by Maggie Thom
“Holy cow. We have twenty-seven new requests in the last hour. Doesn’t that seem odd to you? It’s been a year since we started the website, Knight Safe, for financial fraud research but we didn’t get a single hit until after Christmas. Now we go from four to ten a month, to this. In the last six months, there have been at least five times that we’ve had more than fifteen or more requests at once. Most I’ve deleted because we don’t have time to take more on. But something is really off about this.”
Guy sat at his computer and quickly logged in. “Are these even genuine companies?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had time to even look at them all. Some are obviously garbage and some I’ve dumped because they just don’t seem like a good fit. As you can see, we have over a thousand that need to be explored, down from nearly two thousand. With the legitimate requests we get from our five biggest contracts, I’ve been swamped on this thing.” Graham scanned the list quickly. “How are they getting our contact information? My spidy sense is tingling.”
“Mine too. The question is what are we going to do about it?”
The two worked for the next couple of hours, going through the massive amount of messages. Guy worked on checking out the companies—verifying a website, a contact person named—and then he sent emails asking for additional information. Graham worked on those lacking a company name and website, sending back an email requesting more details. They’d done this before but rarely received a response. They were hoping this might at least determine whether they were legitimate requests or phishing. Nothing had shown up so far though. Graham spent a bit of time trying to trace some of the emails back to where they originated from.
Knights Computers constituted their downstairs business. Clients could drop off, call or contact the business through their website for computer work—removing viruses, trojans and malware, updating computers and doing general repairs. It was very different from their real bread and butter, Knights Associates, but very few knew about its existence upstairs except for an elite group that used them regularly. And now they had Knight Safe, strictly an online business. Even the employees downstairs didn’t know half of what Guy and Graham really did on the second floor.
“Okay, whoever has gotten our email address is good. I can’t find any valid IP addresses.”
“You mean there’s another Graham-computer-genius running around out there?”
“Sadly, it would seem so. I don’t like it. It’s probably some pimply faced little bugger raised on computers.”
“I’d say just like you but I know for a fact you have an amazing mom.”
“Yeah, not her fault I’m a geek.”
“Well, according to the last three women you dated, they all seemed to think you were pretty cute. You and your shaggy, hot look.”
Both men looked up as soon as they heard Bailey’s voice.
“Why thank you, ma’am.” Graham grinned as he looked at her and then at the locked outer door. There was no question about trusting her. She had a key and was welcome to use it any time; he just wished he’d heard her come in.
She smiled as Guy grabbed her into a bear hug. “I’ve learned a thing or two since hanging out with you guys.” Guy and Bailey started kissing.
“Shoo, love birds. I have work to do. Some of us aren’t sleeping with the boss, so we have to jump at the crack of a whip.”
Bailey laughed.
“How’s Grandma?”
“Exhausting. That woman has more stamina than a tank but she’s tired. She tried again to talk me into taking over the winery. I don’t think I could do what she does.”
Graham leaned back in his chair. “Any ideas on who could take over the CEO position? It sounds as though she’s ready to step down.”
“No, but I’ve put some feelers out. I think we need to add it to our list of things to do. We need to find someone soon. She’s looking haggard but won’t slow down. She’s so concerned that someone will find out family secrets, especially how evil her brother, Geoffrey, had really been and all he’d done to others, to her and to the company.” Bailey pressed her fingers to her lips.
“Thank goodness he’s dead. That son of a bitch really did a number on her and on...” Guy and Bailey’s eyes met.
There was a long silence. Graham knew they were all remembering what he’d done to Bailey as well.
“Let’s not get into it today. If each of us can look for an appropriate CEO for Caspian Winery, we’ll find someone suitable. We’ll do the background checks and run the people through interrogation,” Graham said in a stern, deep voice.
Guy and Bailey burst out laughing.
“Okay. Now you’ve hurt my feelings. I can be tough. Okay, well maybe I’ll leave the thumb-screw interviews to the two of you. I’ll do the background checks. Now git.” He waved them away as he went to the front office to pour a cup of coffee and grab a couple of muffins.
Guy and Bailey left for lunch, promising to bring him back a sandwich. They were smiling and holding hands. They finally looked happy, unstressed, and ready to move forward. They’d sure been through enough. Guy had told him it had taken a year before Bailey stopped having nightmares thanks to what Uncle Geoff had done to her. Kidnapping her with the intent of killing her would have messed up anyone. He was glad Guy and Bailey had each other and had reached the point where they were going to get married—not something in his cards but he was happy for them.
Needing a distraction, Graham sat down at his computer, which had logged off automatically after one minute of inactivity. He logged back on and after tracking a couple of his current cases, he opened one sent by Detmier, a PI they sometimes worked with. A mother swore her child was a genius and had hacked her computer.
Graham had been working on cyber-crimes for several years. After he and Guy left the police force, they’d fallen back on private detective work and Knights Associates had been born. Graham worked at tracking criminals on the internet and Guy did the private investigative work. Knights Computers, the division that repaired computers, had really come about to hide what they did at Knights Associates.
