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“I am. But not for the reason you’re thinking. I’ve already briefed my solicitor on what’s happening. I asked her to look after my friends, except she may not be able to represent both of them. It might be better if you represent Flynn rather than me. At the very least, I know Tristan would want Flynn protected too. My solicitor knows Ryder. She’d probably be more comfortable representing him anyway.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “I’ll let Tristan know and speak with Ryder’s solicitor.”
“Thank you.”
She exited, and I took my glasses off, dropping them on the table. I rubbed my eyes, exhaustion setting in like a rising tide. Biting back a yawn, I would have killed for a comfortable couch to curl up on for that nap.
Closing my eyes and leaning back in the hard plastic chair, I imagined being in my guys’ arms. But this time, it wasn’t just Flynn and Tristan holding me. Ezra was there too, and Ry was close as well, standing watch at the door.
It seemed like a pipe dream.
When the door opened again what seemed like hours later, I opened my eyes, blinking in the bright light. “Hey,” Ezra murmured quietly as he walked in and slipped a paper cup onto the table in front of me. “I got you this. It’s not as good as yours or your dad’s, but it’s hot.” The cup was filled with green tea, steam curling from the surface. His shadows—detectives Chisolm and Franklin—stood like sentinels, flanking him.
I yawned, covering my mouth with the back of my hand as he pulled out the seat opposite me and slid onto it.
“Did you look at the USB?”
He pointed at the cameras in the ceiling, and I stopped speaking. I knew the drill.
“We’re being recorded—”
“Anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law, I know.” I shot him a teasing smile, and colour rose on his cheeks. Grinning, I nudged him under the table with my foot, and he hooked his leg around mine. That small show of solidarity, invisible to the cameras mounted above us, was as strong as a hug. Warmth spread through my chest.
“You asked if we looked at the USB—we did. Our tech guy is briefing Inspector Puglisi as we speak.”
“She’s a pleasant one, isn’t she?” I deadpanned, swallowing back a laugh when Ezra bit his lip and looked away.
But his playfulness slipped, and he shot me a worried glance. “Wanna tell me what happened? Because, honestly, the screen grabs and package you’ve put together seems really convenient. I don’t know whether the inspector is going to believe a word of it.”
I took a sip of the tea and hummed. It wasn’t the best, a bit bitter and too hot for green tea, but it would do.
With my hands still wrapped around the paper cup, I nodded. “That’s just it—it was a complete accident.” I gave Ezra my most innocent smile and shrugged. “I was researching for the podcast. I needed some historical information and looked up what data banks were required to keep and for how long. I discovered that the Reserve Bank held transactional records from during the GFC, not the banks themselves.”
“Okay,” he encouraged, sitting forward in his chair and resting his forearms on the table.
Tracing the rim of the cup, I continued, “I tried searching the Reserve Bank’s online databases, but the information I needed—the raw transaction data—wasn’t publicly available. That’s why I had Flynn ask if you could access it when he was speaking with you.” I gestured to him, and he nodded. That conversation had happened only a few hours earlier, but it felt like a lifetime ago.
“I actually clicked on the wrong thing—I screen grabbed it for you—and it took me into a section of the website that should have been behind a firewall, but it wasn’t. It was the Reserve Bank’s password registry. Some idiot had created a spreadsheet with the full listing of passwords, then left some of the end points on the API public.” I shook my head, bewildered at the potential disaster waiting to happen.
“What’s an API?”
"Application programming interface.”
He nodded slowly, but I could tell he wasn’t really interested in what an API was. He probably already knew. “How did you know the password?”
“A survey in 2022 found that the most popular password was ‘password.’ It was a lucky guess.”
Ezra groaned and dropped his face into his hands, threading his fingers through his hair and tugging on the ends exactly as I’d imagined he’d been doing. I couldn’t help my smile. It took everything in me to curb the instinct to reach out and pull his hands away.
He lifted his face, resting his chin on his clenched fists, and I continued.
“As soon as I saw what it was, I didn’t even think. I went straight to the sites I monitor for chatter around hacks. I wanted to see if someone was bragging about getting in and leaving it open. But instead, I found what was, for want of a better description, a wanted ad for personal data from Australian banks with a hefty reward for the people who delivered. They were after access to the Reserve Bank.”
Ezra’s brow furrowed, and he tilted his head, considering what I was saying before giving a small shake of his head. “Why?”
“It’s not a bank per se, but the banks share data with it. There’s an established upload pipeline between them. The aim would have been to get into the Reserve Bank to find a potential back door entry into the other banks’ systems. The complexity of the systems each organization uses, the differing layers of security, and the fact that they need to be constantly updated to keep security at the highest levels would have meant that the Reserve Bank’s ISP addresses were simply whitelisted. Once they got in, every bank account in Australia could have been compromised.”
“So?” He gestured for me to continue my explanation.
