Security Breach

  “You thinking of becoming a tourist guide?”

  “Those two terminals host eleven home port vessels. A total of 200 vessels dock here between May and October, providing service to over a million tourists a year.”

  “Huh.” Randall finished his drink and tossed the cup into a nearby trashcan. “Looks like everyone is home this morning.”

  “And it’s been that way for a week.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s where we start. We find out.”

  “And you think this is connected to Garcia’s murder?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences. We have a dead man who was tracing down an IP address with a program the government would drool to get its hands on, and an unexplained situation down on those ships that’s affecting over a million people.”

  “We usually don’t worry about cyber attacks on private business. They have their own people.”

  “No one is calling this is a cyber attack—yet.”

  “But you think it is.”

  “I think that something is off, and my spidey sense tells me it’s cyber related.”

  “Because?”

  “Because the cruise industry contributes 900 million a year to the Seattle economy.”

  “But only if the ships are running.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And the director’s analysis program?”

  “Jericho puts the chance of a current or impending cyber attack based on those two incidents happening in the same location at seventeen percent.”

  “Pretty low.”

  “It is, based on what we know right now.”

  Nora didn’t have a plan, exactly. The director had also received two separate emails—one from a city official and the other from a concerned citizen. She had the name and addresses for both, but first she wanted to visit the cruise ships. She’d tried to contact both corporate headquarters and individual ship personnel, all with no response.

  If they were facing a cyber attack they should have welcomed federal help. Unless the perps had frightened them into silence. It wouldn’t be the first time an entity thought paying the ransom and not reporting it to authorities would make the perpetrator go away. That seldom worked. If there was one thing cyber criminals had in common, it was greed.

  They wouldn’t be satisfied when their initial demands were met.

  The first ship they visited, the captain was off site.

  The second ship was effectively closed with only a few security guards on board. They claimed to know nothing about why they remained in port.

  The third ship they got lucky. The captain was in, and she was willing to talk.