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My husband, Ollie, stands in the doorway, a look of disdain on his broad, ridiculously good-looking face. “You’re being kind of pushy, don’t you think?”
I let the flap of the nursing bra fall over my nipple. “It’s just...”
Ollie lifts Freddie from me and cradles him in his arms. “Is mommy being mean?” he says in a goo-goo voice. “Is mommy forcing you on her boob?”
“He needs to eat,” I say petulantly, buttoning up my shirt again.
“You shouldlikemommy’s boobs,” Ollie goes on in Freddie’s face. “Isure do.”
Our baby giggles. I unclench my fingers from the handful of comforter I’ve unconsciously grabbed. Ollie’s just being nice. He’s not chiding me. I don’t know why I instantly assume he’s about to attack every little thing I do these days. When I peer at him again, his eyes are kind, and he’s handing Freddie gently back, murmuring kindly, “If he’s not hungry, don’t worry about it. He’ll eat when he eats.”
I nod and stand. There’s no more time to waste, anyway. I have four minutes to get into the car or else I’m going to be late. I stuff everything into the baby bag and shrug on my coat over my scrub pants, feeling frumpy and sweaty and really,reallynot in the mood for work. Dr. Greg Strasser’s latest e-mail flashes in my mind, and I stop short and wince.
“Babe?”
I jump and whirl around. Ollie lingers in the hall. He’s dressed in his police uniform, though his gun holster is empty. There is something inscrutable in his eyes as he stares at me. Dread flutters through my chest once more. “Y-Yes?” I squeak.
“Just be careful,” he says. “With that hack stuff from yesterday, I mean.”
I smooth down my scrubs. Try to breathe. “There’s nothing inmye-mails that could have caused any trouble.” At least I have that solace.
“I just hate that you’re part of the server they targeted,” Ollie says as he starts down the stairs. I follow him. “And I hate that we haven’t been able to shut it down yet. But it’s like, the more we dig into this thing, the more we realize that whoever did this had a beef with higher education as a whole. And whoever did this might not be finished.”
I feel a chill down my spine. “What do you mean by that? Like... another wave of identity theft? Some kind of...attack?”
Ollie shrugs. “Just watch your back, okay? Until I crack this, that is.”
I smile nervously. “Well, if there’s anyone who can figure it out, it’s you.” My husband has been an officer in Blue Hill—where we live, though we own one of the cheapest homes in the township, a run-down fixer-upper that we can’t exactly afford to fix—for ten years. It’s a sleepy precinct to work for, and most of his business is breaking up teenage parties and issuing speeding tickets. Though recently Ollie shut down a rambling, vacant old house that was being rented out for sexual deviants. This washugenews in the neighborhood—but Ollie mentioned he has a feeling the operation is back in business, simply moving into a new house a few streets away.
His good police work got him noticed, and his boss asked him what sorts of cases hereallywanted to work on. Ollie said he was particularly interested in cybercrimes... and now a huge case has fallen into his lap. So the hack is a boon for us, in a crazy way. Still, I hate what has happened that’s giving him the opportunity to advance his career. The fallout from the hack has brought Aldrich University to a grinding halt.Allof Aldrich University—including the enormous, esteemed university hospital, where I’m a nurse. Because all the systems are down, we have to rely on our paper records for scheduling, which we haven’t kept very diligently because, well, why would we, when it’s all in digital form? And try recalling patient surgery histories and prescription records and past appointment notes off the top of your head. Try calling the insurance companies for every single patient because all those records are lost.
Not to mention the mess with everyone’s e-mails on that server. That’s wreaked havoc on other parts of the school, and scandals have broken right and left: like how the admissions department kept digital documentation of Aldrich applicants’ every personal detail, from their medical history to their arrest records to their transcripts to their parents’ tax returns. Or a report I saw about the dangerouscover-ups that are surfacing—like how everyone in the theater department knew that a certain professor/director is a known sex offender, but no one did anything about it. The longer those e-mails stay on that server, the more dirt people are going to find about everyone.
And that’s not even the half of it. The news broke yesterday that not only was Aldrich hacked, but several Ivies up the Eastern Seaboard were as well. Harvard. Princeton. Brown. In each of those university enclaves, students, teachers, and administrators are dealing with their own versions of hell. The fact that so many schools were hacked calms me a little—not that I would wish this upon anyone else, but it seems less likely that this was for Aldrichspecificallyand that the hacker is lurking around a nearby corner, ready to strike with physical weapons instead of digital ones.
“Oh my God, I almost forgot. Watch Freddie for a sec, will you?” I place the car seat in the foyer and dash back up the stairs. In my closet hangs the black dress I’ve chosen to wear to the gala tonight. I grab it, my nicest pair of pumps, my makeup bag, and my curling iron and hair spray, shove everything but the dress in a gym bag, and clomp down the stairs again. Ollie eyes my new loot quizzically, especially the short dress, its flirty hem swinging.
“The Aldrich benefit,” I remind him. “Did you forget?”
Ollie looks blindsided. “You mean it’s stillhappening?”
I reach for the doorknob. “As far as I know, yeah. Why?”
Ollie scoffs. “I’m just surprised, with the hack.”
I drape the dress over my forearm and pick up the baby car seat again. “Well, I’m not the one who makes those decisions. But we have tickets. We should go. It’ll still be fun.”
Ollie tips his head toward the ceiling. The joints in his shoulders crack, a sound that always reminds me of breaking bones. Ollie sometimes works out at a boxing gym and fights against guys mixed-martial-arts style; on one of our first dates, he admitted that he’d broken a few of his opponents’ bones. It’s an image I struggle toreconcile with my soft-spoken, teddy bear Ollie. He claims it only happened a few times. Apparently, sparring is a great stress relief for the pressures of a job in which, literally, you have to prepare every minute to be aiming a gun at someone, or screaming your guts out, or fearing for your life. Still, I can’t quite picture him behaving that way.
“I’m just so slammed,” Ollie says. “We’re no closer to shutting down that database than we were when the hack broke. And I don’t know how it will look—the guy on the task force going to the Aldrich gala instead of burning the midnight oil to take down the hacker? Doesn’t seem right, babe.”
I run my tongue over my teeth. “I didn’t think of it like that.”
“I’ll try and come, okay? But don’t hold your breath. I won’t know until later tonight.”
My smile wavers. I want him to come with me. I don’t know if I can do this particular event alone. Almost nine months ago, when the doctors in the cardiology department bought the more senior surgical nurses tickets to the gala, I’d felt honored. Dr. Greg Strasser and I were—well, our schedules didn’t intersect as much, but the shit hadn’t hit the fan yet.
But now, all that has changed. Going alone will leave me exposed. I need Ollie as my shield.
