Work was the best way to keep the mind occupied, Steffi Roderick told herself. There was no telling how long it might take her brother to notice the e-mail he’d sent here, especially if communications were so snarled that his voice mail wasn’t even engaging and calls went to a busy signal.
And there was always plenty of work around the IT department, even when they weren’t trying to debug someone else’s equipment remotely. She had several projects she needed to touch base with people on — not necessarily urgent things, but still needing accomplished, and soon.
So when her phone rang, she assumed it would be Matt, finally calling her back. Which made it rather embarrassing when the caller proved to be Betty Margrave, calling from the Safety and Security offices.
“I’m looking for a hacker.”
Steffi’s guts clenched with dread. “What have they broken into now?”
“No, it’s not that kind of trouble. I need someone who’s skilled at getting into systems. My niece has been keeping in contact with a friend in Houston, and this friend’s family has been having some serious problems. We just got a text from her that just doesn’t seem right.”
As Betty read the text, Steffi had to agree — there was something fishy about the wording. Like an adult trying to sound like a child, and coming across more like what they thought a child ought to be saying rather than how kids really talked.
“So you’re trying to find out where that message came from, and what’s really going on with this Amy.”
“Exactly. Right now I’m not sure how much I can trust any of my old contacts on the ground down in Houston. I’m thinking we’re going to need to take a look inside some systems we’re not exactly welcome in. Which means I’m going to need the best hacker you can get me.”
The best hacker Steffi knew would be Toni Hargreaves, but she was over at Grissom City, and from what Betty was saying, this job didn’t sound like the sort one could do from verbal descriptions and texted screenshots. Lou Corlin had a lot of raw talent in the area — he’d been instrumental in setting up their streaming server — but he had that Chaffee tendency to be a straight-arrow. Even with the chief of security giving him the go-ahead to get into those systems, he wouldn’t feel that sense of no is a technical challenge that was essential to this kind of hacking.
The next best would be any of several kids she’d immediately thought as probable culprits when she thought Betty was looking to take down a hacker. Every one of those kids had pulled various stunts that weren’t quite bad enough to get them in legal trouble, but still enough to warrant official attention within the settlement.
And most of them were Sheps. On one hand, that might be a good thing — Betty was married to a Shep, so there was a familial obligation.
On the other hand, Sheps were not easy to manage. And if she sent more than one, they might well get so competitive that they’d end up sabotaging each other’s work.