by Barbara Gee
He wasn’t fazed by my sarcastic tone. “Actually, I probably would. But I was mostly hoping to be with you when you take a look at the cameras and DVR.”
“Moral support?” I asked softly, moved by his thoughtfulness.
“Mm-hmm. You gonna be okay checking things out alone?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll take a look as soon as Harv gets here. If there’s anything there, I’ll find it. But to tell you the truth, I’m not optimistic. If someone was smart enough to install all that stuff right under my nose, they were smart enough to wipe the drives clean once they tuned in and saw my office was being taken apart.”
He dipped his head, his eyes searching mine. He was obviously still uncertain about leaving me alone.
“I’m fine,” I insisted before he could question me further. “The shock is wearing off and I just want to get past it. I’ll go through the DVR and the external drive, and if I find any signs of classified information being compromised, I’ll contact my team right away.” Please, God, let that not be the case.
“And if you don’t find anything?” he asked.
I shrugged uneasily. “I’m not sure. A blank drive doesn’t mean I wasn’t compromised. I might still have to talk to the team about it. See what they want to do. I’ll see what I find tomorrow, then figure it out.”
He looked at me for a few more seconds, then gave a resigned nod. “Okay. I’ll get going then. Please promise to call me if you need anything.”
“I will. I promise.”
I walked him to the front door. He stepped out onto the porch, then turned back to where I waited in the doorway.
“I enjoyed today, Ava,” he said quietly. “I hate that you got such rotten news, but other than that, it was a good day.”
“I enjoyed it, too. And I love your beautiful house.” I folded my arms and gave him a sly smile. “I’m not in any hurry for you to move back there, but I do love it.”
His eyes caught the glow from the porch light. “We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
I nodded, hoping his interest wouldn’t have waned by then. “Whatever you say.”
He chuckled. “I say it’s time for me to go, or we’re in trouble. I’ll come over as soon as I get back tomorrow.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Upstairs in your lair?” he teased.
I couldn’t hold back an eager smile. “Wait till you see my lair full of stuff. I’ll be in total nerd mode, which might be a huge turnoff to you, but oh well. You’ll have to see that side of me sometime.”
His eyes moved over my face once again and I held my breath. Go for it. Please, go for it.
He stayed put. “I look forward to nerd mode,” he said with the smile that drove me crazy. “See you tomorrow.”
I covered my disappointment. “Good night.”
I watched him get in his truck and drive 150 feet over to the Owens’ drive. When he was inside the house, I shut the door softly….then closed my eyes and relived his kiss.
The feel of his smooth, firm lips on mine. The warmth of his hands on my neck and his big, powerful body so close to mine. How incredible he smelled. How incredible he kissed.
After a few minutes of that, my legs were almost too weak to get me upstairs.
I changed into an oversized T-shirt that I frequently slept in, then washed my face and brushed my teeth before falling into bed.
What a day. Even though finding out about the cameras was one of the most traumatic things to ever happen to me, that wasn’t what I was thinking about as my eyes grew heavy. Which was exactly what Jude had intended.
He’d done well. I just hoped his mission to distract me wasn’t the only reason for the kissing.
I yawned and wiggled deeper into my pillow, wondering if he was really on his knees praying about us. It was a comforting thought, and pretty soon I rolled over and did some praying of my own. I went through my usual prayer list, along with asking for wisdom and courage to face the next day….and the DVR that would be delivered.
But most of all, I thanked God yet again for bringing me to Hidden Creek and putting me right next door to Jude Keller.
Chapter 12
The truck arrived at ten sharp the next morning. I’d gotten up early, making sure I had plenty of time to do some yoga stretches and eat breakfast. I wanted to be alert and ready for what I knew was going to be a long day.
When I saw the truck backing into my drive, I went out onto the porch to watch. It wasn’t all that big, just an unmarked panel truck that showed no outward indications it was hauling more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of sensitive, latest-and-greatest IT equipment.
I couldn’t wait to get it all upstairs. There was a lot of cabling in my immediate future, but that was okay. I loved all that stuff.
What I didn’t love was hidden cameras, and somehow I knew that’s what was in the first box taken out of the truck, which was now being carried toward me by a short but very muscular dark-haired man with a tentative smile on his face.
“I’m guessing you’re Harv?” I asked as he came up the steps.
He nodded. “That’s me. And you’re Ava?”
“I am.” He stopped in front of me and I stared at the box. “Is that the camera system?”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry I had to give you that news yesterday, but I figured you’d want to know.”
“Of course. I really appreciate everything you did.” I held my arms out for the box. “I’ll take this. Everything else can be taken upstairs. The office is the empty room to the left of the steps. I’ll prop the front door open so you can go in and out easily.”
Harv gave me the box. “Sounds good. We’ll get your racks set up first. You want the same arrangement you had in the old place? I diagrammed everything so we wouldn’t have to ask a lot of questions.”
