Free Hidden Heat: Hauberk Protection, Book 4 by Leah Braemel

now?”
    Moments later the IT manager walked in, sliding Troy a glance as he sat down. It’s not like he or Sandy had made any noise so there was no way he could have known what they’d been doing. Had he and Sam been yelling loudly enough they could hear what was being said in the office beyond?
    Bloody hell, maybe he was imagining things.
    John took his seat across from Troy. From the shadows under his eyes, he’d had little sleep in the last twenty-four hours. “We had another hacker try to get in last night.”
    As he listened to the details of the attempt to break into the company’s computers, Troy rubbed his temples in an effort to ease the headache gradually building strength. “What’s that make this, the third attack this month?”
    “Fourth.” John plugged his laptop into the viewer and launched into an outline of the procedures the IT geeks were taking to prevent a breach of their security.
    Lost by all the geek speak, Troy stared at the screens of data the IT geeks had captured of the hackers’ attempts to penetrate Hauberk security. Yeah, like that helped clarify things for him at all. Show him a blueprint or a timeline of who did what, that he could follow. Even if it were in Russian or Arabic. But this coding gobbledygook? Might as well have been in Martian.
    Thankfully Sam looked just as confused and interrupted John’s lecture. “Yeah, you’re tracking them. Great. What I want to know is do you have any clue of what they’re looking for?”
    “Not so far. They’re testing the firewalls and trying various permutations of passwords and user IDs. It could be a teenager who stumbled upon our system and is poking around to see what damage he can do, or it could be someone attempting to find information on our safe houses or our procedures, but at this stage, it’s anyone’s guess.”
    Frustration gnawed at him. The Sig Sauer in his holster wasn’t a threat to a hacker hidden behind firewalls and proxies. Nor was the knife strapped to his ankle. Give him a hard target to take out. A building to breach. A person or people to hit or defend others against. Tangibles. Those he could fight.

Chapter Six
    And then Sam walked in. With me kneeling right in front of Troy. Sandy typed in her response to the messenger box she’d opened with Jazz almost as soon as she got home.
    MayB he wanted 2 watch or was pissed he’d missed out.
    Sandy snorted. Especially since Sam/Rosie were obviously going at it—loudly— in his office last week. She hit Send and then continued immediately with a second message. Anyway, he hauled Troy into his office. Rest of day Troy wouldn’t even look at me.
    He might be playing it slo 2 try 2 fool Sam. Don’t read things in2 it. Yet. Jazz responded.
    Easier said than done. Hey, how are things going with Mitch?
    *fans self* popped up on her screen along with an icon of a blushing happy face. Great. Oh, BTW, did you look at those videos he helped me edit yet?
    Shit. Where the heck had Jazz put that thumbdrive? It took ten minutes but she finally found it beneath three days’ worth of junk mail piled on the corner of the desk. She popped the drive into her USB port and loaded the file.
    Oooh, they’re great. Good job.
    Thx. Gotta go. BTW hooking up w/ Mitch l8r, don’t head to bathroom naked 2nite n case he’s still there.
    She clicked on the icon to open the email program to find she had four emails waiting, one from her mother with the details of the party she’d missed and how Ernie’s cousin had been disappointed to miss her—sheesh, would she never give up?—two were jokes, and one was a chain letter an acquaintance insisted on sending her. While she was here, she might as well check her work email too. She opened the VPN program that would let her access the Hauberk private network and typed in her password. When she hit Enter the screen cleared then returned with the password screen. That was weird. She typed in her password again and this time she got into the