Chapter 12 #2
“Hey, Ry, how’s it going?” Jack tugs his jacket off and drapes it on the back of one of the stools at the kitchen island. He walks over and pulls me into a brief hug. We aren’t overly affectionate as brothers, but I think all of this is shaking us a bit.
As if this year hasn’t been crazy enough with Vivian getting shot in January, and now Savannah has a deranged stalker. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know that we will double down, and always—always—bet on each other.
The front door opens, and I call out to let whoever it is to come on back. Theo looks as pissed off as he sounded last night as he takes a seat at the kitchen island next to the stool Jack occupied. I offer him a beer, and he takes it with a nod—and a very large initial drink.
“Man, you can’t blame yourself. Because if you do, all of us are right there with you. We had no idea someone had the ability to access one of our houses like that. This is not your fault,” Jack tries to encourage Theo, but it’s not landing.
Not that I can blame him.
I wish we had a name or even an idea of who would do this, and if it turns out to be her recently ex-husband, then Shane would be wise to run far and wide from Forrest Falls, because we will find him, and it will hurt.
I take a deep breath to find my center. I rely on the tools from my martial arts practice to ground me when I feel out of control, and today, I feel like I’m on the verge of losing all control.
But until we can identify who it is, none of us have a direction to aim our anger.
So, we wait.
Liam comes down the back set of stairs and walks into the kitchen with damp hair, grabbing an electrolyte drink before walking over to sit next to Theo.
“Hey, man, you good?” Liam asks Theo, setting a tablet next to me on the counter.
“Hey, I guess as good as I can be. Did you find anything?” Theo asks as Liam sets his drink down on the island and pulls up some video footage on his tablet.
“I didn’t find what I should have found, but I did find what they probably didn’t expect me to find,” Liam responds. What the hell does that mean?
“Translate to non-spy talk, please,” Jack chimes in.
Liam sighs, clearly also frustrated with this situation.
“When Shane and Savannah upgraded their system last year during everything that was going on with Vivi, there were specific parameters put in place that were above and beyond the typical security system. I personally referred the company that did the updates, and I trust them.”
My brother had all our security systems upgraded during that time, and I thought it was the safest thing out there. I’ve never had to second guess Liam when it came to security, and I really don’t care for the gut feeling that I should have done my own due diligence.
“Then why isn’t there any footage of who broke in or how they got into your sister’s house?” Theo asks him.
“Because this asshole is good. He had the same malware put on the system that he used when Savannah’s car was vandalized at the auto shop. Basically, this code allows him to shut down the entire system, but the internal system reads it as a standard update, so no alarms should go off.”
“Should? Does that mean one did?” Theo perks at that, as do Jack and I.
“In a way. There wasn’t an alarm at the time of the incident, but one of the extra measures we put into place last year captures any code that comes across the system, not just the outcome of the code.”
“And that’s good?” Jack asks.
“Yes, that’s very good. We aren’t sure who the hacker is, but I now have their malware program coding.
Every hacker has a signature, and I just need to find it in the code.
Unfortunately for them, I have some of the best hackers in the world currently working on breaking the code to figure out who is behind the malware,” Liam explains.
“If you have some of the best hackers in the world working on this, why isn’t it solved then?” Jack asks, and I bite my tongue to second the question.
“Unfortunately, the code on this wasn’t written by an amateur hacker. They’re really good, and it’s going to take some time. But I promise you guys, I have some of my best contacts on this and they will crack it.”
I highly doubt this is independent of the disgusting vandalism last month. “Can the outage of the auto shop incident help somehow?” I chime in.
“No, they didn’t have the additional measures that I had added to Savannah’s system to record the coding in real-time on an off-sight server.
Even though I have the recording of the code, the malware itself isn’t transferred to my server; think of it like a tape recorder, it just captures the sound of the music, or in this case, the characters written in the code. ”
“And would they be aware this was happening?” Theo asks.
“Nope. They wouldn’t have any idea that their code was getting copied, and that may work in our advantage because they won’t know my crew will be ready for them if they try again.
If someone remotely accesses the system in the same way again to force it offline for a supposed routine update, thinking their malware is still in place, it will actually launch our own malware on their system and feed as much information back as possible before it’s discovered.
If they discover it at all, but judging by the skill level involved here, they’ll know about it pretty quickly.
But my contacts said they only need an open door to get the information, so hopefully that’s enough. ”
“Doesn’t that mean we’re waiting to use Savannah as bait?” Theo cringes, but I’m right there with him, hating the thought.
“I wouldn’t say we are using her as bait; I would say we’re planning for different scenarios. Which brings up another suggestion I was going to run by you, but I know it’s going to seem a little … extreme.” Liam looks from Theo to me and Jack, but I don’t know where he’s going with this.
“Pretty fucking sure we passed extreme when someone was breaking into her house and getting into her damn underwear drawer, Liam,” Jack growls.
“Honestly, I don’t think there is much I wouldn’t do to ensure she and her daughters are safe,” Theo admits.
I knew I liked this guy.
“That’s what I was hoping you would say, because there was something that bothered me about the timing of the pillow incident. How did they know when Savannah and the girls would be out of the house? How did they know to get out of there before they were caught red-handed?” Liam asks all of us.
Son. Of. A. Bitch.
“You think this person is tracking her movements,” I say as it clicks.
Liam nods. “I think it’s possible. But I think we can use that to our advantage as well. Anything we can find out about whomever is behind this—without them knowing we’re gathering that information—could contribute to us identifying and stopping them.”
My security system lets me know the front door just opened as Walker calls out from the foyer, “Sorry I’m late.”
Liam and Jack share a look, and Liam shakes his head slightly, to which Jack nods.
“Perfect timing, man. I need help setting up the table and getting the grill going,” Jack says to Walker and all but ushers him out the back door when he walks into the kitchen.
“I’m not an idiot,” Walker calls out over his shoulder as Finn arrives, walking into the kitchen to join us.