Wow. Harv and his crew were everything Ian had promised when he recommended them. He’d assured me the company was used to working for government contractors and I could trust them to do the job right and keep everything confidential. So far I had no reason to doubt it.
I told Harv the only difference was putting the worktable in front of the window—which was something I hadn’t had in my old office—then I let them do their thing while I dug a laptop out of the second box they brought in and took it to the kitchen table. I unpacked the cameras and the DVR, then had to go out to the truck and dig through yet another box to find a router.
I got the router connected to the house wi-fi without any trouble. In a day or two I’d have my own secure internet connection working, but the local internet provider was fine for this task.
I assigned an IP address to the DVR and went through the steps that would allow my computer to access it. Then I tapped into the hard drive and scowled at the screen, fully expecting the drive to be completely blank.
It was. Completely. I couldn’t uncover a single file. Whoever had wiped the drive knew how to thwart file recovery tactics.
I gave a disgruntled sigh and shoved the external drive from the DVR into a USB port on my computer. Again, I expected nothing, and I was ninety-nine point nine-nine percent correct in that expectation. But lo and behold, my undelete software finally discovered one measly little video file. Whoever had erased the hard drive must have been overly confident, and hadn’t double-checked to make sure everything was gone.
I bent forward eagerly, copying the file to my laptop and using one of my apps to fiddle with it. There was some corruption and I wasn’t able to get a date off the file, but the corruption of its identifiers could be the very reason it had survived.
I opened the file with a compatible viewer and eagerly watched to see what had been recorded.
I froze when my image came on the screen. I’d expected it, of course, but it was still a jolt.
The camera was positioned a little bit behind my head, but it had enough of a fish-eye view to show all of my middle monitor and partial screens of the other two.
I sat forward, trying to read
the type on the screens. I zoomed in and enhanced the picture using the viewer tools, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make anything legible due to the sharp downward angle of the camera. Everything showing on the monitor was distorted, so much so that I was confident even the most sophisticated image enhancing software would fail as well.
I smiled a little evilly, picturing the viewer’s frustration with the positioning. But then the video abruptly switched to a different camera and my smile died. This camera wasn’t mounted anywhere near the center of the room. It was hitting me full on, and to get that shot the camera would have had to be projecting from the very far edge of the ceiling and tilted a bit in its pinhole to give more of a frontal view. It had probably been mounted right beside the cable cover at the juncture of the wall and ceiling. But why there? Why had it been put where it could only see me from the front, with no chance of seeing anything on my screen?
I got a sick feeling in my stomach, but I couldn’t look away from the video. It was surreal watching myself work. My hands weren’t visible, but I knew my fingers were flying across the keyboard. I could tell because my gaze was fixed on the screen, totally absorbed in what I was doing.
The camera suddenly zoomed in, until my face took up the whole screen. Two things became apparent then. One, the person watching the feed wasn’t only interested in my work, and two, they were watching and recording in real time, zooming in on my face.
Actually, there was a third thing. Tiny cameras that could be remotely controlled and zoomed in were very hard to get. Someone had friends in high places. And money to spare.
I kept watching, trying to find clues. All I could come up with was that it must have been late in the evening, because my makeup was worn off and my hair was in a messy ponytail, which usually happened when I worked too long.
The view switched back to the first camera and I paused the feed, zooming in one more time on the lines of code that were visible on the monitor, squinting as I tried to read it. The camera was decently high resolution, but I still couldn’t make out any of the characters on the screen. Not even close.
So far so good, but I still needed to find out where the third camera had been positioned. I could ask Harv, but I wanted to see if it showed on the video first. I hit the fast forward button and watched hopefully.
A minute before the end of the video, when I was about to give up, the view finally switched to the third camera. I quickly slowed it back down and scrolled back to the point where the switch took place, surprised to see the camera was pointed straight down on the small table and chairs I had at the end of the office, which I only used when Ian came over to work on bids for jobs.
I frowned and tried to come up with a reason for putting a camera over that spot. For a split second I thought maybe it could be a competitor trying to spy on our bids so they could lowball us, but there was just no way. It would be impossible for anyone to know when or where we worked on our bids, or even that I was involved in the process. Plus, our team was still pretty small potatoes compared to many. Totally not worth the effort.
I sat back and released a long breath, feeling equal parts relief and frustration. I still had no idea who had put in the cameras, or why, but thanks to that one little file left on the DVR, I now knew the person spying on me didn’t pose a threat to me professionally. Which alleviated a whole host of problems and took away the fear of being unemployed.
I felt a hundred pounds lighter as that particular worry fell off my shoulders.
When there were only twenty seconds left in the video, the view switched yet again, back to the camera facing me. I watched as I stood up to stretch, raising my arms above my head. The stupid camera immediately zoomed in again, right on my face. As I stretched, I closed my eyes and grimaced, as if I’d been sitting at the desk way too long and my neck and shoulders were protesting. Which was no doubt the case, considering I was almost always at my desk too long.
I watched as I rubbed my eyes, and then I noticed the ring I was wearing. Ah-ha. Just like that, I had another gift from this rogue file. Now I knew exactly when this video had been recorded.
