Chapter Nine
Mal watched from the back of the conference
room as Vivian began her presentation.
“I thought she wasn’t doing this anymore.” Ollie slipped
into his chair just in the nick of time. “Didn’t my father run her off?” He put
out a hand. “Not that I thought he should, but I understand he wants to keep
her safe.”
“I’ll keep her safe.” Those words were rapidly becoming his
mantra.
“Thought you were supposed to keep me safe, mate.” Ollie’s
lips kicked up in a grin. “Not that it’s hard. I’m pretty good at protecting
myself. I’m having lunch with Edward Kirkallan later. We’re getting an invite
to the inner circle, mate. He’s getting married soon, and he wants to party it
up before he ties the knot. We’ll be up to our ears in the finest wine, the
best food, and women who know how to treat a man right.”
Sami was on Oliver’s other side. She made a gagging sound.
That wedding would be filled with some of the richest people
in the world. Oliver had met Kirkallan during the
Italian job months ago. He was slowly working his way into a group of rich
people suspected of having their hands in some nasty business.
Mal was not looking forward to it, and now he didn’t have
to. Because Vivian had her case and if Damon wasn’t interested, they would be
having a talk.
Damon, Penny, Ariel, and her husband, Robert, sat toward the
front. The conference room was full this morning, and they’d already gotten
through all the admin notes. He’d noticed that when Damon announced Vivian
would be presenting a case this morning there were a few sighs and barely
concealed groans.
Vivian ignored all of it. This morning she was in her
element. Confident and secure in what she knew.
He’d helped her prepare all weekend. No fun sex. That wasn’t
his favorite part, but he loved the fact that she let him help verify every
piece of information they had dug up. Working beside her had felt natural. She
was focused and so smart it hurt. She could do this job.
And maybe it would keep him close to her for a little while
longer. He was changing. His life was becoming something it hadn’t been before,
and it revolved around one petite blonde with crazy curves.
“This is a rejected case from eight years ago involving the
Dunham Group,” Vivian explained as she clicked a key on her laptop and the
group’s logo popped onto the screen.
Robert frowned. He hadn’t been in the last couple of
meetings because he’d been on an assignment. “I remember this case. We didn’t
have any evidence that anything was taken. Even our computer experts couldn’t
figure what, if anything, was actually stolen or tampered with. We decided if
anything, it was probably some hacker looking for information to sell, but like
I said, nothing was gone.”
Damon was sitting back. “Yes. I don’t even know if I would
call this a rejected case. I don’t think there was a case at all. The CIO was
being paranoid.”
Oliver grinned his way. “We’re going to have fun.”
Sami sent her brother a stare that could freeze fire. Or it
would if Oliver paid her any attention.
“I think you’ll see that there is a case, and it’s tied to
something the group is working on right now,” Vivian promised. “The Dunham case
looked like nothing back then. I think it’s different if we look at it through
today’s lens.”
Damon sat up, eyes focused now. “Continue, and Oliver if I
hear another peep from you, I’ll send your sister instead of you.”
Oliver’s mouth closed.
Lucy’s head shook. “Finally a way to shut you up. And do you
know how ridiculous it is to have a heated pool in a country where it rarely
gets warm enough to swim? It’s terrible for the environment. So are hot tubs.”
“I only know how easy they are to relax in,” Oliver shot
back and looked to his father. “Sorry. She started it, and you would never
throw my beautiful baby sister to the wolves, but I will keep quiet out of
respect for Vivian. Do continue. You’re doing great.”
Mal wanted to see if Oliver would keep up that condescension
after she explained what they found.
Vivian clicked through a couple of slides. “The Dunham Group
is a logistics company. They serve all of Great Britain and Ireland and parts
of France.”
“Yes, they store food and make sure trucks run on time,”
Damon replied. “Another reason I didn’t take the case. They don’t have anything
to steal unless you want endless ledgers of what’s stored where.”
This was where Damon’s thinking was getting him in trouble.
In many ways he wanted to thank the man for being a picky
bastard. This was a case that would make Vivian’s career and bring back her
confidence.
Although that confidence had cost him super sexy spanking
sessions. She hadn’t needed them this weekend. He wouldn’t take it back for
anything. He was surprised at how much his world was starting to revolve around
her happiness.
It would hurt so fucking much when she broke it off, and yet
he couldn’t make himself stop.
