Fatal Transaction (Thriller & Suspense, Cyber Crime) (4 page)

“You’re right. You’ve forgiven the kids who shot Tami. You’ve forgiven yourself for not protecting her. Why won’t you forgive your stepfather?”

The computer had finished loading the program. Derry twisted to face the monitor and acted as if he were trying to work. Mary had successfully changed the subject, something she did well.

He could feel her behind him, waiting for an answer. “It’s not that easy.”

“You’re telling me hatred is easier?”

“No.” Derry stopped his work. Twisting in the chair, he peered at Mary. “I don’t hate him. Not anymore. I just wouldn’t know what to say to him or my mom. He kicked me out and told me to never come back. Not the other way around, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. So, you’re telling me you’re afraid?”

“I’m not afraid, I just don’t know where to start.”

“If you stop by to see him, it will come to you. I’ve never seen you at a loss for words when it mattered.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Think hard. You need to get past this.”

Chapter 7

C
hecking her phone, Sara was happy to see she was almost an hour late. Good.

Jasper’s Restaurant, located three blocks north of the Sixteenth Street Mall, was at the edge of the downtown area. As she walked in, Jasper was wiping off the tables. His was a small Greek restaurant on the first floor of one of the older high-rises that housed several businesses, including a software company. The dated interior of the restaurant was laid out with eight tables and five booths in the dining area. Along one wall was a short dark-mahogany bar with seven red-topped barstools. The place badly needed an update. Its décor included dim yellow lights and dark paneling to match the bar.

The food was okay, but business was sparse, placing the owner in need of money. This gave Levy the advantage he needed to take control of the business’ future.

Sara didn’t like Jasper, and respected him even less. He reminded her of one of those overweight shop owners pictured in a third-world open market, always trying to sell tourists junk they don’t want.

The place was empty except for her and Jasper. “Trying to hide
the mouse droppings? Afraid the health inspector might come in and shut you down?”

Jasper bucked at her voice. Circling the table, he moved toward her, disapproval in his face. “You’re late. You were supposed to be here an hour ago.” He tossed the washcloth on a table.

“I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

Contempt laced his words. “Your friends dropped off a bunch of boxes yesterday. They’re in my way.”

“Really? I’m surprised. Did you have a customer show up?”

“I have a business to run. I put them in the back.” He shuffled back toward the table on which he’d tossed the rag.

“Get them for me.” Not a request but a command. Sara walked over to his cash register.

“I have work to do. You can get them yourself.” Jasper rinsed the rag in a pan of water.

Sara spun around and headed for the door. “I’m out of here. You can take it up with Levy.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home. I’ll let Levy know you refuse to work with us.”

“Hey, I have my own work to do.”

“And I’m not going to go running around in the back, looking for boxes. It’s probably full of rats and other animals, waiting to be cooked up for your customers.”

“I don’t—” Jasper threw the rag into the pan of soapy water. “Fine, I’ll get them for you.”

As he exited the room, Sara mumbled rather loudly, “Must have hit upon the truth.”

“You’re a pain in the—” She couldn’t hear the rest.

She felt some satisfaction as she looked over Jasper’s setup. One redeeming point to this job was her treatment of him. She delighted in humiliating him.

As Jasper brought out the boxes, Sara cleared off a space on which to set up the new computer and card reader. “And bring that washcloth over here. This place is filthy. Don’t you ever clean this area?” It wasn’t that dirty, and it didn’t really bother her, it just gave her another opportunity to make Jasper’s life intolerable.

“My customers don’t see this, so it doesn’t need to be that clean,” Jasper said as he set the final box down. Small beads of sweat formed on his temple.

“So, now you think you have customers. As in more than one?” Sara grabbed a steak knife off a nearby table and started cutting open the boxes.

“Hey. What are you doing?”

“My job.” She held the knife toward him. “You got a problem with the way I do it?”

“Just don’t put it back on the table.” He gave a huff and walked off without getting her the washcloth. He went back to work, leaving Sara alone.

After opening the last box, she carefully replaced the knife where she found it.

Setting up the equipment, Sara thought about her treatment of Jasper. His situation wasn’t all that different from hers. Levy had found a way to sink his fangs into Jasper, and he would suck out every last drop. But one difference remained between Sara and Jasper. Jasper had gone into this with his eyes open.

***

“You about done? My dinner customers will be coming in soon.” His pacing between the kitchen and the dining area was getting on Sara’s nerves.

“What customers? Who’d eat here if they didn’t have to?” Without looking up from her work, Sara could see Jasper out of the corner of her eye. He stopped his pacing and placed his hands on his hips, staring at her.

