Five in a Row

by Jan Coffey

  “Just get the fuck out,” he said without any emotion, turning away from the door.

  Debbie had heard worse. She waited a minute, then took a couple of beers out of the fridge and walked out of the kitchen. Lyden had planted himself on the sofa, TV remote in hand. He took one of the beers from her without looking at her and brought it to his lips. He had strong lips. When they latched onto you, they didn’t let go. She liked that.

  It was getting too warm in the room. Debbie watched him switch the channels, barely stopping to see what was on. His legs were stretched out in front of him. Her gaze moved up along his jeans. She’d been hot for him this morning when she came over. She was even hotter now.

  “How about if I put in one of the movies I brought over?” she asked, sitting next to him on the sofa and resting her hand on his thigh. She took a sip of her own beer.

  “Not in the mood,” he said shortly, staring at the television.

  God, he was cute. And she loved a challenge. It only made her crazier to have him. She put the bottle on the floor, kicked her shoes off and cuddled up next to him.

  “That’s okay. Why don’t you just watch TV and let me work out some of your stress.” She pressed her lips to his neck, trailing kisses down his chest as she unbuttoned his shirt.

  He didn’t object. Debbie took that as a positive response. She undid his belt and slid her hand down into his jeans. She smiled, realizing he was already getting hard.

  Withdrawing her hand, she pulled his arm around her and gently pried the remote from his fingers, placing it on the arm of the sofa. Turning back to him, she pressed her breasts against his body and tried to kiss his lips. He wasn’t very responsive and she pulled back to look at him, trying to decide if pouting or simply going down on him would be more effective. His attention was focused across the room, but he wasn’t looking at the TV. She followed the direction of his gaze. He was staring at an eight-by-ten framed photo of his girlfriend on top of the bookcase.

  She felt her temper rising inside her. Not this time, Debbie thought, slowly disconnecting from him. She stood up and walked across the room, putting an extra swing in her hips. Reaching the bookcase, she put the frame facedown on the shelf. Peeling off her halter top, she turned around to give him something worth looking at.

  His eyes were just slits in an ashen face. She’d never seen hate etched so clearly in a man’s expression. As he stood up, he kicked over her bottle of beer, spilling the amber liquid on the rug.

  “You fucking slut.” There was murder in his voice. “Just who the fuck do you think you are?”

  Debbie held the shirt against her chest, backing along the wall and darting a nervous glance toward the steps.

  “Don’t you ever touch Emily’s picture again. Do you hear me?”

  Debbie moved quickly out of his path and yanked the shirt back over her head, missing an arm first and having to do it again. She watched Lyden as he righted the picture. He handled it like he was holding some precious jewel.

  Icy fear pooled in the pit of her stomach when he again fixed his gaze on her.

  “You come here uninvited. You want to get fucked and I oblige, but guess what, next time it only happens when I tape my girlfriend’s picture over your face. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Put like that, it hurt. She felt like a whore.

  “I thought we were starting something—” she managed to get out before he cut her off, his tone even harsher.

  “I said, do you have a problem with that?”

  Debbie didn’t know where she found the strength to whisper the answer. “I do have a prob—”

  “Then get the fuck out now.” Everything about him was menacing. “You have five seconds.”

  She didn’t need five seconds. The same lips that she’d thought were sexy were now thin and bloodless. His eyes were cold, scary. Dead. She didn’t like the way the fingers on his hand opened and closed. She could hear the joints cracking. In one second he was going to come after her. She’d seen this before. Well, something similar, but never quite like this.

  “Listen, Lyden,” she murmured. “I’m sorry I—”

  He fired the beer bottle at her without warning. She would have taken it square in the face if she hadn’t somehow ducked to the side. The bottle whizzed by her ear, and the glass shattered against the wall behind her, the beer spraying on her back and shoulders.

  She turned and scrambled down the steps, not looking back, not caring that she was leaving her shoes behind or the videos that were due back. She just knew she had to get out of here now. Out of reach of Lyden’s fury.

  She knew without a doubt that she was running for her life.

  Eighteen

  It had taken a great deal of finesse to keep the nurses out of Ben’s room for any length of time. It had taken flat-out coercion to get his family out. Ben had managed both.

  Seeing how focused he was on everything that was being reported by his two partners, Emily recognized that Ben was a force to deal with once he set his mind on something, even if he was injured and in pain.

  Ben had given Emily all the background information he had while they’d been waiting for Adam and Gina to arrive at the hospital. Listening to him, she realized that she’d moved past the denial stage some time in the course of the weekend. She’d signed on with Ben Colter, in a manner of speaking. She was working on this case. A lot had changed. She definitely had something personal at stake.

  Gina had been assembling a historical record of court documents to date. She’d come prepared with a summary of statements from “experts” who had testified in a variety of cases, claiming specific electronic system failures in vehicles with drive-by-wire in the ten years since DBW had been incorporated into the design of new cars. In her materials, Gina had not included the five cases Colter Associates was investigating.

