Page 78 of Insidious Threats

“He quit?”

“Not formally. He just … left.”

“Without saying anything to anyone?” Sasha pressed her. “Not even you.”

Petra’s expression turned stony. She didn’t answer.

“Petra?” Connelly prompted.

“He left a gag gift on my desk. Along with a cipher.”

“A cipher?” he repeated.

“A note written in code.”

“Did you decipher it?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course, I did.” She pulled a folded-up sheet of paper out of her shirt pocket.

A string of gibberish was written on the top half of the page:

nGmni akr bogpitr Fmeorcbi usxfyyr uiw!

Beneath it, in different handwriting, it read:

I'm a coward but you're not. I left a back door propped open for you.

“It’s a polyalphabetic encryption algorithm called a Vigenère cipher,” Petra explained.

“Did you and Gar invent it?”

She laughed at Sasha’s question. “No, it’s been around since the fifteen hundreds if you can believe it.”

“What did he mean that he left a back door open?” Connelly wanted to know.

Sasha and Connelly finished their coffees while Petra considered her answer. Finally, she sighed. “I assume he means he left a way for someone to get back into Pinpoint Partners’ FTP server if that someone wanted to send them a message.”

“He knows you’re a hacker,” Sasha said.

Petra nodded. “He’s one of maybe three people who know I’m Rock.”

“If we uploaded the worm to the FTP thing, would it work? Would it destroy every copy of Mjölnir in existence?” Connelly asked.

Petra stared down into her mug as if the remnants of her tea bag held the answer.

Connelly reached under the table and squeezed Sasha’s hand. She considered pulling away, but the truth was she understood the impulses that had led him to hide this from her. She didn’t agree with them, but she understood them. And she wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t have done the same thing if their roles had been reversed. So instead of yanking her hand free, she interlaced her fingers between his.

They waited in silence for Petra to come to her decision.

When she lifted her eyes, they blazed with determination. “Yeah, it would. I can’t access the back door remotely, so we’ll have to go into the office to do it. We should wait until tonight when nobody’s around.”

“Oh, good. I could use a nap,” Connelly said.

“And I could use a bathtub full of this stuff,” Sasha responded, pushing her chair back and standing up. “Anybody else want a refill?”

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