Page 51 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
“So, you dove in after you went to work for them,” Gideon surmised.
“Yep. It always makes me itchy, working for somebody I don’t know inside and out, but they said I could only consider the offer for forty-eight hours, and then it was off the table.”
“Didn’t that send up a red flag?”
“Gideon, it’s a well-respected, publicly traded company. Plus, I had the opportunity to quit at any time. The only thing that I was dealing with was a non-compete and an NDA. I figure the NDA goes out the window if I can prove Risk Guard employees tried to kill me.”
“You can bet on that,” Gideon growled. “So you started to dig deep on them after you were employed. What did you find?”
“I looked at all of their financials, those that they reported to their stockholders, and then the ones in their enterprise management systems. I was surprised to see those actually matched, kind of stunning in this day and age. But one of the things that bugged me is how they went from a no-name company to almost top of the field in two and a half years. That really got me into digging.”
“Understandable.”
“They had to have changed their tech, marketing, sales, something, but I couldn’t find any evidence of any of those things happening. The only thing I could find was that they landed six huge clients and Miles Albright joined the Board of Directors.”
“Let me guess,” Gideon said wryly. “You dug deeper.”
Jada gave him a blinding smile. The kind he’d gotten when they’dfirstmet in person. The kind he’d killed right before they parted five months ago in Kentucky. Thelasttime they were in Kentucky together.
“I did dig deeper, and I found some gold.” She actually rubbed her hands together with excitement. “Gideon, it was awesome. Yep. Each one of those six big clients? Somehow, mysteriously, within months of one another had huge flaws in their company’s security. Flaws that would take a year to fix. Boo-hoo for them, yay for team Risk Guard.”
“Are you telling me nobody questioned this before you?” Gideon asked in surprise.
“No, because they were so different. This wasn’t a piece of malware or anything as easy as that. Each one of these companies had a different kind of vulnerability, the kind I’m tasked to find, a zero-day. Not all in the same place, not the same type, but definitely a vulnerability that could be tapped. It seemed kind of suspicious to me that within two months’ time, these six heavy hitter companies had system vulnerabilities that could be exploited, don’t you think?”
Gideon cocked his head. “I have to agree, even if they all looked different, the odds are against it. So, what did you find?”
“It definitely took a hell of a lot longer than a minute,” Jada grinned wide. “But, when I went back into their systems, I finally found four identical signatures where they’d been hacked, all going back two and a half years ago. You just can’t convince me that was a coincidence.”
“Nope. No way it was that. Could you trace it back to anyone?”
“Just an I.P. address in the Philippines, so no.”
Gideon nodded. “Probably defunct now anyway.”
“That was my thought. I’ve been looking at all of the software developers here at Risk Guard who were employed during that time, to see if any of them have that same kind of signature when they write code, but so far nothing. I’m only halfway done. The thing that’s been really hurting my investigation, is that I haven’t been able to track down the contractors they had on staff during that time. This is definitely something they could have sourced out.”
Gideon nodded. “You’ve thought this out.”
“Are you thinking I wouldn’t have?” she asked tartly.
“Nope, this is exactly what I would have expected. But now tell me how this brought you to Oregon.”
“Well, like I said, the other thing that was different two and a half years ago, was Miles Albright came on board as one of the Board of Directors. So, I’ve been doing a little digging on him. They love him over at Reynolds, his current company. He’s a star. There is no conflict of interest with him sitting on the board of Risk Guard, but the fact that he does makes Albright shinier when Reynolds puts out their yearly bios of their company officers.”
“What a load of horseshit.” Gideon hated all the maneuvering in corporate America.
“Wait a minute, let me tell you about Reynolds.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve already looked into Albright, I know all about Reynolds,” Gideon told her.
She frowned. “Why would you have done that? I hadn’t told you about him.”
“The woman who was with you on the yacht, she—”
Jada bit her lip and her breath hitched.
Gideon was so in tune with Jada that he immediately noticed her distress. “What’s wrong?” he asked gently.
