Randy stared at his computer screen in disbelief. “He is so gonna kill me. Fuck!”
When he had taken the quick job from the wrinkled stranger with scary-cold blue eyes, he had thought he had just hit the jackpot. Five thousand dollars for what appeared to be a whim, five large ones to just keep an eye on some clinic’s system and see if someone hacks into it. Then five grand more when he’d report the hack, as soon as it happened. The man had been adamant, almost threatening. He had to report the hack the moment it happened.
Of course he’d taken the five grand, never really expecting he’d get the rest of the dough. He was smart enough to know this was not legit. Legit people concerned with systems security buy firewalls, not the services from nineteen year olds with expunged records for computer hacking. Nope, dead sure not legit.
So he’d taken the money, hadn’t thought twice about it, and had written a piece of code, a small intrusion detection application that watched for any unauthorized entry into the transplant clinic’s systems. Easy-peasy. He’d dusted off an old laptop he wasn’t using anymore and had it monitor the application. For weeks, nothing. He stopped believing anyone would ever hack in there, and why would they? He also stopped believing he’d ever see the other five large ones; although his client had called every now and then to check the status.
Then one day, the only time he’d taken off with his new girl and spent a cool afternoon and a hot night at her place, in the absence of her parents, it had to happen. Of course, he hadn’t been there to see it happen, and now more than twenty-four hours had passed since the attack. Fucking shitty luck . . . ! He is so gonna kill me!
He stood there, staring into the screen displaying information about the intrusion and weighing his options. Of course he could just pretend nothing happened and never see his other five grand. Such a waste of some really decent payday, and those were hard to find. Then he could, of course, run the risk that his client would still find out about it, case in which his life wouldn’t be worth much. The man, who’d said his name was Helms, had made that very clear. The other option was to call him and give him as little information as possible, covering his screw-up. Maybe, just maybe he’d get his other five grand.
With trembling hands, he picked up the cell phone the stranger had left with him and recalled the only number stored in the phone’s memory, chanting in his mind no TMI, no TMI, fuck help me no TMI. He had this character flaw, always giving people too much information and talking too much. Way too much. Well, on this call, he’d better stick to his no TMI strategy.
“Helms here,” the stranger answered.
“Y-yeah, hi, it’s Randy,” he stuttered almost.
“Randy, what do you have for me?”
“You were right, someone did hack into their systems. So my job is done,” he blurted, awaiting his prize.
“When?”
Fuck! He decided to lie a little, probably it would hurt way less than the truth.
“Just a few hours ago,” he said hesitantly.
“Precisely when?” Helms insisted in a deathly cold voice.
“Umm . . . at precisely 1:17PM Eastern,” he said, conveniently omitting to add the date to this information. He was hoping the man would assume it had been today, not yesterday, and not probe any further. At least the 1:17PM Eastern was accurate.
“Why did you take so long to let me know?”
Tell the truth? Lie? Randy envisioned what the man would do if he heard the real reason for this delay. Lie, definitely lie.
“I wanted to track where the attack was coming from, and that wasn’t easy. It was done by pros,” he said, spitting out one lie after another and getting more and more comfortable in the web of lies he was creating. “The attack was bounced around from China to Singapore, then to Russia, and so on. It took me hours to decrypt it.”
“Do you have the source? Where did it come from?”
Randy hit a few keys and said, “Yes, it came from San Diego. But I can’t tell you more than that. It came from behind a top notch firewall, government grade or something. When do I get my money?”
“Soon,” the man said, then hung up.
“Whew, motherfucker, that was close,” Randy said out loud, allowing himself to slide