Virtuality

by H. L. Wegley

  Near Tiger Summit, Vince glanced her way. “I don’t think Paul meant financial danger. If that were the case, he wouldn't have looked so frightened.”

  “Frightened? Even facing death, that doesn’t sound like Paul.”

  “Jess, Paul knew where he was going after he died. He must have been afraid of something happening to us.”

  “Your brother was seldom wrong. If we could track the four million dollars to its source, we would probably find the source of the danger.”

  As they topped Tiger Summit and began their descent, Vince eyes widened, and he jammed on the brakes.

  But the car kept going.

  Jess watched Vince’s foot, but couldn’t feel the brakes engaging.

  Instead, the engine revved and the car accelerated.

  Vince shoved the gear shift lever into neutral.

  “What are you doing, Vince?”

  The engine wound up until it roared.

  “Anything I can think of. Hang on.”

  The roar turned to a high-pitched whine.

  A muffled pop sounded.

  Now the engine sounded like an old lawnmower.

  The noise stopped.

  The car slowed, but Vince fought the steering wheel like it had a life of its own.

  “Vince, what's happening?”

  “I think the engine just blew and died. That cut the power steering. The brakes feel solid, but no matter how hard I push on the pedal, they don't work.”

  “There are concrete barriers on both sides. No place to pull off for a couple of miles. “

  “Better pray I can horse this crippled car through the curves without power steering. It should stop at the bottom of the hill, near the big intersection with Hobart-Issaquah Road. I’ll use the emergency brake if I need to.”

  With her panic subsiding, the mental image of the man in service coveralls walking away from the car replayed. “Vince, somebody messed with this car.”

  “What do you mean by messed with?”

  “My best guess—with all the high-tech gadgets and connectivity in Paul's car, I'd say it was hacked.”

  “Come on, Jess. It's me that writes thrillers and has an overactive imagination.”

  “Bet you four million dollars.”

  Vince appeared to be digesting her proposition while he manhandled the steering wheel. “No. Patrick wouldn't do something like this. I’ll bet your point-nine percent of the company that he didn't.”

  “No deal, van Gordon. I don't want to cause you to lose controlling interest in Virtuality. And I think you should keep your interest on controlling this car.”

  “I’ve got the car under control.”

  The car slowed as they approached the bottom of the mountain.

  “Besides, I like owning a piece of Vince van Gordon. So I’m keeping my point-nine percent.”

  Vince didn’t reply, but he managed to maneuver the car onto the wide shoulder near Hobart-Issaquah Road.

  The car stopped.

  He blew out a breath and slumped in the seat. “I guess it's time to call Triple A.”

  “After that, you need to call the local dealer’s service department. As soon as you get someone on the line, give me your phone.”

  Vince turned off the ignition and looked her way. “But why give you—”

  “Don’t ask. Just do it, Vince.”

  Chapter 8

  Jess and Vince slid into the car Vince had rented and she looked at the controls on the dash trying to determine how hackable the new car might be.

  Jess had read about a few car hacking incidents in the IT trade journals. The only thing that would account for Paul’s car’s behavior was firmware changes made to chips on the Engine Control Module (ECM). That board was the car’s equivalent to the operating system of a computer. Seizing control of the ECM would give a hacker complete control over all the digitally controlled systems of the vehicle.

  After Vince called the dealer to tell them Paul’s car was being towed in, he handed Jess his phone.

  She gave several suggestions to the car dealer’s service department person for finding evidence of hacking. The discussion left her with an uneasy feeling about the competence of the dealer’s mechanics to diagnose any sort of hacking.

  If the American automobile industry didn’t get serious in a hurry, the lives and well-being of many Americans would be put at risk due to the industry’s negligence.

  For over a year, Jess had read IT Industry reports of car-hacking tools for sale to anyone with enough money to buy them and the gumption to try using them to take control of a vehicle.

  If she was right about the close call they’d had a couple of hours ago, what might have been the intent of the hacker? The hacker could have killed them if he or she had sufficient skills and a motive. On the other hand, maybe the people behind this had only wanted to scare Vince into selling. Murder might not be the organization’s preferred modus operandi.

  Vince pulled his hand from the wheel of his newly rented car and nudged Jess. “A penny for your thoughts.”

  “So now you want a piece of my mind?”

  The look she got from Vince said he was interested in more than just her mind. Whatever his interest, it didn’t matter unless it was enough to bring Vince home, permanently.

  He looked her way, shook his head, and refocused on the road. “I keep wondering what would've happened if I had been killed when the car went berserk.”

  Jess wouldn't dwell on that. Couldn't dwell on it. Her life would be over. She would never be as close to another human being again as she had once been to Vince. She didn't want to be close to anyone else. And if she didn’t stop dwelling on the past, she would end up crying again.

  “If you're talking about the business implications of a death, we need to see that partnership agreement between Paul and Patrick.”

  The clock on the dash said 12:30 p.m. “Vince, how about getting some lunch then looking in Paul's safe? That is … if you don't mind taking me home with you.”

  Her remark drew another warm look from Vince. “Take you home … does that mean I get to keep you?”

