Darkwater Lies

by Robin Caroll

  Darkwater Lies

  Darkwater Inn 2

  Robin Caroll

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Robin Caroll

  Afterword

  sign up newsletter

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Robin Miller.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at: www.robincaroll.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Scripture quotations or paraphrases are taken from the following versions: the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved

  Cover design by Olivia

  For Pam . . .

  my partner in crime in my research trip for this series my brainstorming buddy

  my sanity during conference season . . . my friend.

  1

  Adelaide

  “We’ve been hacked!”

  Adelaide Fountaine looked up from her notes and tightened her grip on the phone. “I’ll have to call you back, Daddy.” She hung up the phone without waiting for her father’s response and stared at Lissette Bastien. “We’ve been what?”

  “Hacked! Our computer system.” Lissette’s eyes were wider than usual, her smooth mocha skin flushed.

  Taking a deep breath, Adelaide refused to stand or give in to the alarm threatening to rise. “Explain, please.”

  Lissette had been learning the hospitality business to take over as managing owner of the hotel for less than a year, not enough time to accurately gauge panic-worthy events. Not like Adelaide, who had nearly six years under her belt at the Darkwater Inn and had weathered the most serious—and almost career-ending—events.

  “We thought it was just a glitch when the room-service orders all came in, but it’s so much more than that.”

  Adelaide held up a hand. “Wait a minute. Slow down and back up. What room-service orders?”

  The younger woman sucked in air, then let it out in a rush. “That’s what started everything. Dimitri got one hundred and six room-service orders all at once in the system.”

  One hundred and six? “That’s improbable.” The hotel hosted two hundred and seven rooms, including the suites, and as of this morning, with it being Mardi Gras season, they were at ninety-eight percent occupancy. So it was possible to have that many orders, but the likelihood was very slim. It was carnival season and after 6:00 p.m., so a large majority of the hotel guests were out celebrating in the city.

  Lissette nodded. “Right. Dimitri figured it was a glitch in the system, so he called over to tech support. They ran some tests remotely and told him the system was operating properly, but he knew that had to be wrong, so he called me. We rebooted the system and followed all the advice tech support gave, but the orders were still there. Dimitri rang four random rooms that had orders on the system and asked if they’d placed a room service order. None of them had.”

  Of course not. Adelaide nodded.

  “Together we called the software support team. They walked us through everything to try. Rebooting. Resetting. Even starting in safe mode. Nothing worked.”

  Adelaide let out a pent-up breath. “It sounds like perhaps we need a representative from the software company to come check the program, but it doesn’t sound like we’ve been hacked.” Thank goodness, because she certainly didn’t need anything like that. Nothing that would give Claude Pampalon a reason to, once again, doubt her capability to run the hotel as general manager. He’d been gracious enough to grant her request to take a six-month sabbatical to train at a five-star hotel in Europe as long as she returned for the busy Mardi Gras season, but she’d been back a month now. It wouldn’t bode well for her if anything went majorly wrong at the Darkwater Inn that she couldn’t handle after having been gone.

  Lissette shook her head. “That’s just what Dimitri thought, too, until he ran over to security to see if Hixson would look and see if he could figure it out.”

  Smart move on Dimitri’s part. Hixson, the barely legal young man in the Darkwater’s security department, had been taking online classes in computer coding. Finally, Dimitri seemed to be doing what Adelaide had been harping on him to do for a couple of years—learning the staff. Maybe her time away had helped Dimitri as well.

  Lissette continued. “Hixson was able to get into the system and figured out there were corrupt lines of code, and he’s pretty sure they were put in there deliberately to mess with the system.”

  That was a game changer. Adelaide pushed to her feet, snatching her cell phone from her desk. “How long ago did the room service orders show up in the system?” She jerked open her office door and headed down the hallway.

  Lissette fell into step beside her, staring at her watch. “I think they all appeared about five or so.”

  Adelaide glanced at the time on her phone: 6:13 p.m. They’d been down over an hour, and she was just now hearing about it? Unacceptable. She quickened her already fast pace toward the security office.

  “Ms. Fountaine!” Barb, the night-desk manager, came from behind the counter and rushed to her. “We’ve had several guests complain that their room keys aren’t working.”

  Adelaide paused to look the woman in the eye. “I need to see to a pressing situation at the moment. For the time being, just get new cards and reprogram as needed, Barb. I’ll check back with you as soon as I can.”

