“Well, my point is that I was exhausted. So after I got the IP address, I ended up falling asleep in my chair. Then when I woke up, I saw that I’d gotten an email from your email address about an urgent matter, so I opened the attachment on it, obviously thinking it was from you, and…”
“Damn it, Corbett!” Bradford erupted. “You fell into your own trap?”
“I know,” Corbett sighed. “I was just waking up and I wasn’t thinking, but now I am, and I don’t want to dig the hole any deeper.
“I printed out the text file the hacker attached,” Corbett said, handing Bradford a sheet of paper. “I couldn’t detect anything suspicious on my machine or on the intranet. I ran a virus scan and didn’t pick anything up. I think it’s a bluff, but I wanted to leave the decision to you as to how I should proceed.”
“Find him!” Bradford growled, crumpling the paper into a tight ball as he stormed out of his office.
“Ryan. Come in. I want to see you,” Dillon called through his walkie-talkie, with his typical corny imitation of Alexander Graham Bell’s first phrase transmitted by telephone. But there was an unusual urgency in his voice.
In no mood to talk to Dillon, Ryan almost ignored it. But sensing something wasn’t quite right, he answered back with his typical “What?”
“Hey, Ryan. I might be in trouble. I downloaded a file from Bradford’s email account that was sent out to six other Avillage employees, who I’ve since found out don’t exist. The file had a tracer on it, and I think it probably gave up my identity.
“They set me up, so they’re definitely aware that someone’s been in their system, and I think there’s a good chance that by now the IT security guy over there knows it’s me.”
Dillon sounded scared — or maybe just nervous — anyway, something outside his typical spectrum of emotions, which ranged from insulted to angry.
“What are you gonna do?” Ryan asked.
“I’ve got some ideas, but I’m not sure how much they know yet. Let’s just say I could potentially be in a lot of trouble. I’ve spent all morning kind of re-evaluating my goals. Don’t worry, I’m not planning on going down without a fight, and trust me, at least on some level I will get my revenge.
“Anyway, I have a bunch of Avillage information that only I know, and if I’m taken out of play, that information is gone. You’re the closest thing I have to a confidant, so I’m going to share it all with you. Nothing picked over or edited this time. I probably should’ve done it a long time ago.
“I’ve transferred all my data onto an external hard drive, and I’m mailing it to your home address in Cleveland. I want you to read everything and then destroy the hard drive — really destroy it. Be paranoid for once in your life. Hack it up and dispose of the pieces in different locations. Your brain is essentially a secure hard drive that no one else can access.”
“Yeah, sure,” Ryan said. “I’ll look out for it, but I think you’re overreacting. When they find out you’re one of theirs, you’ll probably get off with a slap on the wrist.”
“We’ll see, but I doubt it. Oh, and don’t waste your time with Jared Ralston’s email. It was overrun with spam. All the old stuff’s gone.”
There were a few seconds of radio silence before Dillon added, “You’ve been a great friend.”
“Sir?” Corbett said, walking right into Bradford’s office. There would be no waiting anxiously outside the door with news this big. “I’ve got the hacker’s identity. And he’s one of ours.”
“An employee?!”
“No. An orphan. Dillon Higley — ticker symbol DILN. He’s a computer programmer and app developer. Actually been quite profitable.”
“Who’s his chairman?” Bradford demanded.
“Tom Erskine in orphan ID.”
“Good. Never even heard of him,” Bradford said, staring at his monitor as his index finger stroked the wheel of his mouse. “I don’t have a single share. Prescott’s got his standard 2%, but he hasn’t been buying.
“Leave me his contact info, and I’ll take it from here,” Bradford said. “Do not tell anyone about this!”
“Yes sir.”
“And Corbett?”
“Sir?”
“Nice work,” Bradford managed, as much as it pained him to do so.
As soon as Corbett left the office, Bradford changed all of his passwords and got to work researching Dillon. He learned that his father was a hacker and that his father’s sentence had been extended on a terrorism charge. Dillon had never gelled with his adoptive family, but he was a consistently productive app developer.
A cursory review of his financial statements though showed that the dividends his stock was paying out were far too high for the amount of money the apps brought in. It turned out that almost half the money he was bringing in was in the form of capital gains — from trading other Avillage listings.
Got him, Bradford thought, his sneer morphing into an icy grin, as he typed out an email to Dillon.
Dear Mr. Higley,
I hope you have enjoyed snooping around our intranet. I am quite confident that you did not find whatever it was you were looking for.
Currently I am weighing my options with respect to what my next step should be. Before I go to the authorities, I’d like to give you the opportunity to tell me your side of the story and, possibly, tell me what you might be willing to do to keep this issue out of the legal system.
Let me remind you that corporate espionage is a potentially serious federal charge, especially when the perpetrator profits from it. And I see that you have done remarkably well trading Avillage equities.
As you have probably already discovered, I don’t conduct any important business over email. I will be in the Boston area next Friday. We can discuss this in person then at a location of your choosing.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Send.
He leaned back contentedly in his office chair, imagining the panic that would be coursing through Dillon’s veins the next time he opened his email. But his pleasant daydream only lasted half a minute before it was rudely interrupted by the chime of a new email.
It was from Dillon. It simply read, “Northbound rest area Interstate-95 just across New Hampshire border. Noon.”
CHAPTER 12
All packed up and ready to move out, Ryan still had almost twenty-four hours to kill before his parents would arrive to pick him up for summer break, and the last thing he wanted to do was spend that time alone, holed up in his even-more-barren-than-usual dorm room. He needed a change of scenery. He didn’t really care where. Just some place different.
After running into the bank to take out a few hundred dollars cash, he scampered down the stairs of the T station at Harvard Square and hopped on the red line toward Boston South, where he bought a round trip Amtrak ticket to New York.
Maybe Annamaria would be available, maybe she wouldn’t, but after traveling all morning, he couldn’t foresee chickening out on at least calling her. Worst-case scenario, he’d spend the afternoon in Manhattan. Either way, it would beat sitting in his dorm.
As the Amtrak express train squealed to a stop into bay 3 at Penn Station just past noon, Ryan finally willed his thumb down to the green phone icon on his phone’s touch screen — and then froze. Annamaria answered on the first ring.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Having put all his effort into initiating the call, he hadn’t thought far enough ahead to consider what he was actually going to say if she answered.