Moonlighter (The Company, #1)(78)

“Wait. I thought the hacker locked me out.”

Max shakes his head. “No, that was a safety mechanism. These guys only got about twenty percent of the data on your phone.”

My heart leaps. “Do we know which twenty percent?”

“Mostly recent emails from your ECM account.”

I groan.

“But no texts were compromised before the shutdown,” Max says. “So that’s something.”

“Who did this, Max? Could it be Jared Tatum?”

“We’ll rule him out today,” Max says. “But my suspicions lie in another direction.” He sits back in his chair, absently tapping one knee. “I’m working on an espionage theory.”

“Oh goody. How much danger am I in?” My hand is already rubbing my belly. I’m already apologizing to my baby and she isn’t even here yet.

“The good news is that nobody wants you dead. Probably.”

“Max,” barks Eric as a chill runs through me.

“I’m only being honest,” Max says. “But my gut says the culprit is after a financial gain. That said, his methods so far are risky. So we’re maintaining extra vigilance.”

“Of course you are,” says Eric through clenched teeth. The two brothers have a brief stare down. “What about those license plates from the other night? Did you get anything?”

Max shakes his head. “They were both faked. Neither plate is registered to a real person.”

“That’s slick,” Eric says.

“Everything these guys have done is slick,” Max agrees. “The phone charger in Alex’s bedroom was a nice piece of engineering.”

“Made where?” Eric asks, getting up from the sofa.

“Probably China. But the software has Ukrainian origins.”

Eric makes a noise of displeasure. Then he gets up and leaves the room, and I miss him already.

“So I have a grand theory for why you’re suddenly a target,” Max says. “And it’s the Butler’s fault.”

“Wait, what? Why?”

“Did someone address me?” Bingley chimes in. “Can I be of assistance?”

“No, Bingley,” Eric calls from the kitchen. “Not unless you can make coffee.”

Max leans forward in his chair. “Humor me for a second with this exercise. If you could spy on any ten thousand people in the world, who would you pick?”

“Heads of state? CEOs? This isn’t a tricky question.”

“Right,” Max agrees. “Though heads of state typically don’t buy and install their own internet hardware. So I’m with you on the CEOs. And if you couldn’t pick and choose your ten thousand people, but you had to pick a geographic region, what would it be?”

“Washington, DC? New York City. The Bay Area. London. Hong Kong…”

“Exactly. Alex, this is your problem. New York was second on your list. You have a monopoly over cable internet access in the tristate area. You control the internet connections of some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. And now you’re launching an expensive hardware that promises utter security and privacy.”

“But…” I don’t like where this conversation is headed. “The Butler is not an easy hack, Max. You’d need to hack each device individually. Or hack the entire network and find the encrypted node belonging to the home you wanted to breech…”

Max holds up a hand to silence me. “Your software is as secure as anything on the market,” he says by way of agreement. “And the Butler’s privacy safeguards are exquisitely designed. But what if the hack weren’t a question of software.”

I blink. “That leaves hardware. But nobody could hack the hardware unless they do it during—” I gulp. And now I understand where he’s going with this.

“Manufacturing,” Max says quietly. “It was that fire at the motherboard factory that got me thinking.”

“But—” And now my mind is bounding along after Max’s. “So you think someone wants to take over the manufacture of my motherboards. So they can change the design and modify my hardware?”

“With a tracking device,” Max says.

“But we’d notice,” I argue. “We have rigorous quality control.”

His eyebrows lift. “Do you? Can you honestly say that your current workflow inspects each motherboard before it’s installed in the device?”

Damn it. I flop back against the sofa. “No. You’re right. The testing happens when the unit is complete. If the device boots up normally, there’d be no cause for suspicion.” Which Max knows. “But still. This is the craziest idea I’ve ever heard. The Butler is smaller than a salad plate. The motherboard is the size of my hand. How would you hide all the electronics you’d need to control the unit?”

“Easily. And I can prove that it works, because somebody has already done it. Do you remember a news item about a major hardware hack of a server manufacturer?”

“Sure. Crazy story.” I must have read it a year or so ago. “But that story didn’t pan out. Nobody would go on record, and both companies denied that it ever happened. Besides—those servers are big.” I spread my hands to indicate the size of a server. “You could hide a forest creature in there.”