“If it wasn’t for Mr. Levy, I’d throw you out into the street where you belong.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t. So stay out of my way until I get this done.”

Jasper didn’t move; he remained hovering several feet away, waiting. After a couple of minutes, Sara gave him a command. “Come here.”

He hesitated a few seconds before moving closer to her. “What?”

Seeing his expression, Sara knew she’d pushed him about as far as she could today. “This is important. Only use this white card reader for the cards with this symbol on them.” Sara held up her credit card. “I’ve also taped a printout of the symbol right here.”

Jasper looked around on the counter. “Where’s my other card reader?”

“What do you need it for?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.

“You said to only use your reader for these special cards. I’ll need to use my old reader for real customers.”

Reaching behind the cash register, Sara pulled out the other reader. “I didn’t think you ever used it, but just in case, it’s right here.” She set it next to the register.

“Is that it?” Jasper crossed his massive arms.

“No, there’s more. At the close of business, you need to run the end-of-day procedure on this computer, just like you do for your standard reader. This one will take longer to run because there are several programs running in the background. For at least the first week or two, watch the transactions closely, check for messages every morning. If there are any problems or errors, let me know immediately.”

“What about the money?”

“What money?”

“I was told I would get enough to pay off my debt.”

“That’s between you and Levy. But I wouldn’t count on ever being out of his debt.” Sara almost felt bad at telling him the truth.
Idiot
.

“Where will the money go from the credit cards?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“What if the card companies find out? They’ll come after me.”

Sara gave a short laugh. “Good luck with that.” Even though she hated working for Levy, she was proud of this part of her work. “Look again at the account name. It changes every time you close out the account at the end of the day. Today’s business is Johnson’s Drycleaners, and the address is completely invalid. It’s for a police department halfway across the country. Tomorrow’s will be something different. There is nothing that links it back to you, not even the point of origin on the transactions. I set that up to go all over the place. No two days in a row will come from the same location. It’s amazing what you can do with the Internet.”

Jasper glanced at the card reader. “Okay, I guess you know what you’re doing.”

Sara felt a little insulted by his comment. “Need me to go over it again? Only use—”

“I told you, I got it.” Jasper’s voice was harsh and loud.

“Good. Here’s my card. Show me.” This part was too important for her to allow his anger to bother her.

Jasper swiped the card. On the screen, fourteen transactions showed up. “What is this?”

“It’s the first test. I went to a small store before coming here to give us a test case.”

“Will I always see this?”

“You will always ignore this. It’s none of your business. Okay? The only thing you need to know is that the card was read.”

“But what if—”

“Someone sees this?” Sara cut him off.

“Yes.”

“Like who? You already said that no one comes over here but you. Anyway, go ahead and do the end of the day close-out.”

“Now?”

“No, tomorrow. Of course
now
. I need to see if you know what you’re doing and make sure it works.”

Jasper huffed a little as he ran the end-of-day routine. “Done.”

“Good. Check for messages later to see if everything went through, and let me know if there are any problems.”

Grabbing her purse, Sara left, leaving the empty boxes and papers on the floor.

Chapter 8

“I
just received word that your test was a failure. What’d you do wrong this time?”

Sara’s heart sank. She turned away from her monitor.

Hands clenched at his sides, Levy glared at her. His frame filled the doorway. Behind him, off to one side, stood Mike, wearing an amused smirk.

“You lied to me. That’s something I will not tolerate.”

Sara searched for words. “I didn’t lie. I can fix this.”

Levy stepped into the room. “Is this bug going to delay my project again?”

“I told you it would take some testing. I never said it would work the first time. That’s why we test.” Sara was defensive.

Kai pulled her chair closer to her desk, keeping her face toward her monitor.

“What if this failure alerted the police? Cost me the whole program? I don’t accept failure, incompetence or disrespect. Do I need to teach you a lesson in respect?”

Levy’s dark gaze seemed to penetrate deep into Sara’s mind. His lessons involved pain and quite often death.

“No. No. I’ll get this fixed in the next day or two.”

“You know what the problem is?”

“It looks like my program decrypted some files incorrectly. I just need to find why the wrong routines were called.” This may or may not be the real reason the test failed, but it made the whole situation sound more positive than she felt right now.

As Levy closed the gap between them, Sara’s gaze shifted between his face and his hands. Any moment, she expected him to hit her or grab her hair.

“How can you sit there and tell me you’ll have it fixed by tomorrow if you’re not sure what caused the problem?”

