Breaking-in, CH 14 (Patreon)

A look through the files confirms there is nothing I need to add to them. Johnathan was the last incomplete one. I put them back in the cabinet and take out the laptop from the desk drawer.

Its case is aluminum, reinforced carbon steel. Alex tried to convince me to let him build it sleek and compact. All I had to do was take his and apply torsion to it for him to understand why I prefer the case to be bulky and solid.

He assembled the insides while he was healing. Built me a computer that will put to shame anything I stole from the military. It has the latest processor, eight terabytes of solid state drive, two-hundred and fifty-six gigs of random access memory. The entire thing is his design, with an operating system built on a Linux base, which means I can go in and make alteration, should I feel the need.

I have yet to feel that need.

Withing the house, I can access the internet through the encrypted Wi-Fi without worrying about being traced. Alex has all connections routed through a series of servers across the country with blind reroutes and switch junctions. When outside the house, the laptop of programmed to negotiate any accessible connection until it reaches a server within the country’s largest provider, where it will spoof itself over two-hundred and fifty-six different IPs.

So long as I exercise a minimum of care in what site I access, he guarantees that I will never be traced when I hack a server.

I appreciate the effort he has put in ensuring I will be safe, but he mistakes how I gain access to computers with how he and Asyr do it.

“Hi,” I say when the call is answered. “I’m I talking to Jerome Cloudel?”

“Yes,” the voice is young, uncertain.

“This it Tim, out of the Nevada office.”

“Okay?”

I chuckle. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Sorry, should I?”

“Last year’s National picnic at Yellowstone. You, me and Yolanda had too much to drink and we climb that rock where we…”

“Oh, dear God. That was with you?”

“Sorry, yeah.” I chuckle, embarrassedly. “That was with me.”

Jerome, Yolanda, and Tim were recorded by one of their coworkers stripping in the sun when they thought they were alone. They did nothing but sun themselves, but considering what societal expectations are, once they sobered up, it wouldn’t be something they’d want to think about.

What the person who recorded them might have planned when they uploaded the video to social media, I don’t know. Asyr intercepted it, corrupted the end file and original one, leaving me with the only intact copy. I have an ongoing contract with them to gather anything that will give me leverage within the law agencies. This could be used to blackmail Jerome into doing a number of dangerous thing, or help establish me as someone he can trust because we shared one irresponsible act while intoxicated.

I have thousands of such files stored away on a variety of servers.

“Man, I haven’t thought about…”

“I try not to either,” I tell him. “But when I saw you were my contact for this security check, it kind of surfaced. You spoken with Yolanda since?”

“Oh, dear God, no. I haven’t even looked up what office she’s out of. Did you?”

“Are you kidding? What would I even say?”

She’s based out of the Washington, DC, office.

“Yeah. So, security check? I haven’t heard of anything being scheduled.”

“I hadn’t either, but they dropped this on me fifteen minutes ago. I’m to go through your office’s setup, look over the firewalls. You know the drill.”

“Yeah, but usually they send a notice.” He hesitates. This is outside the parameters he’s used to operate in. Government work is rigidly maintained. Deviations from the norm are never good news.

“I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with you. And I wasn’t given any specific things to look at or into.” I pause. “I mean, I can send you the order if you want. Maybe you’ll see a detail I missed and…”

“I can’t do that. It’d be both our jobs if anyone got wind of it.” His tone gains confidence. “And I know I haven’t screwed up anything, so whatever they’re looking for you to find, it won’t point to me.” He types. “Alright, I’ve opened the port. You can get in and do your check.” He gives me the IP address.

Just like that. I am within the FBI’s computers.

People are much easier to hack than machines.

What I’m looking for isn’t in their system. Although, if I don’t find it, there might be something there that will point me to how the anomaly occurred.

Over the years, I tested the police response time throughout Phoenix. Knowing how long I have to vacate and cleanse a locker is vital to ensuring I remain free. The inconsistency in how quickly the police responded not only to the report of a suspect in the vandalism perpetrated in the neighborhood, but also in searching Johnathan’s house has to be based in… something.

My initial thought was that the neighborhood as a whole, or a few individuals, were paying the local precinct for rapid response, but I have gone over everyone’s finances and accounted for all expenses.

I don’t have enough information about the inhabitants of the surrounding neighborhoods at this point to investigate them, and going to the precinct directly will be faster. 

Because of how interconnected Law enforcement is, and because the FBI is higher within the echelon, it’s simply a question of locating the right administrative path within those computers for me to make my way unquestioned within the Phoenix police systems and get the list of officers at the local precinct.

