Chapter 6 - THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE
“Don’t touch those!” my mother shrieked, dropping to her knees on the hospital floor to frantically gather the scattered security badges.
Despite the agonizing pain in my pelvis, I lunged forward, my hand clamping down over hers before she could retrieve the last card.
“Level 4 access,” I breathed, staring at the heavy white plastic bearing my company’s logo. “How did you get these? I strictly manage the keycard issuance.”
My mother yanked her hand away, clutching the plastic cards to her cashmere chest as if they were diamonds. She stood up, her face flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and defiant anger.
“Vanessa handles them,” she snapped, refusing to look me in the eye. “She’s a consultant for your firm. She has access.”
“Vanessa is a ghost consultant,” I growled, my corporate instincts overpowering my physical weakness. “She has no clearance. She has no login. Who is she giving these cards to, Mom?”
My mother backed toward the door. “You cut off the money, Tessa! You think a country club membership is cheap? You think maintaining our standing in this community pays for itself? Vanessa found a way to monetize the empty office space you refused to let her use. That’s all!”
“Monetize empty office space?” I repeated, the horror slowly dawning on me.
My mother truly didn’t understand what she had aided. She thought Vanessa was subletting physical rooms.
“Mom, Northline doesn't manage physical files. We manage cybersecurity for regional hospitals and credit unions. If someone is using Level 4 badges to access my servers from inside the building, they aren't renting a desk. They are stealing highly classified financial and medical data.”
The color drained from my mother’s face. “No. Vanessa said she had a business partner who just needed secure Wi-Fi for his tech startup. He pays her fifty thousand dollars a month in cash. She was saving our family, Tessa! Because you wouldn't give us enough!”
She turned and fled the room before I could say another word, the heavy hospital door slamming shut behind her.
I fell back against the pillows, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my bruised ribs.
Fifty thousand dollars a month in cash.
Vanessa was facilitating a massive data breach. And Luke had found out. That’s why he had leveraged the house—to pay off whoever Vanessa was working for, to try and buy her out of a criminal syndicate before it destroyed my company.
The door burst open again.
Adrian rushed in, his tablet glowing brightly in his hand. He didn’t bother with greetings.
“Tessa, I just ran the server logs for Northline,” Adrian said, his voice tight with panic. “Someone is manually downloading the encrypted firewall keys for the Ohio Credit Union network. They are draining the data right now.”
“I know,” I said, pointing to the door. “Vanessa is selling physical access badges to a third party. Call security at the Northline building. Lock down the servers.”
“I can’t,” Adrian said, holding the tablet out to me. “Look at the IP address of the data drain.”
I squinted at the glowing numbers on the screen. It wasn't pinging from my corporate headquarters downtown.
It was a local intranet address.
“The breach isn't happening at your office, Tessa,” Adrian said, his eyes wide with fear. “The hacker is using a mobile decryption tower. And the signal is pinging off the hospital's internal Wi-Fi.”
I stared at him, the blood turning to ice in my veins.
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“Where in the hospital?” I whispered.
Adrian swallowed hard. “The pediatric wing.”
