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“From all of them.”
“Excuse me?”
Bob paled at his tone. “That’s what it looks like, at least. Every camera in and outside the vault has a seven-minute time lapse.”
“And no one noticed that the feed had been cut? Where the hell was Security?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think those seven minutes were cut out until after the theft—the footage was recorded, then deleted.”
“So, again, I’m asking you. Where the hell was Security?” Marc demanded with a glare. “People are paid to do nothing but watch those monitors twenty-four hours a day.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. We don’t yet know if they fed other footage into the digital stream, but that’s what I’m surmising. At this point, there’s no other explanation that makes sense.”
“Someone hacked into my system—my specially designed, one-of-a-kind, cover-all-the-bases system—and took control of every camera in or around the vault. That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“And no one noticed.”
“That’s not totally true. We noticed.”
“Not until after the theft!” he snapped, then bent down to look at the dates at the bottom of the footage. “This happened on Monday?”
“Yes.”
“How did they hack in?”
“We’re still working on that.”
“Work harder. And get Geoffrey and Max on it. I want an answer—tonight.”
“I get that you’re upset, Marc, but we’re doing the best we can. The work was so good that it’s damn impressive one of my guys even caught—”
“It will be damn impressive when you find the weakness he exploited and eliminate it. Until then, it’s only sloppy.” He stared at the screen grimly. “On every single one of our parts.”
Bob didn’t have much more to say after that—not that Marc blamed him. He was furious, absolutely seething now that he knew some thief had hacked into his computer system. He had two of the best internet security guys in the world on his payroll and some jackass had managed to completely hijack his security feed?
Enraged didn’t begin to cover what Marc was feeling.
He spent the next few hours snapping at his employees as every single one of them—including him—searched for the weakness. For how it had been done. By the time midnight rolled around, they still hadn’t found the weakness in the operating system that had allowed this to happen. Which made him—and his computer security guys—even more suspicious.
Usually, hackers and thieves didn’t care if you knew how they got in. They’d already gotten what they wanted, after all, so why should it matter to them if you closed the hole after they’d left? But this person had made sure to cover their tracks so well that Marc couldn’t help wondering if this was the first time it had happened—or if it was merely the first time the thief had gotten caught? Maybe the person had been stealing from them for quite some time, taking only a couple small, inconsequential stones every few months, all in an effort to stay off the radar.
They only inventoried the vault fully twice a year. So if this hadn’t been going on very long—if they’d only caught it because of the internal audit they were running—
He finally let himself acknowledge what had been racing around his mind for hours. He finally let himself admit how thoroughly he’d screwed up.
The thought had him sweating, had his stomach clenching and his heart beating too fast. Because if this was an inside job, which he and his security guys thought it was, and it had been going on for a while, then...then there was no way Isa was responsible for it.
He’d blamed her, cut her out, and she hadn’t done it.
The thought made him sick, especially if he let himself think about what she’d looked like after he’d confronted her. How shocked, how hurt...how devastated.
She’d looked like he’d felt, as if her whole world had been yanked out from under her. Again.
And he’d done it to her. Just like he’d done it to her six years ago. He’d let his anger and his pride and his distrust get the better of him, again. The fact that he’d actually let her collect her things this time didn’t make him feel any better about himself as a human being—or as a boyfriend.
With a curse, he shoved back from the conference room table they’d been using as command central.
