Page 98 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
“Okay.” Jada cleared her throat. “Bonham was definitely old school. He was thinking just like a spy back in the cold war days, so you have to put yourself into his mindset. They had some pretty sweet operations back in the day, even with the limited tech they had. So, Bonham was trying to figure out different ways that you could get the firmware installed into different companies’ systems. His best effort, which he didn’t share with Risk Guard, was installing the virus into people’s phone’s connection cords, and then if they charged or paired them with their company laptop, they would then drop the malicious firmware into the laptop port via the connection cord.”
“If he’s doing firmware, wouldn’t that have only captured the stuff on that laptop? Isn’t that how firmware works? I’m confused,” Lark admitted.
“I’m sorry, I should be saying firmware malware. As opposed to a software virus that works on your applications, firmware malware can and will, depending on the bad-guy, corrupt high-privilege layers. Compromised firmware will then screw withallof your software and allow remote access to your machine, and to answer your question, Lark, because the firmware is also malware, it spreads like the virus it is.”
Lark shuddered.
“We’ve got you covered, Lark,” Gideon assured her. “Remember when you left your laptop behind that day you went up and visited Amy in D.C.? I put in some serious, and I’m talking serious, security. You’re safe now.”
“Gonna have to talk to Kostya about being less sneaky but let me thank you, Gideon, for covering my ass,” she smiled.
“Well, we get the idea of what he was thinking to install the firmware. It’s not bad, but it’s not great. Did he have something developed that he could attach to the phone cords?” Clint asked.
“Yep,” Jada answered.
“Now that’s interesting. Can you replicate it?” Dex asked.
“Kane can,” Jada immediately answered.
“Thisisgood stuff. Great job, you two,” Gideon gave her a blinding smile. Having him so impressed was almost as good as sex with him…almost.
Jada turned back to the computer screens. “Okay, Rylie, you and your team are up. You didn’t send up an update, so I figured you’d hit a wall.”
“We had,” she said. The problem with this project is, there aren’t really any strings to follow. It’s more trying to think like he does and figure out what he might be doing,” Rylie admitted. “But in the last day, the three of us began to have some ideas.”
“Lay them out,” Jada requested.
“Obviously, Kendall likes playing different roles,” Lydia began. “Kendall played Miles, but even while he was Miles he was playing at being the CTO at Reynolds and also the mover and shaker board member at Risk Guard.”
Everybody nodded in agreement.
“So, it makes sense that he might have another persona he’s ready to slip into when the Miles one was uncovered.”
Again, everybody nodded, but Jada moved closer to the monitors, and Gideon, God bless him, moved with her, his arm remaining around her shoulder.
“Kane, you should have told me you were going to Manhattan,” Rylie said with a big grin. “You could have met up with a good friend of mine, Melvin Powers. He ended up taking a trip to Miles Albright’s penthouse apartment with another friend of ours, Aretha Heyer.”
“Aretha Heyer, the model?” Lark asked.
“Yeah, that Aretha Heyer,” Rylie replied. “Thanks to her, they were let up to the top floor. Anyway, Melvin scoured Miles/Kendall’s home and found something hinky. He had an extensive library, but a lot of it was not on tech, it was on History, specifically on medieval law. I mean a lot, a lot of books. He took pictures.”
“And his computer?” Jada asked.
“Everything was wiped clean. He found nothing.” Rylie sighed, but then grinned. “But Aretha noticed something else.”
“What else? Don’t keep us in suspense.” Dex was clearly exasperated.
“There were four books throughout the library all about Loyola University. When Melvin did a quick check, he found a class taught at Loyola called Medieval Crime and Community. It’s been taught online by a new professor for the last six months, by the name of Gideon Rydell. The picture of the guy is blurry, but I would say it’s him!”
“Hell, when does he have time to juggle all of this?” Kane wanted to know.
“I don’t know who this Melvin guy is, but tell him I love him,” Jada grinned.
Gideon gave her hair a firm tug, and Jada smiled even bigger. “Okay, so we know who his next persona is, but he could be located anywhere.”
“And he still is planning something big, and my gut is telling me it’s going to be soon,” Gideon reminded the team. “Let’s share all the compiled information that we have and see what we can come up with in the next twenty-four hours.”
Jada’s fingers ached to start in on her keyboard. “Agreed,” Kane said, then his Zoom window went blank. Four more windows went blank almost simultaneously, which left Jada and Gideon staring at one another.
“Ready to get to it?” Gideon asked.
“Absolutely.”
