The Billionaire & I

41.

His eyes took on that hard glint again.

"I want you to see something."

We left his room and ended up in the study. He headed to the desk while I took a seat on one of the sofas. Will returned with his laptop and sat beside me. Placing it on the coffee table, the screen showed a bunch of codes and programs. I minored in Computer Science in college and knew enough to know he was trying to hack into something.

"Is there some kind of firewall behind there?"

"The firewall for Runo's company's website. They talked about it a couple of times while I was tied up in the warehouse. He keeps records of everything on it, drug deals, who killed who, all the crimes they've done."

"He keeps a record of his crimes? And on the company website? Isn't that, I don't know, risky?" I was dumbfounded.

"The website is more like a private network and records like these are like a two way street. He's got other people's info on there too. Stuff he could easily use against them. It's like a little black book. He has one of the best tech teams in the country too, he's confident no one will ever get this information."

"But you are." Viewing the screen again, I could now understand some of the codes better. He was hacking the website.

"That's what Mark and I, along with a small team were trying to do for a while, bring down the firewall of the website. We finally made a lot of progress, we were almost there," he ran a hand through his hair, "then two months ago, half our progress was lost and a message was waiting for us on the site."

"He found out." I said and he nodded in affirmation.

"He knew I'd climbed up the corporate ladder, hard not to,"

That was definitely bragging.

"But he didn't know I was unto him, not until then. That's likely when he started keeping tabs on me. Although when Elise Lynette was killed I thought they had been targeting you." He said and the hairs on my arm stood. "Our work wasn't lost until about a week later though. They were intentional about her."

"She worked for them."

He seemed surprised even as he nodded. "How do you know that? And about the database?"

"The Detective on the case called and told me they caught the murderer but found pictures of me, recently and from nearly seven years ago."

"Finally, a half useful cop." He muttered.

"Do you know why they killed her?"

"I have a theory. She was Twain Yanus' girlfriend."

"Twain Yanus? Who's that?"

He clicked on a folder and a picture of a man, mid-twenties most likely, popped up on the screen.

"I remember him." I pointed.

It was the man who made the last product for Dieter & Leona before they went under. I remembered him because he had a rather unique face.

The day of the disastrous meeting months ago when my pants tore, flashing everyone in the room my underwear. Before the catastrophe, we'd been talking about the last product D&L put out before they went into near bankruptcy. It was a sim card but before it could reach the markets, the man behind it died in a boating accident and his family discontinued the production of the sim.

"What does he have to do with everything?"

"Well, it wasn't an ordinary boating accident that killed Twain."