“Because I believe that he’s a sociopath with absolutely no feelings or empathy for anyone around him,” Adam explained. “I wasn’t working for McKay-Taggart when they took the job for Byrne’s company, but I made sure I met him. I spent some time with him, and he is excellent at looking like the happy-go-lucky, slightly goofy guy you see on TV. But there’s a deep well of darkness in the man that scares me.”
“Maddie thinks he might have had some employees killed.” That wasn’t exactly how she’d put it, but when it came to work, he was a worst-case scenario guy. In his daily life, he was a positive thinker, hence him already putting the idea of her boyfriend behind him. But when it came to an investigation, if someone was missing, he was always looking for a killer first.
“I wouldn’t put it past him at all, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to come talk to you. Ian loses his fucking mind at the thought of the man. He’ll rant and rave about the money Byrne cost him, but that’s not the danger you’re going into. I’ve talked to Chelsea about this, and we’d like to be looped into any technical intel you find.”
Deke closed the locker door, suspicions starting to play in his head. The last thing he wanted was to get caught between Ian and Adam. “What are you asking me to do?”
Adam stopped, seeming to think about what he said next. “Look, what I’m about to tell you is somewhat classified.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t tell me.” He worked corporate investigations. Sometimes he did trace jobs for wealthy people who wanted to make sure their kids/spouse/business partner weren’t doing something they shouldn’t. He’d left the Agency, and he didn’t want to go back. McKay-Taggart was out of the spy business—at least they were out of the business when it came to the CIA. He couldn’t say the same for Adam’s business. While the other partners in Miles-Dean, Weston, and Murdoch ran the business side of the firm, Adam Miles and Chelsea Weston were the brains behind the technology that fueled the company. Chelsea once ran her own department for the CIA, and most of the people he knew still thought she did jobs for them from time to time.
When it came to the Agency, he was happy to be left in the dark.
“You’re going to be difficult,” Adam murmured. “Would you change your mind if I told you that I believe your girl might be involved?”
“What do you mean by that?” His every instinct flared, and he realized he’d never stopped being protective of Maddie. He was ready to throw down with a man he admired at the very thought that he might accuse Maddie of something.
Adam stood, meeting his gaze. “I mean that roughly two months ago there was a cyber attack on three nuclear power plants. One in each of the three largest nuclear power producing countries in the world—the US, China, and France. The Agency contacted one of their best contractors in a desperate attempt to shut down the attack.”
A shiver went up his spine at the thought. There was zero question who the contractor was. It had to have been Chelsea Weston. At one point in time, she’d been the world’s premiere information broker, and that included superlative hacker skills.
Ransomware attacks had been on the rise for the last decade, mostly by organized crime who were emboldened by the ease of cryptocurrency. They could get paid, and as long as they were smart about it, the currency was untraceable. But the targets were usually soft—hospitals, businesses, even individuals. Hell, he knew some public figures who’d had their social media hacked and paid thousands of dollars to get it back. A nuclear power plant would have spectacular security. At least he hoped it would. But there was an easy way to deal with a ransomware attack. “They didn’t pay straightaway? I thought most companies plan for those kinds of attacks. There’s insurance for it now.”
It was expensive as hell, but some businesses found it necessary.
“They didn’t ask for ransom.”
That chill was positively a freeze now. “If they didn’t want money, what did they want?”
“On the surface, it looks like they wanted to cause a meltdown at three power plants, possibly killing hundreds of thousands of people,” Adam replied quietly. “Chelsea got it under control here in the States, and by then they’d brought me in and I walked our French counterparts through the solution while Chelsea dealt with the Chinese. All of our plant security has been hardened, but there’s a part of me that wonders if what happened that day wasn’t a test for something more.”
“Something more?” This was exactly the kind of shit he didn’t want to get involved in.
“I don’t know, but my instincts tell me this was a trial, and Chelsea agrees with me. I would bet this isn’t the first time they’ve used this particular system, but they wanted to see how quickly we can shut them down,” Adam explained. “We believe the same group that attacked the power plants was behind more than fifty smaller attacks across the world in the last six months. All of the previous attacks were minor headaches, but the thing that connects them is the mode of attack.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with Maddie. She doesn’t write that kind of code—certainly not ransomware or malware.”
“I assure you she could. She might not deal with basic coding anymore, but I looked her up and she could easily learn anything she needed to. A ransomware attack would be basic for her. However, it wasn’t that kind of attack,” Adam replied. “The plants were attacked by what I can only describe as an artificial intelligence.”
Fuck. He felt his jaw clench. “She did not do this. She would never do anything like this, Adam. I know her.”
“You know who she used to be.” There was a deep sympathy in Adam’s tone. “I understand that you were close back in high school, but it’s been a long time, and you’ve both changed. Can you honestly say she knows you? The Deke Murphy who went through the military and the Agency? The one who’s been in Dallas for over a decade?”
“The core of who I am hasn’t changed.” There was zero chance Maddie Hill had anything to do with an attack that could kill people. “And it hasn’t changed for her either. She is incapable of this level of evil.”
“All right. Then I believe someone might be using her work for criminal purposes I don’t even understand at this point,” Adam allowed. “I get that you like the lady, that you’re probably still half in love with her, but she’s in a dangerous position if she’s working with Byrne.”
He didn’t want to even think about Maddie being involved with people who could try overloading a power plant. “Why do you think the AI that tried to take over the plant is Maddie’s?”
Adam leaned against the locker. “Chelsea managed to keep records of some of what she did. She’s been examining the code, and she says some of it is very similar to Byrne’s previous work.”
“Okay. Then Byrne is the problem, not Madeline.” He was completely sure of that.
Adam’s dark head shook. “But Madeline is the head of his artificial intelligence team, and she’s the one working on the AI for the satellite system that—if it works—will likely form the basis for all US satellites in the foreseeable future. If this works, Byrne will likely be given anything he wants to build satellites for this country, and if that AI does what I suspect it does, think about what kind of access that will mean.”