Page 80 of Nixon’s Promise

“Yes and yes. But remember, any idiot can use a VPN to mask their IP. And me cracking through that would take days.” McKenna looked up from her screen and bit her lip. “May I ask a question? And if you can’t tell me, I understand.”

“You can ask anything,” Nixon said, purposefully not saying he’d tell her anything, because there were some things he wouldn’t be able to.

“Why didn’t Homeland hack the website and message board? It would’ve taken them less than it took me, which was minutes. There’s no skill—sorry, Holden—to breaking into the backend of this shit site.” Then she gently added for Holden’s ego. “If you know what you’re doing.”

Nixon thought about how he wanted to word his answer, but before he could give his explanation, Jameson jumped in.

“Because what you just did would’ve taken a request chit, a detailed description of the scope of the hack, why it was necessary, and a meeting about it. Then once they were in, another meeting would take place about what was found, who could view the intel, and it’d need to be logged before it could be analyzed. Nothing moves fast at DHS. And if someone there feels like they don’t want to dive deep and actually work, they’ll punt it off to someone else. Who then needs to go through all the same bullshit. Alec knows this, knows we are on a time crunch, and decided it was best to outsource.”

Jameson wasn’t wrong. The government had rules they needed to follow, but it wasn’t as bad as how he made it sound. High priority projects would and could move quickly. Which got Nixon thinking—was Homeland taking this threat as high priority? Or was Alec’s gut telling him the threat was bigger than what DHS was willing to admit?

“But they weren’t on a time crunch. They’ve known about the forum and the growing threat for months,” Nixon told the room. “Why wouldn’t they’ve gone the distance and kept this in-house?”

“Got me. You’re the one who talked to Alec,” Holden unnecessarily reminded him.

“All he said was red tape and politics. There’s more to it, he’s keeping something from us.”

“I agree,” Weston said. “You wanna call him to come in and talk, or should I?”

“You call him,” Nixon told him, then to the others, he said, “We need to look further into where the forum updates are coming from.”

“Well, I can tell you they’re using the pizza place’s WiFi to log into the forum,” McKenna told them.

“Seriously?” Nixon asked.

“Yep. Every logged change has been from that location. I can tell you the exact date. No admin had dialed in for years, then almost daily. Also the old admin lived in Arizona.”

“Tempe, Arizona,” Weston stated.

“Yeah,” McKenna answered even though he hadn’t asked.

“That’s where Olan Peters lived before he moved to Idaho,” Weston continued.

McKenna poked around on the computer then looked up again. “The domain registration is due to expire in a few months. But from what I can see, the updates to the actual website were minor. Basically, all they did was remove contact information and made the link to the message board front and center on the homepage, inviting viewers to join.”

“What about the message board? When does that expire?” Nixon inquired.

“It doesn’t. PHP boards are free,” she returned. “I sent the information you wanted to the printer.”

“So we were right. We’re not dealing with the preppers,” Weston said, picking up his phone and going into the other room for privacy.

“I’m gonna get to work on the message,” McKenna told the group.

“Hey,” Nixon called.

“Yeah?”

“Good work, babe.”

“Thanks.”

Nixon watched McKenna smile and he did it thinking he could very much get used to her being in his office every day. He didn’t share the same concerns as she did about shit getting complicated, but he had been honest—he wanted things between them as tangled as he could get them.

31

I had just finished decoding the last of the message when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jerked at the intrusion, taking off my headphones when I saw Jameson standing next to me.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Your phone rang,” he told me.