by Cherry Kay
He browsed their photos and used their status updates to get a general snapshot of how well adjusted they seemed. It wasn’t a perfect picture, but it told him enough to know that none of the girls he’d slept with over the last few years were acting in any unusual way that might signify their loss of emotional control and subsequent actions against him and the girl he was interested in.
Thomas sipped his bourbon. That was the problem, he knew. Tiffany was different from the other girls. As a handsome billionaire, it had been easy to find any number of young women to take to bed for a few nights, and he’d even enjoyed talking to a couple of them for a few minutes here and there, but it was only Tiffany that kept him awake at night when she wasn’t by his side. He’d found a deeper connection there, and he cursed the fact that he’d been so stupid in how he’d gone about meeting her.
Seeing her profile come up in the search algorithm he’d designed that pulled potential girls from the Matchr database, he’d first seen her as just another beautiful face with a body to match. It was only after researching her in order to decided how best to craft his interactions with her that he realized he didn’t have to play a fake persona in order to get her to want to meet him.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Thomas had only ever been himself when he was around her, and she seemed to be attracted to him for who he was instead of the perfect match he’d often pretended to be.
Swallowing the last of his drink in one long pull, Thomas set the glass down and pulled up a photo of Tiffany. He felt like a moony teenager staring at her image whenever he was upset, but he wasn’t about to give up on her just yet.
He’d screwed himself over by building up a castle of lies around himself, but he was determined to win her back even if that meant knocking it down stone by stone. Someone was trying to get to him through Tiffany, and while he hated that someone would stoop so low to attack him, it made him even more angry that they were using Tiffany to do it.
At a dead end with his own investigation, Thomas let out a sigh of resignation and reached for his phone. He pulled up a contact labeled only as gh0st, and hesitated with his thumb over the call button. Gh0st was a black hat hacker who specialized in compromising complex security measures on sites like the ones Thomas had just been using to check up on his exes. The man had a number of other skills though, one of which was an ability to track down hard to come by information through his network of hacker friends.
Thomas pressed the button and put the phone to his ear. The phone rang a few times, and then there was a click as though someone had answered yet no one said anything.
“I have a job,” said Thomas. “Double the usual rate if you can help me quickly.”
“I’m listening,” said the voice slightly garbled male voice on the other end. Gh0st used a program to modify his voice during these calls, and he sounded different every time Thomas called him.
“A friend of mine is being followed and harassed, and I need to find out who’s responsible for it.” Thomas said.
“Send me what you have along with fifty percent up front and I’ll get back to you when I have something.”
The line went dead.
Thomas collected his research and information into one folder, zipped it, and uploaded it to a secure file server he used only for this purpose. He then logged into a private offshore bank account and set up a transfer for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was a large sum of money, even for a man like Thomas Belmont III, but it would be worth every penny if it got him some answers.
The next few days crawled by for Thomas. He could normally lose himself in the day-to-day chaos of managing a multinational corporation, but since his last night with Tiffany, he’d been able to think of nothing but her and whoever might be harassing her. He’d resisted the urge to put one of his own people on surveillance, knowing that it would only make her more frightened if the person got sloppy and was spotted, and so he had to make due with following her social media accounts as much as possible.
These weren’t much help either, as she seemed to have retreated away from the internet in recent days. He knew almost nothing of what she was doing or whether or not she was still being followed, and he yearned to pick up the phone and call her to ask how she was doing.
“Thomas?” asked his assistant. “Did you hear any of what I just said?”
“I’m sorry, Vanessa,” he replied, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “I’ve not been sleeping well and I just drifted off there.”
“Well, pull yourself together because we have to lock this contract down before the deadline closes in less than an hour.”
Thomas looked at his assistant. She was stunningly gorgeous and had made her interest him known on several prior occasions. He imagined himself wrapping his fingers in her long blonde hair while he bent her over the desk and fucked her mercilessly, but the thought just didn’t do anything for him. He’d had his fill of empty sex and meaningless relationships, and Vanessa, as pretty as she was, could offer him nothing more than that.
“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning forward and redoubling his efforts to focus on the contract in front of him. “You’re right. We should get this done.”
Thomas’s phone chirped once and he glanced at the alert. The sender was identified by nothing more than a random string of numbers and the message contained only an image of an arrow pointing upwards. While it would have seemed like a malfunction or glitch to anyone else, Thomas knew exactly what it meant, and he couldn’t handle the thought of waiting to deal with it.
“Call Richardson and have him finish this.” he said, rising from his seat.
