Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,12
he even would hate her for this. Whichever happened, not a whole lot she could do about it now. She’d lost the right to complain once she had called Kai and asked for help.
*
Johan looked at Galen. “Any luck?”
“Not yet,” he muttered. “I just took some updated training on IT stuff from Stone, not that I’m sure any of it stuck yet, but I can tell you that that guy’s magic when it comes to this shit.”
“He’s also at the end of a phone call,” Johan reminded him.
Galen looked up, surprised, then nodded. “I keep forgetting. Because we’re not back in Africa, I feel disconnected from the team somehow. And I forget that we have a team here.”
Johan nodded. “We do, indeed, and many of them are more into the techie stuff than we are, I think.”
“I am far more comfortable out in the field with a gun, but it seems like the weapons of today favor the electronic version,” Galen replied.
“I know,” he said. “So far I’m not seeing any irregularities with password log-ins or the timing when accessing files,” he said. “I’m just going through the basics at the moment.”
“Right. It’ll get a whole lot more complicated as we get further into it.”
“I know,” Johan muttered. “Because then we must consider who might have been working under somebody else’s access. Like Joy already warned us about with her computer.”
“And whoever might have put in a Trojan, so that it’s sitting there for them to access when they do log in, and they can worm their way into somebody else’s files under their names.”
“Yeah, so we gotta check out Joy’s computer for sure,” Johan said, staring at the computer in frustration. “I really want to blow apart our cover and the security by going in hot, delving like we normally do.”
“But we can only do that after the fact,” Galen said. “We can’t do it here and keep our footprints hidden.”
“I know. I know. But Stone could.” Hearing a phone dialing, he turned to look at Galen, who was calling somebody. Johan raised an eyebrow and asked, “Stone?”
Galen nodded. Johan grinned and went back to his work. With his phone, he sent an update to Levi, letting them know where they were, what they were doing, as well as their progress so far—which wasn’t a whole lot. They were hindered by the need to hide their real intent for being here. But Stone, going under the radar, could find a whole helluva lot more. Johan could hear Galen behind him, conversing with Stone over something that Galen had found. So far Johan hadn’t found much. When an internal chat window popped up, and the IT administrator, who turned out to be Pedro, asked if they needed anything, Johan wondered if something they had done had triggered that response. I don’t think so yet. Why?
The chat window came back up. Just checking in.
We’re doing fine.
He waited to see if the kid would come back with something else, but, when he didn’t, Johan figured that the kid had been watching them, tracking them in the system. Had the kid seen what they were looking at? Or that they were in incognito mode and had lots of ways of getting in and searching for stuff? Yet Johan didn’t know what kind of a hacker the kid might be, and that was always a bit of a disconcerting moment.
Just then a knock came at their door.
“Come in,” Johan called out.
Joy popped her head around the door. She smiled and said, “I was wondering if you guys wanted some coffee.”
He looked at her in surprise and then nodded slowly. “That would be great. Is there a coffeepot around?”
“It’s on the other end,” she said. “I’ll go grab two cups.” She stopped as she was about to exit, then turned and asked, “Black?”
“It’s the only way,” he said with a smile.
She grinned back and headed out.
Johan thought of Galen’s earlier words as she disappeared. She really was a sweetie. Not to mention gorgeous. It would certainly complicate his life to have a relationship over here. If it was short with no strings, that was one thing; but, if it got to be serious, well, that would stop him from going back to Africa, at least right away.
Maybe that was okay too. He shrugged it off as he delved a little further, wondering exactly what he was seeing.
When she returned a few minutes later, she carried three cups of coffee.