Free The Omega Team: Keeping Karen (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Heather Long

soft and still warm from the day. The sun had already set, and lights in the distance the only hint of others intruding on their paradise. Holding her hand, he walked her toward the water’s edge. It took them out of the line of sight from the road, and they’d blend in to the night.
    “So, you said feast or famine.” He wanted to get them back on their earlier topic.
    “Yeah. Sometimes I have a lot of business, other times not so much. It works out. I have a budget, and I keep a good chunk in savings for the lean months. I can even take advantage of the downtime for spontaneous vacations or shopping trips.”
    That startled him. “You were never much of a shopper.”
    “For clothes? No. I’m a basic girl. I like comfy shoes and yoga pants.” She twisted to walk sideways, grinning at him. “I like toys.”
    “Oh?” Intrigued, he wanted to pursue that line of thought.
    “Yep. I have to have the latest gaming systems, and if there’s a new iSomething, well I get it, too. I love electronics. I guess I should warn you, I have very expensive habits.”
    “Duly noted.” Amused at the animation in her step and her voice, he forced himself to scan the area. He couldn’t afford to relax his vigilance. “Tell me about the last job you were doing.”
    “I told you, there were some accounting issues the bank kept running into. They hired me to vet their internal auditing software and to run my own programs. Someone had installed a skimmer. They were taking one-tenth of a penny from every transaction. Doesn’t seem like much, but you multiply that by thousands of transactions large and small every day for months…and it becomes a tidy sum.”
    He nodded. “Once you identify the program, do you shut it down?”
    “Only if the client wants me to. Most of the time, I provide them with a full report listing the program, where it’s running, and what it’s taken. If I can identify where the money went, I give them that and then provide a list of recommendations.”
    “Why not just shut it down?”
    “Because if they report it, the FBI or someone in a cyber division will want access to see what was actually done, if I tamper with the code in anyway without specific instruction, then it could give the person who did the crime a legitimate defense.”
    Ethan frowned. “Something along the lines of you changed it and found it, so you had to know it was there…”
    “Ergo reasonable doubt. It’s a bunch of crap and most people won’t buy it, but sophisticated coding is hard to explain and even harder to fingerprint. Not all hackers leave a signature, no matter what they tell you on television. Why would anyone go to so much trouble to hide a theft only to leave a sign about who they were?”
    “To get credit?”
    “Eh.” Karen shrugged, the absolute disgust in the single syllable tugging another smile from him. “You advertise something like that, you’re asking to get caught. No one wants the cops looking for them, even less the FBI. You know, ten or twenty years ago, maybe it seemed cool to be able to do something no one else could stop, but some of the most talented computer hackers actually work for the government now. It’s better to win in private and enjoy your winnings than it is to flaunt it and invite the bull to charge you.”
    “Fair point. Why did those account transactions get your interest? Had the skimmer targeted them?”
    The water lapped at the shore, the gentle sway of it kissing the sand a soothing soundtrack to score their walk. He kept Karen on the water side. If anything, his greater height and bulk would shield her. Tracking their steps, too, meant they were only a half mile from the house. Soon he’d have to turn her around.
    “I was running a couple of different programs that night. I wanted to vet my own data, more to cover my own ass in case there were improprieties on the bank’s part than for any other reason.”
    “Embezzling?” That hadn’t occurred to him.
    “Or straight