Prodigal Son (14 page)

She laughed and kissed him. “Do you see me protesting?”

“You’re trying to get my shirt off. Bra first, shirt second.”

“But I want to see you,” she said. “You look good naked.”

“See later. I want to touch now.”

She smiled. “Touching is good. I would support touching.”

He stared into her eyes and found himself wanting to get lost there. This is how it was supposed to be, he thought. This is what mattered. Being with someone he cared about. Someone he could trust.

A voice in his head warned him that Samantha had run before and she would probably run again, but he didn’t want to listen. He didn’t want to think about her leaving. Not now.

But what to say to convince her to stay? After all, he wasn’t one who truly believed in relationships working out. They certainly never had for him. Was this time different?

Maybe the difference was this time he wanted it to, he thought as he bent down and kissed her.

She parted for him and he stroked her tongue with his. He tilted his head so he could deepen the kiss, then claimed her with a passion that seared him to his soul.

“Samantha,” he breathed as he rolled onto his back and pulled her with him.

She draped across his chest, her body warm and yielding. Her hands were everywhere, touching, pulling at clothes, teasing and exciting. She shifted so she could rub herself against his arousal.

The sharp sound of the phone cut through the night.

He swore and considered not answering it. It was after eleven on Saturday night—what could be that important? Only an emergency, he thought grimly as Samantha sat up and handed him the phone.

“Hello?”

“Jack? Is that you? Are you watching the news?”

“What? Who is this?” Then he recognized the frantic voice. “Mrs. Wycliff?”

“Turn on the news. Any channel. It’s on all of them. Oh, Jack, it’s horrible. This is the end. I don’t see how the company can survive now.”

He grabbed the remote and turned on the television. The local late-night news anchor appeared and behind her was a screen showing a raunchy porn site. Certain body parts were blacked out, but it was easy to see what the people on the screen were doing.

Jack swore and increased the volume.

“No one from Hanson Media Group was immediately available for comment,” the news anchor said. “From our best guess, the new website for children has been linking to this porn site for the better part of the afternoon. Parents across the country are furious and no one knows exactly how many children were exposed to this sort of smut.”

Chapter Thirteen

“I
t’s been twelve hours,” Jack said, more than ready to yell at the people assembled in his office.

Most of Samantha’s team was in place, as were the IT guys, along with David and Mrs. Wycliff. Although he hadn’t told his assistant to come in, she’d been waiting when he’d arrived.

“Twelve goddamn hours since the site crashed and no one—
no one—
thought to call me?”

His words echoed in the large room, followed by an uncomfortable silence. Right now he didn’t care about anyone being uncomfortable. He wanted answers.

“Everyone has my home number,” he continued. “I’ve told you all to get in touch if there’s a problem and the only reason I know now is because Mrs. Wycliff watched the late news. How long would this have gone on otherwise? When exactly did you plan on letting me know?”

He directed the last question at the IT staff. Roger stepped forward.

“The site crashed yesterday morning. We’re not sure why. I have a team investigating. They had the site up and running in about two hours.”

“At a porn site?” Jack asked sarcastically. “Wouldn’t it have been better to wait until our content was available?”

Roger swallowed. “Our content is available. But when the URL is typed in, users are redirected to the porn site you heard about. Our website is fine.”

Jack narrowed his gaze. “I don’t think I’d use that word to describe things right now.” He turned to Arnie. “Did you pull the plug?”

The smaller man nodded quickly. “Yes. As soon as I heard, I came right in. When you type in the address, the user gets a message saying we’re updating the site.”

That was something, Jack thought grimly. At least no more children would be sent to view raunchy sex.

“Do we know what happened?” Jack asked in a quiet voice. “Do we know what went wrong?”

No one answered.

He leaned against the edge of his desk. “How bad?” he asked David.

“It’s too soon to tell. We have to figure out how many hits we had this afternoon. With the publicity blitz all week, we were expecting a couple million.”

Jack swore. A couple million? Was that possible? Was this company really responsible for exposing two million children to that kind of horror?

“We were supposed to be helping them,” he said. “We were supposed to be providing a safe environment for children. A place where they could learn and have fun, away from everything bad. Instead we sent them right into the heart of the worst of it.”

“Our stock might take a hit, but it will recover,” someone said.

Jack stared at the man, not sure what department he belonged in and knowing it would be unreasonable to fire him for expressing an opinion.

“You think I care about the stock price?” he asked. “Do you think it matters to me if this company goes out of business tomorrow? We have done the one thing we vowed we would never do—we have hurt our kids. Nothing makes that right. And there’s nothing we can do to make it right.”

