“I found something,” an excited voice called, pulling everyone’s attention from their computers.
“It looks like the next target is going to be…”
A rumble of quiet clicks that alone would have been overlooked, but layered on top of each other created a sound like thunder rolled throughout the building.
“…the doors,” the programmer finished his sentence. “I was so close. Sorry. I just didn’t find it quickly enough.”
Pedro called Knox. “We just lost the door locks everywhere. If there are any sensitive or financial items behind a locked door—any kind of locked door—you’ll need to secure it.”
“On it. Vaults first,” Knox announced, letting Pedro know he understood the message.
“Tinkerbell!” Belinda whispered into his ear. “He’ll be loose. I’ll go figure out how to keep him safe in your apartment.”
“Tinkerbell is fine. He’ll find a place to hide and sleep in the apartment until we get back. He’s not really the adventurous type.”
“He goes back and forth across the balconies, and we’re on the seventh floor,” Belinda protested.
“Oh, he’s ornery and a daredevil, but shy. He visits you only because he is as attracted to you as I am,” Pedro assured her quietly. He loved the blush that tinted her cheeks.
“Pedro, you remember Tina. She just sent you the list of employees scoring high in tech skills on the inventory test. Only one is on staff today and in the cafeteria,” Sharon said, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe it.
“I need to talk to her,” Pedro said urgently.
“Knox has gone to get her. He looked very focused, like he knew something but hadn’t connected the pieces. She’s set up a sandwich making station outside the building and is creating picnics for anyone that’s hungry.”
That did not sound like a disgruntled employee who would attack the computer systems. “Who is it?” Pedro asked Tina and Sharon.
“Cynthia Grant,” Sharon answered, shaking her head. “We’ve notified Knox, but there has to be some other person who snuck in.”
That name triggered Pedro’s memory. He waved a hand to get Belinda’s attention. “Cynthia Grant,” he said when she was close.
“Cynthia.” Belinda’s face fell. “She was so upset on Thursday. She left after we talked but was back in the cafeteria yesterday. I asked if everything was okay. She smiled and apologized for making a scene before excusing herself to help in the kitchen.”
“She’s gone,” Knox said, jogging into the room to join the group gathered around Pedro’s computer. “I’ll go notify Easton. Tina, can you send me Cynthia’s address, phone number, and emergency contacts?”
“We’ll get started looking for anything that has Cynthia’s touch. We’ve seen three sets of code now,” Pedro shared before calling the programmers to the middle of the room.
Belinda followed him and stood at the edge of the group. She loved how the group had immediately recognized Pedro’s expertise and followed his instructions without branching out on their own. Coders were a solitary breed, and each had their own style.
“Belinda, would you put the three lines of code on big display for us to look at?” he asked, and she rushed away to make it happen.
Sixty seconds later, she was back. “The display is coming online,” she reported.
“Thank you, Belinda.”
Pedro turned to look at the coding. “We can identify these pieces of code as being added this morning. Each has similarities. We know there is a countdown.” Pedro pointed to the symbols in the corner signaling one slash five, two slash five, and three slash five.
“I’ve tried searching for those symbols or for the others we expect are coming. I’m not finding it. What do you see?” he asked the assembled employees.
“It doesn’t follow the coding language exactly. There’s something added into each one, as if they didn’t know our system perfectly or they’re not trained,” one woman pointed out.
“I see that, too.” The others nodded their agreement and Pedro continued. “Does that give us anything searchable?”
“Each one has those forward slashes. We use those to put notes into programs we’re building as documentation. There would be millions of those to search for,” another programmer suggested.
“There aren’t any notes in the area she added between the slashes except a few random letters.”
Knox picked up a marker and a whiteboard Sharon had brought in. “Read the letters for me in the first three.”
Quickly, he jotted them down as Pedro read them: HEMAD.
“He mad?” Knox read aloud.
“I think you’d have to be pissed to do this to a company you work for,” Sharon suggested.
“No. There’s more coming.” Belinda ran to the whiteboard and held her hand out for the marker. “That’s not what Cynthia said.” She added three more letters to the board: E, M, E.
The group read, “He made me.”
“That’s it. Look for those next letters in conjunction with the forward slashes,” Pedro ordered.
Everyone flew back to their computers as he checked the time. One o’clock. They had thirty minutes. Peering into his computer, he joined the search.
Ten minutes later, Belinda shouted, “I’ve got it! The financial centers are next. The code is sending everything to an account code.”
“Good job, Belinda. Copy everything up to this point and dump it into the sandbox.” Pedro praised her, being careful to use her name and not Little girl. There wasn’t time to remove all traces of the coding. They’d have to use the backup.
Immediately, she got busy. He watched her fingers fly across the keys with complete confidence that she had this.
“We need Easton, now.”
Four minutes later, he jogged into the room, out of breath. “Sorry. I was helping at the gate. We’ve stationed all the security teams at vital places.”
“It’s time to put the backup in place. We found the code but can’t remove it entirely with all confidence,” Pedro told him.
“What’s the next attack?” Easton asked.
“The Edgewater financial centers are all targeted at transferring the funds to an account somewhere,” Pedro answered.
“Do we have time to get the back up going and preserve the evidence?” Easton asked.
“Done,” Belinda announced.
“Everything is in the sandbox now, sir. We just need your authorization code,” Pedro informed him. “You do understand that you will lose a lot of money and information by dumping everything that happened from two-thirteen until now—almost twelve hours.”
“Show me where to type in my code,” Easton requested. He didn’t hesitate or show any concern.
“I set it up on this computer—just in case, sir.”