In the beginning, Knights Associates had taken on pretty much anything but only from a limited resource pool. Once they’d started making connections and getting a reputation as being one of the best, the requests had started coming in from high-end clients—government, police and other private investigators. They decided to limit their clientele and five contracts had kept them busy. But then they’d come across a company victimized by identity theft who had lost a lot of money. Afterward, they’d realized if they hadn’t helped the little company, it probably would have folded. It made them realize that a lot of companies were probably in the same situation. So they’d developed Knight Safe. They hadn’t needed more business but had seen the need and were curious as to the demand. They hadn’t advertised the service, which is what made all the incoming requests all the more fishy—especially since most of them never responded once they’d reached out to obtain more information. And some were so unbelievable.
Kind of like the situation he was currently looking through. It intrigued him, since he’d never had to catch such a young thief—but what made it so interesting was how creative people were in what they sent in. Usually they went after people who were laundering money, living a double life. His thoughts immediately went to Bailey. That had been a crazy case as well; thirty years after a baby was kidnapped, they had been expected to find her. And the kicker was their client had been Guy’s step-grandmother, Dorothea Lindell—not someone you declined. It was precisely that case that made him reluctant to discard some of the requests as crazy.
A computer alert reminded him he had other work to do, and he’d allowed himself to be distracted by noncritical emails that weren’t high priority. All the incoming requests frustrated him to no end. He was sure some punk had hacked their system and was sending fake situations to chase. What ticked him off was he didn’t know how the bugger had done it.
Graham slammed his
fist onto his desk. Someone was screwing with them and it was driving him nuts. It wasn’t as though they could ignore all the cyber-crime requests but who had time to read them all and get any work done? What they needed was someone to go through the emails and figure out what was legit. Then he could spend some time figuring out what was really going on, catch the twerp and get some of their crimes solved.
He sure hoped some better applications came in for the Tech Assistant position.
Chapter Four
Tarin stared long and hard at her monitor. Did she or didn’t she? It hadn’t been in her plans to find a job immediately but this was too perfect. She’d been trying to figure a way in and this was it. Her gaze was immediately drawn to the beautiful strawberry-blonde-haired boy that had become her life. Sitting in the corner of her office, he was busy vrooming his car up and down a race track. It was for him that she was doing this. She looked at her portfolio, checking it over again. Then she reviewed all the background information she’d scattered throughout the Internet. Facebook users expected closer relationships, so she’d chosen Twitter for its rapid-fire information instead. Over the months she’d tweeted and scattered business information. While her website boasted of her computer expertise, if someone tried to contact her, they received an automated message stating she was so swamped she couldn’t take any more business and referred them to another computer company.
Even though it was mostly false, it was enough for several individuals to have asked for her expert advice. At first it had felt great to have people seeking her out for her knowledge, even if she didn’t do anything for them, but it hadn’t taken long before she felt cheapened, a fraud taking advantage of people. It was something that would have filled her father with pride but it was not who she was. She learned to tamp down those feelings and continue on because the façade she created was so important. Her future depended on it. She’d also placed a couple of archive stories she’d written in the Edmonton Journal and the Vancouver Sun, and no one ever checked them to determine their legitimacy.
If anyone cared to look deeper, she had enough information trickling back to her childhood to satisfy any snooper. Everything seemed to be in order. Her trembling fingers lingered over the key that would change her life—or at least she hoped it would. The thought of finally learning something about a blank period in her life caused her breathing to become shallow and choppy.
Before she could even acknowledge it though, the slightest of sounds set her heart to pounding. It alerted her to what was coming. Her index finger punched downward with the speed of light. In a heartbeat, her resume was gone and she had changed her circumstances. She hoped. She pressed her hand to her mouth but didn’t waste precious time on meager feelings. She quickly glanced at another email she’d received the month before. It had been the kick in the butt she’d needed to stop putting this off; an email that meant someone else might have answers to the week she’d lost three years before.
‘Left naked and alone. No memory.’
It resembled her story so much that she knew someone else had been through the same experience. Sadly, the person wasn’t ready to share more but she hoped she would soon.
It was crystal clear that if she was going to find answers, she had to go east to Ontario. If the blank piece of paper with nothing but a logo and a code that had been stuck to her back meant anything, then it had to be the key to her lost memory. With one last hopeful glance that she was doing the right thing, she closed out her email and clicked on the icon for the website she always kept open just in case.
“What are you doing?”
She controlled the shudder that shook her insides as his arms wrapped around her, his hands automatically groping her breasts. She grabbed them and tried to push them away. “Not in front of Chance.”
Stephen squeezed harder. “Why? He’s going to have to learn sooner or later.”
“He’s only two.” Gritting her teeth, she waited him out. Eventually, he let go but only to slide his palms down the sides of her body.
