In Deep with the FBI Agent (3 page)

“I went there for high school, but I haven't been back there since I graduated. I'm sure it's a very different place, and I don't know much about the inner workings of private schools,” Sam said.

“Were there other complaints?” Jack asked.

“Three private schools in the last month have logged complaints,” Ted said. “I doubt any of them are connected. My guess in all three cases is that it's student hackers trying out their skills.” He glanced pointedly at Sam, who felt his cheeks heat.

As part of his admittance to the FBI, he'd had to confess that as a fifteen-year-old, he'd hacked into his school computer just to see if he could do it. He'd changed nothing, stolen nothing, and caused no harm. No one ever knew he was there, but Sam didn't want anything to trip up his application, so he'd been up front about it. “Fine. That
is
something I know about.” Everyone at the table laughed, since Sam wasn't alone in his youthful indiscretion. They were all members of CAT because they were hackers at heart.

“Are you sure they weren't all related?” Sam asked, thinking swiftly and trying to find patterns.

Ted shrugged and slurped his coffee. “I suspect this case isn't under our watch. Let someone in the general cyber team handle it. Almost no money was stolen from the schools, so the DOJ won't take it on.”

“Maybe that wasn't the goal,” Sam said, scratching the back of his head. “Maybe they stole a little bit of money as a MacGuffin.”

His next sentence was drowned out by hoots and laughs at his use of the Hitchcock film term. He accepted the ribbing with a good-natured grin, but he didn't lose his train of thought. “What if the financial theft was to hide the real goal?”

“What was the end goal, then?” Ted asked curiously.

“I have no idea.” He delved into thoughtful silence, continuing to eat his lunch as the others moved into a discussion about the latest trade for a new pitcher on the Nationals.

He returned to the office after lunch and headed to Ted's private office. “Can I see the files on the private school hackings?”

“Why bother? We're overloaded as is, and these aren't going to be a big deal. We won't get a prosecutor to take it on.”

“Maybe not,” Sam replied, “but I want to take a look anyway, with your permission.”

“Fine.” His boss hit a few keys on his computer and sent the files to Sam. “Don't waste too much time on this. We have bigger cases.”

“Agreed.” Sam returned to his desk and opened the email attachments with the intake files detailing the case. After reading all three files, he saw the cases might or might not be connected. Without knowing more, there was no way to tell, except for his gut instinct that was telling him they were connected and not just individual hackings, as was the original thought.

He fired off an email to Ted requesting to take on the case because there was something he was missing. Something bigger than a few grand stolen from scholarship and athletic funding at some prestigious college preparatory schools. With permission to spend more time on the case, he'd find the connection. He knew it.

S
am wondered how many other schools had been hacked and hadn't even realized it yet. Likely a lot. While he waited for Ted to give permission for him to delve into the case, he completed some other administrative tasks on his to-do list.

Finally, around three in the afternoon, he got the green light to take the lead on the private school hacks. He had access to assistance from research and they started making calls to various local private schools. From what they'd seen thus far, the schools hit were in urban and highly populated regions. All the schools had big donors and were in the top fifty of the national rankings. Hmm, it sounded familiar. Too familiar. Exactly like his alma mater.

With that thought, the phone in his breast pocket felt like a weight, because it held the invitation to his ten-year reunion. He'd been lying a little when he'd told Jack and his other colleagues he didn't want anything to do with Montgomery Prep. The truth was he'd liked high school most days. Academically, it had been challenging, but it had been the social life that had caused the most problems.

His prickliest memories about high school revolved around Casey Cooper. She'd remained his friend-slash-nemesis from orientation through graduation. After their one day of friendship, Casey had entered ninth grade with a clear goal to be the most popular girl, and she'd nailed it with ease.

There'd been no place for Sam in her plan, and she'd dropped him quickly. He'd let her, because tagging after her would have been pathetic, though his crush on her never faded. If she'd been stupid or mean, he could've lost his fervor, but, no, she had done well academically, and she was never outright mean to him. She simply ignored him.

Somehow, Sam had always assumed that someday he'd summon the balls to do more than write her secret notes, which he'd left in her locker. He'd man up and ask her out and she'd fall madly in love with him and they'd live happily ever after.

It hadn't happened. It was never going to happen. Hell, he hadn't spoken to Casey since their freshman year of college. Still, she was the one woman he held up as the ideal woman, whom he'd marry and with whom he would start a family.

He was an idiot. An idiot who had a case to solve, and Casey Cooper could help.

Shit.

