece of ass.

But was that what
Catrina really wanted? She was so confident, so self-assured. Could she really
be interested in a guy twenty years her junior? If not, then why did she call
him?

The walk to Doc
Maynard’s was only a few blocks through a steady drizzle. On a wet weeknight,
the usual crowds had disappeared.

Ted entered the
hundred-plus-year-old watering hole and glanced around the bar. He pictured
Jack London sitting at the bar on his way to the Yukon gold fields. What other
famous characters had sat on these worn benches?

He didn’t see Catrina,
so he found an empty table. Even this early on a miserable evening, the place
was near capacity.
What the hell?
An empty balcony sat on the second
floor above the bar.
Oh yeah, this was where the Underground Tours started.

The sound level
was just below the roar of a 747’s engines and a cloud of smoke hung below the
ceiling. He couldn’t wait for Washington’s new anti-smoking law to go into
effect.

He ordered his
usual Henry’s and waited. A couple of nice-looking Asian girls hung out at the
bar. When one smiled at him and lifted her glass, Ted mouthed “I’m meeting
somebody,” raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders. The girls laughed and
turned away.

Where was Catrina?
He’d been here twenty minutes and was already starting his second beer. If she
didn’t get here soon, he’d be too drunk to hold an intelligent conversation.
What
the hell
. He took another sip.
I don’t think she wants me for an
intelligent conversation anyway.
He felt a slight tingle below the belt.

At the half-hour
mark, she appeared in the doorway. The room was dark and she was backlit. Her
silhouette was unmistakable. Short hair, long legs, perfectly proportioned
body.
Man, why couldn’t she be twenty years younger?

She didn’t so much
walk across the room as glide. Ted was mesmerized by her cat-like movements and
swaying hips. Halfway across the room, she turned to talk with an older man at
the bar. He stood and she embraced him.

Man, does she
look good in those tight jeans.
They showed off her perfect, round ass. As
she turned, he almost lost his breath when he saw that she was wearing a tight,
turtleneck cashmere sweater.

“Mr. Higuera, Ted,
I’m sorry I’m late.” There was that sexy, husky voice. “I had an emergency come
up at the office.” She extended her hand to him. “We can’t leave any of our
clients hanging.”

What kind of
date begins with a handshake?
And Mr. Higuera
? Ted took her hand. It
was hard, her grip firm. “That’s okay. You’ll just have to catch up with me.
I’m already two beers into the night.”

“The usual, Cindy.”
Catrina smiled at the bar maid. When she crossed her legs and sat back in the
chair, she reminded him of Sharon Stone. He felt more excitement stirring down below.

“Thank you,”
Catrina told the barmaid as she put down tonic water with a twist. She turned
to Ted. “I hope this isn’t too unusual. I don’t do business in conventional
ways.”

Business?
“Uh…yeah.
Okay. This is alright.”
What the hell is she talking about?

“I think I may
have something you might be interested in.”

Baby, you got
two things I’d be very interested in.
“What did you have in mind?”

“I have a new
client.”

Huh?

“I think your
skill set is just right for this job. I wanted to see if you’d be interested in
taking a look at it.”

Taking a look?
All of Ted’s excitement evaporated. His head spun for a moment. “This is a job
offer?”

“Not exactly. I
thought we could talk for a few minutes; see if we share the same values. Then,
if you’re interested, we can talk more about the case.”

A woman at the
next table lit a cigarette. It immediately caught Catrina’s attention. She
looked longingly at the cloud the woman exhaled.
It’s almost like she’s
trying to suck in the smoke.

Who is this
woman? Why is she interested in me?

Battered or not, Ted
needed his car. Catrina’s office was south of Safeco Field in the industrial
area of town. He followed his Google Maps directions, passing warehouses, steel
foundries, the old Rainer Brewery and other heavy industrial businesses.

