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CHAPTER 1

FISHER

“I’ve already read two chapters.” I pop the bookmark into Miracle on Maple Hill and set it on the nightstand next to the pink sphere my nine-year-old niece calls a moon lamp. Tucking the pink and white quilt around her little body, I say, “It’s bedtime, sweat pea.”

She should have been asleep thirty minutes ago. My job isn’t going to wait much longer. At this point I only have twenty minutes to get into the airline’s system and back out before I miss the deadline.

“Night, Fisher,” Sutton says as I pull her door shut.

With a long exhale, I hurry to my office. I’ve just slipped my headphones over my ears when Bing flops his big golden body down on my foot. My dog has been with me long enough to know that once the headphones are on, nothing short of banging his nose against my leg over and over will pull me out of the only place I’ve ever been truly comfortable.

I jiggle the mouse, and the computer comes alive. Time to move.

Eighteen minutes later, the three black boxes on my screens are full of green code. I’ve got it. The poor sixty-two-year-old mid-level IT idiot never stood a chance.

Not against someone like me.

I shake my head.

Thanks to the lax IT department and the network’s vulnerability to a blind command injection, I easily bypass the authenticator and run a command on the router.

Basically, I unlock it myself and step right in. Damn, I’m good at what I do.

I drop in a few lines of script so the bug will run. And it’s done. They’re officially fucked.

Once I’ve backed out, I sit back and toss my headphones onto the desk.

I may not be good at many things, but I’m damn good at this.

Me: It’s done.