Essie almost gasped at the sight of her. “Did you just come from a fashion shoot?”
Blaise laughed. “Is this too much? I never wear this suit because I think the print is a little over the top but it’s surprisingly comfortable.”
Paige shook her head. “You look exactly like what you are. A model.”
“You’re both very sweet.” She settled onto the lounger next to Paige. “What did I miss?”
“A server took our drink order,” Essie said. “And Paige’s daughter is coming for the weekend. What’s new with you?”
Blaise got a big smile on her face. “I’m having dinner with Brick and his son tomorrow night.”
Essie let out a little squeal. “That’s so exciting. Tell us more.”
As Blaise filled them in, Essie realized she’d completely forgotten to worry about Sophie and the lawsuit.
Frank had been right. Inviting her friends was a great idea.
Chapter Five
Maude ground her teeth together as she glared at the red warning banner across the top of her monitor.
Malware Detected. Site may be compromised.
“Well, that wasn’t the afternoon I was hoping for,” she muttered, pushing her computer glasses higher on her nose. She glanced over at Pixel, her Betta fish. “I could be at the pool right now, doing what you do all day. Instead, I’m dealing with this nonsense.”
Her client, Trish Granger, the owner of an antique store in Alabama, was texting again in panic.My new acquisitions page says ‘Buy Crypto Now.’ What’s happening?!
Maude exhaled slowly. She picked up her phone, tapped the microphone so she could use voice-to-text, and spoke. “You’ve been hacked, Trish. But don’t worry, I’m on it.” She hit Send.
Thank you, Trish texted back along with praying hands and a heart emoji.
Maude opened her FTP client and connected to the site’s server. Inside the main folder, a dozen unfamiliar files flashed red in the error log: btc_banner.js, popup-miner.php, and a suspicious admin2.php. All files she definitely hadn’t uploaded.
“Lovely,” she growled to herself. “Some script kiddie decided to mine Bitcoin on Trish’s new items for sale page. Probably lives over his parents’ garage and thinks he’s about to hit it big. Loser.”
Maude’s fingers flew across the keys. She disabled the site via cPanel, set it to maintenance mode, and ran a MalCare scan. The report showed injected code in the theme’s header.php file—a snippet designed to redirect traffic.
“Not today, buddy,” she murmured. “Not on my watch and not on my website.”
She opened the infected file, scrolling until she found the offending line of code. She deleted it, saved the files, and uploaded the clean version. Then she replaced all admin passwords with strong randomized strings and generated a new access file to block external writes. She made a few more tweaks to be sure the site was as secure as it could be.
An hour later, she’d removed a few more JavaScript injections. That had to be all of them, didn’t it? She ran another check. At last, the console returned a satisfying green message.Scan complete. No malicious code detected.
Maude exhaled and raised a triumphant fist in the air. Now to update the site, which was built on WordPress, and let Trish know everything was taken care of.
She was just finishing up as Trish texted again.
How’s it going?
“Refresh your page,” Maude spoke into her phone. “You’re back in business and good to go. I’ve also installed Wordfence and limited logins to your IP range. And maybe the next time someone in your antiques group on Facebook recommends a new plugin, run it past me first before installing it?”
She hit Send.
Trish’s response came immediately.Thank you so much. You’re the best. I’ll never install anything else ever again, Iswear. She followed that with a laughing emoji, another heart, and a flood of exclamation points.
Maude leaned back, smiling. The shush of the Gulf breeze through her open windows felt like applause. She pushed back from her laptop, already composing the invoice in her head—Emergency Cleanup, one and a half hours, plus one stern lecture about internet hygiene for free.
She looked over at Pixel again, who was currently resting in his leaf hammock suctioned to the side of the tank near the top. She shook her head. “You’re the world’s tiniest couch potato, you know that?”
