Page 9 of Butterflies and Hazel Eyes
“‘Far’ means ‘father’ in Danish,” Gulliver explained.
I made an O with my mouth and motioned for Mathias to continue.
“Some jerk came up on me in the left lane. I thought they were passing, but they forced me off the road. I was lucky I had the SUV and not the convertible or I’d be dead. I was able to slow down enough that when I hit the small trees, they didn’t kill me. By the time I got my wits about me, the other car was long gone.”
“It was probably someone on their phone,” I said, my teeth clenched. “I can’t tell you how many times someone almost killed me because they were on their phone instead of paying attention to the road.”
Mathias went to swing his head no but seemed to think better of it. “No, this was very much on purpose.”
“On purpose?” Gulliver asked.
“I have no doubt,” he said, his hand going to the back of his head. “This wasn’t a game of chicken or someone not paying attention. They purposely forced me off the road. I was too busy trying to stay alive to notice anything about the vehicle other than it was a black SUV of some kind.”
“You have blood on your shirt,” Gulliver said. “That means you were hurt.”
I inspected Mathias’s head and noticed his hair had been cut away and he had a row of stitches. “How did you crack your head open?” I asked, coming around the chair.
“When I hit the trees, everything flew around in the SUV. Something hit me. I think it was the snow scraper for the windows. I wasn’t going to go to the hospital, but the EMTs didn’t give me a choice. They said a head laceration like that will never heal without stitches. The doctors also said I have a concussion. I think they’re wrong.”
Gulliver’s gaze met mine, and he lifted a brow before he spoke. “I don’t think they’re wrong. You have all the signs. You’ll have to crash here in my apartment tonight so I can check on you.”
Mathias waved his hand at his neck. “Honey is on her way down. She’s going to drive me home in the Butterfly Junction van and stay with me.”
“Good,” Gulliver said on a nod. He worked a set of keys out of his pocket and handed them to Mathias. “Do you think this is because of the formula?”
“Oh yeah,” Mathias agreed. “We have a problem on our hands, and it’s getting worse if they’re resorting to violence.”
“I was just telling Gulliver that you definitely have a problem,” I said.
Mathias glanced between me and Gulliver, then to the two computers I had open on the desk. “What kind of problem?”
I typed a bit on the keyboard before swinging the screen to face them. “I was able to get into the server in under thirty seconds.”
Gulliver leaned in closer to see the screen better. “No, you can’t be on the server. You mean you’re just into the website where the store and information about the educational opportunities are, right? The research on our servers can’t be accessed through the website.”
I banged my head on the back of my chair in frustration. “Oh, dear, sweet, naive Gulliver. You have a website, and that makes you vulnerable. I can’t see your research. Yet. If you give me another twenty minutes to dig for it, I could find it. I’ve been patching this for the last two hours, and when I’m done, the door will not only be closed but removed and drywalled over.”
Gulliver’s head shook immediately. “My web designer assured me no one could get into the whole system. He said he was making the encryption stronger.” He waved his hand in the air. “Or something like that. I didn’t understand it all.”
Mathias whistled long and low. “I guess we weren’t overreacting by calling you in,” he said, his eyes glassy. “I was worried we were, but at the same time we couldn’t chance waiting.”
I motioned at the computer. “No, you made the right choice by calling me. You were days away from losing everything.”
Both men sighed in response, but Mathias was the one to speak. “Are you done? Are we solid now?”
I nudged the computer out of my way and leaned on the desk. “Sure, I can be done, if you don’t care that your competition can steal every bit of information on your server without you knowing it. You’re damn lucky that they haven’t already. You have a security level on your server that I like to call, ‘Come on in! Everyone’s welcome!’” I said, throwing my hands around in excitement. “‘Mi casa es sus casa. We have everything you could ever need to create eco-friendly pesticides. If you’d rather have fungicides, we have those too! Just ask!’” I finished with a gigantic clown grin on my face. I was relatively sure it was a little bit scary.
“Sarcasm, right?” Gulliver asked, nonplussed.
“Sarcasm with a serious undertone of absolutely accurate. I will say you’re fortunate whoever is after your research wasn’t successful before I got here. To be blunt, someone is trying to steal your information, and I don’t know who it is. Yet.” I quickly explained what I’d found once I was inside the server. “I do know they aren’t an expert by any stretch of the imagination, or your data would already be gone.”
“What do we do now then?” Gulliver asked.
“I’ve changed the passwords again. Honestly, your password wasn’t strong enough to keep a four-year-old out of your phone, much less someone intent on stealing your information.”
Gulliver grimaced on a nod. “I know, but the password had to be easy for everyone to remember.”
“Not anymore,” I said, my finger pointing at a sheet of paper on the desk. “From now on, only you two have them. I have generated passwords that are unhackable by anyone other than a black hat.”