  As the attorney finished her summary, she pointed out that all the confirmed DBW failures were identified by the auto manufacturers’ quality control engineers during the diagnostic tests following the accidents. The auto companies—for the public record, anyway—were willing to shoulder the blame when it was warranted and make the appropriate settlement.

  “Our five accidents, not counting your accident today,” Adam began, “are different. All five cars were run through the same postincident testing and passed with flying colors.” He went on to summarize the comparison he’d done on all the diagnostics. According to the tests they’d done, the engine control modules—the central computer brain in each vehicle—showed nothing out of the ordinary to indicate that the ECMs of those vehicles had malfunctioned.

  “At first glance, then, if the ECMs show nothing, it can’t be only a DBW failure,” Ben concluded.

  Adam nodded. “If it were a ‘normal’ DBW malfunction, something would have shown up in the diagnostic test results.”

  “Got it.”

  “Another area I took a close look at was the brake function,” Adam continued, “since every one of the drivers of the five cars involved claimed that the brakes failed to operate.”

  “I can attest to that,” Ben said. He used his good hand on the control button of the hospital bed to sit up straighter.

  Adam turned to Emily. “You probably know that in DBW the brake pedal acts as a potentiometer.”

  “A what?” Gina cut in.

  “A potentiometer,” Adam replied. “It’s like the volume dial on a radio. It sends electronic signals to a microcomputer—”

  “Connected to the central computer in the ECM,” Gina guessed.

  “Right. The computer then sends the message out, dividing hydraulic pressure to each of the four disk brakes according to how much the sensors decide each disc needs.”

  “And all of this communication is recorded in an event log in the ECM,” Emily said to Gina.

  “That’s right,” Adam said. His excitement showed as he flipped through some pages in his notes. “What’s fascinating is that none of the event logs in these cars recorded any malfun
ction. To the inspectors looking at the system after the accidents, everything appears to have functioned the way it should. In fact, the codes in the log verify that there was perfect communication going on the entire time.”

  Gina shook her head. “You mean they actually recorded that the driver braked and the car responded as it should.”

  “Exactly,” Adam replied.

  “Could the codes be, I don’t know, wrong?” Gina asked.

  “Obviously,” Adam answered.

  “How sure are we that the ECMs in these cars were not tampered with?” Ben asked. “Are they tamper-proof?”

  All of them turned to Emily.

  “Let me back up a little,” she started. “The signals in drive-by-wire systems are digital. The complexity of automotive drive-by-wire systems requires a network. Now, due to the nature of the system and decreasing use of backup systems, the network has to be robust—”

  “Hold on.” Ben held up his good hand. “When you use the word ‘network,’ I think of the bandwidth attacks that crippled the systems at Yahoo, eBay, Amazon—even the FBI, some five or six years ago. How secure is the DBW network really?”

  “Very…or at least that’s what the software companies doing the contract work like to say. They love quoting their encryption levels,” Emily explained. “But before I get into explaining the possible ways around their security, I should explain how the whole thing is structured.”

  Gina, her legal pad in hand, pulled her chair closer to Emily. “Thank you. That’s exactly what I need, some education on this stuff. Just don’t use any terminology that’s too technical.”

  Emily smiled, opening her files and handing the attorney copies of printouts that explained the topic in more detail. She then turned her attention to the two men in the room.

  “Conventional office networks and those networks currently used in multiplexed signal applications on some cars rely on an event-driven protocol. An event-driven protocol is essentially reactive, passive, meaning it does nothing until requested to handle an exchange of information. With such a system, if the network is faulty, the driver may only discover this when he or she tries to operate something that is controlled using the event-driven network, like the sunroof or the windows.”

  Adam took notes. Ben, with an IV stuck in one arm, only watched her. Emily knew he was in pain. He’d refused the proffered medication the last time one of the nurses had poked her head through the door. Emily tried not to look his way too much as she talked, knowing she could easily be distracted, and she didn’t want to lose her train of thought. Ben was after information now, not sympathy.

  Emily glanced down at her notes. “For applications that are more complex and more safety-critical, the aforementioned arrangement isn’t robust enough to ensure the level of reliability needed. For systems like braking or steering, a time-triggered protocol is used.”

  “TTP,” Adam repeated, finding something on his notes and circling it. “That was one of my questions.”

  “And what’s that?” Gina asked.

  Emily was glad that she’d dug up the right information for them. “TTP allocates specific blocks of time to each of the connected computers. On each allocated time block—which are fractions of seconds—the specific computer must respond and acknowledge that it’s there and functioning correctly. If the ECM wishes to have a specific operation carried out, the signals for this wish are messaged via the network to the actuator’s controller.”

  “Wait,” Gina broke in. “So this back-and-forth messaging is like taking continuous roll call, saying we’re here and working.”

  “Exactly,” Emily said. “The network checks continually that the system computers are connected and making the appropriate responses. Then, in cases of failure, the fault-tolerant protocol of the ECM can take appropriate actions.”

