Free Edge of Control: An Edge Security Novel (Edge Security Series Book 1) by Trish Loye

as she touched his mouse to wake it. It asked for a password.
    She pulled her laptop out of her tote, and after setting it beside his computer, she plugged it into his system. She’d recently upgraded the graphics processing card that would let her brute-force cracking code run faster on the GPU rather than the laptop’s CPU. She set her program parameters and let it fly.
    While her system went to work, she explored the office. A bookshelf held a few books on art, though dust covered them, as well as the rest of the empty shelf space. A check of his desk drawers revealed two pens, a pad of paper, and some receipts from a nearby Chinese restaurant. No pictures or anything personal sat anywhere in the office.
    Dani frowned as her laptop beeped at her. It had taken all of two minutes to crack his password.
    Kotyonok .
    The Russian word for kitten. It was the pet name Vladimir had called her.
    Ice traveled from her core outward, while her heart thundered in her ears. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to slow her racing heart. She should have followed Tass on her date rather than indulging her curiosity and cracking E.D.G.E.’s inner firewalls.
    She ignored the impulse to run and forced herself to go through Levkov’s system. Though she knew that wasn’t his real name. A few minutes later she sat back, frowning. Nothing. As far as she could tell, only video games had been played on this computer. Even the email was nonexistent.
    What was going on here? She packed up her system and decided to dig deeper, her curiosity driving her as much as her need to find her friend. She walked down the hallway until she came to the corner office. The president of the company.
    Dmitri Levkov.
    She paled. She could no longer deny it. It wasn’t the right last name, but the name Dmitri confirmed her suspicions. The Levkov name had to be a cover for Dmitri and Vladimir, the ruler and heir-apparent of the Rusakov family—one of the largest Russian mafia families in North America. She’d been hiding from the Bratva for five years now. The only reason she’d thought she was safe in Montreal was that Vladimir had been sent to Russia by his family as punishment.
    For killing her.
    He was obviously back and working in the family business again. And here she was, breaking into one of their offices. Nausea threatened to bring her to her knees.
    “Just get the information, Dani,” she muttered to herself.
    Inside, she ran her fingers over the books decorating one wall. A small filing cabinet only held a few files of art transactions. She sat down at the large, polished wood desk and sighed.
    Dmitri had a Cyrillic alphabet keyboard, which would make things more difficult, but not impossible. Her Russian reading skills were rusty, so she added a translating program from Russian to English before she started the cracking program.
    As her system went to work, she checked Dmitri’s desk. Nothing interesting, and she prayed for Tassia’s sake that there was something more useful on his system than video games.
    Her laptop came up with Dmitri’s password and she set to work. She dug through his files, moving slowly because she had to translate what she was seeing. She tapped her fingers on the desk and glanced at the wall clock. 11:45. She bit her lip. She’d already been here longer than she wanted.
    His email revealed sparse conversations with a couple of galleries in the city. Not enough for a healthy art-import business. There were a few messages from the Office of Public Prosecution relating their intent to investigate Volka.
    The clock now said 12:15.
    The back of her neck prickled with unease. Cutting off the email, she inserted a backdoor program into Dmitri’s system so she could enter remotely, bypassing the major firewalls she’d found earlier. She bit her lip and surveyed the sparse office. Why have such sturdy firewalls if there wasn’t anything to find? He must have information somewhere. Probably on a home computer or