Seducing Texas (So not Prince Charming #2)(52)



“It’s okay,” Willa says, sadness crinkling her pretty dark eyes. She looks a lot like Cyn, except Cyn loves clothes and Willa is more comfortable in sweats or jeans. She’s a sweet kid. “Aedan is picking me up. Do you think it’s weird that the studio hired him back? They know he likes me.”

“The studio probably had a hard time finding a qualified videographer,” Cyn says. “We will pick you up, Willa, not Aedan.”

I don’t argue with Cyn because we should keep Willa close after the Escalade tried to run Cyn down. I’m on high alert and find everything suspicious. It does seem odd that the studio fired and rehired him.

When we drive into the covered parking at my office building, I search for any black Escalades. There are none, but that doesn’t set me at ease. Our attackers could drive any vehicle.

With one hand on my gun, I guide Cyn upstairs. The office is quiet because many of my programmers aren’t morning people. I don’t keep track of their time because they work really hard. I like all my employees, but one of them added this rogue software and opened the port on our server. I have to find him or her before Cyn gets hurt.

She digs through the files in my office.

“This is the one I converted,” she says, her voice low and shaky.

I open the file she modified and search through the account numbers. “Fuck,” I mutter.

Her hand squeezes my thigh, and for a moment, my concentration is shot. “What?”

“These top three accounts belong to me. We need to scrub the file we don’t want to hand over and give the rest of them to the feds.”

Over the next few hours, I convert the rest of the files and find bank accounts all over the world. After making copies of the files, I look up the names of the banks and their locations. Cyn works with me until all the files are translated into English.

I rake my hand through my hair. “I have a friend who can hack these accounts and get copies of their transfers.”

Cyn fondles me, and I consider doing her on the desk, but my whole workforce will probably know. “Could you get your money back?” she asks.

“I don’t know. It would be illegal. I should probably let the feds take it from here.” But damn I want my money back. Fuck the thieves who stole from me.

Cyn’s phone beeps, and we both jump. She reads her text. “Espinoza wants to meet for lunch. He has what we can turn over on a flash drive.”

“We’ll have to go through the file on Manny and the Asian files before we turn them over to ensure the data’s good,” I say.

She nods. “I should get to work and get payroll done.”

I scan through the files, making connections from my accounts to a few of the accounts in one other file. Each one of these has my account linked to one that’s not mine, and they’re in a digital sequence. I bet this is the accounting and IP routes my money took, skipping from one destination to the next until it landed into an overseas bank.

I trace a few of the accounts. I know it’s wrong, but I hack into one of the linked accounts.

I search through the transactions made last year. One came from my home laptop and went through several servers before it reached a Panamanian bank account.

“Shit,” I mutter. This is where 150 million went. My friend could get it back by reversing the unauthorized transaction. I couldn’t before because my own bank couldn’t tell me where the money went. It had gone through several banks before it landed in the one I just hacked. It was so far gone the bank couldn’t get it back.

I’m taking my 150 mil back. I’ll work with my friend who’s much better than me at hacking.

“I have a meeting in a few minutes in one of the conference rooms to cover the secure servers.” Jeremy isn’t going to like it, but I hired an outside security firm. I can’t have anyone hacking into the personal accounts of our clients.

Cyn doesn’t look up from her laptop. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

When I enter the conference room, my eighteen programmers minus Sonia are already seated. She’s always late. My lead Tang starts the presentation of the latest enhancements to Hoops N’ Hookups. He added a side application that allows the user to buy tickets in other cities and arrange long distance hookups. That has worked well for our wealthier clients, but most like to simply meet at the game and then a possible romp back at the apartment.

Sonia waltzes into the room, bringing donuts and coffee. “Sorry.” She smiles big at me and then her gaze unapologetically roams over my body. A couple of my female employees have hit on me. She’s the worst.

“Thanks, Sonia,” Jeremy says. He’s a bit geeky, but if he didn’t try so hard at flirting, a couple of the girls would go out with him.

Most everyone digs into the donuts, and even I take a cup of coffee. “Thank you,” I say. “Let’s continue.”

After a few of my lead programmers give the status of their projects, I finally talk. “Everything looks good. I have something I’d like to talk about. We’ve had a security breach on the servers, and we can’t afford to lose any personal client data, so I hired an outside security group to look at the issues.”

My security technician Jeremy blanches. I don’t mean to embarrass him, but I want everyone to know I’m taking this seriously.

“I trust you guys.” Hell, I ran background checks on everyone here. Other than their drivers’ license records, I didn’t have much to go on for my foreign employees. I have two Canadians, one Chinsee, and one Indian, but they’re good workers. “But I won’t jeopardize our clients’ trust. I put in a 512-bit key encryption program to secure personal data for our application, and I installed it last night. Now when our users login to their accounts, their data will be automatically encrypted with a more advanced algorithm instead of the hashing we were using.”

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