He finally found
his way to Sixth Avenue South and Massachusetts Street.
This place is a
dive.
The parking lot, infested with weeds, hadn’t seen new stripes in
decades. Cigarette butts, beer cans and the occasional used condom, littered
the pavement. The warehouse’s corrugated metal siding was many years past
needing a new coat of paint.

Ted got out of his
car, and following Catrina’s instructions, pushed the button on the call
system. The accented voice greeted him and buzzed him in. Climbing the long,
narrow, steep stairs nearly winded him.

Dios mío, this
place looks like they bought everything at a swap meet.
This dump certainly
didn’t look like a successful PI’s office on TV.

There must have
been two-dozen secondhand desks scattered around the large open area. Most of
them were back to back, with the women working there facing each other. A few
were arranged in fours, with two women working side-by-side, facing two other
women across their desks.

Here and there, a
dog sat at its owner’s feet while she worked away. He could hear a baby
screaming from somewhere down the hallway.

There wasn’t a man
in sight.
What kind of outfit is this anyway? A bunch of Amazon male haters?
Ted felt the estrogen oozing from the walls.

“Mr. Higuera.” A
large, black woman got up from her desk to extend her hand. She let Ted grasp
her fingers. Her limp handshake was merely a slight flip of the wrist.

“Mrs. Flaherty
will be with you shortly. Would you like to take a seat? I can get you coffee
or water.”

“Water would be
nice.” Ted sat on the well-worn sofa. Some ancient copies of
National
Geographic
littered the coffee table.

“My name is
Abeba.” The large woman handed Ted a glass filled with cold water. “Mrs.
Flaherty has been talking about you. I’m hoping we’ll see more of you.”

Ted couldn’t put
his finger on her accent. She spoke perfect English, but it just sounded a
little funny. She almost sounded British.

“Ted, thank you
for coming.” Catrina came around the corner into the reception area. “Come
right this way.” She looked much as she did the night she saved Ted from the
Neo-Nazis. Dressed from head to foot in black. Black boots, black jeans. His gaze
lingered on the black sweater.

Ted followed
Catrina into her office. Her butt was almost hypnotizing.

“Sit down,
please.”

Ted took one of
the unmatched set of chairs in front of Catrina’s desk. “I hope you don’t mind
meeting so late,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to leave work early.”

“Oh, it’s no
problem. We often work late here. As a matter of fact, I have a stakeout
tonight.”

She was serious.
Ted figured she would be spending the night tailing some tomcat of a husband.
He didn’t want to get on the bad side of this lady.

“You said you
wanted to talk to me about a job?” he said.

“Our operation
here has kind of evolved," Catrina said. "I never intended to be
running a criminal background check business. I got a job doing a background
check for one company, then they recommended me to another company, and so on.

“Over the years,
it just sort of grew. Now we have a database with thousands of names. I have
associates in all fifty states to check court records and public documents. For
a hundred dollars, I can learn everything there is to know about you.”

“Isn’t that a
little like science fiction? I’m in the computer security business, I read the
crime novels too, but that doesn’t make it true.”

“Let’s see,
Eduardo Higuera.” Catrina picked up a file folder from her desk. “Born July Fourth,
nineteen eighty–four in East LA. Parents are both illegal immigrants. The
oldest of five children, three boys, two girls. You were a football star at Garfield High School. Went to the University of Washington on a football scholarship, but
didn’t play much. Graduated Summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in
computer science.”

Ted couldn’t
believe what he was hearing. She had his whole life mapped out on paper.

“You went to work
for YTS Digital Security about two months ago.” Catrina sipped at her coffee. “It
looks like you ‘pulled the sword out of the stone.’ You hacked into Justin
McCormack’s private system. That’s marked you for the fast track at YTS. I
expect that if you stay there you’ll end up a millionaire.”

Wow! Ted hadn’t
really looked that far into the future. When she put it that way, well, it
didn’t sound bad at all.

