The Hacker Heiress Strikes Back novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Monday, Nine A.M.

She walks into the security firm that ruined her and reads its own audit back to its founder in front of his staff, and he reopens it; the tamper key leads to the Merriman family office.

Whitfield Security lived in a converted cotton warehouse in Castleberry Hill.

It had exposed brick, forty desks, and a glass conference room in the middle.

I walked in at 8:58 with my laptop bag on my shoulder and last night's hoodie still smelling of Maybelle's fabric softener.

The receptionist stood up behind her desk.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"A nine o'clock with the man who ruined my life," I said. "He knows."

She looked at the clock, then at my silver-lilac hair, then at the clock again.

"Conference room," she said faintly.

I didn't wait to be walked.

Forty people turned their heads as I crossed the floor, and the keyboards slowed one row at a time.

Raylan Whitfield stood at the head of the glass room with his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He had the family attorney on speakerphone and a printed copy of his report on the table.

He also had a tired look I would have missed if I hadn't spent six years studying that PDF.

"Ms. Calhoun," he said. "You're early, and you're not on my calendar."

"Tell the lawyer to hold," I said. "This takes four minutes."

The speaker clicked off.

I set my laptop on the table and opened it to the first page of his report.

Page four, line nine, a block of code with a date beside it.

"August fourteenth, last year, 3:12 a.m.," I read. "That's the commit you say proves Marlena wrote Lamplight first."

"It is the earliest entry in her repository," he said. "Verified against her laptop."

"Verified how?"

"Metadata."

"Metadata is a sticker," I said. "Anyone can peel it off and put on another. Please look at line forty-one."

He looked.

I watched him read it, and I watched him not like what he saw.

"It imports a library called pyrelay," I said. "Version three point two."

"So?"

"Version three point two came out this March."

The glass room went very quiet.

Outside the walls the whole floor had stopped typing.

"A commit from August of last year," I said, "can't call a function that wasn't written until seven months after it."

Raylan took off his rimless glasses and cleaned them on his tie.

It was a slow, deliberate movement, the kind a man makes to give himself two seconds.

"That could be a later edit."

"Then it isn't August," I said. "And it isn't first."

He put the glasses back on.

"Pull the release notes," he told the room without turning around.

A young man at the nearest desk was already typing.

He read aloud from his screen, and his voice went smaller with every word.

"Pyrelay three point two. Published March twelfth. Public registry."

Somebody behind us whispered, "Oh, no."

Raylan didn't flinch.

He turned his head slowly toward me, and for the first time he looked at me without a number in his eyes.

"How did you know the release date?"

"I'm good at reading my own mistakes," I said. "Yours too."

He took that in.

"My report is going to the Merrimans in an hour," he said quietly.

"Then you have an hour to decide what kind of man signed it."

The tablet in his hand lit up with a call from the attorney.

He declined it.

"Reopen the audit," he said to the room. "All of it. Every signature on that repository, from the first commit on."

Chairs scraped.

Forty people started moving at once.

Raylan came around the table until he was close enough that I could smell clean cotton and cedar.

"Nobody has ever walked into this room and told me I was wrong in front of my own people," he said.

"I could have waited in the lobby," I said. "I didn't want you to be alone when you found out."

"That's very generous."

"It isn't," I said. "I want witnesses."

The corner of his mouth moved.

It might have been annoyance, and it might have been the first smile he'd had in a week.

"Sit," he said. "Show me the signature block."

I sat.

I typed fast, because my fingers knew the path.

The commit hash, the signing key, the fingerprint, and then the ugly green line at the bottom that said who had authorized it.

The young man at the nearest desk stopped breathing.

"That isn't Marlena's laptop key," Raylan said.

"No."

He leaned closer, one hand flat on the table beside mine.

"Signed Saturday night at 11:40 p.m.," he read. "Issued to the Merriman family office."

Then he read the name beside it, and the color went out of his face.

"Account holder," he said. "Lucinda Merriman."

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