Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Maude ground her teeth together as she glared at the red warning banner across the top of her monitor.
Malware Detected. Site may be compromised.
“Well, that wasn’t the afternoon I was hoping for,” she muttered, pushing her computer glasses higher on her nose. She glanced over at Pixel, her Betta fish. “I could be at the pool right now, doing what you do all day. Instead, I’m dealing with this nonsense.”
Her client, Trish Granger, the owner of an antique store in Alabama, was texting again in panic. My new acquisitions page says ‘Buy Crypto Now.’ What’s happening?!
Maude exhaled slowly. She picked up her phone, tapped the microphone so she could use voice-to-text, and spoke. “You’ve been hacked, Trish. But don’t worry, I’m on it.” She hit Send.
Thank you, Trish texted back along with praying hands and a heart emoji.
Maude opened her FTP client and connected to the site’s server. Inside the main folder, a dozen unfamiliar files flashed red in the error log: btc_banner.js, popup-miner.php, and a suspicious admin2.php. All files she definitely hadn’t uploaded.
“Lovely,” she growled to herself. “Some script kiddie decided to mine Bitcoin on Trish’s new items for sale page. Probably lives over his parents’ garage and thinks he’s about to hit it big. Loser.”
Maude’s fingers flew across the keys. She disabled the site via cPanel, set it to maintenance mode, and ran a MalCare scan. The report showed injected code in the theme’s header.php file—a snippet designed to redirect traffic.
“Not today, buddy,” she murmured. “Not on my watch and not on my website.”
She opened the infected file, scrolling until she found the offending line of code.
She deleted it, saved the files, and uploaded the clean version.
Then she replaced all admin passwords with strong randomized strings and generated a new access file to block external writes.
She made a few more tweaks to be sure the site was as secure as it could be.
An hour later, she’d removed a few more JavaScript injections. That had to be all of them, didn’t it? She ran another check. At last, the console returned a satisfying green message. Scan complete. No malicious code detected.
Maude exhaled and raised a triumphant fist in the air. Now to update the site, which was built on WordPress, and let Trish know everything was taken care of.
She was just finishing up as Trish texted again.
How’s it going?
“Refresh your page,” Maude spoke into her phone. “You’re back in business and good to go. I’ve also installed Wordfence and limited logins to your IP range. And maybe the next time someone in your antiques group on Facebook recommends a new plugin, run it past me first before installing it?”
She hit Send.
Trish’s response came immediately. Thank you so much. You’re the best. I’ll never install anything else ever again, I swear. She followed that with a laughing emoji, another heart, and a flood of exclamation points.
Maude leaned back, smiling. The shush of the Gulf breeze through her open windows felt like applause. She pushed back from her laptop, already composing the invoice in her head—Emergency Cleanup, one and a half hours, plus one stern lecture about internet hygiene for free.
She looked over at Pixel again, who was currently resting in his leaf hammock suctioned to the side of the tank near the top. She shook her head. “You’re the world’s tiniest couch potato, you know that?”
She got up and stretched. She would have loved to have gone to the pool to hang out with the other Queen Bees, but running a business like hers meant dealing with client emergencies. It was the kind of service they paid for, and she was honestly happy to deliver it.
But sometimes it would be nice to be truly retired and able to do what she wanted. She glanced at her phone, wondering if there was any chance they were still at the pool. It had been nearly two hours. Probably not. But worth a text.
You guys still at the pool?
Maybe she’d head to the beach for a bit now that she’d put out all the fires. She stood in the open slider, looking out at the water. Might as well, since she didn’t— Her phone vibrated.
She checked the screen.
Essie had responded. Still here! Come join us if you can! Cabana 12
A cabana? That was so cool. With a big grin, Maude answered. On my way!
She threw on a bikini with a tank top and cut-off denim shorts, grabbed her beach bag, her hat, phone, and sunglasses, then locked up. She drove faster than usual, but golf carts weren’t exactly speedy to begin with.