“What they had was a young coder who’d written some truly
extraordinary code that made it possible to cut back on staff by fifteen
percent and sent the error rate plunging,” Vivian replied and clicked another
key. “This is Kit Lowe. He’s a certified genius. Born in Manchester, but his
parents died when he was eight and he moved to an aunt’s house in France. The
aunt recognized something in him and got him tested. He was placed in a gifted
and talented program and was done with high school by age fourteen. Graduated
top of his class at MIT and came to work for Dunham because he said he wanted
to live in England for a while. He was working on what some people considered
experimental code.”
She had Damon’s full attention now. “I’ve heard of him. He
went on to found his own company. He works in artificial intelligence.”
Vivian nodded. “Mr. Lowe is active in the charity scene. And
artificial intelligence was what he was working on then, too. A more primitive
version, without a ton of bells and whistles. He practiced on Dunham. I don’t
think the company was randomly hacked by people looking for a way to make cash.
I believe they were hacked to copy and download his code.”
Penny was looking through one of the files Vivian handed
out. “That’s intriguing, but I don’t understand what an almost decade-old case
has to do with a case from today.”
“I will admit I always wanted to find out how they got in,”
Damon said. “The security was excellent.”
“The outside attempt was there to hide the fact that they
gained access to the source system. That was how they did it. If anyone noticed
something odd, they would think it was a hacker coming in the normal way,”
Vivian explained.
Lucy leaned forward. “That sounds awfully familiar.”
Damon was fully interested now. “Yes, it does. Vivian, I’m
sure this is a lovely presentation, but I need you to get to the point. You
suspect who did it and that it has a lot to do with a case we’re currently
working on.”
Vivian moved through a couple of slides before stopping on a
grainy security cam photo. “Luckily the group saved these in their files since
they were coming to you. Please understand I’m not pointing fingers at the
people who investigated. That photo back then would mean nothing. It was
nothing more than a little girl with her dad at a meeting. They would almost
certainly have had an excuse like the babysitter bailed or school was closed
and he couldn’t find one. Which was exactly the excuse used years later when
they hacked Miles, Dean, Weston, and Murdoch.”
“Fuck me, that’s Gabby,” Robert said, his eyes on the
screen.
“Yes, facial recognition matched the footage from Adam’s
company,” Vivian explained. “We believe she also stole from the company Kit
Lowe worked at. And now Kit Lowe works with a company that has ties to another
case we’re investigating, so we might have a chance to talk to him, too.”
“Yes, I’d like to figure out if he’s a victim or part of the
problem,” Damon said, reading through the file Vivian had put together. “I
don’t like the connections to France. We still haven’t figured out what they
took from MDWM. Ian’s worried. Adam was working on some high-level AI at the
time. The government wanted the source code, but he would only give them a
license to use it. We always suspected they were the ones trying to hack Adam
until we met Gabby. Now we know it was The Chateau group. It could go for a lot
of money on the Dark Web.”
“Or it could be twisted and used for purposes Adam never
dreamed of,” Lucy pointed out. “When Sami and I broke into The Chateau, we
found evidence they’ve done this to a lot of cutting-edge inventors.”
“At the time I wondered if they left that behind as a false
trail,” Sami admitted. “Now I wonder if it wasn’t either a mistake or someone
on the inside trying to help. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
She glanced over at Sosa.
“They’re collecting tech,” Penny said with a sigh. “I don’t
like the thought of that.”
“None of us do, which is why we need to identify these
people. What do we know about this”—Sami looked down at her file—“Charles
Martin?”
“That’s where my expert comes in,” Vivian said and looked to
Sosa, who for once was sitting quietly, actually following the conversation.
Not that she didn’t always. He’d learned that Sosa was excellent at pretending
not to listen, a skill that likely served her well in her previous career.
“Charles Martin was an alias they all use from time to
time,” Sosa explained. “Charles Martin and his daughter, Lily. I believe Gabby
was around twelve or thirteen, but even years later she could pass for that
age. The girls who develop properly tend to get sent to the brothels when they
can no longer pass as children. Which is why I’m thankful I’m fairly flat
chested. Though I think I would look good with boobs.”
“Sosa,” Ariel said softly.
“Sorry.” Sosa sobered. “This man is known to us as Jaque. I
don’t know his last name. They weren’t big on them. He was one of the trainers.
He is not the same man as the David Gatton who took Gabby to Dallas. That was
another one of our trainers named Charles. He was brutal, but Gabby knew how to
do her job.”