Page 82 of Roots of the Wicked

“If you’re wondering about my name and my father, the answer is yes. I’m Mack MacKenzie’s son. Unfortunately, I didn’t inherit his looks or his ways with the women.”

His father was a millionaire playboy I had met at a few social functions. He was a prick who treated women like trash, and rumor had it, his son was the key to his success of their telecommunications empire. They provided cable and internet services to over a quarter of the industry.

I was grateful that Travis had been able to get Max at all.

“It’s nice to meet you, Max. I have quite a situation I hope you can assist me with.” I pointed at my laptop sitting atop my desk.

The young man had the laptop powered up in minutes.

“Shoot,” he uttered.

The pinch in his forehead and tightened lips revealed my dilemma.

Max’s speedy fingers hadn’t stop working, and he glared at my laptop like it had come alive. He tapped his forehead, his eyes never leaving the screen. Was he contemplating his next move?

He talked as he typed. “Sir, I can’t stop this. The only one who can, is the person who initiated it. It’s like attempting to disarm a bomb, made by a bomb maker I don’t have a profile on. The best I can do for you at this point is attempt to save the data you have left.”

“Please, save what you can,” I instructed, hopeful that all wouldn’t be lost.

He bit deep into his bottom lip, his eye squinting at the screen. “Who did you piss off? I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’ve been a techie since before I hit double digits. Despite what they say about data still being out there, there are ways to make it disappear.”

“Disappear, as in vaporized with no backdoor way of making it reappear?”

He nodded as his fingers worked.

“I can’t retrieve what’s gone after its been taken. It’s being sent to a place I can write my way into but can’t exit. If I execute a command without proper syntax, it can cause the program to fail. Whoever did this created a digital black hole, and if I go chasing after your info in there, I could risk losing everything, faster.”

For a moment I was unable to speak.

“How much is gone?”

“Thankfully, its slow-moving. So far, about forty percent of your data is gone,” he revealed.

Half my data, gone. Data that I was never getting back. My only hope of saving some of my pending business deals, rested on my team.

At this point, I took a seat. Hearing what Jax had already confirmed, made my knees weak. Losing everything on my computer was depressing but losing her had wounded me so deeply, it shredded my heart.

I dialed my father, needing to find out who had set me up. Disclosing to anyone how I had gotten the horrible virus was out of the question because it would implicate Jax.

Whoever sent those pictures to the media, had sent it from my computer or had found a way to make it appear that way.

Max stopped his rapid fingers, when I approached and stood over him.

“This is happening because someone leaked files from my computer to the tabloids. Is there any way to locate those files and trace it back to who used my computer to send them? I scanned the past week of surveillance, and my computer hasn’t been touched, until today. By me.”

“I will have to stop saving data to hunt for what might already be gone.”

“Shit!”

I was being forced to choose between saving what was left of my data or figuring out who had set me up.

“Do it. It’s more important to find out who used my computer to leak that information.”

Max’s brows lifted at my comment before his typing commenced.

The security team had been instructed to review the camera feeds for the past month. Who else had been in my office? Glancing back at the past week may not have been long enough.

If my laptop had been used remotely, I prayed the teenager who sat behind my desk, was clever enough to track down and identify the user. Otherwise, Jax was never going to speak to me again, especially when she found out where the drone came from.

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