  “What do you think?” She gave him her enigmatic smile.

  “I think I'm gonna watch Jesse James crack a safe this afternoon.”

  That wasn’t the answer she was hoping for. “And maybe I can watch while you amputate your ear.”

  “Jess, I—”

  Vince’s phone rang.

  He glanced at the cup holder on the console, where he’d placed it. “See who that is, Jess?”

  She picked up the cell and read the display. “It's the car dealer’s service department.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to talk to them.”

  Jess picked up the call.

  “Is this Vince van Gordon?”

  “He's driving right now. I'm the person who—”

  “Yeah. We remember. The computer security whiz. Or is it hacker?”

  “What did you find? Did someone flash the ECM’s EEPROM?”

  “You mean update the firmware?”

  “That's what I asked.” Jess shook her head and rolled her eyes, not that anyone could see.

  “Yes. A chip on the ECM was updated.”

  This is what she had expected, but they needed to identify and catch the culprits. “Please, don't do anything that might change the firmware on any of the chips on that board. We’ll need the FBI and maybe US-CERT to investigate where these hacks came from and, if possible, determine who made them.”

  “Look, lady … I can’t just call in the Feds and whoever else it was that you mentioned. I don’t have—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll call them. Just don’t let anyone mess with that board.”

  “I've got the board on my desk right now.”

  “Lock it up for safekeeping. I'll call the proper authorities. We’ve got to stop this before it becomes widespread and puts you out of business. That’s exactly what will happen if you can’t guarantee that your customers won’t get their
cars hacked.”

  “Jess, what's up?”

  “Wait a sec, Vince … look, doofus, you will lock up that board or an FBI agent is going to show up in a few minutes and spew hot lava all over you and your boss. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Ms. Hacker. Computer geeks—can't live without’em anymore.”

  “Thanks. We'll have the authorities contact you.” She ended the call.

  “That sounded ominous.”

  She nodded. “Paul's car was hacked, and I might have a description of the man who did it.”

  “What? How did—”

  “Vince, when we left Patrick's office, I saw a skinny guy with wild-looking, red hair, dressed in white coveralls, walking away from Paul's car. He reminded me of one of those Three Stooges.”

  “Sounds like Larry. But, if he could hack a car, it wasn’t one of the three stooges.”

  “While you drive us home, I'm going to call the FBI, Seattle Division Cyber Security Task Force. I wonder if they’ve ever investigated an attempted cyber murder?”

  * * *

  While Vince rolled the rental car down the steep driveway at Paul's house, Jess still had the phone planted in her ear, talking with someone at the Seattle Field Office.

  After he shut off the engine, the car heated quickly on this blistering July day. Vince rolled down the windows and sat in the car listening to Jess’s end of the conversation.

  Jess mentioned car-hacking tools for sale on the Dark Web, whatever that was. With some mysterious, less than ethical people involved, Paul was probably right about the danger he’d mentioned.

  Jess ended the call. “Interesting.”

  “To you maybe. But it was all geek to me.”

  “Punny, Vince. Very punny. But the Seattle FBI is chomping at the bit to investigate their first car hack attack.”

  Vince opened his door. “Let's get into Paul's safe and find that partnership contract.”

  Jess’s mention of Paul brought back the fact that Vince was staying in Paul's house, had been driving his car, sat beside the woman who loved Paul, all with Paul's memorial service scheduled for tomorrow morning. Vince had usurped his brother’s place in the world, the place of the incredible man whose shadow had covered Vince most of his life. Would anyone ever recognize Vince as someone other than Paul van Gordon’s little brother?

  He glanced at Jess, walking beside him up the wide steps to the front door of the big house. If only Vince were her first choice, he would never feel guilty about loving her. With Jess in his life, Vince could simply remember Paul as the good and great man he was, instead of the man who had stolen the happily ever after from Vince’s life.

  It’s high school all over again, dude?

  Not if Vince could help it.

  Inside the house, the air was hot, still and suffocating. “I'm going to open some windows and the slider. See if you can open Paul's safe.”

  “I'll need to find the combination first. I met with Paul here to discuss my work contract. He opened his safe to get some papers he needed. He’d hidden the combination in a box on the top shelf of his office closet.”

  Vince smiled. “As brilliant as my brother was, he couldn’t remember simple things like phone numbers.”

  “And safe combinations,” Jess said as she headed down the long hallway.

  Five minutes later, Vince walked into Paul's office and plopped down in the desk chair, watching the pleasant sight of Jess standing on the top level of a stepstool.

  She had taken off her outer shirt, shucked her shoes, and she stood barefoot in denim shorts and a tank top, rummaging through boxes.

  Jess went up on her tip toes, reaching for the back of the closet. “Paul was a bad filer at his work office. Apparently, even worse in his home office.”

  The calf muscles of her shapely legs flexed as she tiptoed, revealing a level of muscular development one would never suspect from a slender, five-foot-eight woman.

  She shoved a box to the back of the shelf. “The box in the back looked like the one Paul used. But it isn’t.”

  “Jess, do that again.”

