Marcus
I’m ruthless when it comes to business.
I’ve been told I’m arrogant and have expensive tastes.
I’m a womanizer, and I’ve spent one too many nights on the town.
But when it comes to saving lives…I’ll spare no expense.
I’m shocked that Katy has trusted me with the truth. I’m pleased that there are no more secrets between us...at least from her side.
But now I have to jump into action. Lives are at stake, and I suddenly feel as though the weight of the world is on my shoulders.
“Katy,” I say, holding her arms. “You have to tell me more information. I need to know more information about the bomb. When is it gonna go off?”
She looks at me with a worried expression and says, “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to log back into the chatroom but they have me axed. I can’t get back in. I just know that it’s gonna happen in the next 24 hours. I remember them saying that.”
“Okay, that’s something. We still need more to go off, but I’ll start making calls now. Don’t worry, everything’s gonna be okay.”
I say the words, but in my heart, I’m not sure that it’s true. How can it be okay? There’s a bomb in the city, and we don’t know when and where it’s gonna go off.
Luckily, I have every resource at my disposal.
I make various calls, first to my personal security team who are the best in town.
“Hey, Alfred,” I say to the main operative. “There’s a bomb in the city, and we don’t know when it’s gonna go off. My…friend thinks she might know what building it’s at, but she’s not sure. She’s gonna try to hack into the system and find out more information. But in the meantime, I need you guys combing the city for all potential suspects. Got it?”
“No problem, boss.” He seems unfazed. “We’ll find it before it goes off. Trust me.”
That’s why I like my team so much. Having protected celebrities and presidents alike, they are used to this sort of threat. I know they’ll get the job done.
I also call the police, the FBI, and the government. There’s no hiding this from anybody. Everyone needs to find out.
Somehow I’m gonna have to work around the fact that Katy is a hacker. I don’t want her getting in that middle of all this. She came clean with me after all. She deserves to be trusted.
While we’re waiting for everyone to do their jobs, I ask Katy, “Anything else? Is there anything you can remember from the chat room?”
She thinks for a few seconds and says, “They said they want to make a statement. And that this is their statement. I told them I didn’t agree with them and then they locked me out.”
Part of me is proud of her for not being a part of this. I know she’s in a clandestine world that burglarizes corporations, but the fact that Katy can at least draw a line in the sand against her oppressors is a good sign. She has a sense of morality about her.
Tears are forming in her eyes, and I realize how upsetting the situation must be for her. She’s never dealt with anything like this before. I can’t imagine how traumatizing it must be.
And so much of my pride comes in the fact that she chose to call me over all others.
I wrap her up in my arms and say, “It’s gonna be okay, Katy. We have the best people on it. The government knows, for God’s sake. They’ll shut it down, and everything will be fine. I promise.”
“I hope so,” she says tearfully into my shoulder. “I just can’t help but feel responsible for all of this. Had I not been a part of their world, maybe none of this what happened.”
I squeeze her tighter and say, “Yes, but Katy, if you hadn’t been part of their world, we never would have known about their plan, and the bomb probably would’ve gone off no matter what. So, it’s a good thing you were there. You’ll be what stopped it. Besides your motives are pure...kind of.”
She laughs a little at my statement, and I’m glad to at least get a small smile from her.
“I’m gonna try to hack into their system again. It doesn’t hurt to try,” Katy says as she opens the chat room once again.
I facilitate many calls between the police and FBI. They’re questioning me about what else we know.
“Is your source reliable?” an FBI agent says.
“Extremely reliable. In fact, we’re trying to get as much information as we can right now.”
The man says, “This could be a hoax. To be frank with you, Marcus, we don’t have the funds or the people to follow up on an unreliable tip. You know how many calls we get every day about bomb threats―and many aren’t real. It’s hard to sift the real ones apart from the fake ones. So for me to put manpower behind this, I need to know that it’s real for sure.”
The fact that these guys are even talking to me about money makes me cringe.
Shouldn’t the government have every resource at their disposal? How do they sift through the various bomb threats anyway? Who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong in terms of this kind of violence?
I decide to do the only thing that I can think of. I decide to do what I know is right.
“Let me tell you this,” I say. “How about I pay for all of it instead? You can use my money for your resources and therefore you can use the best of the best and make sure to shut this thing down. I want you to do it.”
The guy is surprised, and he says, “Are you sure about that, Marcus? Because I just might take you up on that offer. If what you say is true, we’re gonna need lots of people behind this.”
“I’m absolutely sure. Do it.”
It’s a drop in the bucket to me. I have so much damn money that it’s hard to spend it all sometimes.
Just then I feel her slim arms come around my waist from behind.
She says, “You’re really gonna do that? That’s amazing, Marcus. Spending your own money to stop this is really an amazing thing. Thank you.”
I turn around and take her face in my hands before placing a deep kiss on her lips. I can smell the perfume in her hair or on her neck or wherever she puts them. She smells and looks gorgeous, as always.
And I’m starting to get used to her little hacker apartment that doesn’t have one scrap of furniture.
I take a seat on the bed next to her computer, and she goes to try to log back into the chat room. The girl is ruthless. She’s trying to navigate around all of their restrictions.
I watch her fingers fly over the keyboard, and I’m just astonished at her talent for this kind of work.
“Do you think you can break it? If you can do that, Katy, then we’ll have the upper hand,” I say.
“I don’t know,” she says. “But I think I might’ve found a weakness in their chat room. I think I can get in and out pretty quickly without them realizing I was there. But the method that I need to use to do it is kind of shady.”
“Shady?” I ask.
“As in…breaking the law,” she says.
“I think you should do whatever you need to do. This is more important than the law.”
“Okay,” she breathes. “Here I go,” she says as she engineers her plan.
I’m looking over her shoulder, waiting for any information to pop up on the screen.
Finally, we see others in the chat room. The conversation is right before us. She and I are able to read every message exchanged about the bomb. We get every detail that we need.
“You got it?” she asks. “Because they’re gonna know we’re here in a second. If they learn that we saw all the details they might change the location and the day of the bomb. I have to get out.”
I’m writing down every last detail on my phone.
Then I say to her, “Shut it down.”
She does so, and we’re out of the chat room. But we got all the information we needed. Hopefully, the hackers will never have realized that we were there. Katy must really be good at her job to hack into a chat room with that many blocks.
I’m on the phone immediately with my contacts relating to them all the new information.
The FBI is absolutely pleased with it. I tell them not to ask where it came from. They don’t.