Page 18 of Lost Truth
“Maybe he has one at his business, and he shreds them there.”
He pushed off the bookshelf. “We’ll have to ask when we go to the shop.”
She went back to the cupboards and pulled dishes in and out. Kai’s neat cabinets continued to show his organizational skills. Thirty minutes later, she reached the final cabinet, holding coffee mugs from various surfing locations across the United States. Based on the mugs being stored high up, she doubted he ever used them but had collected them on his travels.
She took out a vintage mug from Hawaii where a plastic surfer moved in gel on one side and shook it like she’d done with the mugs on lower shelves. Something clinked. Her excitement built. She looked inside. A small blue metal device lay in the bottom. Her heart soared.
“I found something!” she yelled loud enough for Abby to hear in the bedroom. “Looks like a flash drive, but it’s kind of big.”
She hopped down with mug in hand. Hayden met her between the two rooms, and she handed him the mug. Abby rushed into the room.
He picked up the drive and turned it round and round, but instead of excitement over the lead, he frowned. “It’s a flash drive, all right.”
A confusing response, for sure. “I thought you’d be happy I found it.”
“I would be if it wasn’t one of these.” He pulled the ring on the end to release a case and reveal the end of the USB drive that plugged into a computer. Nothing unusual there, but when he flipped it over, the backside of the device held a tiny black keypad.
Something she’d never seen before. “Are those keys used to access the device?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You need to know the PIN and enter it here before you have any hope of getting to the data. It could be any random string of up to fifteen characters. Drives like these often use military-grade encryption that’s oblivious to any kind of hacking. Almost impossible to figure out the password.”
Cady’s excitement was dashed to the curb. She held back a sigh of frustration.
“So unless we get the PIN, you won’t likely be able to open this,” Abby said. “Even then, it’ll be iffy.”
“Exactly.” Hayden shoved the drive back into the sleeve. “Only one hope that I know of to get it open. We need to contact Nick Thorne at the Veritas Center.”
“Veritas Center?” Cady asked.
“World-class forensics experts in Portland,” Hayden said. “Nick is their cyber specialist, and I’ve never seen anything he can’t do. Problem is, he’s highly sought after, and he or his team might not have time to handle this drive.”
“Then together we’ll convince them to do it.” Abby bounced on her toes. “We have to. It must hold something big. Your average surf shop owner in a small town like Lost Lake doesn’t need to own a drive with this level of security.”
“Yeah.” Hayden’s gaze grew uncertain. “It’s seeming more likely Kai is indeed missing, and there’s something on this drive that will help us find him.”
Cady had to agree with him and prayed the drive didn’t reveal something terribly wrong. Wrong enough to have cost Kai his life.
