No One to Trust

by Julie Moffett

  “Computer guru.”

  “Oh, that would be Jonah Miller. Shall I bring him up?”

  “That would be helpful.”

  Niles lifted the telephone receiver on Darren’s desk and punched in a couple of digits.

  “It would also be helpful to see Darren’s personnel records,” Finn added.

  Niles nodded and then spoke into the phone. “Mary, please find Jonah Miller and ask him to come to Darren’s office at once. Also, I need a copy of Darren’s personnel folder. Bring it immediately.”

  After he hung up, Finn asked, “What can you tell me about NanoLab Industries?”

  Niles raised an eyebrow. “They are our manufacturing partner. Their headquarters are located about five miles from here. They’re a new company, but come highly recommended.”

  “They’ve agreed to manufacture and distribute a product not even created yet?” I asked.

  “Based on Darren’s prototype and theoretical work in progress, yes,” Niles replied. “It’s not an uncommon practice.”

  “When did you enter this partnership?” I asked.

  Niles thought for a moment. “About three weeks ago. We haven’t finalized the details, but it’s a done deal.”

  That would be a week before Darren disappeared and I wondered if there was any significance to that. But before Finn could ask anything more, an older woman with a severe bun and sensible shoes arrived with Darren’s personnel file. About a minute after that, a young, thin guy wearing an ID badge around his neck hurried into the room.

  “I’m Jonah Miller. What do you need?”

  “Access to Darren’s hard drive,” I explained, vacating Darren’s chair.

  He looked over to Niles for confirmation. When Niles nodded, he sat down in front of the monitor and starting logging on using administrative privileges.

  “That’s weird,” he said after a moment.

  “What’s weird?”

  “It isn’t letting me on.”

  His hands flew over the keyboard and then paused. Nothing happened. He started typing again and I could see he had abandoned attempts to get on as an administrator and was now trying to log on as a regular user. That apparently failed, as well.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  “What’s wrong?” Niles peered over his shoulder.

  “For some reason I’m being denied access to his account. That’s highly irregular.”

  “Why didn’t you notice this before?” Niles said, his voice icy.

  “I don’t make a practice of surfing around in other people’s accounts unless I’m specifically asked.”

  “Can you access the drive or not?” Niles asked.

  “Yeah.” Jonah stood. “I just have to go to the server room and reset the user password for Darren.”

  “What does that mean?” Finn asked, clearly bewildered by our techno-talk.

  “It means he’s going to erase and then reset Darren’s password, logging on with a new one as if he were Darren himself.” I glanced at Jonah. “Mind if I tag along?”

  “If it’s okay with the boss.”

  Niles waved his hand impatiently. “Go ahead.”

  “All right, we’ll be back in a few minutes,” Jonah said.

  I followed Jonah to the server room. He sat down at a terminal and started typing. Within minutes it was clear that this approach wasn’t going to work either.

  “Shit,” he said, pounding the desk in frustration. “Why isn’t it working?”

  “Because he hacked it.”

  Jonah looked up at me incredulously. “What did you say?”

  “I bet Darren hacked it. He cut you off on purpose.”

  “Why in the world would he do that?”

  “Good question. How well did you know Darren?”

  Jonah shrugged. “Honestly, not well at all. He was nice enough, I guess, but a little strange. High-strung is maybe a better word. I talked to him a couple of times about some computer stuff and he was pretty knowledgeable. But he didn’t seem the hacker type to me.”

  I wondered if Jonah thought I was the hacker type. Guess I wouldn’t tell him. “Did he hang with anyone at work?”

  “Only Michael Hart,” he answered. “They were as tight as brothers until the accident. Or maybe they were something more.”

  “Like what?” I asked even though I knew what he meant.

  “You know…boyfriends,” Jonah said, his face reddening slightly. “Not that I care. What people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms isn’t any of my business.”

  I happened to agree with that statement. “So what happened after Michael died?”