But people would try. He looked at David again. “Has the legal team been notified? Come Monday morning, people are going to be lining up at courts across the country.”

“I have calls in.”

“Good. I’m guessing most of the board members have heard, but in case some of them are out of town, I’ll call them in the morning.” He glanced at his watch. “Later this morning.”

Arnie stepped forward. “Jack, I know it’s not worth much, but I think this was done intentionally by a hacker. Oh, sure, the site crashed, but when we got it back up, it was working fine. The, ah, techs monitoring the site never saw the porn site because it wasn’t there. I think there was an override in our server.”

Jack stared at him. “You’re saying the redirect was external to our system?”

Arnie shrugged. “It’s a place to start looking.”

* * *

The meeting broke up an hour later. After telling everyone to be in by six on Monday morning, Jack sent them home. Samantha stayed on the sofa, not only because she’d come with Jack but because she felt too sick to move.

He collapsed in a club chair and rubbed his temples. “This is completely and totally screwed.”

“I feel so horrible,” she whispered. “I can’t believe this happened. We checked so many times. The security was all there. That’s what gets me. The site wasn’t compromised. It was the server.”

“Regardless of the technicalities, Hanson Media Group is still responsible,” he said.

“I know. No one is going to care how it happened, only that it did.” She crossed her arms in front of her midsection. “All those children. Who would have done it and why?”

“Not a clue,” he admitted. “But I’m going to find out and then that person is going to be prosecuted if I have to do it myself.”

Her eyes burned, but she blinked the tears away. Crying wouldn’t help anyone. Still, it was hard not to give in to the pain. So many people had worked so hard, only to have everything ruined by someone bent on destroying the company.

“This is revenge,” she said. “Or an act of rage. It feels personal.”

“To me, too. So who hates me that much and why?”

“Does it have to be someone hating you?” she asked. “Can it be someone who hates the company? A recently fired employee? Someone with a personal grudge against George, or one of your brothers. Who has enemies?”

“Who doesn’t?” he asked.

She stared at him. “I’m so sorry, Jack. I thought the new website was the answer to all the company’s problems. Now I find I’ve just made things worse.”

“You filled all the holes you saw.”

“And missed a really big one.”

She’d also gotten in the way of his future, she thought as her stomach clenched tighter. Jack wanted to do his job and get back to his dreams. What were the odds of that happening now? The board was going to be furious and they would blame Jack.

So not fair, she thought frantically. But how could she keep it from happening?

“Jack, I—”

A knock on the door cut her off.

“Come in,” he called.

Mrs. Wycliff stepped inside. “The police are here.”

Samantha’s breath caught. “The police?”

Jack shrugged. “What did you expect?”

Not that. Some of her shock must have shown on her face. He stood and walked toward her.

“It’s all right,” he said gently. “David is waiting in his office. He’ll take you home.”

“I don’t want you to have to deal with the police by yourself.”

He touched her cheek. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your chance to answer their questions later today or Monday. Try to get some sleep.”

Before she could try to convince him to let her stay, Mrs. Wycliff had ushered her out of the office and into the hallway. There she saw several police officers. They nodded politely.

She walked past them toward David’s office. A part of her couldn’t believe this was really happening. It was all wrong and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop it.

* * *

Jack grabbed a couple of hours of sleep Sunday night and was at the office before five on Monday morning. He had multiple crises to deal with.

While it all hit the fan over the website disaster, there was still a company to be run. The emergency board meeting started at nine, followed by an afternoon with in-house legal counsel. At last count, there were over a hundred lawsuits ready to be filed as soon as the courts opened. If this didn’t kill the company, it would be sheer luck. Best case scenario, Hanson Media Group survived as a smaller, less proud organization, which meant cutbacks and massive layoffs.

He was surprised to find Roger waiting outside his office when he arrived.

“Here to confess?” he said, then regretted the words as soon as they were out.

Roger looked at him. “I didn’t do it. I’ll take a lie detector test if that will help.”

Jack looked at the lines of exhaustion on the other man’s face, then waved him into the office. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I have no reason to suspect you.”

“No more than anyone else with the technical expertise,” Roger said bluntly, then handed over a tall cup of Starbucks.

Jack was as startled by the coffee as by Roger’s statement. “I was under the impression that you were more a manager than a techie.”

Roger sipped his own coffee, then shrugged. “I’ve worked in the business all my life. I might be older and not as fast, but I can code with the best of my team.”

News to Jack, as he tried to remember where he’d gotten the idea that Roger didn’t know what he was doing on the technical front.

