2 Executive Retention

by Maria E. Schneider

  Apparently I wasn't keeping up on my super spy techniques. "Turbo, I have had the same phone for five or six years. It's not something I replace every year!"

  "Does it use the old forty-megahertz frequency?

  I felt a headache forming at the base of my neck. "Do you want me to get my old phone with a cord and call you back?"

  The pause was long enough that I could have gotten the old phone, gone to the bathroom, made tea and cookies and taken a nap.

  "Uh, well. Perhaps you don't recall the product spec if you bought the phone so long ago." He didn't sound like he thought it was possible to forget such important details.

  I was an engineer, but I was not as obsessive-compulsive as all of my friends. Turbo, being at the very far end of that spectrum, frequently obtained the company electronic specifications when it became apparent that, gasp, the schematics of the inside wiring and voltages had not been included in the consumer box. Me, I was lucky to read the bullet points on the box telling me whether or not the phone had speed dial.

  Rather than continue the ridiculous conversation, I simply hung up. Grumbling, I dug through my closet until I unearthed a low-tech, corded telephone. I plugged it in and called Turbo at home.

  He answered on the first ring. "Domino's pizza."

  "What? Turbo?"

  "Is the line now secure?"

  And if it wasn't, he had sort of blown it with the whole pizza front question. I held back an urge to scream. "Cords all over the place, secure as it's going to get." I hadn't taken the time to get all the knots out, so I had to sit close to the wall jack with my head at a funny angle.

  "Okay." I could picture the look of supreme satisfaction he wore. "Here's the scoop. Jacques was an engineer, but it equated to a low-level management position. He was at Kronology five years and guess what that means?"

  I chased the carrot, my mind churning. "Vesting?"

  "Bingo. According to Daniel, everyone at the company got stock options when they were hired on, and those options vested after five years. Daniel also mentioned he had been offered twenty thousand stock options when his company got bought up."

  "Whew. That's a lot for a grunt engineer."

  "Jacques was there long enough and played the game well enough that he probably had the opportunity to get even more options. Once anyone stayed five years, they could purchase and take the stock with them even after quitting. Jacques may be sitting on them waiting for the stock price to go up."

  "He would have held them for nearly ten years now." Maybe he had gotten tired of waiting for Kronology to get its act together and decided to step in and help Kronology customers. "I guess good old Jacques has a lot of reasons for wanting Kronology to succeed, doesn't he?" No wonder he got so hot under the collar when I didn't mollycoddle Kronology.

  "Absolutely. Daniel also said he was pretty certain that when Jacques left he got at least two Kronology customers to go through Acetel for support rather than straight to Kronology."

  That would make him look very good to his new management--and could he be getting paid on the side for the work? But there had been no evidence of that in the database. And how did the layoffs fit in? It still didn't tell me who the people were that had supposedly been axed from the Denton payroll.

  I thanked Turbo for researching the information and hung up. It was time to tell Huntington my suspicions about the post office boxes and inform him that he was watching the wrong guy. I wasn't certain of exactly what Jacques was up to, but he wasn't completely on the up-and-up. He was a much more likely candidate than whoever lived in Piney Oaks. Well...except for the shooting.

  I drove to Huntington's condo carefully, watching behind me the whole way and taking a circular route. Eloy, the doorman, parked the car. If someone had managed to follow me, they wouldn't be able to track which condo I went into. Additionally, since Eloy parked the car, the goons couldn't attack me in the parking garage.

  Michael, professional greeter, master of the elevator and general "watcher over all things" was working behind the little lobby desk. His face fell when he saw me.

  I smiled. "Is Mr. Huntington in?"

  "I'll be happy to announce you."

  I didn't wait. Let Michael warn Huntington that I was on my way up. Michael probably treated reporters and cops the same way he treated me. Vermin. I was low-class vermin.

  When I knocked, Mark answered the door. He let me in and gave me one of his less wolfish greetings, but that didn't stop me from getting a silly grin on my face.

  Huntington looked like he could have easily answered the door, despite the sling still around his arm. The cane was no longer in evidence.

  "How are you feeling?" I tried to start out on the right foot.

  Huntington grunted. "I've been better."

  Since I couldn't head for the kitchen and start cooking to get rid of my nervous energy, I perched on the opposite edge of the cream leather couch where Huntington was sitting.

  Mark brought me a soda and helped himself to one.

  "I suppose you probably heard about the, uh, disaster at work today?" I asked.

  Huntington grinned. "Did you really attack some guy with your purse?"

  "No," I said irritably. "That wasn't me. I was going to lunch with Becky, and she had an issue with one of the EMT guys."

  Mark pulled around a kitchen chair to face the couch. "I've been watching the camera data from yesterday. Any chance the stuff you were looking at is the reason those guys showed up?"

  I nodded uncomfortably. "I would guess so." I told them quickly about the files I had accessed and the automatic email warning that was sent. "I was looking up various employee addresses. It's too coincidental that those guys attacked the day after we were looking at those files."

  "And why were you looking up addresses anyway?" Huntington demanded. Mark hid a grin behind his soda.