“But you never let Richardson have final approval of these things,” said Vanessa, clearly concerned. “What’s wrong? Is this about that girl?”
Thomas shut her down with a cold glare. She retreated from his gaze, raising her hands in apology for questioning him and backing off to go fetch someone to ensure that the contracts were ready to go off for final signing.
Thomas marched out of the room and went straight to the elevator. He punched the button for his private office, tapping his fingers against his leg impatiently while he waited for it to get there. Once at his floor, he practically ran to his computer terminal where he entered his login and password into the file server site.
As the message had indicated, a new file waited for him. It wasn’t the most efficient way of communicating with the gh0st, but it was damned secure and prevented either of them from being identified if one or the other were compromised.
Thomas downloaded the file to his desktop and opened it. To his disappointment, it contained almost no information. Gh0st confirmed that he’d been able to hack some security camera feeds from the days Tiffany had told Thomas she’d sighted possible stalkers, but the people couldn’t be found in any facial recognition database.
Even the license plate on the car that had picked one of them up was a complete dead end, as it was a false plate that didn’t correspond to any known vehicle registered in the state in the last five years.
The note was signed off with the phrase ‘will keep looking’, but Thomas wasn’t hopeful. Gh0st was one of the best in the business at sussing out hidden data, and if he was running into brick walls already, then that meant someone equally talented was behind all of this.
Thomas stored the file in his folder containing all the information he’d collected on Tiffany and then put the system to sleep. He left the room, shutting the secret entrance behind him, and went to the floor to ceiling windows that dominated the other half of the apartment. The windows were mirrored on the outside so it was impossible to see through them, and he’d had them installed at a slight angle so that he could more easily look down on the city.
Standing in front of them gave one an eerie perspective of the city below, and he liked to stand there to remind himself of exactly what kind of power he wielded. There were other men who had as much or more money than he did, but few of t
hem had such control over the tech world that ruled over everything.
Thomas’s companies had invested deeply into security and networking technologies, and he had at his fingertips the power to access almost any information he wanted if he was willing to ignore a few laws here and there.
He placed a palm on the glass and leaned his forehead against it. The surface was cool on his skin, and he felt a slight twinge of vertigo.
With all the resources he commanded, why could he not do this one thing? His winning back Tiffany relied on him removing the threat against her, and that seemed to be an information black hole. He seemed to be able to get close to the edges of it, but he could never get at its center without having his attempts shut down completely.
Someone was working very hard to keep him away from that information, and it only served to drive him even harder. He didn’t care what it took to find out who had sabotaged his relationship with Tiffany, he only knew that he’d burn down anyone who dared stand between him and what he wanted.
*
Sweat dripped down Tiffany’s neck and trickled along her chin to hit her lips while she hung downwards, touching her toes as part of a sun salutation. She’d felt a little guilty about coming to a yoga class when she was unemployed and facing down a mountain of debt, but since the month’s membership was already paid for, she’d figured she could use the escape from her worries.
Flowing from one pose into the next, she focused on her breathing, and tried to ground herself in the movements of her body. She struggled to ignore the negative thoughts fighting for attention, especially the more paranoid ones that made her worry someone in the room was watching her.
She was fairly certain that no one had been following her since she’d broken things off with Thomas once and for all, but she still looked twice at anyone who glanced her way or seemed out of place. It was no way to live, and she wanted it to be over.
The instructor guided them into a final moment of peaceful meditation, and she focused her energy on the good that she’d done that day. She’d followed up on several job leads, at least two of which seemed promising, and she’d called her bank to discuss options for consolidating her upcoming debt. Of course, none of those things were immediate solutions, but she had laid the groundwork for future successes, and that was what was important.
She told herself to prioritize the positive, and she pushed the negative thoughts of Thomas and her possible stalkers out of her mind.
By the time the instructor dismissed them with a warm “namaste” she felt rather centered and calm. All in all, her day had been very productive, and she felt she could splurge on a cheap bottle of red wine on the way home. She’d cut alcohol out of her budget completely after realizing that she’d need to scale back her expenses as much as possible, but today she felt especially proud of herself for finding a sense of balance between her problems and the solutions she had worked hard to put into place.
Standing in the aisle at her favorite shop on the way home, she skipped over her usual twenty dollar bottles and veered towards the cheaper options. She hadn’t bought six dollar wine since she’d been a college freshman, but there was a limit to how much she could treat herself. A twenty-dollar bottle of her favorite Malbec might cheer her up, but it was a slippery slope that would soon have her back to buying only locally produced organic food, or going out to restaurants and bars with friends now and then.