  Jonah shrugged. “Darren became all withdrawn and weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “He didn’t talk to anyone. He’d just walk past you in the corridor, staring off in space, muttering to himself. He spent a lot more time locked in his office than in the labs after that.”

  I didn’t see how I could get any more useful information from Jonah, so I flicked my thumb toward the door. “All right, let’s go break the bad news to the others.”

  Jonah stood and I could tell he was troubled. “This isn’t your fault,” I said, trying to make him feel better. “It’s hard as hell to protect from an inside hack, especially one coming from someone with as many privileges as Darren. Since everything else seems to be running smoothly, it looks like the hack wasn’t malicious. Just paranoid.”

  Paranoid. There was that word again. More and more, it seemed to be an accurate description of Darren Greening.

  Niles and Finn were waiting for us. Finn was looking through Darren’s personnel folder and Niles sat in Darren’s chair, his hands folded in his lap, his face impassive.

  “So?” he asked Jonah, rising from the chair.

  “I’m sorry, sir. He must have hacked into the network and removed himself from the group.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a very unusual happenstance,” I added.

  “Are you saying you can’t access his hard drive?”

  “As of right now, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “I don’t understand how he could lock out his own IT guys,” Finn said.

  “Most likely Darren stole the administrative password,” I offered. “Then he removed the domain administrators and users from his group and created his own local account. His drive information and account would then be accessible to him and him alone.”

  Niles’s face flushed an angry red. “Why would he do this?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. The winning supposition at the moment is paranoia.”

  “From what?” Niles asked.

  “It’s hard to say. To me, an action like this really does scream fear. As if Darren felt he could trust no one.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Perhaps, but that’s where we’re at.”

  “So, the bottom line is that we have no way of accessing his hard drive,” Finn restated, bringing us back to our current dilemma.

  I sat down in Darren’s chair and tapped on his keyboard. “Yes, unless we get lucky and guess the password to his local account. Frankly, the odds of that are pretty astronomical. Darren doesn’t strike me as the type to use his birthday as his password. But since we have no other choice, I suppose I could give it a shot.”

  Niles strode over to the window and looked out, his lips pressed tightly together. “How long will it take?”

  “Probably forever,” I said. “I can’t hack it, Mr. Foreman. I can only guess at Darren’s password.”

  “Then do it. This situation is intolerable. I’ve got something I have to take care of right now. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  With that, he stalked out of the office without a backward glance. Jonah made a slicing gesture across his own neck and then followed.

  Finn and I exchanged glances. “Niles looked pretty upset,” I said.

  “Yes, but frankly I wonder why Niles hasn’t tried to access Darren’s drive before this.”


  I tapped my finger against my chin. “Personally, I think he did.”

  “What?”

  “Look, nothing about Niles smacks of inefficiency. And if my star employee bolted into Neverland, you can be damn sure, the first thing I’d do is check out his computer files. But my guess is Niles wanted to go about it quietly, so at first, he didn’t involve Jonah. I bet he hired some outside consultants who had no luck.”

  “But why the secrecy? Why not tell us?”

  “Heck if I know. Clearly Niles has his own agenda.”

  “So, what now? You think he’s hoping we can figure a way to get in?”

  “Well, it was my name on Darren’s cryptic note after all,” I murmured, swiveling back in the chair. “If I were Niles, I suppose, at the very least, I’d give me a try. Can I have a look at Darren’s folder?”

  Finn handed it over, shaking his head. “I’m going to look through the papers in Darren’s desk. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something useful.”

  “Go for it.” I sincerely doubted it and was pretty sure Niles had already been through the place with a fine-tooth comb. But maybe he didn’t know what to look for. Then again, I didn’t know what to look for either.

  I thumbed through Darren’s file, disappointed to see it contained only standard information, nothing remotely exciting or revealing. And as much as I doubted that Darren would be stupid enough to use his birthday as a password, I didn’t have many other options to try.