The night of Ella’s birthday dinner—May 11. We’d gone to an exclusive French restaurant and I’d dressed up enough to look like I belonged, including the sapphire ring and necklace Mom had given me for my twentieth birthday. I knew for sure it was that night, because I rarely wore rings and I’d only worn this one because I was making an effort to fancy myself up so my mother wouldn’t complain about me looking like I shopped at thrift stores.
Which I sometimes did, because there are some really cool things at thrift stores.
I remembered I’d changed my clothes after I got home from dinner because I had some more work I needed to get done. I’d forgotten to take off the ring, though, and hadn’t realized it until I sat down at the keyboard. I’d been afraid I’d lose it if I took it off and laid it somewhere, so I’d left it on. Thanks to that decision, I now knew the date of this video.
Six weeks ago. There went my hope that the cameras had been installed and then abandoned long ago, once the watcher found out I was boring.
I closed the laptop and drew my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. I heard the movers going up and down the stairs, talking quietly, while I just sat there and pondered things for a while. Things like whether to tell my team about the surveillance, even though my work hadn’t been compromised. And, of course, the bigger questions. Who in the world had been watching me? And why?
I felt certain they’d been bored to death. Hour after hour of watching me stare at my screens….what a waste of time. It gave me a certain sense of satisfaction to know they hadn’t seen anything interesting, but it still freaked me out to think of my privacy being violated like that. I just wished I knew what they’d been hoping to see.
My ponderings were interrupted when my phone chimed. I picked it up, putting my legs down quickly and sitting up straight when I saw it was a text from Jude.
How’s it going there?
I closed my eyes and gave a happy sigh. How could something as simple as a text from that man make me feel so warm and fuzzy?
I tapped out a reply. I’m sitting on my rear while the moving guys do all the work.
You may be sitting on your rear, but only because you’re looking through that DVR. Find anything?
I smiled. He knew me pretty well already. I found one video file. Thank goodness my screens weren’t even close to being legible. If the motive was to spy on my work, they were sorely disappointed.
There was a lengthy pause before he responded. Do you think the motive could be personal after all? I’m not liking that idea.
I didn’t either, but I didn’t want him to worry about it while he was trying to work. We’ll talk about it this evening. I’ll show you the footage and get your opinion.
I’ll get there as soon as I can. Want me to bring some food?
No, it’s my turn to feed you. I’ll stick something in the slow cooker. Just get here when you can.
I will. And then a few seconds later he added, Nice to know you’re waiting at the end of my day.
My heart swelled up when I read his words. I missed him like crazy, longed for him even though I’d spent most of the day with him just yesterday. How could that be?
I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I settled for a smiley-face emoji. Not the one with hearts for eyes, just the smiley. But….I was pretty sure if I were to look in a mirror right then, I’d see hearts in place of my own eyes.
I sighed, confusion mingling with hope. It was too soon to be feeling this way—logically I knew that. My heart had other ideas though, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.
***
When I went upstairs to check on the progress of Harv and his men, I found they already had all the boxes and racks carried up and were starting to assemble the shelves that would hold my servers, switches, and various other pieces of equipment. At this rate, they’d be finished and gone in anoth
er couple of hours, then my own work could begin.
Since they had everything under control, I went back downstairs and rounded up the ingredients for one of my favorite crockpot meals—salsa chicken—which I’d be eating with the most handsome, intriguing, intelligent, and thoughtful man I’d met in all my twenty-five years.
The thought made me ridiculously excited.
Chapter 13
When I sat down alone in my partially assembled office two hours later, having seen Harv and his men off with many thanks, I actually set a timer so I wouldn’t get so absorbed in the work that I’d forget to finish my preparations for dinner. I gave myself enough time for a shower, too, because a girl wants to be at her best for a man like Jude.
In spite of how eager I was to see him, I got completely drawn into the challenge of setting up my new space, just like I’d known I would. I was concentrating so hard I jumped about three feet when the timer went off.
I took another ten minutes to get to a good stopping point, then hurried to get in the shower, dry my hair, and put on a little makeup. I kept things casual with a pair of frayed denim shorts, a mint green peasant-style top, and flip-flops. I coaxed my hair into a loose side braid, mostly because I didn’t have time to do anything more interesting with it.
Back down in the kitchen, I measured rice into my rice cooker and got that going, then added a can of black beans to the chicken mixture and let it all continue to heat while I waited for Jude. I’d add cheese and sour cream just before we ate.
I kept checking the clock—the round, retro one with an avocado-green plastic frame and a different vegetable in place of each number. It had been hanging above the sink in Grandma’s kitchen ever since I could remember, and it wouldn’t be coming down anytime soon.
At seven o’clock I started getting nervous, knowing Jude could arrive at any minute. I set the table, keeping it simple. No candles or flowers, because this wasn’t a romantic dinner, it was just him being a good friend. He’d watch the video and give me his input, and I’d feed him for his trouble.