She paid for the bottle and the ridiculous thought flashed through her mind that she could always sign back up on Matchr to go on a few dates. Guys were always eager to pay for dinner and drinks when they were with her, and it would be a cheap way to take her mind of how frustrating her life had become.
Smiling to herself as she removed her debit card from the machine and stuffed the bottle of wine into her tote, she dismissed the notion immediately. She couldn’t imagine going back on Matchr after everything that had happened, and even worse, she didn’t think she could stomach any more blind dates for a while. No, she was perfectly happy to be going home to a simple meal and a few glasses of wine in front of the TV.
Tiffany climbed the steps to her apartment, unlocked the door, and tossed her yoga mat in the corner. She removed the bottle of wine from her tote, placed it on the table and dropped her bag on a chair, thinking she’d shower and change out of her sweaty yoga clothes. She’d only made it a few steps away from the kitchen when she heard her phone ringing from inside her bag. She debated ignoring it and heading for the shower anyway, but it was still only late afternoon and there was every chance it could be a job prospect calling.
She dug out her phone and saw that the contact was a blocked number, and a tiny thrill went through her. If the caller wasn’t in her contact list, then that meant it was a good chance it was one of the companies she’d applied to over the last few days.
“Hello, Tiffany Norman speaking.”
There was a moment of silence on the end of the line and then a soft hissing static that quickly became a man’s voice she recognized immediately.
“So this will grant me full super user authorization on any of the sites without being detected?” said the man she knew to be Thomas Belmont.
“Thomas?” she asked.
“Yep,” said a stranger. His voice sounded strangely altered. Almost robotic. “It’s completely untraceable and no one will see your digital footprint. Even the network admins won’t have any idea of what you’re doing. It disguises your traffic as routine maintenance demons that run all the time anyway. Seeing the anomalies in your usage would be like picking a single screaming teenager’s voice out of a stadium filled with Justin Bieber fans.”
Tiffany listened in horror. She knew now that what she was listening to wasn’t a live conversation but rather a recording. She couldn’t believe someone had this information and was playing it for her, but she couldn’t help herself from wanting to hear more.
“And that extra feature I asked you about?” asked Thomas’s voice. “Did you get that working?”
“For sure, man,” said the other person. “You can easily block out anyone and decide what kind of traffic gets directed to a profile. Say you target one girl, but she’s got a connection going with some other dude, right? You can block those two profiles from each other so it’ll look to each of them like the other person quit the site.
Then, if you want to be a total bastard, you enable my custom scumbag filter that starts matching your girl with all kinds of losers. You message her in the middle of that and you look like a goddam knight in shining armor.”
“Perfect,” replied Thomas. “This is better than I’d hoped for. It works across all the sites, right?”
“Just Matchr for now, but I expect to have backdoors installed on every site you own in the next few days.”
“I’m in the menu right now,” said Thomas. “This is beautiful work. I’m going to send over payment right now, and there’s a twenty k bonus in it for you for turning this around so quickly, and obviously, for never telling anyone about this, right?”
The voice on the other end of the line laughed. “For sure man, I know the deal. I wouldn’t be in business long if I couldn’t keep my secrets.”
The hiss of static ended and there was just flat silence on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” asked Tiffany, unable to keep panic from sounding in her voice. “Who is this? Why are you sending me this?”
“I wanted you to hear this just in case you were thinking of changing your mind about Thomas Belmont,” said a female voice that sounded a lot like the one belonging to the woman who’d assaulted Tiffany in her apartment. The line went dead and Tiffany nearly dropped the phone. Shaking with fear and rage, she pulled up her contacts and pressed the button for Thomas’s phone.
“Tiffany?” he said, sounding surprised to hear from her.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she shouted into the phone. She squeezed it so hard her fingers hurt, but she couldn’t seem to relax her grip.
“Whoa, calm down,” he said. “What’s going on? Tell me what’s wrong so I can help you.”
“I just got a call with a recording,” she spat. “Do you want to know what was on it? It was you talking to someone about a back door program you paid him to install for you! It was exactly what you swore to me you didn’t do.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line before Thomas spoke again.
“There’s no easy way to say this,” he began. “I lied to you because I didn’t want you to know about what an asshole I’d been with other women. It’s so impossibly hard to just have normal relationships when you have the sort of public profile that I do, and all that money and power sort of shifts things into a strange perspective. I admit that I used the program, but I regretted all of it the moment I met you. You have to believe me, Tiffany.”
