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But they didn’t. She’d never even been arrested. In a follow-up article, Davies sadly explained that, “Jessica is a gifted technologist. She’s covered her tracks and erased the evidence I found. We currently have nothing tangible to offer the DA. Except, of course, a warning about her overall character. It makes me sad that such a bright young woman with a long career ahead of her turned out to be so reckless and amoral.”
Adam had read the articles with growing incredulity. Given her hard-working history and intellect, the claims against her made no sense. If someone with her level of computer skill wanted to make money through illegal means, she would never do what Davies accused her of. It was too easily traced back to the University. If she was truly as smart and amoral as Davies described, she could have been making a hell of a lot more money doing other illegal activities. He winced, considering the wad of cash he’d just forked over to his hacker.
One of the articles featured a photograph of her being escorted out of a University office building by campus security. A grim-faced guard in uniform gripped each of her elbows. It was this photograph that strengthened Adam’s suspicion that something else was going on here, that she’d been framed.
No organization wants a photo of a senior staff member being led out of their offices. It’s terrible publicity. Getting her out of the building would have been done quietly, with as little fanfare as possible. Even if the story had to come out, a picture is always a thousand times worse. And the one of Jessica Hughes was a doozy. It didn’t even look like a candid, which told Adam that the photographer had been tipped off with plenty of time to get in place and frame the shot. Jessica was centered in the photo, with the stern guards at each side. Wearing a simple black suit, her shoulders were back, her chin up. The expression on her face was a mixture of anger and confusion.
In the newspaper photo, she didn’t look much like either the blonde socialite or the woman now sitting across from him. She’d been paler, her face rounder and softer. Her hair had been darker, shorter, and slightly curly.
Oh, but those eyes. Staring straight into the camera, her dark eyes were huge and defiant. He’d recognized them in an instant.
So here they were. She accepted his comment about the newspaper photo with a sad bow of her head. She pushed away the plate of pickles, pulled the glass of bourbon closer.
What had happened to the defiance, he wondered. He guessed that it had translated into whatever shenanigans she got up to with the keycard, but he was a little surprised she hadn’t gone with a legal option first. If she was innocent she could have fought back with an employment lawyer.
Adam enjoyed a long swallow of Angel’s Envy. She had good taste in bourbon. “Why do you think they made up the story about the identify theft? Why did they need you to be fired?”
Jessica’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Wow. He’d actually managed to demolish her poker face. A little strange that it was his belief in her innocence that finally managed to shake her composure, but people were strange. He took a moment to relish in her shock before cocking his head and waggling his eyebrows. “Well, Blondie, any theories?”
She blinked at him three times. It was fun watching her catch up.
But then, she licked her lips, and sucked the full bottom one into her mouth. Which quickly erased any feelings of condescension. And concentration. Possibly because all of the blood in his head began to drain south.
“I do have a theory,” she said. “I think it has to do with Maurice Knoll.”
And...the blood began to flow north again. His pulse beat faster. I knew it. “Go on.”
* * *
Jess struggled to keep her voice even and her thoughts proceeding in a linear fashion, when all they wanted to do was circle around these two questions: What the hell was happening? Who was this guy?
She didn’t let herself get stuck. She needed to stay sharp, hyper-focused. He was gorgeous and charming, but she recognized the undercurr
ents of his vibe tonight. Hell, she had four good-looking and charming brothers; she recognized most male vibes.
He wanted something from her—and it wasn’t sex.
Or at least, not only sex.
She’d seen his brief pupil dilation when she licked her lips. Good. Knowing her identity, he had the upper hand in whatever game he was playing. Even if he hadn’t pushed it in her face yet, her instincts told her it was coming. She needed any weapon in her arsenal.
“Normally when a new Board member is appointed, they’re given an alphanumeric ID,” she explained. “Everyone associated with the University has one. Mine was jhughes13, for example. Maurice Knoll’s was mknoll25. I’m responsible—I mean, I was—responsible for all of the security of our campus systems,” she said, flushing. “I took the responsibility very seriously. Aside from the normal protocols and systems in place, I also wrote my own security audit programs. Board members are generally given a University email address and basic network access so that they can pull their PowerPoint slides when they’re on campus for quarterly meetings and stuff. But that’s it. They don’t get access to anything else.”
She paused, remembering the first time her audit logs had alerted her to Knoll’s unusual system access. “My security programs detected that Knoll’s ID had been granted admin-level access to every single system the University has. It was absolutely bizarre. He would have been able to do everything from admitting a student, to changing grades, to stopping employee paychecks from being processed, to viewing the campus at night through security cameras. No one outside of system administrators has that much access.” She paused to make sure he was following.
Not only was he following, he was way ahead of her. “Putting aside the question for now of why Knoll would have wanted that much access, isn’t setting it all up under his own ID kind of stupid?”
She nodded, emphatically. “Yes. Totally stupid. But if Knoll wanted that access, he would have had to get someone in IT to do it for him. I suspect that unclear instructions were given to an idiot,” she said dryly.
Comprehension lit up his eyes. “Your esteemed dancing partner from Saturday?”
Jess scowled. “Yeah. I saw that Jerome had done all of the system security setup for the mknoll25 ID. At that time, I suspected Knoll had bribed Jerome for all of the access, but didn’t make it clear enough that he didn’t want it under his own ID.”
“What do you think now?”
She looked down. After six months, it still hurt. “After I disabled all of Knoll’s access, I went to tell my boss, Seymour Davies, my suspicions. I told him we had a breach situation and we needed to call the police. Jerome needed to be taken into custody. Seymour thanked me and said he would handle it, but he wanted to alert the University president beforehand in case of any fallout. That was on a Friday afternoon.”
She forced herself to look up and speak matter-of-factly. “I was fired on Monday morning.”