“I don’t know the whole problem yet, but I know what area of code it is in. It won’t take me long—”

He grabbed her by the throat, cutting off her air. “You’d better get this fixed today.” Shoving her back, he added, “I gave you a schedule, and you
will
meet it.”

Rubbing her neck where his fingers had dug in, Sara fought to keep back the tears. “We’re still on schedule. It hasn’t changed. We will have a successful test before the end of the week.”

Levy moved back a step; Sara’s heart started beating again.

“Good. I have six runners ready to hit the streets on Monday. Be ready.”

“Yes, sir. I will.”

Levy turned away and moved out of the room. Mike gave her one last ‘You’re in trouble and I’m happy’ smile before he followed. Sara sat frozen until they were gone.

Glancing over at Kai, “What are you looking at?” Sara snapped.

Kai returned to her work, then stopped and turned back. “Can you really get it working that fast? I mean, it’s tens of thousands of lines of code.” Was she really worried? If so, was she concerned for Sara? Or just about the possibility of having to finish the work alone?

“I don’t have a choice, now, do I?” Sara felt the reality of what failure would mean. She stared at her monitor. “I need access to your code. Send me the path and allow me to log in.”

For the next several hours, Sara completely ran the show while Kai helped her run tests on various parts of the code.

The reality of the situation made Sara rude and bossy. The few times Kai was brave enough to ask a question, Sara told her she didn’t have time to explain every little thing.

Around nine that night, Kai finally asked if she was hungry.

Sara wanted to say no, her stomach was in knots, but she needed Kai out of the room for a while. She’d finally found the problem; it was in one of the programs she’d modified on Kai’s computer.

“I’m starved, but I can’t leave ‘til I get this fixed. You want to make a sushi run?”

Kai stood and stretched her back. “The pizza place is a lot closer. I can make a call and have them deliver.”

Pizza sounded good, but it wouldn’t work. Kai needed to be gone for at least forty minutes so Sara could make the changes and test them out. “I need something to keep me awake. Pizza will put me to sleep.”

“But the sushi place is so slow. I’ll be gone for an hour.” Kai walked around the little office, stretching her arms and shoulders.

Sara also felt tired and sore, but needed to make the changes before she let the fatigue overtake her.

“Look, I need to fix this, and I need food. You gonna help me or not?” Her words had just enough bite to send the right message.

“Fine, sushi it is.” Kai grabbed her bag and left.

As Sara listened to the footsteps descending, she pulled out her jump drive and plugged it in. Grabbing a string of code from one of her files, she did a search for it in Kai’s files. The code was missing.

Just what I thought.

Kai had either switched files or edited the lines out. In order for the other changes to work, these lines had to be in her program.

The building was quiet. The others who worked in this area had left hours ago. Even with an empty floor, Levy was probably watching Sara through the cameras. Taking a quick glance into the open area, she found it empty. Sara went to work, afraid that at any moment Kai would return and she’d be caught.

The changes and testing took most of an hour. Sara was mentally exhausted. Her brain had been running a marathon for the last hour and needed a break. She started the last set of tests just minutes before she heard Kai coming up the stairs.

“Food!” Sara called out the door as Kai hit the landing.

“You’re lucky it made it. I’ve been smelling it all the way here. It’s not as good as what I used to get back home, but as hungry as I am now, I don’t care.”

“Well, Hawaii’s a long way to go for take-out.”

“Yeah, but it would be worth it. Any luck? You sound better.” Kai peeked at the output streaming by on one of Sara’s monitors.

“It’s all fixed.”

Setting the food down on Sara’s desk, Kai bent down a little to get a closer view. “Really? You sure?”

Sara grabbed one of the boxes of sushi and a wooden set of chopsticks. She sat back to eat and allow Kai to see the output more clearly. “This is the last test, just to make sure all the code compiled correctly. You get any egg rolls with this?”

“In the bag.”

Sara reached in and grabbed one. She didn’t want Kai to dig into the code. “I still need to install it on the card and download the changes to Jasper’s. Just don’t make any changes or even touch the code, okay? It works now, and I’ll be running a field test at Jasper’s tomorrow.”

Kai stepped back and grabbed the other box of sushi and one of the egg rolls. “Sure thing.”

Sara snatched a bite of her egg roll. “I suppose you think these aren’t as good, either?”

Kai glanced at the roll in her hand. “Different, but still good.”

“You ever miss Hawaii?”

Kai gazed above Sara’s head. “I miss the islands a lot, the beaches, surfing, the warm weather year round. Yeah, I miss all that.”

“Ever miss your home? Family?”

Kai became quiet. She never answered the question.

