Regan Black - Killer Colton Christmas

Marie didn’t expect the lag to last, and the more reporters covering this development, the tougher things would be at work. Her appetite gone, she skipped breakfast and headed into the office, the news following her on every station as she scanned the radio channels during the drive. Her grip tight on the steering wheel, she cursed the way one high-profile bad apple could ruin the whole bushel.

For Marie, Colton, Incorporated, was more than a career choice. The company had embraced her and she returned that welcome with a loyalty and affection as powerful as family ties. Now, thanks to one evil woman’s machinations, her family of coworkers would be cast into a glaring spotlight as the authorities investigated Livia’s connection to the company.

She’d seen it happen elsewhere. The most innocuous decisions and comments would be scrutinized for use as potential evidence, and as those details reached the press, the court of public opinion would weigh in first. Doubts crept into the customer mind-set quickly, and regardless of damage control, it could take years to restore confidence.

In the digital age, nearly everything lasted forever. Usually that worked in her favor as a CDO, sifting through data for patterns, identifying influencers and tailoring experiences for their customers. This process was known as data mining, but companies that mishandled the wealth of information had given a valuable process a bad name. She feared this kind of headline would work against her beloved company.

As she pulled into her parking space near the office, the radio went silent midbroadcast as if the station had lost the signal. In the next moment a new voice broke the quiet, speaking through an alteration device that hid the speaker’s gender and identity. “The Cohort will prevail. We can and will expose everyone colluding with Livia Colton. We will see true justice is served.”

“Not good,” Marie murmured to herself as the normal radio hosts came back on air, apologizing for the strange interruption. The Cohort, a notorious hacktivist group, claimed to work collectively for pure transparency, holding the powers that be accountable. In college, her professors had built several lectures and case studies on the organization’s methods, recruiting and most successful hacks. Unfortunately, they were often as destructive as Livia had been, despite their noble claims.

At thirty, Marie had experienced her share of bad days. Mentally, she shuffled today into her top ten list of worst ones, though there was serious competition in her history. She turned off the car and took a deep breath, resisting the urge to run flat out into the office and stay locked inside the building she loved until they stopped whatever the Cohort had planned. A thriving corporation connected by name and bloodlines to Livia would be an irresistible target.

Glancing around the parking area, she imagined someone hacking into the cameras and flashing her panicked race to work all over the internet with another headline full of negative insinuations about the company.

With that unpleasant image in mind, she forced herself to move with deliberate, calm purpose, belying the dread knotting her stomach. Purse over one arm, computer case over the opposite shoulder, she strolled into the gleaming twenty-five-story glass tower, hoping the lingering panic inside was hidden by her professional confidence and perfect posture.

The Cohort had a global reputation for following through on its threats. She knew Zane Colton, as head of security, would have precautions and heightened alerts in place, and the cybersecurity division would be shoring up firewalls and such to protect the company from a digital assault. As soon as she got upstairs, she would do everything possible to help ward off an attack.

The lobby door had barely whispered closed behind her when a wave of jitters surrounded her like a sudden storm. The air in the soaring atrium practically buzzed with nervous energy. She hustled to the elevators and upstairs to her office, just in time to pick up the phone ringing on her assistant’s desk. “Marie Meyers. How may I help you?”

“Good—you’re in.”

“Zane?” she asked, startled by the obvious relief in his normally composed tone.

“You’re needed in the conference room,” he said.

No sense in wasting time with questions. “I’ll be right there.” The urgency was surely related to the Cohort broadcast. She wouldn’t know how bad it was or how best to help until she got down there.

If she’d thought the building had a jittery vibe downstairs, it paled in comparison to the action in the conference room. A grim resignation pulsed through the air, as various people sat around the long oval table, murmuring stats and updates as they studied laptop monitors. At the head of the table, Fowler Colton, company president, stood with his brother T.C. and their stepbrother Zane. Today the company’s top men wore similar expressions of anger, frustration and grave concern.

Had the Cohort made an attempt on the company already? It seemed impossibly fast, considering the news had just broken.

At a colorful oath, her head swiveled toward the presentation screen along with all the others in the room. Feeds from half a dozen computer monitors, presumably projections from those around the conference table, were displayed for everyone to see.

She walked closer to the screen, disbelief and alarm going to war with that knot of dread in her stomach. Under a black-and-white banner the names of the highest-ranking officers of Colton, Incorporated, were posted, including hers. Alongside each name were personal details, ranging from partial home addresses and phone numbers to bank accounts and social security information. While some of the information was shown for each name, other fields had been completed with Click for More links.

“What site is this?” she asked the room at large.

“Does it matter?” Fowler asked.

“It does,” she replied, thinking of customers and their viewing habits. “We need to get it shut down—”

“Too late, Marie. The first successful breach of the firewall occurred just after five this morning and we’ve been scrambling to stop the digital bleeding ever since.” Zane gave a nod to a young man at the table. “Show her.”

That put the breach two solid hours before Everything’s Blogger in Texas posted the story that Livia wasn’t dead. Marie was trying to make sense of that when the screen flooded with a scroll of more names. She pressed her hand to her lips to smother the alarmed gasp. The Cohort hadn’t just compromised the executives or those with the last name of Colton. It had systematically captured the personal records for everyone in the company.

“How can I help?” she asked, determined to fight back.

“You’re looking at a dark website where the Cohort has started an auction,” Zane told her. “We’ve contacted the FBI. They should be here any minute.”

An auction for this kind of data would be irresistible to thieves, smugglers and human traffickers. The criminals who could afford the information wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Although she had concerns for herself, she was only one person. Her heart sank for the employees and their families over the terrible consequences of identity theft of this magnitude.

How ironic that the Cohort, supposed champions of personal privacy, had just compromised the data of innocent people while she worked relentlessly to protect the information gained by her efforts.

“We have to move quickly and get an identity protection plan in place for everyone.” Each of them faced more than just immediate inconveniences. With just a few hours’ head start, bank accounts and retirement funds were already in jeopardy.

“We are,” Zane said. “There’s more, Marie.”