Page 53 of Indecent Demands

It was one of the reasons I’d asked Ariana if she had it back when we first started. She’d managed to get around those limitations but at the time I’d assumed that was one of the perks the thief would need in order to do their dirty work. I hadn’t expected the thief to be able to hack well enough to get around that.

Time to get to work.

I sat down at the desk and worked on replacing all of the things Ariana had done to make it look like Damien had been the person taking those microtransactions. It was the most difficult piece of hacking work I had ever done, and I didn’t have a lot of time to do it, but I could make it work.

People were able to scam others out of their crypto in their wallets. I could do the same here. I could admit that I did have an advantage in my reputation and previous work. Our security firm had worked for a lot of rich and powerful people, and we’d proven our integrity time and time again. If Damien’s lawyers tried to question my work, there was an entire community of the rich and powerful who would back me in my research, not to mention all the previous military, government, and security people who would also take my side.

I just had to make sure it wouldn’t be easy to undo my hard work so that anyone trying to prosecute me would have a hard time getting anyone to change their minds about me.

It took me until the wee hours of the morning. I basically had to get into the most basic code of the company and rewire it from scratch, bottom up, and I had to do it without crushing any coconuts, so to speak. If I fucked up any weird random coding that had been put in to keep the system running then I’d bring the whole thing crashing down around my ears.

But I had spent the last couple of weeks getting to know this system inside and out while trying to find the thief, and I had Ariana’s credentials that kept a log of everything she did, which included the real, actual work she’d done making repairs and patches for the company’s systems. I used that as a blueprint when I was in danger of getting lost.

My phone told me it was five in the morning by the time I finished. I’d been at this for seven hours. Christ.

I triple-checked everything. This had to be perfect. I was putting my integrity on the line, breaking the law and framing a man for another person’s crime, and all for Ariana. I didn’t mind at all. I was happy to do it for her. But I doubted a jury would understand.

Everything was in place. I had rewritten the very code of the company’s system and then used the powerful electricity from the company’s bitcoin farming to undo and then redo the blockchain. Supposedly it was impossible—that was what cryptocurrency believers touted as the big draw—but if you had the electric power, you could in fact undo the computer equation, then redo it. I just needed every single bit of the company’s electric power at my disposal.

Another reason why I had to do this at night.

But now we were set. Unless one of my very good buddies in the hacking community was willing to work against me to try and undo my work, then we were in the clear.

I just had to make sure that nobody else got hurt, and nobody even thought to look that deeply into the thefts.

Five in the morning was cutting it close on the other half of my operation but… I looked at the clock again.

Dare I risk it? If I did, I could have missed that early-morning window to catch someone unaware. Three to four in the morning was the best time. On the other hand, if I waited an extra day, that would give the hitman time to strike if Damien gave him the go ahead. I shouldn’t count on Damien’s patience.

Brian, I couldn’t do. The man had come from a middle-class background, same as Damien, and he believed in working for his position. Jackson was a rich man’s son and refused to give up his position not because he really cared, but because he wanted to keep his slice of the pie. He’d be the one sleeping in.

I went to Jackson’s place.

He lived in the city in one of those fancy condos not far from the office, on the fifteenth floor. I disabled the security cameras in the foyer outside the elevator that led directly to his condo, the only one on that floor, and made sure they stayed off. I wanted a security guard to notice.

From there I had to figure out how to make it look like abotchedmurder attempt, so that the real hitman would steer clear of such a debacle and Jackson and Brian would ultimately remain safe . . . and alive.

Jackson was sound asleep in his bedroom, snoring away. He’d want to start the day with a fresh cup of coffee. I went into the kitchen and found the cleaning supplies. Aha. Antifreeze. Nice to know the man actually had some care for his car.

I used gloves, just like the actual killer would, and mixed antifreeze into the coffee. This was the kind of thing you had to be careful about. You had to put in enough to make the person sick, but not enough to actually kill them. Antifreeze was a great murder method—easy to purchase, and it had a sweet taste so it could be mixed in with a person’s drink like a sugary coffee or a soda.

Again, any smart killer would wear gloves. But what most people forgot was that the reason burglars and such wore ski caps over their heads wasn’t just for some weird aesthetic. It was because we shed hair constantly, and police could find it during a forensic sweep. I’d gotten some hairs from Damien’s office, and I put them around the bottle of antifreeze and the coffee tin.

Damien would have no reason to touch either of them.

I then went into another room, and waited.

At about seven in the morning I heard an alarm go off—a few times, actually—and then I heard the shower start up. About twenty minutes later there was the sound of stumbling around, then the coffee maker starting up in the kitchen.

Perfect.

Coffee made, silence fell… and then I heard the groaning. By now, the security team should’ve noticed that a camera was out of power on this floor and had been for a bit. Jackson stumbled back into the bathroom and began to vomit, and then a pounding started on the door.

Security, right on time.

They managed to get inside and immediately ran for the sounds of vomiting in the bathroom—two of them—and I heard a 9-1-1 call start up.

Time for me to go.

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