Undue Competition

by R A Wallace

  “Someone drugged Marquita and took advantage of her?” Callie guessed.

  Ella nodded. “She became pregnant with Jesse.”

  “He wasn’t Guy’s?” Callie asked.

  Ella shook her head. “I never thought so. Marquita acted as though her life was ruined after that.”

  “You don’t think she would have felt that way if Guy was the father?”

  Ella nodded quickly. “Exactly my point. She would have been thrilled to still have a part of Guy.”

  “That’s when Guy left Florida?” Callie asked.

  “Yes.” Ella frowned. “That’s another reason I don’t think Jesse is his. I can’t believe he would leave his own child. Not a child with Marquita.”

  Callie wondered how best to phrase her next question. “I understood that Guy and my father sometimes…” Callie searched for the words.

  “Competed?” Ella said. “Oh, yes. Those two competed over everything, including your mother.” Ella waved it away with her hand. “I’m sure Margaret knew it didn’t really have anything to do with her. It was just the way those two got along.”

  It was Callie’s turn to frown. “Got along?”

  “Oh, yes.” Ella’s hand dropped to her dog. “Guy and Wade were the best of friends. Your father must be absolutely devastated right now.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She stood watching others in an alcove away from the flow of foot traffic in the hallway. Periodically, she nodded to faces that she recognized. She’d spoken to as many people as possible during the course of the week. Except for the shy guy. His eyes immediately dropped to the floor in front of him when he saw her standing there. The red flush began to creep up his neck just before he passed out of view.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a spy.”

  “Excuse me?” Ariana turned toward the voice and looked up. She’d seen him before. He’d been with the group of students that were now working with Sierra and Michael to find the hacker. The deep dimples bracketing his mouth as he smiled down at her reminded her of Greyson. Instead of the deep blue eyes that Greyson had, however, the guy in front of her had eyes so dark they were nearly black. And bottomless.

  “Just kidding. I didn’t mean anything by it.” He held out his hand. “I’m Alejandro.”

  “Ariana.” She felt her hand swallowed up by his.

  “Where do you go?”

  “Go?” Ariana looked around her in confusion.

  His laughter was warm as he released her hand. “To school?”

  “Oh.” She took a step back from him so she wouldn’t have to tilt her neck as much. “I don’t. That is, not yet. I start in the fall.”

  “And you’re competing already?” He gestured around them. “Impressive.”

  “Yes.” Ariana shook her head. “I mean no.”

  The dimples returned. “Which is it?”

  “You shouldn’t be picking on her,” Aiden said as he joined them.

  “I wasn’t picking on her,” Alejandro said as he turned back to Ariana.

  She saw the laughter in his eyes. “I was trying to explain that I’m here to help me figure out which area of information technology I should major in.”

  Appreciation replaced the amusement on his face. “Now, that is impressive.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Aiden said.

  “Aiden told me about cybersecurity. Which area are you in?” Ariana asked.

  “Databases. When you stop and think about it, most of the information on the planet is held in a database. That’s why they’re so important.”

  “Not unless they’re secure,” Aiden said as he turned to Alejandro. “That’s why you need cybersecurity.”

  “Not the way I design a database. It is already secure.” Alejandro pointed to his chest as he spoke.

  Ariana looked between them and wondered if they would notice if she left. She was several yards away when she heard her name. She turned for a moment to see them both watching her. No longer arguing with each other, Aiden had his hands up in the air in a mute question to her. Alejandro was laughing as though he and Ariana shared some private joke. She flashed them a smile and a quick wave before continuing on her way. She was beginning to think that she was really going to enjoy college.

  ***

  She was surprised to learn that they were able to meet with her. Callie moved quickly to find Mack and Jo at their desks in the main office of the police station. Jo was typing something into her computer when Callie reached them. Mack had a folder in his lap and was periodically feeding information to Jo.

  “Long time no hear,” Mack said.

  “See,” Jo said without turning around.

  “What’s that?” Mack said over the noise in the room.

  “See. See.” Jo raised her voice also.

  “Long time no see,” Callie said as she took the seat between them.

  Mack raised a hand briefly. “That’s what I said.”

  Jo finished typing and swiveled around in her chair. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Callie explained to them what she had learned so far. “I just came from Ella Fisher’s place.”

  “Interesting history involving the victim.” Jo’s eyes shifted to Mack.

  “We need to talk to her,” Mack said to Jo.

  “I told her you might stop by.” Callie explained where she lived.

  “Oh, I love what she does at Christmas,” Mack said. “She does this thing with the elks.”

  “Reindeer,” Jo said. “We knew about Jesse Dixon filing the petition for determination.”

  “Have you talked with him about it?” Callie watched Jo and Mack share a look. “What?”

  “Either way, we followed up on your dad’s alibi,” Jo said.

  “We know that he was held up by one of his crew members asking questions about a job and didn’t get there when he was supposed to.” Mack reached into his drawer and took a packet of cheese crackers out.