  I typed in his birthday in as many different ways as I could think, then his phone numbers, social security number, middle name, mother’s name, father’s name and every combination of his personal data that I could manipulate. Nothing worked. Taking a breath, I tried STRUT, nanotechnology, energy, oil and Earth.

  Nada.

  Not willing to give up yet, I thought about his personal effects in the shoebox. I typed Einstein, rabbit’s foot, Thomas Jefferson High School, Mars, and Michael Hart in a multitude of combinations. I even typed the word paranoia, but came up empty. I spent another ten minutes manipulating all that data some more in as many normal and weird ways that I could imagine, but still came up with nothing.

  “Crappola,” I whispered in frustration and, just for the heck of it, typed in that word.

  Nothing.

  I expelled a frustrated breath and pressed my hand to my forehead. “What the hell are you about, Darren?”

  “Any luck?” Finn was still going through the papers in Darren’s desk.

  “None and frankly I think this is a lost cause. He probably used a mixture of nonspecific letters, symbols and numbers. That’s what I would do if I were him.”

  “Then think like him.”

  There you have it. Wisdom dispensed from a lawyer.

  Sighing, I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I needed to put myself in Darren’s shoes. If I were paranoid and had just hacked into my own company’s network to create my own safe haven, how would I protect it?

  I linked my fingers behind my head and thought. I guess it would depend on why I created my own account. If I wanted complete and utter secrecy, I would use a case sensitive, nine-digit password. Then it would be nearly impossible to crack. Since I presumed that was the whole reason Darren eliminated administrative access to his computer, I couldn’t see how I’d have any success pursuing this avenue of investigation. He obviously didn’t trust anyone, ergo, he didn’t want anyone to be able to see what he had on his drive.

  Then why did he name me in that note?

  My mind flitted to Darren’s Navajo coded message. SOS, it had read. A universal cry for help. A cry of one geek to another.

  Suddenly, a weird sensation came over me. I abruptly sat up and started typing, my fingers flying over the keyboard. I tried half a dozen manipulations and then stopped when I heard the computer working.

  “Finn, I’m in,” I said in disbelief.

  Finn dropped the papers and rushed over to my side. “You’re a bloody genius, Lexi. What was the password?”

  I looked up at Finn, feeling a bit dazed. “My name as it appeared in Georgetown’s yearbook the year we graduated.”

  “You mean to say the password was Lexi Carmichael?”

  “Well, um…not exactly.”

  His brows drew together. “So, what exactly?”

  I sighed. “Lexi ‘Zorch’ Carmichael.”

  “Zorch? Do I dare ask?”

  “Well, in hacker language, it can mean a lot of things. In my particular case, it sort of referred to luck or brownie points.”

  “Damn it, Lexi. Would you mind speaking English?”

  “I’m trying,” I protested, lifting a hand. “Let me put it this way, some of the other students may have considered me—in a tiny way—a bit of a teacher’s pet. They sometimes said things like, ‘Maybe Lexi could help me increase my quota of zorch with Professor Colby’ or ‘I ran out of zorch for the programming exam.’ It was a joke. Lots of computer-science students had nicknames. I don’t know why, but somehow my nickname stuck.”

  “Zorch.”

  “Look, forget the zorch. The point is he used my name as a password on his computer at work. This is getting totally creepy.”

  I accessed Darren’s hard drive, somehow not all that surprised to discover it had basically been wiped clean. There was no smoking gun, no blinking message for me and no encrypted or coded file. Nothing. I might as well have not guessed the password.

  “It’s clean,” I said to Finn who was still peering over my shoulder. “Nothing of interest here.”

  In fact, the only possibly useful items left on Darren’s drive were his email address book and the bookmarks in his internet browser. I glanced through his address book and noticed he had my home email account listed in his book.

  “Jeez, he’s got my personal email account address,” I said, shaking my head. I quickly emailed both files to my account for a closer perusal later and then sat back. I rarely gave out that address, mostly just to my parents and close friends.

