There is No Cloud

by Kat Wheeler

  “Well, hello to you too. Seriously, Cam, manners. You never call and say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ You just jump right in.”

  “Hi, how are you? It was the wife.” She rolled her eyes, not caring that he could see her. “I watched so much of the stored data from his cameras, and he’s never with his wife. Lots of other women but never her. So, I looked it up. Seems like she lives overseas. What do you want to bet they’re getting a divorce and she’s looking for leverage?”

  “I don’t buy it. She’s his wife. She wouldn’t have to resort to this to get that kind of info. If she wanted his video recordings, she could just walk into the house and take them. Plus, it’s kind of a sophisticated maneuver for a woman who basically shops for a living.” He caught her side-eye in the monitor. “Yeah, I looked her up too. Don’t look so surprised. And if she just wanted dirt on him with other women, she didn’t have to do any of that. There’s plenty info on Page Six to do the job. Also, she’s been living overseas for years.”

  “Fine, it’s not the wife. It’s not a conspiracy. What’s your brilliant idea, genius?”

  “It’s a heist,” he answered confidently. He looked so excited at the prospect that he was bouncing a bit in his seat behind his desk.

  “How’d you get there?” she asked. “Tell the truth, you just wanted to say the word heist.”

  “I’ve been examining the protocol on the chip you found. It does exactly what I said it did with one additional wrinkle.” He paused in his speech, still bouncing, obviously excited about what he found. He wanted her to ask, she could tell. So she purposely waited to see how long he could contain himself. She didn’t have to wait long. “Aren’t you going to ask?”

  “What did you find?” She smiled a bit to herself, lips tipping up at the corners, his excitement contagious.

  “There’s a priority protocol written into the program.”

  “Huh?” She didn’t see what he was getting at.

  “There’s obviously minimal storage on the device. That’s why it sends the data every night. It’s also why I couldn’t find any of the previous data. It erases everything after it’s sent. So I looked a little deeper into the code. If the device takes in too much data on a given day, priority is given to information collected from certain devices. It isn’t any of his smart home gear. Priority is given to computers, laptops, and tablets.”

  Her brain swirled with this new information, gathering the data presented and making the logical conclusion. “So that’s what they’re after. Data. Specifically, Minsky’s data. They don’t care about his surveillance system, or when he gets home every day. They want whatever he has on his computers. And you think because his family owns the bank and he’s a money guy that it’s a heist. Why couldn’t it be simpler than that? Why couldn’t someone just be using the information gathered to manipulate the stock market? I’m sure there’s a way you could make money there, and with considerably less risk.”

  Casey’s face fell. She’d burst his bubble. “Well, sure, you could do that. But my version is way more fun.”

  Cameron laughed. “True, so, okay, we’ll keep heist in the mix. But I think my idea is more plausible. Which means this has nothing at all to do with Matt Rodriguez’s death. I’m sorry, Casey, I sent us on a wild-goose chase.

  He shrugged. “Nothing to be sorry about. It’s been fun. And you’re probably right, but manipulating the stock market is illegal as hell. We’ll still have to contact the authorities. Although now I’m not sure which authorities. The NYPD detectives investigating Matt’s murder or the SEC?”

  “I wouldn’t begin to even know how to contact the SEC. Unless we contact that client I insulted.”

  “I remember that. Didn’t you think he worked for the South Eastern Conference?”

  “I’m from Kentucky,” she snapped. “He just said SEC. It was a logical assumption.” And embarrassing as hell when he corrected her. “We’ll stick with the NYPD like we planned. I’ll come out to the office first thing in the morning and pick up the units. I’ll turn them in myself and explain it to them.”

  “You still have to tell Steve.”

  “I know, but at least this way, it isn’t some vast global conspiracy involving SmartTech. He won’t care as long as it doesn’t affect profits.”

  “True, but we are forgetting one thing. There is another possibility.”

  “Oh yeah, what’s that?

  “Beta test.”

  “Beta test?”

  “Yes, beta test. This could be Synergistic themselves. This could be a beta test to see if the system would work with large-scale distribution. Can you imagine?”

  She could imagine, and it was horrifying. A company like Synergistic, with the global reach it had, having access to that much data? It was definitely the worst-case scenario. She shook herself out of those thoughts before she went down that rabbit hole.

  “All the more reason to turn over the chip and the info. We’re not qualified for this. We’ve done way more than enough. It’s time to let it go.”

  “Agreed. I’ll see you in the morning, then.

  “Yep, see you then,” she replied and hung up.

  She tried to put it out of her mind, but the idea Casey had planted stayed with her and grew as she got herself prepared for her next meeting. Any way she looked at it, a company like Synergistic with all that information was the stuff of nightmares.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Back to the office

  Wednesday morning, Cameron was back on the road again at what for her was still early. To other people, it was 10:00 a.m.. After finding out the situation with the hub was a one-off, she’d relaxed a bit and didn’t feel like she had to meet Casey at the office first thing. She could take her time to answer some emails and wait for traffic to die down before traveling back to New Jersey.