Sam picked up the phone, both excited and dreading the call. He didn't have to talk to
her
. He could talk to someone else. After all, Casey worked in development. She had nothing to do with the school's IT staff or anything remotely connected to the hackings. Still, she was his closest connection to the school, despite his parchment diploma from the place.

He made the call and got a bubbly admin named Annie who made the assumption he was calling to respond to the ten-year reunion invitation. Her disappointment that he simply wanted to speak to Casey was a palpable dejection that came through the phone.

“I'll consider attending the reunion,” he finally said. “If work allows.”

He tried to make it seem he might be off doing dangerous undercover assignments, when in reality, he'd be staring at a glowing computer screen, sitting on his ass most of the day. He loved his job, but sometimes wished he lived the stereotype that people assumed when they heard he was an FBI special agent, especially given the name of his division. Cyber Action team implied, well, action, and though they were always busy, always on the go, he'd never had to fire his weapon and likely wouldn't ever have to. He did get to wear the cool navy FBI Windbreaker when they stormed a building in which they suspected someone was running a cyber fraud ring.

It took an hour for Casey to call him back, during which he reorganized his pen cup on his desk, rooted out all the rogue paper clips in his top drawer, and discovered that the FBI firewall blocked BuzzFeed quizzes. He'd never learn the twenty-two things that made redheads different from the rest of the world.

His phone finally rang with the caller ID from Montgomery Prep, and his arm sent his newly clean pen cup flying across the desk in his haste to grab it, though he did force himself to let it ring twice before picking up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Is this Sam Cooper?” Her voice was smooth, professional, and yet his every nerve ending tightened as if he were about to run a sprint in an Olympic trial. Nothing in Casey's voice hinted that after four years of her ignoring him in high school, they'd kissed on graduation night. A kiss, despite its brevity and regrets, that was still the hottest kiss he'd ever had. At least in his memory.

In his memory, Casey's warm body had pressed against his, and he'd wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in close. His lips and tongue had known what to do despite their relative inexperience.

The Kiss—as he thought of it—probably hadn't been that great. It was purely the glow of time settling on the memory. It was this kiss that kept Casey in his mind, even ten years after graduation. It kept her as the pinnacle of women and prevented him from getting serious about any of the women he dated.

“Uh, yeah, it's me.” Then silence.

Way to be cool, Sam.

Luckily, he didn't have to say anything at first, because she launched into discussing something that let him listen to her smooth and professional voice without paying attention to her actual words.

The second he'd picked up the phone, Sam was transported back to high school, and his stomach clenched as his sweaty palm gripped the receiver. He heard words coming out of Casey's mouth and heard his own mouth making responses, which was tricky, considering his brain was in an alternate universe.

“Sam, are you there?” he heard Casey ask.

“Um, yeah. Still here,” he answered.

“So you can do it?”

“Yeah, of course. Wait, do what?”

“Can you come to give a talk on careers in law enforcement on career day?” Casey asked, sounding a little impatient. “What's up with you? I thought you would've changed since high school, especially being an FBI agent, but seems like you're still living with your head in computer code.” It was something Casey had often teased him about.

Ironic, really, since he was always on the ball and on point until she was in his space. Then he couldn't stop staring at her long, almost-red hair and skin that looked softer than silk. As he'd gotten older, he'd also been nervous around her, waiting for her to tease him about leaving letters in her locker, but she'd never done that.

Casey Cooper was the one woman in the world who got his hyper-focused brain to short-circuit. If that wasn't a reason to stay far away from her, he didn't know what was. But circumstances and the alphabet had thrown them together time and again. They always had to sit next to each other at any large school ceremony, including graduation. They were placed in the same required classes such as Intro to World History, and worst of all, PE. Freshman year, PE had been co-ed. What sadist had invented co-ed PE for high schoolers? Someone who liked to watch underdeveloped adolescent boys get their asses wiped up and down a lacrosse field in front of girls, that was who.

Sam forced his mind back to the present day. “Yes. I can come do career day. And I'll be at our reunion,” he blurted, and then remembered to add, “if work allows.”

“Oh, okay great.” Casey sounded as if she could not care less. “Gotta go.”

“Wait.” Sam remembered why he'd called in the first place. “Any chance Montgomery Prep's been hacked recently?”

Casey's tone suddenly sounded a lot less distant and a lot sharper. “Why do you ask? What have you heard?”

“I'm not at liberty to say,” Sam said cagily. It was a good tactic to let people think you knew a lot and they'd reveal more than you'd asked. Silence was his friend—an interrogation technique he'd picked up a few years back.

“As far as I know, we're fine,” Casey said, “but I heard about Wooton.”

“What'd you hear?”