“We’ve continued to investigate over the weekend,” Roger said. “As I suspected from the first, it’s not our website. The content there never changed and the address wasn’t hacked. Instead, someone got inside the server and messed with it. When the server started to route the user to our site, it made a quick left turn to porn central.”

Jack didn’t know if the information made a difference or not. “Who did it?”

“I’m still working on that. My guess is someone from this end rather than the server, but the police will be investigating them. I’m in touch with the detective in charge of the case.”

“Why do you think it’s someone from this company?” Jack asked.

“The attack feels personal. That’s just my opinion.”

“I appreciate hearing it,” Jack told him. “Anything else?”

Roger nodded. “The detective thinks there’s a good chance the feds will get involved.”

More trouble, Jack thought. No one wanted that. “It’s all out of our control,” he said. “What are you doing this morning?”

“Continuing the investigation.”

“Stay available. I have an emergency board meeting. They may want to ask you more questions.”

Roger nodded, then left. Jack stared after him. He’d never liked the man, but suddenly Roger was stepping up to take charge during a crisis. Did he need something like this to show his true nature, or was he the guilty party looking to be close to the action?

Several hours later Jack sat with the board and wished to hell he’d never left his law practice. They were angry and out for blood and right now they didn’t particularly care whose.

Baynes, the chairman, led the discussion.

“This has to be fixed, Jack, and the sooner the better.”

Jack sat forward and braced his forearms on the table. “I agree, and I’m working on the problem. The in-house IT people are doing what they can to find out who’s responsible. I’ve also hired an outside team to work backward from the server problem.”

“Hired guns?” Baynes asked.

“Independent agents. They don’t evaluate what they find, they simply report it. Someone told me this morning that the website crash feels personal and I agree with him on that. Someone somewhere wants Hanson Media Group to crash and burn. I want to find out who and I want to know why.”

Baynes looked surprised by the information. “A personal attack? Against the company?”

“Until I know who did it, I can’t answer that,” Jack told him.

“You’re working with the police?”

“Yes.”

Baynes looked at the papers in front of him. “Samantha Edwards was in charge of the new website.”

“That’s correct. She handled content while coordinating with the IT team on technical aspects.”

“According to previous reports, she came up with the whole idea.”

Jack saw where they were going and didn’t like it. “She had nothing to do with the crash and subsequent rerouting.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Baynes said.

“Actually, I do. Samantha simply isn’t that kind of person and even if she were, she doesn’t have the technical expertise.”

“She could be working with someone.”

“She’s not. I know Samantha personally and I’m telling you she’s not the one. You’re wasting your time with her. She is as devastated as anyone by what happened.”

Baynes didn’t look convinced, but he changed the subject.

* * *

The board broke at noon. Jack barely had an hour until he met with the company’s legal counsel. As he hurried into his office, he yelled for Mrs. Wycliff to get Samantha in to see him right away.

He didn’t have time for any of this, he thought as he poured coffee and ignored the sandwich his secretary had thoughtfully left on his desk.

Samantha arrived less than five minutes later.

“What’s up?” she asked as she walked toward him. “Is it awful? They all have to be furious, but they have to know none of this is your fault.”

“They don’t know what to think,” he told her. “Right now they’re looking for information. They want to talk to everyone involved in the project, including you.”

She nodded. “Especially me. I was in charge and it was my idea. I thought this would happen. When do they want to see me?”

“After lunch.”

“Okay. No problem. I’ll clear my calendar.”

She looked tired, but then they all did. It had been a long couple of days. Perhaps anticipating her presence before the board, she’d dressed conservatively—at least for her. A simple blouse over a dark skirt. Her hair had been tamed by a clip at the base of her neck.

He led her to the sofa and urged her to sit. He settled next to her.

“They’re going to ask a lot of questions,” he said. “You don’t have very long to prepare. Stay calm and answer as best you can. It would help if you had information to back up your plans.”

She frowned. “What kind of information?”

“Your notes. How you came up with the idea of the website, the various forms it took. Logs of meetings with your team and the IT people. Transcriptions of discussions.”

Samantha stared at him. “You have to be kidding,” she said, knowing there was no need to panic, but wanting to all the same. “I don’t keep records like that. I barely record the dates and times of our meetings in my date book. Jack, this was a very creative process. We would brainstorm together for a few hours, then go off to work individually. When we got back together, we compared what we had. No one took notes. Sometimes we worked over a game of basketball. You know that.”

He nodded. “You’ll need to go through the process as logically as you can. Our board members wouldn’t be described as creative, so they’re not going to understand what you’re talking about. They’ll want to see your e-mail assigning a task to someone.”