Authors: Julie Moffett
“You were the star of the evening. I enjoyed being with you and showing you off to my friends. I had fun.”
“In spite of me hanging up on your father and hurling all over the limo?”
He chuckled. “There’s never a dull moment with you, Lexi. Truthfully, I had a hell of a good time. There is no pretense, no games. But most of all, I like being with you.”
The warm, fuzzy feeling began spreading in my stomach. “I like being with you, too, Finn. By the way, I forgot to mention I’d be happy to pay for the clean-up of the limo.”
“Forget it even happened.”
“Actually that’s top on my list of things to do today.”
He laughed. “See, I have to work hard to stay one step ahead of you.”
The tension broken, Finn turned on the radio to the local jazz station and I tapped my foot in time to Louis Armstrong until we arrived.
Flow Technologies was in a brand-new building just off the Dulles Toll Road, not too far from Darren’s apartment. The industrial-looking building was a bit of an oddity in an area full of high-rise, dazzling architectural structures with unusual shapes and lots of glass windows. Flow Technologies was a long one-storied complex, painted silver and surrounded by an electric fence. Someone had designed the building to curve slightly in order to form almost a semi-circle. In front of the building stood a huge fountain that even in November sprayed water high into the air and down over two magnificent glass dolphins. A guard stood at attention at the entrance to the parking lot and stopped us, checking with Flow to make certain we were permitted to enter before letting us in.
We pulled into the visitor area and parked the car. As we walked toward the entrance of the building, I tossed a penny into the dolphin fountain for good luck. Finn smiled, so I tossed in another one for him. Inside, the receptionist made us wait in an area with real plants and lush leather armchairs while she checked with someone to announce our arrival. I noticed with interest two armed guards patrolling around the building. I guess Flow considers it secrets well worth guarding.
Niles came out to meet us. He wore a badge around his neck and handed two visitor badges to Finn and me. He led us to a locked wooden door and slid an electronic card from his pocket and then placed his palm on a nearby screen. The door beeped and he pulled it open.
“Tight security,” Finn commented as we passed through and into a stark white hallway.
“Yes,” Niles said. “It’s a necessity in our business. Industrial spying is rampant.”
We walked down the hall as Niles explained how the office was divided into several sections.
“To the right is the Materials Division,” Niles explained as we stopped at a fork in the hallway. “That is where work is done on self-organized nanostructures. To the left is the NanoDevice Division where our scientists are conducting research on new materials, processes and instrumentation. Straight ahead is the Biomolecular Division where Darren spent most of his time exploring new systems and concepts based on self-assembled or single molecular manipulations at nanoscale.”
“Cool,” I murmured. I glanced over at Finn and saw he was completely clueless so I gave him a reassuring smile.
We continued down the long corridor. Somehow just the sheer size of Flow Technologies surprised me. I guess I’d kind of thought of Flow as a small, tight company. I should have realized creating something as mind-boggling as an energy replacement for oil would take a lot more space and equipment than two kids could manage, even if they were geniuses.
We walked past a highly guarded area, including a security guard armed with a stun baton.
“Hello, Richard.” Niles nodded. “Richard is standing in front of the specially designed Clean Room—an experimentation lab designed so that there are less than ten micro-inches of floor vibration throughout the lab complex. This ensures optimum performance from ultra-sensitive equipment, including an electron-beam lithography system and a scanning electron microscope. Would you like to check it out?”
Since I didn’t see how I would understand much I saw beneath a scanning electron microscope, I asked instead, “Can we have a look at Darren’s office?”
“Certainly. It’s this way.”
We bid good-bye to Richard and headed not too far from the Clean Room to a large office. A multifunctional desk stood pushed up against a wall upon which sat a computer with an extra-large flat panel display. Shelves took up nearly every other inch of wall space and were crammed with books, reference materials and manuals. A framed poster with a black background and white lettering hung over the computer desk and read simply: Your Village Called, Their Idiot is Missing.
I couldn’t help but snicker.
I sat down in his nice leather swivel chair and placed my fingers over the keyboard. It took me two strokes to realize the computer was password protected.
“Anyone know his password?”
Niles shook his head.
“Who’s your IT guy?”
“Our what?”
“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.