***

Walking through the parking garage to his car, Derry thought about what Mary had said. It had been on his mind all day, and he knew she was right. He’d forgiven everyone involved with Tami’s death, except one—his stepfather. Even though the man wasn’t involved in the shooting, Derry never forgave him for kicking him out of the house afterward.

The drive to the old part of town felt interminable as he pondered what to say. Would his stepfather talk to him or hit him?

Mr. O’Connor’s dojo sat west of I-25, along Inca Street. Derry slowly drove past the old converted warehouse, hoping someone would be coming out or going in, and he would be able to see inside.

This is stupid
.

What’d he expect his stepfather to do? Beat him up in front of one of his classes?

Derry parked and got out of the car.

As he approached the dojo, he heard the loud rumbling of a train just on the other side of the fence that ran along the east side of Inca Street. He opened the door and walked in on a class. Moving to the right of the doorway, he waited, surprised to see a Hispanic instructor teaching the class. When Derry lived at home, his stepfather would never have hired a Hispanic; he would train them, but never hire them. Maybe he had changed over the years.

After a few minutes, the instructor glanced at the door. He told his class to run through some drills as he walked over to Derry. “You here to sign up?”

“No, I’m here looking for the owner, Mr. O’Connor.”

“I’m the owner. Me and the bank, that is. The name’s Paul.” The man extended his hand.

Derry shook it. “You’re the owner? What happened to Mr. O’Connor?”

Paul studied Derry for a second. “You another bill collector? I’m sorry, but I ain’t seen him for a while.”

“No, I’m his stepson. When did he sell this place?”

“I don’t think he did. I bought it from the bank, or at least I’m trying to.” Paul was only a few years older than Derry. He had a much more relaxed manner than O’Connor.

Derry thought for a second. “How long have you been here?”

“About a year and a half. Hey, if you’re not interested in taking lessons, I need to get back to my students.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Paul gave a quick nod and went back to teaching the class.

Derry left the building, and his gaze turned west. He wondered if his mom and stepfather still lived up the road.

The house was only two blocks away, so he decided to walk. The area was about the same age as the one he lived in now, but the income level was much lower.

The neighborhood hadn’t changed much in the six years since he’d left. Some of the houses were fixed up with nice yards, but others hadn’t been touched in decades. Most were in bad need of repair, and their yards were dead. Gang signs covered fences and houses.

Derry paused on the sidewalk in front of his old house.

What would his mom say?

Was his stepfather home?

Were they still together?

A lot can happen in six years. His stepfather never hit his mom, but the verbal abuse was enough to drive anyone away. She might not even be here.

Only one way to find out.

Shutting down his fears, Derry headed up the walkway. Pausing before knocking, he listened to the voices coming through the door. A man was talking.

Derry knocked and waited.

“Who’s there?”

“Derry.”

“Who?”

“Derry, your stepson.”

The door opened, “Who? I ain’t got no stepson. What you want?”

Derry stared into the face of another Hispanic man in his thirties. Glancing around, he checked to make sure it was the right place. It was.

“Well, what you want?”

“Ah, I’m looking for the O’Connors.”

“Who?”

“Mr. and Mrs. O’Connor.”

“They don’t live here no more.” The man spoke with a heavy accent.

“Do you know where they moved to?”

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Derry Conway. I’m his stepson.”

The man’s voice became softer. “Was the wife your mom?”

“Yes.” Derry didn’t like the way he asked the question.

“I’m sorry. I heard she died about two years ago.”

The blow hit hard, sucking the air from his lungs. “How?—what happened?”

The man stepped out onto the landing. “What I heard was that your father witnessed some gang stuff and called the cops. Then one day when he was gone, the gang broke into the house. Your mom was alone. They beat her up and left her to die. She bled to death. Your old man—ah, stepdad—lost it. Went crazy. Don’t know what happened to him or where he went. The bank foreclosed on the house. I’ve been here about a year.”

Reeling toward the street, Derry barely heard the man’s last words. They didn’t matter.

His mother was murdered, and he hadn’t even known. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. A hole grew inside him.

He had no one. His family was gone.

He slowly walked back the way he came. Nearing his car, he dug into his pocket for the keys. They slipped from his hand.

Snatching them off the ground, he shifted away from the car and returned up the street to his old neighborhood. The last time he’d seen Mom was the day he got out of the detention center after Tami’s death. Lamar brought him home.

He’d hoped things would be okay after the judge released him for lack of evidence, but his stepfather said a real man never let his girl get hurt. A real man would have taken the bullet for her, not held the gun that killed her. So much big talk, and now, because of “
Mr. O’Connor”
his mother was murdered. Beaten up, and bled to death.