First Impression II: At Second Glance

Chapter Sixteen - It's complicated

Chapter Sixteen – It’s complicated

There was a backdoor in Sophia’s computer. This backdoor led to a computer which presumably belonged to some hacker. The hacker also planted a similar backdoor in his father’s computer. This was no coincidence. Someone was behind these hackings.

So far, the hacker hadn’t suspected anything wrong and continued to retrieve the files Sophia had purposefully cooked up. Adrian and Avery then planted a bug in one of the files that allowed them to trace the route of the files. The files were always sent to a few emails.

That was the only breakthrough they had in ages. Which was better than nothing. But it was hard menial work; trying to hack into each account to see if there was any information.

Adrian sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He glanced at the clock. 2 a.m. Bloody hell, he had school tomorrow too. Just a little more, he thought to himself. Just a little more… and crack. He was in.

Adrian smiled grimly and began scouring the contacts and email history, all the while being careful to hide his traces. The documents were all those retrieved from Sophia’s email. As Adrian scrolled through the history, he realisedthat this email also contained his father’s emails and papers, most of them from around the period of time just before his father died. 

A chill ran down his spine. He had suspected as much but finding the evidence was still chilling. His intuition told him that there was some big master scheme behind all this and he had merely reached the proverbial tip of the iceberg. There were many more pieces of the puzzle to uncover.

*

“Is that guy even alive?” Edward asked as he placed the tray of four coffees down on the table and sat down. He nodded towards Adrian whose head was glued to the laptop on the table.

Edmund poked Adrian’s cheek experimentally. “ It’s still warm,” he reported. “Still alive.”

Adrian swatted Edmund’s hand away and opened one eye, glaring. “Oi.”

Avery handed Adrian a coffee and asked. “What happened this time to keep you up?”

Adrian took a sip of the coffee and winced. “Edward, you got extra bitter.”

“You look like you needed it,” Edward replied blithely.  

Adrian cast a glance around. The courtyard was fairly empty. He leaned in closer. “I hacked into another of the account we got from the hacker’s computer yesterday night and a lot of my dad’s documents were on it too.” He summarised his grim findings.

The other three were silent, taking in the implications of this discovery.

Edward sighed. “It’s bad when we’re stuck but when we get any headway, it’s still bad news.”

“Chin up, Adrian, we have some additional info for you,” Edmund said and reached for Edward’s bag and pulled out a manila envelope. “We did some research on that middleman guy you saw talking with Senator Palmer and your uncle. There’s not much on him. He seems to be a regular businessman. Pretty low-profile except for one big lawsuit several years back.”

Adrian looked up. “What lawsuit? 

“It was between an architecture firm and construction firm who were partners. The architecture firm was suing the other firm for breach of trust in a hostile takeover. The defendant won the case. But our guy only had a minor role in the case. He testified for the defendant.”

“No other info?” Adrian asked.

The twins shook their heads. “Not yet.”

“We found all we could on the guy,” said Edward.