Page 40 of Zen's Crash

Chapter 16

Zen

Sitting at my workbench, I brood over pissing Lexi off. Rob stops by to bring me a cup of coffee and pulls up a chair on the other side of my bench to talk.

“I made it with three creamers and two sugars, just like you like, boss.”

When he slides the big mug my way, I drop my tools and take the warm brew in both hands. “I’ve told you a million times that you don’t have to call me boss. You can use my club name like everyone else.”

He takes a sip of his coffee before answering, “Sure thing, boss.”

That makes me smile. Rob is very set in his ways for one so young. I like him and Walter, so I don’t argue with him about it.

That’s when he asks, “You want to talk about it, boss?”

Putting my coffee down to cool, I pick up my screwdriver and get back to work. “Talk about what, Rob?”

“You know—about your girl, Lexi, running out of here this morning like a bat outta hell. Did it have something to do with us being at DEFCON three? We’re still at three, right?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “We’re still at three.” I catch Rob up on the whole Lexi story, including how she spent the night in my bedand how I fucked it all up by accusing her dad of being the real serial killer because we found a kill bag buried at her place.

“If I had only found a less offensive way to have that conversation, she wouldn’t have freaked out on me and run away. Now, I know my club brothers are outside her place, keeping her safe. But the problem is, I wanted to be the one to keep her safe. I can’t do that and disassemble her computer, too. I need to be here where all my tools are and where I have space to work. Because of my own stupidity and inability to talk right to women, she refuses to stay here with me.”

“That sounds like a really fucked-up situation. I can’t blame her for being a little skittish. She’s probably fucking terrified and doesn’t know which way to turn. She thought you were her rock, right up until you started telling her that her dad might be a serial killer. There ain’t no woman in the world who’s gonna be able to take that lying down. You’re damn lucky she didn’t punch you in the face.”

“Yeah,” I tell my longtime friend. “I really screwed that one up.”

“Do you really think her old man is a serial killer?”

I grab my coffee cup and take another sip. “I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that it was definitely a kill bag we retrieved from her property. It even contained some jewelry we think might be trophies he took from his victims.”

“Damn, he must’ve been one smart fucker. Imagine killing a woman where you work and then running off on a killing spree with your wife and kid, all the while convincing your wife that you were tracking the killer when you were the killer. That takes intelligence, cunning, and balls of solid brass.”

“I don’t know. He was a college professor, so he was definitely smart. Lexi said he spent a lot of time wrapped up in his own little world. By looking at the information on his flash drives, he was either tracking the killer or being tracked. I’m not sure which.”

“I hope you find this fucker, ‘cause then you can wring the information out of him.”

“My first step is to find out how someone managed to turn Lexi’s computer into a two-way audio and visual system.”

“I’m surprised you’re checking her hardware. Most spyware is a software issue.”

“We already ran a malware scan on it.”

“Maybe whoever did this is a professional hacker?” Rob suggests.

I think that over. Professional hackers always hide a backdoor that allows them to get back in if you fix the bugs and remove their malware. The backdoor they hide might just be some simple code or a vulnerability they opened in the operating system.

Rob continues, “Maybe they created a backdoor by adding a line of code in the PHP that allows them to add any file they want remotely, and then automatically erase the evidence after each eavesdropping session. That way, they’d be able to pop in and out whenever they wanted without leaving a trace.”

“That’s pretty brilliant, Rob. What made you think of that?”

A slow smile spreads over his face. “I heard you and Lexi talking about the problem yesterday, and I couldn’t sleep lastnight for thinking about how someone could ghost into and out of a computer at will. That’s one of the ways I came up with.”

“Well, I have to admit that the hardware all looks fine. Let’s put her back together again and see if your hunch is true.”

We spend the next hour putting her computer back together, and then I use her password to get inside. Rob and I drink coffee and inspect every line of code in the PHP. It’s exhausting, and to our disappointment, we find nothing.

Just then my phone rings. It’s Siege.

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