  Jo frowned at him. “You’re going to ruin another shirt.”

  “No, look. I planned this.” Mack held up the orange crackers and pointed at his shirt. “They match, right? There’s orange in my shirt already. It’ll look like it belongs.”

  “I knew that one of the employees held my dad up. How does that help?” Callie asked.

  “We got traffic video confirming exactly where your dad was at the time of death,” Jo said.

  Callie leaned forward. “You cleared him?”

  Mack pointed at Callie with a cracker. “Yes and no.” The cracker crumbled and fell to his pant leg. He brushed it off leaving a streak of orange.

  “We’re keeping him on the list of suspects, but we’ve moved him to the bottom.” Jo pulled a packet of pre-moistened wipes from her desk drawer and handed one to Mack.

  “I was going to call you today to let you know,” Mack said. “We couldn’t confirm anything until we got the final determination from the autopsy.”

  “When we matched those up with the traffic video, we realized your dad couldn’t have been in two places at once,” Jo said.

  “Thanks guys.” Callie stood.

  “You’re still planning to keep digging?” Jo asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Mack said to Jo. “You know she doesn’t like to leave things unsolved.”

  Callie’s mind flashed to Corky. Before she left, she promised to keep them in the loop if she learned anything else.

  ***

  The buzzing in her pocket startled her. Ariana quickly reached for her phone. She set it to buzz rather than ring whenever she was at the competition, but she still wasn’t used to it. She glanced at the people sitting next to her to make sure they hadn’t been disturbed. The presentation they were listening to was really good. Of course, she was really sitting through it to blend in with the other students and talk with them hoping to learn something that might help Michael and Sierra. Still, she’d enjoyed the other presentations she’d attended also and had listened to what the students s
aid about them afterward.

  Quickly, she glanced at her phone. She’d received a text but didn’t recognize who it was from. The number wasn’t from someone in her contacts. She nearly dropped the phone when she read the text.

  ‘This presentation is boring. I’ll bet I can make it really exciting by taking control of their computer.’

  It was the hacker! They were sitting through the same presentation with her. Ariana glanced around the room trying to guess who it might be. Nothing looked out of place. Everyone was paying attention to the speaker in the front of the room as they talked about something they were projecting onto the large screen. She tried to think of another way to figure out who it might be.

  Coming up with nothing, she finally texted back. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You’ll never know.’

  She wanted to keep them talking. She tried to think of what would be most helpful to Michael and Sierra.

  She entered another text. ‘Tell me how you do it.”

  She scanned the room again while she waited for a response. Everyone was watching the presenter.

  ‘No. You’ll tell.’

  She knew the presentation was almost over. ‘No. I won’t. Tell me.’

  ‘It won’t matter. No one will believe you.’

  She frowned at her phone. What did that mean? She watched in horror as the messages disappeared. How was she going to help Michael and Sierra now?

  The room erupted into applause. Several in the audience stood and began filing out of the room. Others stayed behind to ask questions. Ariana stood and moved with the other students until she reached the hallway. Then she walked as quickly as possible to the room Michael and Sierra were using. The door was locked so she pounded on it. A startled Sierra opened it a moment later.

  Ariana burst into the room holding her phone. “It’s gone!”

  Michael stood and crossed over to her. “What is?”

  “The text.” Ariana shook her head. “I know I’m not making sense. I’m sorry. The hacker texted me.”

  “Let me see.” Sierra took the phone from her. She frowned as she scrolled through the recent messages then looked up.

  Ariana motioned to her phone. “They deleted it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “It’s okay.” Michael put his hand on Ariana’s arm. “Calm down. It’s okay.”

  “I thought I could help. You could have figured something out if you had the texts, right?”

  “We might still,” Michael said calmly.

  “How? They’re gone.” Ariana looked from Michael to Sierra.

  “Give us a few minutes,” Sierra told her as she turned to Michael.

  He nodded at Sierra. “We’ll use my portable forensic workstation.”

  “How are you going to read the texts if they’re gone?” Ariana wrapped her arms around herself as she stood behind them watching them work.

  “They might not really be gone,” Michael explained. “Remember? We talked about this before.”

  “Just because something is deleted doesn’t mean it’s really erased permanently from storage,” Sierra added. “For example, files that you saved on a portable drive years ago for a class in school are probably still there even if you deleted them. Old photos that you accidentally deleted and thought were lost forever. Things like that can sometimes be recovered under the right circumstances.”

  Ariana shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “When you think you’re deleting a file, that’s not what really happens,” Michael muttered.

  Sierra looked up at Ariana after connecting the phone to the forensic workstation. “The operating system just deletes the pointers to the file. That’s why you can’t see it anymore. The file itself stays there usually until there’s no more room on the disk. That’s when they might get overwritten with new files.”

  Ariana watched over Michael’s shoulder. “But this is a phone, not a computer.”

  “They have some similarities.” Michael moved back from his forensic workstation. “And there we are.”