  She turned on the step to face Vince. “Do what again?” Jess gave him a bug-eyed stare. “You weren't checking me out, were you?”

  “I was just—”

  “Vince, you had eighteen years to do that. If you'd found what you were looking for, I would have known.”

  But she didn't know and now was not the time to tell her. “I just noticed you’ve got a lot of leg muscle.”

  “I'm not the feminine, girlie type, remember?”

  He scanned her body slowly, trying to get a rise out of Jess. That didn’t work, so he tried what he did best, use words. “Five-feet-seven or eight, slender—you look like the feminine type.”

  “But I’m not, see?” She turned a three-sixty on the foot stool, then put her hands on her hips. “Wanna try me?”

  “I’m not sure how to take that.” Vince smirked. “What if I say yes?”

  Her face turned pink. “Vince, I’m a tomboy. If anyone knows that, it should be you. I climb rocks. I even took some martial arts classes and won a board-breaking competition.”

  “Oh. How many boards did you break?”

  “It's not just the number of boards you break, it's how. It's about style.”

  “So how many did you break with style?”

  “Six in one jump. Two sets of three. One set with my right foot, the other with my left.” Jess still stood on the top step, displaying a perfect specimen of the human female body.

  His gaze dropped to her board-breaking legs.

  “Would you stop staring at my legs? It makes me feel like … like that time you caught me in my underwear.”

  “Which time was that?” Vince curled his smirking lips further.

  “When kids spend as much time together as we did, there aren’t many secrets. You and Paul were my best friends. We did everything together, until Paul outgrew us. Then it was you and me.”

  Her voice turned to a raspy whisper and broke. Jess stepped down from the footstool, and walked toward him, brushing her cheeks. “I guess we'll have to look somewhere else for the combination to the safe.”

  One thought of Paul had brought tears to Jess’s eyes. He opened his arms to her.

  Jess stepped into them, returning his embrace in a way that suggested more than friendship.

  But he must be mistaken, unless Jess had begun substituting him for Paul.

  And why would she do that, dude?

  Because she has no other options.

  Chapter 9

  Trent had raided various funds in MMI's accounts to come up with the four million dollars he had made available to LACO to offer to Vince van Gordon. Hopefully, it had been enough to persuade the young author to sell Virtuality, a company of which he had little or no understanding.

  If he took the money, Vince could retire and write novels to his heart’s content. What bright young man would refuse that kind of offer?

  Like van Gordon, Trent had been a bright young man once, but no one had ever offered him an opportunity to stop working, except when he’d been fired by a large Hollywood movie studio after a movie deal went sour. The only place he’d found work was making adult movies. But taking the job with MMI had cost Trent his wife and two kids.

  Emily didn’t want to be associated with a producer of pornography, so she took his two boys and ran. He had never seen nor heard from her since. But he had found where she lived.

  With the wealth MMI’s virtual reality venture promised, Trent would make her rue the day she left. He could lure his kids away from their mother with all the things he could offer them. And the boys were in their late teens, the perfect luring age.

  Maybe money couldn’t buy happiness, but it could buy satisfaction … and revenge. All Trent needed was for Mr. Michaels to deliver on his promises to LACO.

  If things had gone as planned, Patrick Michaels should have made the offer to Vince sometime earlier today. But it was 6:00 p.m. an
d Trent had heard nothing.

  He slipped his laptop in its case, along with two half-completed business plans. As he locked his desk, preparing to call it a day, New York, New York sounded from his cell.

  Russo? Or was it one of the new hires from New York?

  “Del Valle here.”

  “Del Valle, this is Sal Romano. How are you today?”

  “Suppose you tell me, Sal.”

  “You referring to the meeting between Michaels and van Gordon?”

  “Yes, I'm waiting for you to give me the good news.” It couldn't be good news. Romano would have blurted it out instead of beating around the bush.

  “Our contact at LACO streamed the video of the meeting to us. There were some surprises.”

  Trent didn't like surprises. He played favorable odds and even interfered, when necessary, to improve the odds. And legality seldom played into his decisions to interfere. It was beginning to sound like this deal with Virtuality would require a little interference.

  “I take it that Mr. van Gordon didn't like our offer.”

  “No. But there's a lot more to it than that, Mr. Del Valle. van Gordon got mad and said he was keeping the company. Him taking the four mil—you can forget about that. He more or less told Patrick Michaels what he could do with the money. But the babe van Gordon had on his arm is sharp and she's dangerous. She influences him. One look at her and you would understand why. I'm thinking van Gordon and her have a long history. Closer than close, if you know what I mean.”

  Sal had rambled on enough for Trent to get a feel for the man's perceptiveness. The guy was sharp enough to cut him a little slack. “So are you recommending a course of action?”

  “Yeah. We can try some intimidation and see if van Gordon reconsiders. In fact, we already have.”

  Already tried intimidation? “Look, Sal. I'm the one giving the orders for anything we do to van Gordon.”

  “I know that, sir. But Russo said our job description included a little muscle or intimidation. We were just opening the door in case that was needed.”

  “So you didn't actually threaten van Gordon?”