  “That is peculiar.”

  “Peculiar?” I repeated, my voice going up a notch. “Darren Greening uses my name as a password and has my home email account listed in his personal address book. But to my knowledge I’ve never met this guy nor received any kind of correspondence from him. What’s the damn connection I’m missing?”

  “I’m certain we’re getting closer to finding that out.”

  But I didn’t share his confidence. I needed a hell of a lot more data.

  “How are you doing on the paper search?”

  “Nothing,” Finn said. “All the research materials are on nanotechnology and energy. It’s all Greek to me. But I’ve got one more drawer to go. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  I thought for a minute. “You know, at our initial meeting Niles mentioned that they had brought in a new guy to replace Michael Hart. Do you know who he is?”

  Finn nodded. “Yes. A guy named Evan Chang. I talked to him on the phone. He didn’t seem to know anything useful.”

  “Maybe I could talk with him.”

  “Niles might not approve of you wandering about the hallways alone.”

  “You think I should call for his approval first?”

  Finn sighed. “No, I don’t think it’s necessary and frankly, I’m not crazy about the way he is hovering. I’ll cover for you if he comes back while you’re gone. I’d like to finish up here.”

  “Okay. Any idea where Chang’s office is located?”

  Finn slid his finger down a laminated piece of paper taped beneath Darren’s phone. “Room 1604. Think you can find it?”

  “Of course, I can. If I get lost, I’ll just ask directions.”

  “Just don’t get shot by security.”

  “I think it would be wiser to hope I don’t touch something and blow us up by accident.”

  Finn chuckled as I left the room. I wandered down the blinding white hallway looking for Room 1604. It took me all of about two minutes to find it and I didn’t even have to ask for directi
ons. The door was open and someone sat typing at a computer, his back toward the door. I cleared my throat and he swiveled around.

  “Can I help you?”

  He was young and Asian, dressed in jeans and a tucked-in button-down shirt. His white lab coat was open and a couple of pens were shoved upside down in his pocket. His glasses had been pushed up on the top of his head.

  “Hi, I’m Lexi Carmichael from X-Corp.” I waited to see if there was any flicker of recognition of my name in his eyes. Nope. Nothing. “Are you Evan Chang?”

  “Yes.” He stood and adjusted his glasses on his nose. “What can I do for you?”

  “We were hired by your company to locate Darren Greening. I wondered if I could ask you a few questions.”

  “I already talked to someone from X-Corp. I don’t know where Darren is. It’s not like we’re friends or confidants. In fact, we’re barely colleagues. I think he resents me, at least in his mind, for trying to take Michael Hart’s place.”

  “Well, essentially wasn’t that why you were hired?”

  “I was hired because I’m a good scientist and a careful researcher. I never wanted to take Michael’s place in Darren’s life.”

  “Is that what he thought you were trying to do?”

  “Probably. He certainly hasn’t yet had a kind word for me.”

  I thought for a moment. “Tell me a bit about your background. What did you get your degree in?”

  “What does that have to do with Darren’s disappearance?”

  “Just humor me.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve got an undergraduate degree in molecular chemistry and a MS in biochemical engineering, both from MIT. I also took several graduate courses at Penn State in nanoscience and nanotechnology. I’m currently working on my PhD there.”

  “So getting a job at Flow was a big step up for you.”

  “Well, yeah, sort of. Look, I’m not going to lie to you. Darren is brilliant. The glimpses of his work that I’ve seen are breathtakingly revolutionary. He’s poised to make scientific history and I don’t mind admitting that I’d like to be a part of that. But the guy is completely nuts. He’s been extremely difficult to work with in my short time here.”

  “So how is it that you became interested in Michael’s old job?” I asked. My question seemed to catch him off guard. Curiously I saw a flicker of uneasiness in his eyes, replaced quickly by indifference.