J. Jance - Cruel Intent

“The next time Jacky shows up, I might let you use some of those moves on him.”

“You think he’ll be back?” Leland asked.

“Of course he’ll be back,” Ali answered. She handed him Marissa Dvorak’s file folder. “By the way, I talked to Marissa Dvorak and made up my mind. She’s this year’s recipient.”

“That stands to reason, since Miss Marsh turned it down,” Leland replied. “Would you like me to prepare a press release to that effect?”

“Yes, please,” Ali said. “I told her you would.”

Leland nodded. “Very well.” He looked around the room. “I got a start on things today, but since I’m going to be shampooing the carpet tomorrow, I hope you won’t mind if I leave the furniture where it is.”

Ali knew Leland Brooks was more than capable of pushing the leather couch around, but there was no need for him to do so twice. “Of course not,” she said. “This is fine.”

“You can expect me here bright and early,” he said. “You may want to be out and about. As for your Cayenne, if you’ll pardon my saying, that could also use a good detailing.”

“Trying to keep me in line must be a real trial for you,” Ali said.

“On the contrary, madam,” Leland said with a fond smile. “Occasionally, I find it quite stimulating.”

As soon as Chris knew Leland Brooks had left, he ventured upstairs. “Is the cleaning Nazi gone?” he asked. “He was here working up a storm when I got home from school. What was that all about?”

“Thanksgiving,” Ali told him. “With everything that’s going on with the contractor, we came to the conclusion that there’s no chance of having dinner at the new house. Leland came over here to see about whipping this one into shape.”

“You’re not going to let him clean my studio, are you?”

“He will unless you stop him,” Ali said with a laugh. “Since he seems to be a force of nature, I’m not sure that’s possible.”

Chris took a soda from the fridge and hustled back downstairs. Ali was in the bedroom changing into her comfy sweats when her phone rang. Caller ID told her the number was restricted.

“Ms. Reynolds?”

“Yes.”

“It’s B.”

The B. in question happened to belong to Bartholomew Quentin Simpson. Named after his maternal grandfather, Bart Simpson had been ten years old when the other Bart Simpson first appeared on local TV screens, thereby consigning Sedona’s Bart Simpson to a peculiar form of childhood hell. Subjected to unending teasing, he stopped answering to any name but his first initial, since using both of them, B.Q., didn’t work for him, either. The one initialed B. had retreated into the solitary solace that computers had to offer. By seventh grade, he had taken apart his father’s old Commodore 64 computer and put it back together.

By eighth grade, B. Simpson had taught himself to write computer code. To his parents’ dismay, he had dropped out of high school his junior year after selling his first video game to Nintendo. He had gone to work for them long enough and well enough that he’d been able to “retire” at age twenty-eight. He had returned to the Sedona area, where, although he had never played golf, he bought himself a golf-course-view home. Rather than hitting the links, he had started his own computer security firm called High Noon Enterprises. His company motto was “It takes a hacker to catch a hacker.”

Now that B. Simpson was back in town, he easily could have been one of Sedona’s most eligible bachelors, except no one really knew he was there. He lived alone and worked odd hours, usually coming into the Sugarloaf for breakfast just as Edie and Bob Larson were closing down for the day. It was Bob who had brought B. Simpson’s painful childhood history and the existence of High Noon Enterprises to Ali’s attention.

“The way I understand it, he’s sort of like an Internet version of an old-fashioned gunslinger,” Bob Larson had told his daughter. “As much time as you spend online, you should probably have someone like him in your corner. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone shipped you one of those awful viruses. Or worms.”

In the end, Ali had signed up with B.’s High Noon Enterprises more to shut her father up than because she was worried about being hacked. In the three months since she’d been a paying customer, it had seemed like a needless expense. As far as she could see, preventing cyber crime seemed about as exciting as watching grass grow.

“Good to hear from you,” Ali said now to B. “What’s up?”

“You won’t think it’s good to hear from me when you find out what I have to say,” B. warned her. “You’ve got yourself a Trojan.”

“Excuse me?” Ali asked.

“A Trojan horse,” B. replied. “In your computer. Twice each day I run a monitoring check on all the computers I have under contract. Today your noontime analysis came up positive.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that as long as your computer is connected to the Internet, someone else can see everything you do there. He can take over control of your computer. He can gain access to your files and change them. He can also send mail that’s ostensibly from you, even though it isn’t. You don’t use a multiple-computer network, do you?”

“No,” Ali said. “I’m usually on my air card.”

“That’s good,” B. said. “If there are other computers operating on the same network, the bad guy can gain access to those as well. If he’s inside your computer, he’s also inside your network.”

Suddenly, cyber crime sounded a lot more ominous. Ali was surprised to find herself feeling spooked and vulnerable. Knowing that a crook could operate inside her computer made her feel like someone had broken into her house and penetrated her personal safety zone.

“What should I do, then?” she asked. “Turn off the computer? Unplug the damn thing and shut it down?”

“No,” B. said. “If you do that, it might tip him off that we’re on to him. I want you to leave the computer on. Try to use it more or less the way you usually do.”

“Why?”

“Computers that are connected to the Internet are two-way streets,” B. explained. “Whoever sent you the Trojan did it over the Internet. I’m going to try to return the favor and send one right back to him. While he’s monitoring your every keystroke, I’ll be monitoring his keystrokes. If he makes a move, I should be able to begin tracking him down.”

“Wait a minute,” Ali said. “If he has that kind of total access to my computer, shouldn’t I cancel my credit cards and shut down my online banking? Should I report this to the police?”

“It’s my experience that banks are a whole lot more interested in identity theft than cops are. If there’s a murder or even an armed robbery, the cops are all over it. With identity theft, they’re not until and unless we can prove that a crime has actually been committed. They’ll get on the bandwagon once we’ve accumulated enough evidence that it’s easy for them to make a case without having to expend much effort. Right now the best thing that could happen is that the guy will try to rip you off. In order to catch him at it, you’ll need to monitor your credit-card and bank transactions very carefully. Be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary, but don’t use your computer to do it.”

“If I’m not supposed to use my computer,” Ali objected, “how am I supposed to go about monitoring anything?”

“I have a couple of spare laptops lying around,” B. said. “I’ll be glad to lend you one of mine to use for the time being. If you don’t mind, I can drop off a loaner for you a little later this evening. You can insert your air card and use that for anything you don’t want exposed to prying eyes.”