  Barb nodded and went back to the front desk while Adelaide returned to her fast pace toward the security office. She glanced at Lissette. “You said the orders showed up around five? Over an hour ago?”

  “But we only figured out it was a hack in the last thirty minutes or so.” Lissette’s steps faltered.

  Pausing with her hand on the security office door handle, Adelaide glanced over her shoulder. “At which time you should have alerted me. We’ve lost thirty more minutes now, putting the hotel and all of our guests at risk.”

  Lissette’s eyes narrowed, and the muscles in her jaw flexed. Adelaide didn’t have time to address the chip that had been on Lissette’s shoulder ever since Adela
ide had returned from Europe.

  Not now. Not when they’d already lost so much time. She jerked open the door and stepped inside. The first thing she saw was acting chief of security Sully Clements typing frantically on dual keyboards and murmuring to himself. Or to Hixson, who sat at a computer as well, fingers flying over his own keyboards.

  A hack could compromise all the sensitive data on hotel guests, staff . . . the hotel itself. Mr. Pampalon would have a fit. This could be just what he needed to prove Dimitri wrong and deny Lissette control over the hotel. He’d probably fire Adelaide for good measure since it had happened on her watch.

  Adelaide moved to stand at Sully’s right arm. “I’ve just been made aware of the situation. Any progress?” She didn’t want to get in the way, but her heart caught in the back of her throat. She needed results.

  “Ms. Fountaine, I’ve run every debugging program we have, per- formed every virus scan, and called everybody that I can, but no one knows exactly what happened. Somehow, someone got into our system remotely and locked it up. I can’t figure out what all is included.”

  Adelaide chewed her bottom lip. If only Geoff weren’t in jail, if only this had waited five months to happen until he was out . . . No, she was the general manager of the Darkwater, and she would figure out a way to handle the situation.

  “We’ve rebooted the system three times, even bringing it back up in safe mode.” Hixson shook his head. “It loads, but then messes up. It either freezes everything or just locks up random actions. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve studied hack prevention.”

  She looked at her watch again. The system had been compro- mised for over an hour and a half. Protocol dictated that she notify the police cyber-crimes unit, especially with the particular guests she had in house at the moment. Still, she hesitated.

  It’d been barely a year ago that she’d confronted the biggest problem she could ever have imagined she’d have to face. Her four years of hotel management education at Northwestern State University hadn’t prepared her to handle a murdered body found in one of the rooms. Many changes had followed at the hotel, including one that left them without their chief of security and made Adelaide leery to call in the police too soon. But she had to protect the hotel, first and foremost. “What all is affected?” she asked both men . . . neither . . . anyone.

  Hixson leaned back in the chair and looked up at her. “The way the Darkwater’s set up is that everything is running on two systems. One system runs the room reservations, the accounting systems, outlets, and stuff like that. Those programs on that server don’t seem to be affected by whatever is knocking out the other one, so all those things are up and running without a problem. The one that’s messed up maintains the programs for customer satisfaction like housekeeping, requests, and room service. This server also runs all the security programs—monitors, electronic locks, mass notification system, and the room-key program.”

  Oh, lovely. Now Barb’s front desk problems made sense. “So no guest room keys are going to work?” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Everyone is going to be locked out of their rooms?” This was like her worst nightmare come to life.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Fountaine.” Sully nodded. “The keys can be reprogrammed, and I think they’ll work, but I’m not positive. It looks that way now, but . . .”

  No time to be sorry, actions produced results. She turned to Lissette. “Call the police cyber-crimes unit and report the problem.” She looked at Hixson. “Keep trying to get the system working.” She turned to Sully. “Who is at the vault?”

  “Leon.”

  “Has he reported anything unusual?” Adelaide could hear Lissette on the phone giving the basic information to the police amid the backdrop of Hixson’s tapping on the computers.

  “I haven’t talked to him since Dimitri spoke with us.” The tips of Sully’s ears reddened. “I’m really sorry, Ms. Fountaine.”

  Adelaide ground her teeth silently. Geoff would’ve checked with the vault immediately, according to procedure. But she wouldn’t panic yet because surely if there’d been any disturbance, Leon would’ve called. “Will you please check in with him?” At least she could mark that off the protocol checklist.

  “They’re sending someone right over.” Lissette clutched her cell in front of her as if it were a life preserver and she was in deep waters. “The dispatcher said detectives would be here within fifteen minutes.”

  Fifteen minutes they really didn’t have. Not if everything had been hacked remotely.