I also get the list for all the precinct in Phoenix. It is possible that the chain of corruption doesn’t start locally, but that it was instructed to act quicker from higher up.

Could it have come from the FBI?

I quickly quiet the boxes intent on sending me chasing down all those avenues. I do not have the time. The types of security check I am supposed to be performing never lasts more than nineteen minutes, and I have used three-quarter of that making my way into the phoenix police and acquiring the list of officers. If I do not find the culprit there, I can find another way within the FBI’s system and look for them there.

I confirm I have everyone working there, then exit, sending Jerome a message confirming I’m done, and that everything looks good. I add a message to Asyr for them to monitor Jerome’s emails and calls and redirect anything he sends to Tim back to me. There is no reason for him to want to initiate contact, not over an embarrassing incident, but people come with some level of unpredictability I need to account for.

The next step is to enter the names into a program Alex wrote when I started researching our neighbors that will do a surface scraping of their finances. That will be enough to eliminate anyone who is not taking bribes from my research.

While the program runs and consider my next step while sketching a drawing of Emil lounging on the couch, laptop on his lap and that crease on his brow he gets when he’s trying to understand something. I expect he was going over his studies.

Can the speedy response have anything to do with the link Alex found between Mexico and Phoenix? Could that be whoever this unknown person or group is looking for, those responsible for Juan Manuel Fernan’s death?

If it is, why have they not acted? Their existence would indicate the investigators I convinced to stop looking into us were hired from Phoenix and not Mexico as the left over of my and Alex’s actions regarding Liaison. If that is the case, would they have pictures?

If they know what I look like, they should have acted.

If they don’t, then it feels too coincidental for them to have a hand in increasing the police’s reaction time as part of looking for me. They would have to force that city wide.

And only if they had a reason to believe I am here. The investigator would have told them I was well out of the city before I stopped them.

If they are, should I stop at investigating the police? It would make sense for them to use every emergency organization within the city to find me. 

I find the box and silence it.

This has stepped beyond being cautious and into paranoia.

Find out how who is behind the increase in readiness within the city police and why will answer the question of if it is because of me, or this was merely a coincidence.

I do not like coincidences.

A glance at the screen shows me a handful of names have completed. Those with the smallest financial footprint. Most likely not corrupt, as corruption increases the footprint within the financial system of those involved.

I turn to another blank page. This time I draw Alex, bruises on his neck when my fingers held him. The scars, fresh and old, on his flesh. Bruises on his hip, where I held him and I fucked him. The need and fear I his eyes.

His box glows and I stop drawing before the excited trembling of my hand ruins it. I still it. I can not control it entirely, and I accept that. But I will not have it take over the way it attempts anytime I’m not entirely focused on controlling it.

There is a thrill in the way Alex makes me feel, but also a danger.

I look at the incomplete drawing, and the box tests its limits again. If Alex was home, instead of work, I would drag him into the backyard and we would fight until the pain made me take him.

I tighten my hold on it, and my cock softens.

I set the pencil and pad aside. Continuing will only stress my control. So I need something other than Alex to think about.

Contingencies.

If the police’s rapid response is because of me, I need to prepare an exit strategy and a method to sanitize the house.

I am halfway through drawing the house’s foundation and marking the best location for Semtex to ensure it caved in with the least amount of damage to the neighboring houses, when the laptop dings. I set the diagram aside, next to the list of city utilities I need Asyr to hack into and look over the names. The program has gone through two hundred of the over three thousand officers.

I easily eliminate half as uncorrupted. A quarter goes on a list of probably uncorrupted. Thirty will most certainly be revealed as on the take after a deeper look into their finances, and nineteen names don’t even need that to know they are getting paid by someone.

The question is by whom and if any of it relates to finding me.

The knock on my door has me reach for the Desert Eagle and pointed at it when it opened.

Alex smirks. “You know. When you’re not wearing pants like that, I can’t really go for the ‘is that a gun in your pocket?’ joke. But on the upside, I can see you’re happy to see me.”

I have him against the wall, hand around his throat. “Do you think you’ve earned what you’ve seen?” I loosened my grip only enough to let him speak.

“I’ll be happy to kick your ass for it.”

The insolence. His box glows. The arrogance. Others react to it. The sheer audacity to think that he has a chance.

I’m so hard, I contemplate forgoing having him earn what I will do to him and simply doing it.

Alex is a danger to my self-control.

And I love the thrill of it.