“Here’s the part I
like.” Catrina flipped a sheet of paper in her file. “You were one of a group
of American kids who stopped an al-Qaeda attack on an American cruise ship.
Your friends were all shot up, two of them killed. Eye witnesses say you never
flinched.” She fiddled with the crooked gold horn pendant on a gold chain
around her neck. “You took control of the boat and rammed the terrorists’ ship.
I have reports here that you never panicked and never batted an eye. You saw
people getting hurt and killed all around you, yet you kept your head and
caused the terrorists missile to go off target.”

Ted felt that old,
familiar throbbing in his chest. His breathing became fast and shallow. “I
really didn’t have that much to do with it. The Mounties showed up just in
time. I’m not any kind of a hero, I’m just a
tanto
who got my friends
shot up.”

“That’s the part I
like best of all. You’re modest, even self-depreciating. I think that attitude
would fit in here well.”

Ted grabbed on the
opportunity to change the subject. He didn’t want to think about the
terrorist’s attack any more. “So, what do you need me for? This looks like a
low-tech operation.”

Catrina picked up
a brown onyx fountain pen and tapped it on her desk. After a long pause, she
said, “
That
is precisely the problem. A client calls and wants to do a
background check, chances are that we already have the data in our database. We
have tens of thousands of records.” She took the cap off of the pen and doodled
mindlessly on her desk blotter.

“We’ve outgrown
our technology. We keep the data in an Access database.” She capped the pen and
set it down. With a new vigor she continued. ‘It’s an old, crumbly system. It
crashes several times a month. We have a consulting firm that patches it
together for us, but they’ve been recommending that we rebuild the system in
more scalable technology for years. I need someone who understands this
technology stuff to make it happen. Like I said, this is our cash cow. We have
to take care of it.”

Ted stared at
Catrina’s blotter. It was full of doodles of martini glasses, whiskey bottles
and drinks with frilly umbrellas. “Why do you need me? I’m not a database
expert. I’m a security analyst. I mean, I took database and programming classes
in school, but that’s not what I do.”

Catrina got up and
walked to the filing cabinet next to the book case. She took out a file and
returned to her desk.

“You’re right,”
she said. “I can hire a consultant to rebuild the system for me. But I want
someone here who understands technology. I don’t trust what consultants tell
me. They’re all trying to sell me something. I want someone with some skin in
the game to decide what’s best. I also have an interesting challenge.” She
shoved the file in front of Ted.

Ted picked it up
and opened the cover. “
Millennium Systems
? What do you have to do with
MS?”

“You said you were
a hacker for hire.” Catrina paused and let her words sink in. “I want you to
hack into the Millennium Systems network. I want you to worm your way into
their systems and find some secret information for our client.”

“Lady, you’re
nuts!” Ted felt the palms of his hands grow sweaty. “Even if I could hack into
MS, which is clearly impossible, it’s as illegal as hell. I could go to prison
for five years.” He dropped the file back on Catrina’s desk.

“Not exactly.”
Catrina picked up the file and flipped a few pages, then handed it back to him.
“Here, we have permission from the CEO.”

Ted stared at the
document in disbelief. “I don’t get it. Why would the CEO hire someone to hack
into her own system and get data that is plainly, legally already hers?”

“Something is
fishy at MS. Someone's trying to sabotage the company. She can’t trust her own
security department because they might be part of the problem. We have to find
out who it is.”

Holy shit!
Was he really good enough to hack into a hotshot firm like MS?

****

Detective Sergeant
Tom Bremen had been on “The Job” for twenty years. He’d worked his way from
uniformed patrolman to homicide detective. His best assignment had been on the
Seattle Mounted Patrol. He loved horses, and people, especially kids, were
drawn to mounted officers. He spent more time answering questions about his
mount than he did fighting crime.

But all good
things come to an end. When his sergeant suggested that he might have a shot at
homicide, the elite detective unit, Tom had bitten. Now, after five years of
finding dead bodies in all sorts of places, nothing surprised him.