  “I can’t get Leon to answer the radio or his cell phone.” Sully pushed to his feet. “That’s unlike him, ma’am. Maybe the hacker took out our radio and blocked the call somehow. I’ll go check.”

  Adelaide’s heart pounded against her ribcage. “I’ll go with you.” She tried not to glare at Lissette as she spoke. “Hixson, please continue to work on the system. Lissette, call Dimitri and have him meet us at the vault.”

  She followed Sully out of the security room, matching his long stride as they crossed the lobby. The hustle and bustle of people outside the hotel’s open front doors, enjoying carnival season in the French Quarter, was deafening. Or maybe it was just Adelaide’s pulse pounding in her head that filled her ears.

  She and Sully passed the front desk and headed toward the back of the building and the area restricted to only a few hotel employees and a very select few guests. It was in this dark back area that the vault sat, secure and guarded. Even more than usual at the moment, considering one special guest in particular had brought their own guard as well.

  Adelaide followed Sully so closely that when he stopped suddenly, she ran into his back. With no explanation and in one fluid movement, Sully pushed her against the hallway wall, drew his gun, and spun toward the door to the vault. He took a step over the threshold into the vault room.

  What the— Adelaide pushed off the wall and eased behind Sully. She immediately saw two bodies on the floor. She sucked in air as her steps faltered. The door to the vault stood open before her like a gaping, dark void.

  They’d been robbed!

  Sully, gun still drawn, squatted beside Leon on the ground and pressed two fingers against the downed guard’s throat. His shoulders sagged a little as he glanced back at Adelaide and shook his head before checking the second figure.

  Her eyes burned. Not again. “Hey.”

  She spun around, every muscle in her body taut.

  “Whoa.” Dimitri smiled as he closed the distance between them. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Lissette said you were heading here. What’s going on?” He joined her, looked over her shoulder into the room. “Oh, no.” He pushed around her and dropped to his knees beside Leon.

  “They’re both dead. Lots of blood loss.” Sully holstered his gun. “There’s nobody else in here. I’ll call it in.” He pulled his cell and dialed 911.

  Unable to hold back any longer, Adelaide rushed into the room. Leon . . . And Princess Katerina von Pavlovna’s private guard dead too . . . What had been taken?

  Dimitri was on his feet in a flash, his arms around her. “You can’t help them. They’re gone. We need to wait in the hall.”

  “But Leon—”

  Dimitri steered her back out of the vault room. “It’s a crime scene now.”

  This couldn’t be happening. Not again.

  Sully joined them in the hall. “The police are sending over detectives right now. Their cyber-crimes team had already been dispatched, so this is a priority since the two incidents are probably related.”

  Adelaide’s stomach twisted. Bile burned the back of her throat. This was worse than last year’s dead body in a hotel room. This was two bodies, a hacked security system, and a probable robbery, and she’d been back on the job for barely a month. Claude Pampalon, owner of the Darkwater Inn and Dimitri’s father, was sure to fire her now. Not that that was more important than the two dead men—of course not—but . . .

  As if reading her mind, Dimitri pulled her into hi
s arms, providing her warmth and comfort. She let herself draw from his strength as she closed her eyes and breathed in, relaxing in the familiar scent that was all Dimitri. Just for a moment she needed this. Needed him. Just for this minute she needed not to have the weight of responsibility bearing down on her. Just for a second . . . two . . . three.

  Adelaide exhaled slowly and eased out of his embrace. She was the general manager of the Darkwater Inn, at least for now, and she had a job to do. She squared her shoulders. “I need to see what’s been taken from the vault. I’m not going to touch anything.” She hesitated. The fewer who entered a crime scene, the less chance the police would have an issue. Three of them had already been inside the room.

  She slipped off her heels. “Come on, Sully. We’ll just do a walk-in to get an initial idea of how much has been taken. Dimitri, would you please head to the lobby to meet the police?”

  Dimitri raised a single brow, but nodded and left.

  Great. She hadn’t really thought about that aspect. Homicide at the Darkwater Inn—that was sure to bring Detective Beau Savoie to the scene. About this time last year, Beau and Dimitri had both shown a romantic interest in her, but she’d told them both that she’d needed time to focus on herself. After a few months of trying to continue with the status quo, however, she’d found the situation too difficult and awkward, realizing she was keeping them hanging. It was then that she’d found the opportunity to train at the hotel in Europe, which Claude had thankfully allowed. She’d returned home about a month ago, having had some space both physically and mentally, and known she had cleared a lot of the emotional baggage that had kept her from taking the next step with either relationship.