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By the time she'd reached her new office building, her cheeks and nose were numb from the cold wind. The bitter gusts had died down, signaling that the overnight front had passed through. They were simply in store for seasonably cold temperatures throughout the day until another stormfront approached from the west.
Brook opened the outer door, attempting to suppress her disappointment that she hadn't seen anything unusual in her surroundings. This game that Jacob was playing required patience, and she had it in spades. Unfortunately, he was dealing the cards.
The overhead heater in the small space between the two sets of doors was a welcome relief, and she stood there for a moment to give her body time to adjust to the change in temperature.
The rush of cold from behind wasn't unexpected, though.
"There's something that you should know, Boss."
Brook sipped her barely lukewarm caramel macchiato instead of reprimanding the young man who'd joined her in the small recess of the double doors. She'd already learned that his uniqueness was what made him so good at his job, and she wasn’t about to suppress his essential wellspring.
Bobby "Bit" Nowacki was a hacker.
It was that simple, and yet that incredibly complicated.
His past association as a paid consultant for a Russian racketeer who had moved into the area had landed him on the FBI's radar. Bit had actually been an informant for the Bureau, which had gone sideways when he withheld details of his dealings with a man by the name of Kuzmich. Brook had done what she could to keep him from landing behind bars. The cybercrime unit had no evidence that Bit had done anything illegal, and she planned to make sure it stayed that way.
"If you have done something that could get our firm shut down, it's probably best that I be kept in the dark," Brook replied wryly as she stepped through the door that he'd opened with great big grey mitten that matched his knit hat. His greasy blonde hair that could have used a cut years ago hung out the back by a few inches. "Good morning, Bit."
"Yeah, yeah," Bit murmured distractedly as he fell into step beside her. "Morning. Seriously, though, you need to hear this. It's about the new case."
Brook wasn't sure how he could have any information for her on the new case since she hadn't debriefed any of the team members on any of the details. She didn't react to his statement, but instead glanced up at the surveillance camera above them. Seeing as a bank took up the majority of the lower level, the security system was not only top-quality, but it was monitored twenty-four-seven.
He got the message.
She didn't want anything discussed about any of their cases while being recorded on a system that they didn't have one hundred percent control of editing the contents.
"I didn't expect anyone in this early," Brook replied as they continued to walk toward the elevator bank. "I'm sure there's a later bus route that can get you here at eight o'clock."
"Are you kidding me?" Bit asked in a tone that was more like himself. He hoisted the strap of his backpack to sit more securely on his shoulder as he gave her a lopsided grin. "This is my first legit job. No way was I going to be late."
"How is your sister doing?"
As was Brook's habit, she swept her gaze across the ground floor of the bank's foyer and the marble stairs leading to the balcony of where they had their executive offices, which were off to the right side. None of the bank officers were in this early in the morning, but it was comforting to know that nothing had been disturbed overnight. The morning shift security guard arrived around eight o'clock, and the person who opened their doors came a little bit later to get things set up for the day. By nine o'clock, the entire bank was staffed and ready for their first customer.
"Paula took her last chemo treatment last week. She's looking forward to growing her hair out, and not puking every five minutes." Bit pressed the elevator's call button. "I was hoping that I could bring her in sometime next week. I don't think she believes me when I tell her that I work for a legit private investigator."
Brook took another sip of her drink to prevent herself from automatically correcting him, as was her usual response to almost everything he said during a conversation. Being in his presence on a continual basis was going to take some getting used to, but his skills were worth every second of endurance. As for the termprivate investigator, she wanted to grind her teeth every time it passed over someone's lips.
"I'm looking forward to meeting her."
Brook stepped into the elevator after the doors had slid open before making room for Bit. He eagerly stood beside her and pressed the button to the fourteenth floor. The bank occupied the three bottom floors, but only the ground floor and the balcony were used for business operations with the public at large. Senior bank executives filled the third floor, and they rented out the remainder of the building to businesses who required little, if any, patronage by the public.
"Just so you know, I'll be tied up in a ten o'clock meeting for about an hour with Supervisory Special Agent Harden and Special Agent Houser. You might want to stay in your office while they're on site."
"Are they still a little sore that I'm no longer balling with them?" Bit asked warily due to his previous run-ins with the law. "I mean, I was a pretty badass informant, if you ask me."
"Let's just say that I think they underestimated how valuable an asset you could have been for them," Brook replied wryly, monitoring the lighted numbers above the exit as they rose with each passing floor. "The agents who are coming into the office today aren't with cybercrime. Still, there is no need to ruffle any feathers, if you get my gist. They could still subpoena you, especially if they know where to find you."
"Is the meeting today about that murder that took place in your building?" Bit asked with curiosity as he began to take off his grey mittens. He swung his backpack around so that he could store the knit apparel inside one of the numerous side pockets available. "I read somewhere that they believe it's the same serial killer who murdered that woman up in Maine. Apparently, he's been at it for quite a while. Did you work on that case before you handed in your resignation?"
"Not exactly," Brook replied vaguely, knowing that she would eventually need to explain her relationship with Jacob Walsh. Maybe it was selfish, but she wanted a little more time before she had to face the judgement of three people who had come to respect her. "Let me put my things in my office, and then I'll show you the physical layout of your space. A bank of standard nineteen-inch racks were laid out per your specifications, but the actual computer equipment is still secured in the storage locker against the wall in your office. There are six one-thousand feet spools of Cat 6e to start with, three red and three blue. The internet core node access point has multiple 10 Gbps nodes installed in the rack against the utility wall—as we discussed. Hurricane Electric set up your backbone connection. I'll leave the rest to you. Their service technicians are waiting for your call this morning. SIPR access won't be available until next week when they send in their inspection team to verify compliance."
Bit had requested very specific, high-end hardware and software packages, along with restricted keypad access with a retinal scanner for the main offices. The large space that she'd allotted him was the size of an over-sized conference room, and most of the area was taken up by equipment racks for an end user server, several utility servers, twenty other multi-core blades managing relational database servers, and mass storage devices measured in terabytes mirrored in multiple RAID arrays.
Truthfully, she was quite impressed with herself for learning all the technical verbiage. The elevator doors opened, and she proceeded ahead of him to the right until they were standing in front of the double glass entrance. She didn't have long to wait for his reaction.
"No fucking way!" Bit practically whispered in awe as he stepped closer to the panel that had been installed on the left side of the wall. It was the biometric scanner that he'd recommended to skim the irises of those with permission to enter the premises, and the security system was completely controlled by those onsite. Along with Bit, she didn't trust any outside sources when it came to safeguarding their files. All the offices had keypad cypher locks, and there was even a secondary biometric scanner for Bit's office. "It's not up and running yet, right? I need to code the…"