  Ariana pointed. “Those are the texts that disappeared. Can you tell who sent them?”

  Michael nodded. “We can run the number of the phone they came from, sure.”

  “You did it,” Sierra said. “Because of you, we might be one step closer to the hacker.”

  Michael nodded before turning back to his computer. “Now let’s see what we can find.”

  ***

  Callie took the glass of wine from Greyson. “Thanks.”

  “I thought you’d be a little happier about being one step closer to the hacker,” he said.

  “I am.” She looked at the food on the table as she took a sip of wine. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to enjoy it until she got it off her chest. She needed to confess what she’d done. She let out a sigh.

  Greyson walked across the room to stand in front of the aquarium. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She stared at his back as her mind went over past conversations. Her eyes narrowed at him. She set her glass of wine on the table and stood.

  “You know.”

  He turned to look at her. “Know what?”

  She crossed her arms and looked up at the ceiling. “And to think I was feeling guilty all this time.”

  He took a sip of his wine as he watched her.

  She threw her hands up. “Fine. I’ll tell you. I should have known it would throw up some flag and alert you. I ran your name. I felt guilty about it even though I shouldn’t have. It was a logical thing to do. I was running a prospective partnership for Simon and figured since I had all of the screens in front of me anyway, I should run your name too.”

  He looked pleasantly surprised and took a step toward her. “You were thinking of a partnership?”

  “Not the point.”

  He stopped walking. “What is?”

  She shook her head slowly as she tried to pull her thoughts together. Finally, she turned and picked up her wine glass. “The point is, we aren’t there yet.”

  “That’s it?” He took another step closer.

  “Yes. I think we should keep things the way they are. For now, anyway. We’re still figuring out how to work together. We can revisit it once we both agree it’s time.”

  He stayed where he was. “What about the fact that I don’t exist?”

  “I talked to Gemma about that.”

  His brows went up. “And?”

  “And we agreed that you do exist.” She motioned toward him with her free hand. “You’re right here. I can see you. Of course, you exist. You have a social security number and everything.”

  “So, that’s it?” He waited for her response.

  “No. That isn’t it. We need to eat dinner before it gets cold.” She returned to her seat. “The seafood and vegetable skewers you grilled look awesome.”

  “Your salad looks pretty good too. We make a good team.” He crossed the room and joined her at the table. “When it comes to making dinner.”

  She smiled as she passed him the salad.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Callie stepped outside Friday morning just as Dex was dragging her empty garbage can up her driveway.

  “Good morning.” Dex positioned the can in its usual spot.

  “Thanks.” Callie took in his shorts and tank top. “I should be getting up an hour earlier to get some exercise before work.”

  “You’re welcome to come with me,” Greyson said from beside her.

  She turned and looked at him. He’d walked between the houses to get there and was already dressed for work. “I’d have to get up three hours earlier to go running with you. I’m not sure I’m up to that.”

  Dex chuckled. “I’ll let you two figure it out.” He pointed at Callie as he walked backwards down her drive. “If you change your mind, join me. I walk every morning.”

  “You could start with him and move up to me when you’re ready,” Greyson said.

  “I’ll think about it.” Cal
lie took a couple of steps into Ramona’s front yard and faced the older woman’s sunroom. “Good morning.”

  Greyson appeared beside her and waved at Ramona.

  Ramona saluted them with her coffee. “You two are on the move early. Big plans?”

  “Looks like we’re taking down a hacker and a killer today,” Greyson said. “Just your normal Friday.” He grinned.

  “I’ll have the snacks ready later,” Ramona said.

  Greyson waved again. “I’ll bring the wine.”

  ***

  “Do you think you can do it?” Michael asked.

  Ariana found herself nodding even as she questioned herself.

  “But you said you haven’t spoken with him before,” Sierra reminded her.

  Ariana tried to look confident. “He’s just really shy. I’m pretty sure I can get him to talk.”

  Michael turned back to his computer. “His name is Carter Heilman. Based on the other competitions he’s been in over the past two years, he’s smart. Very smart.”

  Ariana wasn’t surprised. Everyone at the competition was smart. “Any clue why he’s doing this?”

  Sierra shook her head. “There are just as many reasons as there are hackers.”

  “Might be the attention,” Michael muttered as he tweaked a program he’d just finished writing.

  “Could be,” Sierra agreed. “Carter might just want the accolades of his community.”

  Ariana frowned. “His community?”

  “Sure. Even if they don’t go by their real names, individual hackers gain a lot of notoriety using aliases.” Sierra checked the monitors showing the security camera feeds again. “In fact, it isn’t entirely unusual for young hackers to become successful business entrepreneurs later in life.”

  “Seriously?” Ariana took a sip of her iced coffee and grimaced.

  Michael chuckled. “It happens. What starts out as a fun challenge turns into a profit when necessary.”

  “How does that happen?” Ariana stooped and carefully set the full cup in the bottom of the trash can.