  Casey never sent her any new info on the chip the previous evening, so she spent her night researching Mark Minsky some more. She wanted more than the cursory info she’d gotten on Monday’s drive out to his place. He was young, thirty-six years old. Just like Trey Howell. Born in Manhattan, he grew up in boarding school, a roommate of Trey’s. The two had been good friends since then. It was amazing what could be discovered on the internet. Especially if you were a rich New York socialite and had been mentioned on Socialite Rank in your younger days. People really didn’t realize whatever you put on the internet was there forever. Thank God for cached websites. Seemed as if Mr. Minsky ran with quite the party crowd during that site’s heyday. There were still links to all the photos and gossip for her to find.

  It was amazing. She was almost the same age as Mark Minsky and his crowd, but their lives were vastly different.

  Parking in the lot, Cameron jumped out of her Jeep and straightened her clothes. Being five feet four and driving an SUV was always a little bit of a jump for her, but it was the only kind of car she’d ever owned. Albeit her brand-new model with only seven thousand miles on it was a far cry from her brother’s hand-me-down that she drove in high school, but she’d loved Jeeps then as much as she did now. She was again dressed in a suit, but the weather in the northeast was beginning to turn chilly as they headed into late November, so she grabbed her coat and her messenger bag out of the car and headed into the building to Casey’s office. She’d typed up all the info she had the night before, but she wanted to add his and take it to the detective in charge of the case. That way she could clear her conscience.

  She knew something was wrong the moment she walked into the lobby. It took a beat before she realized what struck her as different. The music was off. Generally, they had some cheesy Muzak background music piped in, but today, without it, the silence in the lobby seemed unnaturally loud. Echoes of whispers and footsteps sounded cold and uncomfortably loud against the marble floors and glass-enclosed lobby. There was an unusual number of employees congregating in the open entrance space. Grouped tog
ether, talking, hugging. But it was the phones that caught her attention. The persistent ringing of unanswered phones. She saw Melissa, the SmartTech receptionist, wiping tears from her face and made her way over to her.

  “What’s going on? Why’s everyone freaking out?”

  “Oh, Cameron, it’s just terrible. We just got the news. Casey Keane was in a horrible car accident on the way to work today. He’s dead.”

  The world seemed to fall away in that instant. Her vision narrowed. All the noises and movement seemed to turn into one big blur, and focus was impossible. She had to force herself to breathe before she passed out.

  Casey was dead? It was unbelievable. She talked to him every day. He couldn’t just be gone. Her eyes grew moist, and she had to blink back tears. Not Casey, her friend who’d been having so much fun playing at solving a mystery with her this week.

  “What happened?” Cameron asked, suddenly suspicious, a chill running down her spine. The timing was just too coincidental for her liking. Patience, she told herself. Car accidents happened all the time; it didn’t mean it was deliberate. He’d had the hub for the last two days, and nothing had happened. Hell, she’d had it over a weekend and was fine. But what if? If it was still transmitting, what might the person on the other end have learned?

  “Hit-and-run,” she answered. Melissa had been with SmartTech for over ten years. Normally she was the office gossip and a fount of information, but this news seemed to quell the natural boisterousness in her. She was more subdued than Cameron had ever seen her. Melissa was a tough girl, tattooed, and always with a different color dye in her hair. Nothing usually seemed to faze her, but apparently death did. “I saw it, you know? On my way to work, I passed an accident on the Palisades. A burned-out car in one of the lanes. I was pissed. It was down to one lane, and I felt like it was going to make me late to the office. How selfish is that?”

  “You didn’t know. That’s what everyone thinks when they see an accident,” Cameron said. But her mind was racing with what to do next. She had to call Bill and Phil and let them know. They’d be devastated too. They loved Casey as much as she did. And she had to get the chip. She had to turn it over to the police before it disappeared or got someone else hurt.

  “He just had a baby. Like a month ago. I can’t imagine what his wife must be thinking.”

  “It’ll be okay, Mel. God only gives us what we can handle,” Cameron repeated the platitude she’d heard so many times when her father died, but as with hearing it then, it just felt hollow to say. Nothing people could say could make you feel better in a time like this. But for Cameron, being proactive helped. She’d put her focus on getting the chip to the police and put Casey out of her mind for now. She’d deal with her grief later.

  Never being good in these kinds of situations, Cameron was trying to do what she could to sound concerned while simultaneously trying to extract herself and make her way to Casey’s office, but she couldn’t just leave Melissa there crying. Her opportunity came when a girl from marketing came over to commiserate as well. She took that as her chance to escape and made her way up the stairs as quickly as she could without running and drawing attention to herself.

  The scene was the same upstairs as it had been in the lobby, but she successfully dodged everyone and made it to Casey’s office. The door was shut, and with a glance around to make sure no one was looking, she cracked it open and ducked inside.