  "What difference does it make? The point is, you're watching the wrong guy. You should be watching Jacques. Let's look at the facts here. Ever since you gave my resume to Jacques, I've had people chasing me."

  Before I could continue, Huntington interrupted. "You were seen with me in the restaurant. Then we left the car in your driveway. Later, they actually caught me near your place. Those connections don't necessarily point to Jacques."

  "When exactly did you give my resume to him? Was it before or after that night in the restaurant?"

  Huntington squeezed the side of the couch with his good hand. He opened his mouth to yell at me. Instead he muttered, "Dammit."

  "That's what I thought. You had already given him my resume before we went to the restaurant, so the resume told him where I was currently employed and where I lived. Those guys could have picked up our trail based on my work history and followed us to the restaurant."

  Huntington growled, "If he is up to his eyeballs in this mess, handing him your resume might not have been the smoothest transition into the job."

  "And," I added crossly, "He's using company employees, mainly me, to enhance his own pocketbook." I explained rapidly about his probable ownership of stock options in Kronology Servers. "He not only stands to gain if the stock goes up, he is in the best position to make side deals. He has direct contact with desperate Kronology clients that need help, and he has contact with the Kronology folks that can fix the problems."

  "Did you find solid evidence of side deals?" Huntington was finally starting to pay closer attention.

  "Noooo, not exactly. I actually found something even more confusing." I hated to get shot down, but I plunged forward. "The layoff list included a lot of people with post office boxes. I looked through the org charts for a couple of the laid off employees, but I couldn't find them. If those people exist, they don't appear to have worked on any project I can find. Yet the payroll and address database show they were being paid by Acetel and laid off by Acetel. Unless Jacques or someone else had them working on the sly, there's no evidence the employees existed at all, which makes no sense."

  Huntington sa
t back. "They have to exist if there are records for them."

  "I know it sounds crazy, but no one talks about anyone that has been laid off. Becky is positive the layoffs were all in San Jose."

  Mark said, "It should be easy enough to confirm whether the laid off people worked in Denton or in San Jose."

  "If they did exist, where did they work? Did Jacques have a secret group somewhere that solved his Kronology cases?"

  Huntington started to speak, but I held up my hand. "I know. I don't think it's possible. It's too much work, too much equipment, too many possibilities for discovery. The more people involved, the higher the chance of discovery or complications."

  Mark stepped back in. "We've got some files being watched and possibly tampered with. We have employees that don't appear to have permanent addresses. We have a guy that may or may not be trying to line his own pockets with Kronology customers. Bottom line, we need to know who has looked at those files and why they were being watched."

  "Good place to start," I agreed.

  Mark continued, "The cameras aren't going to help us much. We put those in mainly to see if any ex-employees came back to either sabotage systems or try to access data that they might need to continue customer relationships. Whoever is hacking into the system probably isn't using an office machine."

  "No, and they definitely aren't using their own login account. It would be stupid to do so. Radar can easily track a login to a particular office machine regardless of what name is used. Whoever is hacking the files is likely doing the work off-campus and off the clock."

  "That does bring up an interesting point," Huntington interjected. "Who the hell is Radar?"

  Mark started laughing. He obviously knew about Radar because he had been watching the camera files.

  My face fell, and I could feel my cheeks flame. Since I was busted, I confessed. "Radar is the guy that has been helping me track down who has been opening certain files." I glanced over at Mark to try and gauge how much he had already told Huntington. He looked back at me with a charmingly innocent expression.

  I mumbled onward. "Radar…uses a back door into the system to find out when files are being accessed. He has also set some traps to monitor certain things. Before I even got involved, he noticed that someone was using the Administrator account to crawl around Acetel's systems. I just borrowed his skills."

  Huntington narrowed his eyes. "It sounds illegal."

  I squirmed. "It wouldn't be illegal if you, representing the board or the company, hired him to track this type of information and keep records. I think it would be a very good idea to copy the files we looked at to a nice safe place. We're dealing with someone who could easily change what I saw yesterday to something completely different."

  Huntington gave a sharp nod. "That is actually an excellent idea."

  I frowned. He could have sounded less surprised. "The point," I emphasized, "is we need to legally get our hands on those files. Whether you hire Radar to do it, or you know someone you can trust enough to get them, we need to have them."

  I looked from Mark to Huntington. Mark watched me closely. His brown eyes were warm, sharply intelligent...and concerned. "There is one other possible culprit you haven't mentioned," Mark said.

  I had thought about it, but didn't like the idea. I looked down at the carpet, but that didn't stop Mark from spelling it out. "Whoever is doing this is a very good hacker and is probably stashing a lot of money. And there's at least one person we know for sure who is an excellent hacker. Not only that, this excellent hacker has legitimate administrative access privileges that he can use without raising suspicions. Your buddy Radar can also wander into any of the computer rooms whenever he pleases."

  I nodded an agreement of sorts, because he was right.

  Mark leaned forward intently, his forearms on his knees. I felt obligated to meet his gaze. "Whoever is doing this is incredibly smart, Sedona, and it's past time to be careful. Maybe Radar is leading you on and laughing up his sleeve."