This call wasn’t
unusual. A floater. Tom hated floaters. After a few days in the water, the fish
and crabs left little that resembled a human being. He only hoped that this DB
would be in better shape.

The one thing he
hated more than floaters was unsolved cases. His squad, one of three homicide
units in the city, had an eighty-percent close rate. That was average for the
city, but well above the national average. It wasn’t near good enough for him.
His goal, his only goal, was a one-hundred-percent close rate. Every homicide
victim deserved that.

Tom pulled his unmarked
Crown Vic up to the curb and climbed out. A coroner’s van and two patrol cars
with flashing lights waited for him. The CSI van pulled in after him.

“What ya got for
me, George?” Tom asked the salt and pepper haired officer in charge of the
scene.

“Floater. Female,
looks like mid-forties. Pretty badly decomposed. Harbor Patrol fished her out
for us. Undressed, no obvious signs of sexual trauma, but look at this.”

The officer led
Tom to a covered lump on the pier. He pulled back the cover. Tom winched.

He had seen all
sorts of things, but this was bad. “That wasn’t fish or crabs. Someone did that
deliberately.”

The body was
missing all of its fingers and teeth. “We’ll have to run DNA on her, see if we
can get an ID. What the hell is that?” Tom pointed to red marks on her breasts.

“Looks like signs
of torture to me, Sarge.”

Human beings’
capacity for cruelty to their fellow human beings always amazed Tom.

“Okay, turn her
over to the coroner. I don’t think that CSI is going to find much here. She was
obviously dumped somewhere else and drifted here with the tide.”

****

“I’m in business
to help people.” Catrina put down her clear glass coffee cup. She looked into
Ted’s eyes. “The only reason we have a criminal background check division is to
fund my investigative unit. We spend most of our time chasing cheating husbands
and working sexual harassment cases, but every now and then, we get to make a
difference. We do a lot of work for domestic violence victims. I specialize in
working with policemen’s wives. I lost a wife a couple of years ago and I never
want that to happen again.”

Despite the
beat-up furniture in Catrina’s office, she was a professional. Ted sensed the
conviction in her voice. She was dedicated to her work.

“When a woman gets
a restraining order against her ex, odds are it won’t do any good. If the son
of a bitch needed a restraining order, he isn’t going to listen to the court
anyway. Do you know how many women are killed or hurt by their exes and
boyfriends who had restraining orders?”

“No.” Ted really
hadn’t thought about it much.

“Most of them.”
Catrina put down her coffee cup, leaned forward and gazed straight into Ted’s
eyes. “For the most part, restraining orders aren’t worth the paper they’re
written on. That’s where we come in.”

“You serve
restraining orders?” Ted squirmed uncomfortably in his ill-fitting chair.

“No, we protect
women. We get them out of dangerous situations and into safe houses. We do
things that the police can’t or won’t do. Anything it takes to defend our
clients. We defend people who can’t defend themselves.”

Ted felt like an
arrow hit his heart. Those words
we defend people who can’t defend themselves,
he’d heard them before. He remembered saying them. Shortly after the terrorist
incident, when Chris’ life hung in the balance, he remembered making a pledge
to Chris’ dad. He said that he had been given a second chance at life and he
wanted it to mean something; he wanted to defend people who couldn’t defend
themselves.

“So how would
hacking into MS or building you a new database defend helpless people?”

Catrina sat back
and took a long breath. “It would fund our efforts. Jobs like that bring in enough
money that we can work for these women who can’t afford to hire help. They
can’t afford an attorney and they certainly would never think of hiring a PI.
You want to see examples of our work?”

“Yeah.” This woman
intrigued Ted. The fact that she wasn’t hard on the eyes didn’t hurt either.

“Look around our
office. Every one of those women was rescued from a bad situation. We got them
out. We got them safe. We made a job for them. Now each of them is dedicated to
helping her sisters. The only compensation I ask, for cases like that, is that
they pay it forward.”