“That they were hacked and the parent body is freaking out that a lot of their personal information was leaked. It's a total nightmare. Think about how much data a school has on each student and their family.”

There was an awkward moment of silence as they both remembered that back when Sam had been in high school, he'd hacked into the school's database just to see if he could. The problem was that the wrong Cooper had come up and that was how he'd learned Queen Bee Casey's dirty secret: that she'd also been a scholarship student, something she'd teased Sam about.

She was the only person ever, besides his coworkers, who knew what he'd done, and proving that adolescent boys were truly idiots, he'd gone to Casey in a lame attempt to bond with her over both of them being on scholarship.

Unfortunately, his plan had backfired, and instead of bringing them closer, Casey had been super angry, threatening to report his actions to the head of the school. To stop her, Sam had said he'd spread the word that she was on scholarship. For three years, they'd lived with an uneasy truce.

“Ironic, isn't it?” she asked.

“I do see the irony, yeah,” Sam responded softly. He swallowed and stared at the headshot of Casey on the Montgomery Prep website, which he'd pulled up during their conversation. Yeah, he still had it bad for her. “Casey, I never really apologized for what happened. I was an idiot to look into those records, and once I did, I never should've told you what I'd seen.” He swallowed and reached a finger out to stroke her face on the screen, pulling back before making actual contact.

She snorted. “Yeah, because you could lose your job if I ever decided to tell the FBI that you once were a hacker, not to mention you would've been kicked out of school if I'd told on you.”

“Actually, the FBI knows. I told them during my interview process.”

Casey was silent over the phone, and then she said, “It was your good luck I didn't want to make a big deal out of it to hide my own scholarship.”

“I would've deserved it. I shouldn't have blackmailed you.”

“Damn straight.”

“I hadn't wanted to upset you,” he said. “In my own awkward way, I was trying to be sympathetic and tell you there were worse things in the world than being on scholarship. Instead I ended up being an asshole who blackmailed you, which I never wanted to do. You should've called my bluff. I wouldn't have said anything about your scholarship.”

“I understand that now,” Casey said, sounding softer and sweeter than Sam had ever heard from her. “I…” But whatever she was about to say, he wouldn't find out, because she broke off and then finished with, “Why were you asking me about the hackings? The private school community is small, but not so small that they'd share their dirty laundry with me.”

“Gotcha,” he said, disappointed that the moment of sweetness was gone. He'd always suspected that whomever could break through Casey's diamond shell would discover pure powdered sugar underneath, and for too many years he'd tried to be that boy. Now, as a man, it seemed he was still trying.

“You know who to call if Montgomery Prep is hacked.”

She gave a low, sexy chuckle. “Will do, but let's hope you never hear from me.”

Ouch. “See you at the reunion,” he said, but she'd already hung up, which was a good thing because he undoubtedly would have done something stupid, like ask her to be his date to the reunion. Yeah, like she didn't already have a date, and if she didn't, she still wouldn't want to go with him.

Sam slowly rested the receiver in the cradle and cursed out loud. Loud enough to get a glance from his across-the-cubicle-wall neighbor.

“Bad case?”

“It's nothing,” Sam said. It
was
nothing, and he was pissed as hell that two seconds on the phone with Casey Cooper had reverted him back to the insecure, underdeveloped geek that he had been in high school.

It was ten years later, and he'd grown a little past six feet, worked out every day in the gym with the result of decent muscles, and had a brain muscle that surpassed the external physical ones. According to his last few girlfriends, smart was sexy. So, all in all, he was the total package, and he had to remember that the next time he interacted with Casey Cooper.

In fact, maybe if she saw him in person, she'd see him as he was now and not how he'd been. If he saw her in person, maybe he'd see that she was just a woman, maybe even not as fabulous as his last girlfriend.

Except his last Facebook stalk had revealed that she was prettier now than she'd been in high school. She'd finally allowed herself to eat more than three Tater Tots, and her breasts and ass, which had been spectacular before, were now hovering in the out-of-this-world plane.

The more Sam thought about it, the more he liked the idea of seeing her again. He didn't want to see Casey for the first time at the reunion. He wanted to see her sooner. He'd wanted to see her a lot during the past ten years—eight, really, if you counted their freshman and sophomore years at college, which Sam didn't since Casey and he had barely seen each other except in passing.

Since you couldn't call someone you hadn't been friends with out of the blue to ask them to hang out, he'd never contacted her. He had a reason now. A legit reason. He needed more information on how the administration of a private school operated, and she might help him to see a pattern in how the school crimes were connected. Who better to help him than Casey? He'd show up at the school without an appointment tomorrow. Surprise her and see how she handled getting thrown off her game.