Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

silver-blue BMW X5
SUV. Clicking her key fob flashed the lights on the BMW and started the engine.
She climbed in and pulled out of the Park’N’Ride lot.
    She hummed an old
Marvin Gaye song along with the oldies station on the satellite radio as she drove
into the long, curved driveway of her large brick-fronted home. The
gardeners must have been here yesterday. All of the leaves had been raked
up.
    The garage door
opened at the touch of the remote control. She backed into the garage, killed
the engine and just sat for a minute, still humming I Heard it Through the
Grapevine and smiling to herself.
    Stepping out of
her vehicle, she removed her old coat and put it, along with her battered purse,
in a locker near the SUV. She removed her gray, cleaning lady dress and donned
a stylish Nike track suit. She kicked off the clunky cleaning lady shoes and
slipped into mulie slippers. Her wedding band set sat on a shelf in the locker.
She slipped it onto her finger.
    “I’m home, honey.
Are the kids up?” She stepped through the door from the garage into a kitchen
filled with granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances. She reached
into the light-stained oak cupboard over the stove and grabbed a pair of coffee
cups. The aroma of fresh coffee, from the automatic coffee machine, called
seductively to her.
    “Hi, Hon.” Her
husband entered the kitchen pulling on a light jacket. “How was work last
night?”
    “The usual. Are
the kids ready to go?” She planted a light peck on his lips.
    A teenage boy and
girl swept into the kitchen, grabbed breakfast bars, and blew through to the
garage.
    “Tammy, Billy,
good morning,” she called after them. “How’s school going?
    “Not now, Mom,”
the girl yelled back over her shoulder. “I need to be there early today.”
    “What’re your
plans today, Bill?” Donna asked as her husband reached for the door knob.
    “I’m going to make
a Costco run, then I have the furnace repair guy coming for annual maintenance.
I’m hoping to clean the fish tank and vacuum. I’ll try to keep everybody quiet
so that you can get some sleep. Bye, Hon.”
    “Bye, guys.” Donna
stood holding two coffee cups as her family disappeared into the garage. She
heard the garage door open and Bill’s Hummer pull out. She looked at Bill’s
cup, then shrugged and sat it on the counter.
    She took her
coffee into her office and sat on the comfortable swivel chair in front of her
desk. While she booted up her computer, she sat for a moment, glancing at the
cup in her hand. It had a big pink heart on it and said “The World’s Greatest
Mom.”
    For just a second,
her heart felt heavy, then a long, elegant Seal point Siamese cat jumped into
her lap. She rubbed his ears and he began to purr. “At least somebody’s glad to
see me.”
    The morning light
broke through the gloom. A pair of doves picked seeds from the bird feeder
outside her window. The sunflowers along the cedar fence were at the height of
their glory.
    When she reached
for the mouse, the cat attacked her hand. Then he jumped onto the desk and
batted at the moving cursor on the computer screen. Donna laughed and double-clicked
on an icon on her screen. “That’s a very bad cursor, Maxie. It must be
punished.”
    The Cisco VPN
application opened. She gently picked up Maxie and cuddled him in her lap, then
clicked on the DigiGuard link, clicked on the “Connect” icon and was challenged
for her credentials. She entered her user ID, pin number, the constantly
changing code from the SecurID token on her key chain, then her pass code and
waited for a minute for the virtual private network to connect to her work
network. A popup box on her screen prompted her to scan her fingerprint. The
best security is something you know, something you have and something you are, she thought.
    The logo for her
company, DigiGuard Security, flashed on the screen along with the usual legal
warning notice that she was entering a private network. She