Page 77 of Reclaiming Love

Chapter 42

“Afew last minute applications came in.” Rory handed a plastic folder to Noah as he walked in for a brief about the current recruitment drive. The recent meeting with Melissa was still uppermost in his mind. She was hurting, she was hurting a lot more than he was. And he had to do something—only he was trying to pace himself, not go running headfirst into anything.

“I particularly like the one from Matt Elliott. He knows his networks and that’s a lot of our fundamentals covered.” Noah blanched when he heard the name, which sounded so foreign coming from his boss’s mouth.

“Matt Elliott?” Noah questioned and briefly looked down at the plastic wallet.

“He made it. Barely. It’s a last minute entry. But he checks out good. According to his application. I’d like to bring him in for an interview.”

Noah coughed to fight the knot of tension currently plugging his throat. “Let me take a look at these and I’ll get back to you.”

“Ideally we need to get the first round of interviews over with this week.”

Noah felt his facial muscles tighten. He’d tried not to help Matt out much last night, and had offered only a few tips on how to word his resume. The guy had experience, and lots of it. He knew Rory liked guys that were well rounded, but they needed the relevant network knowledge first, since Black Diamond monitored a lot of their clients’ servers remotely. This guy had all of that and more. On paper he looked good enough, thought Noah, glancing through Matt’s application form.

Knowledge-wise the guy checked out. It was the other stuff Noah wasn’t so sure of. He returned to his desk, wondering how he could convince Rory that Matt was a bad asset to have in the company. How could he put Rory off without alluding to anything that might involve Melissa?

In no way did Noah want the guy working at Black Diamond. Especially not, as this position warranted, reporting to him.

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He knocked off work two hours earlier, citing some work that he could do from home—mainly going through the applicants’ forms and deciding who to shortlist. Rory trusted his judgment and didn’t bat an eye when Noah left.

But the real reason was to get home before Matt did. It would give him time to slip the CDs back into his room and leave them in some inconspicuous space…not on the desk as Melissa had told him. That would be too obvious. Matt would know they were gone one minute and suddenly reappeared the next.

Getting back from work in the late afternoon, Noah slipped into Matt’s room. It was unlocked, as he knew it would be.

He walked over to the desk and slipped the CDs on top of one of the heavy towers under the desk. It was a simple and obvious enough place to have put them and forgotten about them. Heck, if the guy was used to checking the refrigerator for his CDs, it would be so entirely believable that he’d left them on his tower under the desk.

He looked around, not feeling guilty at all for being in Matt’s room, trespassing; he’d lost respect for the guy days ago. Carefully, he scrutinized the surroundings and shook his head—the guy was one seriously messy dude.

Time to get to the serious stuff.

He had his own CDs with him. Software that would allow him to hack into passwords and gain access to machines easily. There was an obvious advantage to working for a company that offered monitoring and protection to companies who needed to secure their networks. Dealing with denial of service attacks from hackers and the like meant having to think like a hacker and acquiring the necessary skills and expertise to carry out these attacks.

He sat at Matt’s desk and accessed his laptop. Pulling out one of his own CDS, he easily overcame the first hurdle. Matt’s password. Inserting his own CD, he was easily able to get into Matt’s PC and then he spent the next few minutes snooping around. He wasn’t sure what it was he was looking for.

Until he found it.

The folders, labeled as dates it looked liked. He clicked on them in order. Nothing here—a couple of girls, in various stages of undress, most smiling. This guy was a perv. He continued, rushing through the folders, his stomach churning, a gut instinct warning him that he was going to find something soon enough.

And he did.

Time stopped, and he ceased to blink, to breathe, to function. Pictures of Melissa in various stages of undress turned his mouth dry and his heart plummeted to his feet. She looked scared, and sad—he was careful to focus only on her face, not the rest of her. He could almost taste her fear—feel it, for her. He raced through the images, made all the more uncomfortable because Melissa’s discomfort was so evident in them. With relief he made it to the end.

But then he saw a movie file and his breathing slowed right down. He almost knew what this could be. With trepidation, he clicked on it, even though he knew it would only bring bad news. His face dropped, when he saw Melissa. And Matt. She was crying. And she was naked. And he was moving over her with no regard for her pain.

On the bottom was a date. It was the date he’d seen Melissa the first time at the apartment. He’d accused her of sleeping with Matt, of cheating on him, of leading him on, and all this time she’d listened to his accusations and not told him what had actually taken place. She had only told him what she thought he could handle.

He forced himself to watch the movie all the way through. Even though it broke his heart to see the girl he was starting to feel something for, crumble before his eyes.

Noah wiped his hands over his face, his jaw tight, his hands fisted. He was tempted to bring his fist down on the laptop, smashing it to pieces.

But he could do something better.

He could wipe it clean.

He thought about it calmly and knew what he would do. He would create a virus, and he would unleash it on Matt’s unsuspecting computer. A virus that would completely corrupt all of his images and multi-media files. He’d code it such that it would unleash late at night, once Matt had gone to bed, in this way diverting the chances of any suspicion of him or Paul.

And he would do the same for all the other devices connected to the box. It would take a while to set it all up—but he had time.

When he’d done that, he would go and see Melissa. He needed to know that she was all right.

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