I want to look into his eyes and tell him what a low-life, bottom-feeding, lying, cheating scumbag he is. That’s what I want!” Maggie cried dramatically.
“And that’s exactly what you are going to get, my dear,” Kitty said. Then she grinned and said, “Meow.”
The women all laughed, even Maggie. Man, she was so in like Flynn, it was scary.
The women decided to forgo the Jell-O dessert and asked for the bill. Everyone but Maggie scurried to come up with her share, and then they were outside. One of the women hailed a cab for Maggie. Kitty handed over a slip of paper with directions to her ranch.
“Your best bet is a cab,” she told Maggie. “Bring enough stuff to spend the night. We’ll give you a ride back to town in the morning.”
The good-byes were long and loud. And then the cab was pulling away from the curb just as Avery Snowden hopped into the cab behind hers.
Maggie thought she was going to explode as she pulled out her phone and sent one text after another. Lordy, Lordy, she’d hit the mother lode.
Chapter 12
Everyone was sprawled on the furniture and the floor as they watched Abner and Mary Alice tapping away at their computers in the little room off the main suite. They all looked worried, especially Charles and Fergus. This was taking too long. The hackers had been at it for hours, with nothing to show for their efforts. Sparrow just kept shaking his head and chewing on his bottom lip.
The door to the suite opened to admit Jack and Harry. They quickly related in hushed voices, so as not to disturb Abner and PIP, what had gone down at the Cat & Cradle. The others digested the information.
Sparrow spoke first. “Why are we spending so much time on Kelly’s love life? So he’s a Romeo, a Casanova. Who the hell cares? I really don’t see how that is of interest in terms of what we’re here for. Will someone please enlighten me?”
“It’s a thread. It might or might not tie into why we’re here. While it may not seem important, we can’t just ignore it, either. If it’s nothing, then no problem. We put it behind us. If it turns into something, we play it out to the end,” Charles said. He turned to Jack and demanded, “What’s your gut feeling? Do you think one has anything to do with the other?”
“I don’t know. Part of me says yes, and part of me says no. It’s a crapshoot, Charles. Maybe when Maggie gets here and tells us whatever she’s found out, if anything, we’ll know more.”
The room went quiet again so that they could hear Abner and PIP’s disgruntled commentary. They heard mutterings about how the guy had to have software on his computers that erased the hard drive if someone hacked or tried to copy it or used the wrong password, in which case it would wipe the computer clean.
“Hey, maybe since we don’t have access to the classified feeds, we could port in through a private virtual network,” Abner said. “Wanna give it a shot, PIP?”
“I already tried that. You watched me. You’re burned out, and so am I. I give up. We’re never going to catch this guy. He’s way too smart for us.”
“That’s it! I’m done!” The group looked up to see Abner getting up off his chair and throwing his hands in the air. “This is impossible! We can’t do it! That guy has got to be an absolute genius.
“Listen to me and pay attention. This guy has malware that is so sophisticated, he could use it to dispense cash from ATMs without any physical contact with the machines themselves. Then he could have what the money guys call mules walk by, scoop it up, and that’s the end of it. It’s a new era in cyber crime. It’s here whether you like it or not. I read about it, and so did PIP. It’s called an APT attack, which stands for ‘advanced persistent threat’ attack. This is just like those Russians who hacked the one billion dollars from the banks. Hell, RC probably set up the malware for that caper. Wouldn’t put it past him, either, and PIP agrees.
“We simply cannot hack in! No one except the guy that set it up can, and my money is on RC. I never thought I’d live to see this day. The guy has to have an army backing up what he’s doing.”
Mary Alice, her