  Before I could decide how to answer, Huntington added, "The setup this afternoon could be the kind of egomaniac thing a hacker would pull. Show you the files, and then silence you at lunchtime the next day."

  Since I couldn't readily dismantle their logic, I attacked elsewhere. "Yeah, and the pristine guys that hired you are all above board. Sure, it could be Radar, but since it appears that everyone in the company knows I'm at Acetel undercover it could also be any of the others we've just talked about that set up the attack."

  In his own way, Mark agreed with me. "Chances are very good that at this point someone has us all made." He exchanged a look with Huntington.

  "There's nothing to be done about it now," Huntington said.

  Mark didn't look convinced. "Time to get rid of the obvious enemies."

  Huntington gave an exasperated sigh. He glared at his brother, and I had the feeling this was ground already long covered. Without taking his gaze off Mark, Huntington asked, "Sedona, if I buy the ticket to Hawaii, will you go?"

  I thought about it. "After the holidays."

  "I'm hoping this case will be over by then."

  "It is very tempting." How often did one get a chance to vacation for free in Hawaii anyway?

  If I had known what the next several days were going to be like, I would have made him get the ticket delivered to the condo and grabbed it from his hand.

  Chapter 24

  Meeting Radar at Happy Family after work on Wednesday felt more clandestine than meeting with Huntington. Maybe that was because Radar handed me a note with the time and location, and then whispered that I should eat the piece of paper after reading it. Mark's warning about Radar drifted in the back of my mind like yeast, growing on its own.

  I didn't eat the note. I mailed it to my home address. If something happened to me, someone would eventually open it. Sean probably, because he was so nosy.

  The folks at Happy Family were always glad to see me. There was certainly no point in me trying to appear in disguise. The more stressed I was, the more they saw me; they had seen me in all of my moods, from bag lady-stressed to celebratory happy.

  Since this visit was the second one this week, Evie Chang, the motherly owner, was very eager to make sure I was okay.

  "Oh, I'm fine. I'm here to meet someone." The restaurant was small and did more takeout than sit-down business. Only half of the ten or so tables were full. I wouldn't have seen Radar had he not stuck his hat in the air. At least I assumed it was his Gatsby hat that waved.

  Evie grinned and bustled along behind me with the menu. By the time I reached the table, Radar had the hat pulled low over his eyes.

  "Here, here, take menus. I know, I know, not need them, take anyway. Never know, might try Peking duck today, yes?"

  She winked and sped into the kitchen.

  "Yo," Radar saluted as I sat. His hair was pulled back neatly under his hat. He would have looked quite dapper except for the fact that he was scrunched against the wall of the booth in order to stay hidden from anyone coming in the door.

  "Hi." Only one other couple was nearby since Radar had chosen the booth closest to the kitchen door. There were red candles burning on the ends of the table and chopsticks already out.

  Evie put a water down in front of me to match whatever Radar was drinking. We ordered.

  "So," I said.

  "So." He grinned. "I looked up the service contracts, the reports that got sent to the auditor, and hunted around for deleted reports as well. We can be pretty sure that you aren't looking for altered customer reports."

  "Did you bring the files for me?"

  "Of course. They're in the car. That's why I figured you'd be willing to buy me dinner." His smile was gigantic.

  "Oh." I blinked and feigned concern. "Then that makes you an accessory."

  His eyes narrowed.

  I nodded solemnly. "If you did it as a favor for me, you could probably get off easy. But if you take payment, that makes you an accessory."

  "I
don't think it is illegal for you to see these reports." His smugness was replaced by eyebrows drawn in a tight line.

  "My brother is a lawyer." Sean was always accusing me of being an accessory to something. I wasn't sure reading the reports was illegal, but I was very sure that the way Radar had obtained them was way over the line.

  "How about I just bring them in and you can look at them, then?"

  I would probably need to take anything he gave me home, but I shrugged agreeably.

  He scooted out of the booth, and returned very quickly with a package the size of two large phone books. The stuff I had asked about was on top. I thumbed through it. He was right--the sample reports didn't look like they had ever been illegally altered. There were updates, but every one of them contained additions, not deletions.

  He pointed to another section of the pile marked with a post-it tag. "I grabbed some files from backup, but from the date stamps, you can tell that once entered, they are left alone. The only ones that changed were when customers asked for more work. But even then it looks like Acetel usually did a whole new entry rather than change an existing record."

  Radar had retrieved all kinds of information, including the layoff files I had been trying to look at. "Sixty-five people got laid off." The company had been at about six hundred fifty. He had not gotten me every employee file, but there were several lists. The first thing I checked were the two names I remembered: Alvin Nygen and Sandra Garcia. Both Denton post office boxes, as I thought.

  The food came, but I ignored it for the moment. Perusing the other addresses, I noted that fourteen of the people that had been laid off had addresses that were post office boxes. Most of them were in Denton.

  "No one seems to know very many of the laid-off people. Well, except these two." I pointed out the contractors. Neither of them had post office boxes. In fact, Ben Martinez lived in Piney Oaks, the neighborhood near mine where Huntington had been shot! I kept that little note to myself, but found it very interesting. Maybe Huntington hadn't thought Mr. Whistle-blower had been free of ulterior motives.