  “Gina, are you sure you weren’t a TTP system in your last life?” Adam teased. “Considering how many times you call home to check on your kids…”

  He ducked as a crumpled piece of paper flew across the room at him. Gina smiled sweetly at Emily. “You have a teenager. You know how it is dealing with an adolescent. Please go on.”

  “What kind of timing are we talking about between checks?” Ben asked Emily.

  “A failure should be detected in a matter of a milliseconds.”

  “So a person can’t really hack into the system between checks,” Adam commented.

  “Somebody did take control of my Aston this morning. They were operating the car for me—and it wasn’t for milliseconds.” Ben didn’t take his eyes off of her. “What are the weaknesses in the security system, Em? What are the loopholes into this kind of network?”

  Emily put her notes aside and sat back in the chair. “You understand that everything I say from here on is hypothetical. I have no proof of any of it.”

  “I like hypothetical,” Adam put in. “But Gina only likes to deal in facts.”

  “I want to hear all of it,” Gina corrected.

  “Well, there are ways that one could hack into the system,” Emily started. “You can get into the network if the system permits ongoing upgrades.”

  “Do these systems permit upgrades?” Ben asked.

  “Upgrades are an ongoing thing with engine control modules,” Adam answered for her.

  “And since they do,” Emily continued, “I think it’s possible a person could secretly upload a trojan that is programmed to wake up at a certain time or under a certain condition. It could then enable a ‘talk’ device that, in effect, becomes a remote control device to take over the car. The vehicle could then be driven by remote control off into a field, or into a church building, or—”

  “Did you say ‘driven by remote control’?” Gina repeated.

  “That’s right.”

  “And with the satellite navigation systems tied into the ECMs,” Ben suggested darkly. “They would know where the car is and which way they should drive it.”

  Emily nodded.

  “I can’t believe it,” Gina said, sitting back. “Remote control. Like a video game.”

  “But it’s not virtual reality,” Adam added. “It’s reality reality.”

  “Are the updates done locally?” Ben asked. “In the local dealerships, for example?”

  “I don’t know that. But I do know that the manufacturers keep a log on the upgrades that they do prior to shipping the vehicles out.”

  “In either case, we should be able to check to see if recent upgrades were done prior to any of the accidents in question.”

  Adam took notes. “Emily, say a trojan was uploaded into the system. Shouldn’t that be visible on the event log?”

  Emily thought for a moment.

  “Not if it was coded in such a way that it carried instructions to erase itself or somehow mask the activity within the log.”

  “It can do that?” Gina asked.

  “Absolutely,” Emily replied. “Which brings me to something else…another way someone could be tapping into the vehicle’s network.”

  Emily looked at their faces, making sure everyone was with her.

  “It’s possible an OS patch was loaded into the ECM initially. This patch would contain a virus that simply lies dormant. Then, when it wakes up, it follows very specific commands.”

  “You mean like turn right, turn left, accelerate to eighty miles-per-hour before you take another left?” Gina asked.

  “Something like that. Of course, then there would be the same pattern in all the accidents,” Emily said.

  “I’ve read the witness and driver statements on the five accidents,” Ben said, shaking his head. “There’s no identical pattern, including when I throw my car into it. The first car drove around a parking lot like a toy for fifteen plus minutes before it crashed. The second one, in Providence, took less time—the whole thing happening in under a minute. I tend to lean toward your initial suggestion that someone is remotely tapping into the ECM using a trojan or some virus. Someone was driving my car for m
e.”

  Emily nodded. “Then we should go with the idea that, one way or the other, a trojan was loaded into the system and that the perpetrator is taking total control of the car. He or she is following three steps. Load, execute and hide.”

  “I can’t believe someone can actually do this,” Gina said.

  “It can definitely be done,” Emily replied. “The mechanism for delivery will be hard to pinpoint, though, unless something jumps at us when we look at the software upgrades.”

  “I can have my fingers on that info first thing Monday morning,” Adam asserted.

  Emily turned to Ben. “I believe the best use of my time will be finding what the intruder has most likely tried to erase on the event log in your car. I’d like to get into the Aston’s ECM and start digging for shadows in the memory. Those shadows are the very fine fingerprints of who’s been there and what they’ve done.”

  “I can arrange for that, too,” Adam said. “You can have the first look, before any mechanics or engineers sent by the automaker get their paws on it.” He turned to Gina. “This is exactly the type of testing that I was telling you about on the phone. Nobody has been looking too deeply into those systems. Everyone has been working on covering their own asses with respect to liability. There has been no serious thought of the possibility of foul play.”

  “That’s where we come in.” Ben looked at Emily. “We’ll make that call, if it’s warranted.”

  “But can we make that call fast enough, or soon enough, before someone else gets hurt?” Gina asked, sitting straight in her chair. “Six days ago, there were five accidents. Now there are six. The first vehicle crashed twenty-one months ago, but since June of this year, there have been five more. The last two were only six days apart.”

  There was a long pause, and Emily considered the ramifications of what Gina was saying. Things were happening faster now. What was next?

  “And why,” the attorney continued, “did the last two accidents happen in Connecticut?” Gina looked directly at Ben. “And why were you, of all people, involved in it?”