INTRUSIVE

CHAPTER 2

Ember had been sitting in a small room for nearly three hours. There was no clock, but paying attention to numbers was what made her so good at her job, so she just knew. The rest of the room was as bare as the walls. She only had a table and two chairs to keep her company.

After they'd been caught making their escape, that man and his guards had taken her and Luke back into the building. Luke was placed in one holding cell and Ember in another; she hadn't seen or heard from anyone since.

Where did I go wrong? She kept rechecking her code in her head, but she couldn't figure it out. As always, she'd done everything right.

The door opened and derailed her train of thought. She half expected a detective to come in and start grilling her, but instead, the man from earlier walked in. The way he strode in made her blood boil. He was cocky and full of himself. He had bested her, and he knew it.

"That was good," he said, sitting down in the chair and crossing his legs in front of him. He leaned back, the smug look still plastered to his handsome face. Ember had to remind herself that he was the enemy. He was the one who had caught her.

"How'd you catch me?" she asked icily. Even saying those words hurt. She never thought she would have to say them.

The man leaned forward, smiling even larger than before. "Because I'm better."

Those words hurt even more. No one was better than her. She had proved it hundreds of times before. But maybe – just maybe, this man was good. Better? She didn't think so. But he was good.

"How?" she asked again.

"How did I stop you withdrawing the money to your offshore account, or how did I crack the camera codes and actually catch you?"

Ember bristled at the question. He had a good point: either one of the codes she had used should have been untraceable. But for someone to crack both of them, within the time span they'd been in the building... that should be impossible.

Ember didn't answer. She just glared.

"Okay, well, let's start with the cameras," the man said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers together. "That was good. Maybe even great. Your code that you injected into the system was untraceable by normal people. But I took a little bit of liberty in working with the camera code yesterday. I used an algorithm for facial recognition to find you on the cameras weeks ago – when you posed as a camera tech and inserted your code.

"From there, finding the line of code you injected was simple. I just changed a few parameters and voila – I was able to track your movements without you knowing."

Ember felt her face flushing with shame. It was something she never should have let happen. She had jumped the gun, and it had gotten her caught.

"As to you cracking the system to withdraw the money, which was much, much simpler."

"How?" Ember asked. She couldn't help herself. She had to know.

"It's the same exact thing I did two years ago," he said, matter of factly. When confusion crossed on Ember's face, he continued, "It's the technique I used. The technique I invented."

That's not possible. I created that technique. I wrote the code myself. No one else on this planet knows about it but me.

"Your DDoS attack threw me off, though. Most of the techs upstairs were more focused on that instead of the actually attack. I thought that was originally going to be the attack. That's something I haven't seen before."