Thread of Suspicion. Susan Sleeman

to his claim of a lack of programming knowledge. Next, she delved deeper into network logins starting six months prior and moving forward. She found a login from Luke’s house during the time the two of them reviewed his home computers yesterday. Neither of them connected to SatCom, so the login couldn’t have come from his home unless his wireless network was hacked. With added security protocols that was virtually impossible. Which meant the log had been altered to make it look like Luke had logged in from home.

      Someone had falsified the report. They wanted to make Luke look guilty.

      Thrilled to have a lead that pointed to a suspect other than Luke, the next few hours flew by as she tracked the transmission through several servers. It didn’t take long for her to realize she was hunting a person who knew how to hide his tracks. As she worked, something kept niggling at her mind. The hacker’s pattern was familiar somehow. She’d seen the programming style before, but where?

      “Knock, knock.” Tim stood at the doorway, holding out a piece of paper. “Here’s the login information for the network, Ms. Justice.”

      She swiveled to face him. “Please, call me Dani.”

      “And I’m Tim.” He handed her the paper. “Of course you’ll need to destroy this as soon as you memorize the info.”

      Luke got up and joined them. “Isn’t that overkill?”

      Dani shook her head. “Tim’s right. You can never be too careful with passwords. Especially since we already have a problem.”

      Tim smiled his thanks at her, lighting up his face and making him boyishly handsome. “Good to talk to someone who understands tech stuff.”

      “Back atcha,” Dani said. “My family would rather be hung by their fingernails than talk about computers.”

      “I hear you.” Tim laughed and Dani joined him.

      “I’m starting to feel like a third wheel,” Luke grumbled good-naturedly.

      Tim’s humor faded, and he fired a patronizing look at Luke that Dani suspected was a normal occurrence between the partners. “Guess we could talk about the investigation instead. Any new leads?”

      Luke nodded. “We found the computer I told you about earlier.”

      Tim’s eyebrows went up. “Really? How?”

      Dani quickly explained about Eggleston and the homeless man, leaving out her takedown of Eggleston. “I’m hoping Eggleston gives me a call and this homeless guy can tell us where the computer came from. Maybe even give us an ID on our suspect.”

      “That’s good news, then, isn’t it?” Tim’s gaze drifted to her computer screen as if the talk of Eggleston had bored him and he couldn’t wait to get back to a topic he loved to discuss. “How about your work here? Having any luck?”

      “Maybe. I found another login to the network that occurred yesterday. At first, it appeared as if it came from Luke’s house, but as I dug deeper, I found he’d used a proxy server in a long string of proxies. I’m tracking the transmission now.”

      Tim gave a low whistle and leaned against the doorjamb.

      “I’m going to pretend I understood that.” A lopsided grin flashed on Luke’s face, and now that Dani was starting to believe in his innocence, she grinned up at him. She got lost in his eyes, enjoying their obvious connection, until Tim pointedly cleared his throat.

      She jerked her eyes away. She was working her dream case, and she had to let go of this hold Luke had on her. With his good looks, Tim probably had to deal with women throwing themselves at Luke all the time. She was not going to be one of those women. She focused her full attention on Tim.

      “With skills like that,” he said, “it’s likely our hacker’s done this before.”

      She nodded. “But why is the question. Since there’s really no financial payoff for this kind of hack, I’d say our hacker was hired to do it.”

      “Hired by someone who wants us to fail.” Tim pushed off the door frame. “He’s no match for us, right? We won’t let him sink us.”

      “Right,” she answered absently as his words tickled the elusive memory that she couldn’t help but feel was connected to the case. She needed to figure it out instead of standing here talking. “Thanks for the login, Tim.”

      She turned back to the computer, opened Crypton and started clicking through the code while Luke and Tim chatted near Luke’s desk. She went deeper into the program. A line of code jumped out at her, sending her heart plummeting.

      This was it. The elusive hint she couldn’t put her finger on earlier. Just a snippet of code but it was distinctive, like a trademark. A trademark for a ruthless hacker. A killer. Echo, the man who’d murdered Grace Waters, Dani’s friend and partner at the FBI, all because they’d tried to apprehend him for hacking a bank’s website.

      And threatened to kill me if we ever crossed paths again.

      How had she not seen the pattern yesterday?

      “Oh, no,” Dani whispered as her world seemed to collapse in on her. Father, no. Not Echo. I can’t handle this again.

      “Dani.” Luke looked up. “Is everything okay?”

      Okay? her mind screamed as the two men watched her closely. No, everything isn’t okay.

      Feeling as if she might be sick, Dani bolted from her chair and ran down the hallway to the women’s restroom. She leaned over the sink and took a good look at her face in the mirror.

      Colorless. Fearful. Terrified.

      This couldn’t be happening. Not when she’d finally given up on finding Grace’s killer and laid it to rest.

      “But it is happening,” she mumbled, her mouth so dry the words barely slipped through her parched lips.

      Echo was back and they were not only dealing with a ruthless hacker who worked for the highest bidder, but if she did her job right and got too close to him, he’d kill her without a second thought.