For some reason, she was super excited to hang out with everyone. Maybe it was the thrill of being included. Didn’t hurt that Essie, or someone, had hooked them up with a cabana. That wasn’t in Maude’s budget, but she’d eyed them up longingly more than a few times.
It was nice having friends with money, but it made her think about the equality of it. She couldn’t exactly reciprocate, but there had to be something she could do. She’d think about it. Something was bound to come to her.
She walked through the pool complex, reading the numbers on the cabanas. She heard Essie’s laugh before she found the right number. She followed the sound to Cabana 12. “Hi, guys!”
“Maude!” All three waved as they shouted to her in greeting.
A handsome, stocky man with salt-and-pepper hair and a phone pressed to his ear stepped out of the cabana. That had to be Essie’s husband, Frank. He gave a little wave, too, then stood with one hand on his hip as he went back to his conversation. The big watch on his wrist caught the sun.
“This is so fancy,” Maude said as she joined them, pulling another lounge chair over from the next grouping. She positioned it next to Essie and sat down to lean in. “I’m assuming the man in the cabana is your husband?”
Essie laughed. “Yep, that’s him.”
“He’s cute.”
Essie laughed harder. “He’ll be thrilled to hear that. Speaking of cute, have you seen Dr. Ollie lately?”
“Maybe tonight,” Maude answered. Ollie’s job as a cardiologist at the local hospital kept him pretty busy. As much as Maude loved spending time with him, she didn’t want to come off as needy, so she was letting him set the pace.
“Tell him we said hi,” Blaise said.
“Will do. I didn’t think you guys would still be here.” Maude pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head. “I would have come sooner but…” She shrugged. “Never install a plugin on your website unless you’re sure it doesn’t contain malware. Just saying.”
Paige let out a little snort. “Can anyone translate that into English?”
Frank ended his phone call and joined them. He stuck his hand out and smiled. “You must be Maude.”
She stood up again to shake his hand. “I am. You must be Frank. It’s really nice to meet you.”
“You, too. Essie was telling me you do something with computers?”
Maude nodded. “Website design and maintenance.”
“Outstanding. You have a card on you?”
“Um, no, sorry.” It had never even occurred to her to bring a business card. “But I’ll give one to Essie next time I see her.”
“Great.” His phone buzzed. He glanced at it. “I’ve got to take this, sorry.” He answered the call as he walked back into the shade of the cabana. “Luigi, good to hear from you.”
Essie shook her head. “They just opened a branch in Italy and there’s a lot going on.”
“I can imagine.” Actually, Maude couldn’t. She didn’t have a clue what that would entail.
Blaise pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “I might want to talk to you about a website.”
“Yeah? Cool. I’d be happy to do that. I’m surprised you don’t already have one.”
“That’s what Paige said,” Blaise answered. “Are you busy tomorrow? Maybe we could get together in the morning and talk.”
“Sure. I’m available. You want to come to my place or have me come to yours?”
“I usually go for a walk first thing in the morning. I could just walk my way to you.”
“Hang on,” Maude said. “When you say first thing, what do you mean exactly?”
Blaise smiled. “I mean early, but you know what, it doesn’t need to be then. How about after I walk Beau and get home, I’ll text you to see if you’re up.”
Maude nodded. “I’m usually up late working or gaming, so I try to avoid anything too early. But we could say ten a.m. Does that work for you? My place? Be easier for me to show you examples of my work that way.”
“That would be great.”
“Cool. I’ll see you then.”
Paige had a wide smile. “I just love this. Queen Bees helping each other. Hanging out. It’s exactly what I hoped would happen.” She put her hand on Essie’s arm. “Thank you so much for inviting us all to join you today.”
“Yeah,” Maude said. “That was super nice of you.” There had to be something she could do for Essie as a way of showing her just how much Maude appreciated this. An idea came to her. “How are things with you and the stepdaughter?”
Essie sighed and shook her head. “Not great.” She glanced back toward her husband, who was still on the phone. “Looks like we are going to be countersuing her.”
Maude grimaced. “That’s not great at all.”
But it had given her an idea.