“I’m looking at dresses. I think I found—”
He straightened, pulling away. “I told you, I already bought your dress. It’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Mommy. Mommy. Look a spida.”
“Jesus. I thought I told you that he wasn’t to bring any more bugs into my apartment. I’m going to have to fumigate the damn place,” Stephen huffed. He grabbed the offending daddy- longlegs, dropped it on the floor and stepped on it with his loafers.
“Noooo.”
“Clean it up,” he said before leaving.
Tarin scooped up her son, turning his head away from what Stephen had done. She placed her hand on her son’s tummy. “Your tiny friend is fine. Remember our song. The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout.” Her fingers slowly crawled up his tummy. He sniffled a bit. “Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain. The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.” As she was singing, she slowly rolled her chair over to where Stephen had left the dead daddy-longlegs and with a slight grimace, she wiped it up with her foot. Her son finally quieted down and was soon cuddling with her.
“The spida, Mommy.”
“Ssshhh. It’s okay, love. Look. He got up and went home.”
His perfect blue little eyes looked down in wonder at the spot she pointed to and then back at her. His grin was more than enough payment for the little white lie. He grabbed her cheeks and gave her a big sloppy kiss. Tears instantly flooded her eyes as she hugged him tight but he was ready to be put down long before she was ready to release him. He started squirming. Reluctantly, she stood him on his feet, gave him a quick hug and let him go. Her arms felt lost and empty without him. He had already moved on. For a few minutes, he looked for his little friend but when he couldn’t find the Daddy Longlegs, he went back to his toys in the corner and was soon playing as though nothing bad had happened. She prayed that he would forget all of this.
She listened for a moment to make sure Stephen wasn’t lurking before clicking back into the website she’d designed. At first, it had been a place where women like her, women unhappy in their marriages, could vent; but it had morphed into so much more.
Stephen never had a clue. He hadn’t wanted to know what she did with her time, before or during their marriage. They’d met at one of her father’s hotels and he had assumed she was a guest, not an employee. It had been flattering to have someone interested in her, not for what she did or who she was but for her. Though her own feelings hadn’t progressed passed mild interest, he’d been very attentive. Her lips stretched taut in a self-deprecating smile. It had been the first sign of trouble, a scandal involving her, when she’d leapt into his arms, his bed and his life. She’d done it without any doubts, expecting that he would protect her from the big, bad world, like her father always had.
She dropped her head in her hand, realizing she’d gone from trying to please her dad to pleasing another man, while both thought they had the right to dictate how she lived her life. And she had allowed it. Pulling herself together with a promise not to allow herself to be sucked into self-pity, she read through the forum to see if there had been any new comments, or if there were new women reaching out to share their story. It had been several days since she’d checked. Stephen had been a lot more attentive lately. It just reinforced what she was doing was right, but it also made her wonder if he knew she was up to something.
Praying it wasn’t the case, she logged in and sifted through the new member requests. Anyone could become a member; all they had to do was leave their name and email. They would have access to basic information on a site that looked like it was full of information for women trying to stand on their own. Those who wanted to share their deeper story, the one of abuse, abduction, prostitution or whatever their lot in life had been, had to share much more. And they had to be invited. They had to be willing to tell their story, even if just to Tarin; the reasons they were joining and what they hoped to
get out of the group. This was all done privately through emails back and forth with her. Once she believed they were legitimate, she’d accept them into the inner circle where her plan was to have women open up and share and find ways to heal their lives.
It had taken a while for the first person to do so, but then it had opened the gates with several asking to join the inner circle. They wanted to tell their stories to others who would understand what had happened to them. Not all were ready to open up to everyone but all had shared with her. One had really touched her. They’d been emailing back and forth.
‘I’ve never known anything but abuse. It’s the story of my life.’ LJ
‘I’m sorry to hear that LJ. I too have had more than my share but I’m making changes. I hope you do too.’ Tarin
‘I’ve made some bad decisions but I’m trying to change that.’ LJ
Frowning, she sifted through the higher than usual number of emails. There were a few new comments that questioned the legitimacy of the website and some had her wondering what they were talking about. Flipping through her site, she realized she hadn’t installed an effective firewall and spam filter, as someone had posted sex pictures and videos. They were very crude and terribly brutal for the women who trusted her. The scenes made her ill. She quickly deleted them but the damage had been done. There were several very nasty comments left for her. She wrote a statement on the home page and responded to each and every angry reaction. Then she tried to back trace who might have put up the insulting media. Whoever had done it was very good. They’d obviously used a proxy, so she had no way of finding their IP address.
Initially, the site was to have been a safe place for women who were sick of their marriages and simply wanted to vent, but Tarin had soon realized there were a lot of women in abusive situations who had no one to turn to. Hearing their stories made her realize that hers wasn’t so bad. The site soon became a haven for those who had been or were being abused, raped, violated in some way or were just dissatisfied with life. The majority of the cases had never been reported and most had never talked about it with another living soul, which was what she hoped to change for her and for them.
