Chapter 2 - ELEVEN WEAKNESSES
The first assessment sounded simple.
We were given seven minutes inside a simulated executive suite.
Identify security weaknesses.
Write them down.
Leave.
Most candidates found four or five.
An unsecured service entrance.
A poorly positioned hallway camera.
One unlocked file cabinet.
A visitor badge left near a printer.
I found eleven.
The last three mattered.
A microphone hidden inside a desk charger.
A mirrored decorative panel that exposed keypad entries.
And one access badge that had been duplicated badly enough for the laminate edges to separate.
I placed the list on Grant’s clipboard.
He read it twice.
“You had help.”
“No.”
“You’ve seen this setup.”
“No.”
“How did you find the badge?”
“It reflects differently.”
Grant looked at the sample.
Then at me.
“What does that mean?”
“The top layer is newer than the photo layer.”
He stared.
I continued.
“Whoever duplicated it used heat laminate instead of pressure seal.”
Cole stood two applicants behind me.
He heard everything.
Grant lowered his voice.
“Candidates don’t diagnose fabrication techniques.”
“Apparently one does.”
His eyes hardened.
Then he drew a red line through the last item.
“Not a vulnerability.”
“It’s a cloned credential.”
“It’s a training prop.”
“Then why isn’t it marked like the other training props?”
His jaw tightened.
That was the first real crack.
Not anger.
Fear.
Small.
Controlled.
But fear.
I had spent eleven years in Army intelligence learning that fear often appeared before lies.
Grant handed the sheet back.
“You found ten.”
“Eleven.”
“I’m the evaluator.”
I looked at him.
“That doesn’t change the number.”
Above us, through the glass railing, Victoria Sloan leaned forward.
She had heard enough to be interested.
Grant noticed.
May you like
And from that moment forward, the assessment stopped being about whether I was qualified.
It became about whether he could make me fail before someone important asked why I had noticed something he did not want noticed.
