“I’d like to…” Trees rolled his eyes. “I’ll take April through August and see what kind of patterns emerge. Oh, and be sure to look at any cookies, plug-ins, or other programs she might have downloaded. I compiled a list of EM-approved software.” He slid the paper on the table between them. “Anything else is something she would have downloaded without telling the bosses and worth looking at. If you have questions about what you find, holler. I’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks.”
Obviously, he wasn’t grateful at all. How could he be, actively working to gather evidence against the woman he loved?
Trees reached across the table to slap his shoulder in support. “You’re welcome.”
Then they both dived in. Trees worked faster since Zy’s specialty wasn’t tech but demolitions. Trees didn’t pretend to be anything but functional when it came to blowing shit up.
“What is toy voyaging?” Zy asked suddenly. “Any idea?”
“No. What the hell?”
Zy looked it up, then just started shaking his head. “Who sends their toys with strangers so they can be photographed around the world? And why is that a thing?”
“Is it? Really?”
“It is for Aspen,” Zy went on to explain. “Apparently, she got a kick out of that.”
“Because that’s not weird or anything,” Trees quipped.
“Not at all. So here’s a piece of software either she or Tessa downloaded on January thirty-first, exactly one year ago. The location suggests it was installed onto Tessa’s machine. Was she in the office that day?”
Since Zy hadn’t begun working for EM Security yet, he had no way of knowing, so Trees stepped in. “Let me bump that against a calendar I maintained. I told the colonel I wasn’t a fan of letting the temp use Tessa’s machine because we didn’t know her, but we didn’t have a spare at the time. So I kept track of who had control of it when.” Trees flipped over to another document on his computer and scanned it with a frown. “That was one of Tessa’s last days in the office before her maternity leave. She was supposed to have worked with Aspen the following Monday through Wednesday, as I recall. But she went into labor on Tuesday morning and didn’t come back until the end of March.”
“So Tessa probably downloaded this?”
“Most likely. What is it?”
Zy scowled as he scanned the code again. “Looks like some sort of spyware maybe.”
“Let me see.” Trees craned his head to study the screen—and he didn’t like what he saw. “Fuck. This is some hand-coded shit that collects every keystroke, but it also enables stealth remote access from anywhere in the world.”
Zy paled. “So whoever installed this could tap into Tessa’s computer at will and could see every time she or Aspen hit a key? And they could access our servers without anyone being the wiser?”
As much as he hated to tell his buddy, Trees couldn’t sugarcoat this. “Yep. I begged Aspen to let me scan that computer a couple of times. Every time, she said it crashed or she finger-flubbed whatever she’d been typing and ended up somewhere in the computer she shouldn’t be, like a command prompt.”
“Then Tessa couldn’t have had anything to do with this. She’s not a computer whiz, and she definitely doesn’t know anything about writing code, especially something that involved.”
“You think Aspen does?” Trees pointed out. At least Tessa was good at her job. The temp had been a wreck.
“Is it possible neither of them did this?”
“Possible? Anything is. Improbable? Yeah.” And Trees felt really sorry for Zy. “Keep digging. See if you can find any traces of contact in March, around the time we went to Mexico and damn near got ambushed.”
“Getting there. After that software is installed, there isn’t much in the way of sent emails except to the bosses. It’s like…Aspen didn’t do that much.”
“No, it’s not ‘like’ that. She actually didn’t do much. But no fishy communications around the time of our mission?”
Zy shrugged. “Not that I see.”
“With remote access and keystroke recording, all anyone had to do was log in to our server themselves and they could mine almost anything.”
“Do you think that spyware/remote-access garbage is still on Tessa’s computer?”
Zy clearly hoped Tessa had been passing on information without even knowing it, and Trees had bad news for his buddy. “No. As soon as Aspen cleared the building, I restored the computer back to the factory settings, then carefully rebuilt Tessa’s profile. I didn’t trust Aspen not to have unwittingly screwed everything up.”
“So the rogue software is gone? And we have no way of knowing who might have been accessing our systems and where the information was going?”
Trees winced. “When you put it that way, I should have looked to see what was on the computer before I wiped it, but I had no idea…”
“You couldn’t have. You finding anything else?”
Yeah, and it wasn’t good. “Let me finish. Then…we’ll talk.”
Zy stood and ambled to the coffeepot, brewing another. “Coffee?”
“Yeah. It’s going to be a long night.”
Zy glanced down the hall, where Laila’s light was still on. “Should I encourage her to go to sleep?”
“You can try, but she won’t.”
With a grim press of his lips, Zy poured two cups of coffee and headed back to the table. Trees absently sipped the black brew and scribbled notes as he peered at the screen, working, working…until he came across something that made his heart stop.
When Trees looked up, Zy froze. “What?”
“There are footprints of communications from what looks like a Gmail account to an external mail host with its servers in Switzerland.”
“Why is that important? Why does the server location matter?”
“Because the Swiss have some of the strictest tech privacy laws in the world. No one is getting their hands on that information. A lot of people use this kind of service. People who don’t like their emails being scanned for keywords so that online retailers can market to them, for instance. People who don’t love government intrusion into their personal life.”
“So you have one of these email addresses?”
“Not this particular provider. This one is expensive. But I have one like it. It’s also commonly used by people who have something to hide.”
“Like criminals?”
As much as Trees hated to admit it… “Exactly. I’m not saying that anyone who has one of these is up to something nefarious, but I am saying that anyone up to something nefarious probably has one of these email addresses, rather than a simple freebie.”
“Let me recap: Someone with Gmail sent messages to a party with a super-secure email address who might be a criminal?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Because the information packet passed through our server, and I have some goodies residing there just in case, I can read the contents of the emails. But I can’t prove who the Gmail address belongs to.” But if they could prove it was Tessa’s, then she was toast.