  With the lights off and the blinds drawn, it was hard to see in Casey’s office. This was the first time she’d been grateful for his lack of accoutrements. She immediately rushed to his desk and began searching the top. Nothing but files. She moved to the drawers, which proved more challenging to search. Like a true nerd, his drawers were full of miscellaneous cables and parts. It took her several minutes, but she was unsuccessful in finding the chip there as well. She turned to the shelves on the wall and immediately spotted the two HomeTech Hubs she left with him. Cursing herself for not checking there first, she grabbed the first box and discovered what she’d been looking for. The rogue chip sat right on top of the interior packaging. She grabbed it and shoved it in her bag, glad, not for the first time, that she always carried monster-sized bags, and it would fit along with all her other gear. She made her way back to the door, checked to see no one was looking, and slipped out.

  Back in her Jeep in the parking lot, she took several deep breaths and thought about her next move.

  Holy shit, holy shit. Casey is dead.

  The device was in her possession now, and if what Casey said yesterday was true, it would transmit whatever data it collected at midnight. That gave her thirteen hours and some change before anyone would know someone had taken it. She didn’t know enough about it to know if it would connect with the Wi-Fi in her car, or if this chip could use that to identify her, but she didn’t want to take any chances. It was well past time to hand this over to the police. Maybe if she’d done that yesterday, Casey would still be alive.

  She had to try hard to not travel down that path; most likely it was just an accident. She couldn’t be certain his death was related, but she couldn’t ignore it either. Who was receiving these transmissions, and what had they heard from Casey that was so threatening they’d had to kill him?

  One thing was certain: if someone murdered Casey, then the odds of this not being connected to Matt Rodriguez’s death were slim to none.

  She pulled out her phone and googled Matteo Rodriguez. Scrolling through the hits, she found the New York Times article on the murder, which listed the detective on the case as a William Justus. She snorted. Justus. What a ridiculous name for a detective. She saw he worked out of the 10th precinct. She looked up the number, called, and was immediately shut down. Being a sales rep had given Cameron a lot of experience trying to get around gatekeepers, but the woman on the other end of the line was immovable. No, she could not connect her to the detective; she didn’t know if he was in; she didn’t know where he was. The best she could do was take a message.

  Frustrated, Cameron ended the call and drove into the city. She parked her car at the garage in her apartment building, made a quick detour, and then walked to the Midtown South precinct on 35th Street.

  Chapter Nineteen

  You never get a second chance…

  Sitting on the bench in front of the police station, Cameron waited for Detective Justus. She’d had time to think during her drive into the city and decided this was her best bet of meeting the man. Surely he’d have to return to his office at some time.

  It was cold in the city that Wednesday, fall having begun to turn to winter. She’d grabbed a coffee on her way to warm her during her wait, but it wasn’t doing the trick. Her mind kept drifting to Casey’s accident, and those thoughts were chilling. She made a difficult call to Bill and Phil, and as predicted, they were devastated. She spent the rest of her time on the hard city bench between calls and emails from her customers and researching the players involved. She’d found a picture online of Detective Justus, so she’d recognize him when he arrived. She had also researched his background—what she could find, anyway—discovering he was a native New Yorker and had been in the military. He didn’t have any social media profiles, so information was hard to come by.

  Information on Synergistic and the partners there was much easier to find. She’d found dozens of pictures of them at different parties and social events. Trey Howell always featured prominently, as well as their attorney, Brandon Reece, and the VP of sales, Tessa Wells. From what she could see, the three of them plus Mark Minsky had been friends since they were kids. The boys all attended the same boarding school near Boston. She found pictures of them in their youth, parties, vacations, and hunting trips. The pictures ran the gamut, but the common thread was they lived a luxurious lifestyle. She wasn’t sure where Tessa came in, but as a native New Yorker, she’d probably run in the same circles as the boys.

  Cameron had been sitting
in front of the precinct for almost three hours and her fingers felt frozen by the time she saw Detective William Justus walking up the street with an older man. Her first thought was that his pictures didn’t do him justice—pun intended. He was hot. She’d expected Columbo but had gotten Rockford instead. While not a classically handsome man, his presence was arresting. He was attractive in a way she couldn’t quite explain. While he was tall, dark, and broad-shouldered, his face wasn’t particularly pleasing, at least not in a conventional sense. A mix of features that individually may not have worked, but somehow on his face, they seemed just right. There was something about the way he carried himself that was undoubtedly masculine. To a woman like Cameron, who spent her days with men who didn’t even watch sports, it was almost overwhelming.

  She’d just about let him walk past her before she had the presence of mind to shove her iPad into her bag and stand up to address him.

  “Detective Justus?” she asked tentatively, trying to get his attention. Nothing. So she said it louder. “Detective Justus?”

  “Yes,” he answered, turning to face her.

  “You’re the detective in charge of the Rodriguez murder,” she stated, glancing between the men. She recognized the man with him as Detective Alan Jones, his partner. Both of them grew noticeably cautious at her statement.

  “Yes. How can we help you?” His words were kind but guarded.

  “My name’s Cameron Caldwell. I think… well, I think I know why Mr. Rodriguez was killed.” She could tell they were doubtful. Her assumption was confirmed when Detective Jones spoke next.

  “Did you kill Mr. Rodriguez?”

  “What? No. Jesus. Look, I work in sales for a tech company. I found something in one of the HomeTech Hubs last Friday. I showed it to a coworker, and now he’s dead. Trust me, I can help you.”