What Have You Done(31)



Sean knelt down so they were face-to-face. He used his thumb to wipe away Liam’s tears. “I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not going to die. I won’t leave you.”

“Ever?”

“Ever. I’m your brother. You’re stuck with me.”

Liam tried to smile. “You’re stuck with me too, then. Forever.”

Sean rumpled Liam’s hair. “Forever sounds good to me. It’s a deal.”



Sean pulled his red pickup truck into the driveway of his home in Blackwood, New Jersey, and shut off the engine. The house was an old craftsman, a little beat up from years of minimal upkeep. The grass was slightly overgrown with spring dandelions beginning to dot the landscape. He hopped out of the car and walked to the front, never noticing the imperfections his neighbors couldn’t help but see. The house had been given to him after his grandparents died, a reward for helping raise Liam. It never felt like his, though. It was just a place he grew up in and now occupied mortgage-free. Just another hand-me-down. The busted front window and rusted doorframe remained.

The front door shut with a thud as he stepped into the empty house. He walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. Everything was so quiet. He’d been the one to meet Kerri first. He’d seen her leaning against the wall outside the women’s room of a club, waiting for a friend, and had made his move. The conversation was quick but friendly. He’d offered his usual line about being a cop, and she’d bitten with the intrigue he was accustomed to. They talked and drank until the bar closed and the hours turned over the day. Numbers were exchanged, and an on-again, off-again relationship was formed. No sparks, just a little chemistry. A little fun.

Liam had met Kerri about two months after his brother, and unlike Sean’s experience, the expressiveness of sexual attraction between the two of them was both unmistakable and immediate. Liam, deep within the trenches of a failing marriage and looking for a light at the end of his tunnel, had fallen head over heels for his brother’s girlfriend, and Kerri had responded accordingly. Neither of them could help what they felt for one another, and both knew they were hurting Sean, but love conquered all, and they were no exception. Their relationship began the moment their eyes met.

Sean never had trouble dating women, but lasting and concrete relationships were few and far between. He did his best, but the inevitability of a breakup always seemed to preoccupy him until he used it as a crutch to let the relationship crumble.

Although he thought he could’ve loved Kerri, Sean convinced himself their relationship would’ve fizzled within a few months as all the others had; so giving her to Liam was fine. He was used to sacrificing for Liam. Kerri was no different a sacrifice from anything else he’d had to give up. It was all part of being a good brother and the leader of their little family.

Sean pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled through his contacts list. When he found what he was looking for, he dialed.

“Tender Cares,” a voice said on the other line. “How may I help you?”

Sean cleared his throat. “Yes, hi. I need to make an appointment to see Marisol Carpenter and her primary caretaker at the facility. I’d like to come tomorrow if I can.”

“Are you family or friend?”

“Family,” Sean replied. “We’re family.”





22

Back in 2008, during the peak of the financial crisis, Liam’s team had been brought in on a homicide involving a young financial advisor who had been skimming his clients’ accounts for almost a decade, while at the same time creating quite a lifestyle for himself. As the market declined, his clients had begun to withdraw their money from funds that were losing millions by the day, and it was then his scheme was discovered. It wasn’t long before the man was found shot three times in the foyer of his home.

Partnering with Homicide and Forensics was the tech team from the police department. They had used a hacking device called rainbow tables to bypass the victim’s password and gain access to his computer, thus providing client lists, emails, ledgers that tracked the amounts of stolen money throughout the years, and whatever else they needed. In the end, it had been an older woman, six years into retirement, who’d killed the financial advisor with her husband’s illegal handgun. The tech team had uncovered several email exchanges between the woman and the advisor that had ended with threats, which ultimately steered the homicide detectives toward the woman, who eventually confessed. The investigation had lasted about three weeks, and Liam had ended up keeping a copy of the hacking software on a CD-ROM one of the team members had given him. He’d never imagined a scenario where he’d have to use it, but then again, he’d never imagined a scenario in which he’d be a murder suspect.

Operating systems didn’t store a user’s passwords in plain text. It would be too vulnerable to attack. Instead, they executed calculations through an algorithm called a hash and put the passwords through a one-way hash function for storage. Even if someone were to obtain these hashes, they would be rather useless as they’d be no more than symbols that meant nothing. The password would still need to be entered, after which the hash would need to be calculated and compared to the stored password hash. A rainbow table circumvented this requirement in a matter of seconds by matching against an enormous list of passwords with the respective hashes included. This allowed a hacker to get into a person’s computer without having to delete or change a password. The victim would never know his or her system had been compromised, which was the beauty of the rainbow table. It was the skeleton key to a person’s protected data, and it was exactly what Liam needed to pull off his latest move.

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