Page 30 of Tango
And that’s only the beginning.
“How about you tell us the rest of the story,” Tucker says. “Then we’ll decide where to go from there.”
“Fine. Okay.” They’ll believe me when they hear it…right? They have to. My gaze shifts to Dylan, who’s eyeing me as though I’m going to jump at him and yell “boo!” any minute now. I try to think back to where I was before the email, finally remembering we were just approaching what Ramiro came to tell me.
“As I said, Ramiro was visibly upset and distracted. I asked him to elaborate, but he told me we had to go inside to talk. That it wasn’t safe out on the street. So we did. Once we got into my apartment, he went through and unplugged my computer, television, router, any electronic device that was plugged into the wall. Then, he took my cell and his cell phone, as well as both of my laptops, and shoved them into Faraday bags he’d brought with him.”
“So he was paranoid,” Tucker comments.
“Very. The only things left plugged in were my lamps and appliances. He even went through with an RF detector and checked for bugs. Interestingly enough, he found three of them hidden in two of my lights and an electrical outlet.”
“Your apartment had been bugged?”
“Yes. To be honest, had he not found anything, I probably wouldn’t have believed him. It seemed so outrageous at the time.” I rub the heel of my palm against my chest as the image of him lying dead assaults me again.
“Any idea who would have placed the bugs and why?”
“To be honest, I haven’t even had the time to give it any thought. Everything spiraled from there, and a place I’m not staying at the moment wasn’t high on my priority list.” I take a deep breath and then continue. “Uh, he told me that he’d been out with two of the guys we work with, and they’d told him that they’d found two security threats that popped up overnight.”
“Doesn’t that happen all the time? Isn’t that the purpose of companies like Web Safe?” Dylan questions.
“Sure. But these two hits were identical and had been placed in two different companies with nothing in common. Low-level ones too. They were protecting nothing more than basic employee information.”
Dylan continues staring at me like I grew a third head.
“A hacker is going to typically target similar companies. Two separate hackers will have different coding techniques. It’s like a thumbprint,” Tucker says.
“Exactly,” I reply. “And why bypass higher-profile companies with more important information? Ramiro thought that maybe it was a test. They were trying to see if they would get caught. But the next day, he said he patched three more breaches, all with the same code, all formulated at the same time. He tried to trace the origin location of the attack but kept hitting a wall. Which is why he came to me. He believed that someone in Web Safe might have been selling access to hackers. They punch a hole in the security, the hacker gets in, and then they seal it back up. He wanted me to write code that would prevent the hole from ever being punched.”
“Did you help him?”
“Of course. He was frantic. There were bugs in my apartment. Things were looking incredibly suspicious. So I changed, and we drove over to Web Safe. I logged into my computer and opened up the companies he claimed had been patched. But there was no sign anything had gotten into the system. There was no patch work.”
“Patch work?” Dylan questions.
“Coding to repair the breach,” Tucker replies.
“Yeah. There was no sign that anyone had ever tried to access the information. Which, of course, made Ramiro even more paranoid. The only way that would happen is if someone who knew our coding language repaired it. But there was no log of it in the system.”
“You keep all the records?”
“Every breach. Every patch. Full transparency,” I reply. “It’s possible that the repair was done by the night crew—they tend to not update records until right before they leave—but Ramiro was insistent. So, with all of those pieces, I did what any good friend would do, and I tried to prove him right, hoping that I would, in turn, prove him wrong and put his mind at ease.”
“Seems like a lot of panic over something that you deal with on a daily basis,” Tucker comments.
“Which is exactly what I thought too. Even considering the bugs in my apartment. I mean, that could have been anyone trying to get access to our clients. It’s happened before, and our security has handled it.”
“Employees have had their apartments bugged?” Dylan questions then shares a look with Tucker.
“Yes. A time or two. We deal with the type of accounts that would crumble the economy if they’re breached. And that’s not even including the military contracts or law enforcement information we protect. We’re a target. It’s just understood.”
Dylan shrugs.
“Anyway, as I was trying to find any trace of the hack, a door opened, and our head of security—a man by the name of Wilbur Huck—and one of our lower-level bug chasers, as we call them—Shawn Brackers—came into the room. Normally, that’s not a big deal. We have a skeleton crew that monitors the systems at night. But Ramiro panicked, turned off my monitor, and tugged me under the desk.”
Dylan and Tucker exchange a look, but they don’t say anything, so I continue.
“While we were under there, Wilbur told Shawn that it was time to move forward. That their clients weren’t going to be happy if they didn’t deliver on time. Shawn said that the accounts would be as promised at the agreed-upon time and they would just have to be patient. He said that moving too quickly would set off too many red flags.”
