Page 104 of Never Forget

“Hello. Don’t tell me. Obviously you’re Blake Holland,” she says, tipping her head at Blake. “And you’re Cory and… Not Eric.” She looks over at Kit. “The flight manifest said Eric. But you’re…” Her eyes trace me from head to foot. “You’re either Naz Lester without tattoos or he has an unregistered twin brother.”

I grin, but whatever snarky comment I would have made is cut off by Blake.

“Mr. Lester was just about to explain to me why he’s here and wearing this poor disguise.”

“It was his idea,” I say, pointing to Cory.

Cory rolls his eyes. “He insisted on coming, but I didn’t want to put him on the flight manifest in case it was being tracked. It was the best I could do on short notice.”

Blake turns his unimpressed glare back on me. “You have to be difficult?”

I shrug. “A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.” I make zero apologies for wanting to be here to back up my man.

Blake huffs. “Would anyone like some tea or water before we get started?”

“No thank you. I’m ready to get to work.” Sunni beams and looks around before spotting the large dining room table, where she takes off a baby blue backpack and sets it on the table. While she’s pulling a laptop and what looks to be a screen extender out of her backpack and setting them up, she chatters pretty much nonstop, asking questions but then answering them in the same sentence. “Would you like to get started with the data I pulled from the phone or what I found regarding your information leak? Actually, never mind. Let’s start with the systems analysis, and it’ll segue right into the phone data.”

Kit takes a seat to Sunni’s right, smiling at their young employee like she’s the most precious little thing to ever set foot on earth. Which, to be fair, might be accurate. She’s so bubbly, it’s hard not to get caught up in her joy.

“So, this system is not as secure as they make it out to be. I barely had to try to get access. It doesn’t look like your leak came from anywhere external, which I realize isn’t good news. So I may have… wandered outside the scope of what Kit technically asked me to do and took the liberty of peeking into the label’s main databases.”

“And by peeking, you mean?” Blake doesn’t sound like he actually wants to know the answer to that.

“She hacked them,” Kit confirms.

“Hacking is a strong word.”

“What would you call it?”

“I merely explored publicly inaccessible information…” Kit blinks slowly, waiting for her to finish. “...with permission-adjacent behavior.”

A laugh bursts out of me before I can help it. “I like her.”

“You would,” Blake mumbles. Then he clasps his hands on the table like we’re about to have some kind of staff meeting rather than hear about cool hacker chick stuff. “So was this… permission-adjacent exploration useful at all?”

“Very,” Sunni says. “Right away, I noticed a bunch of things that seemed odd.”

“Odd in what way?”

“It’s all about patterns. Inconsistencies in patterns will jump out, but also new patterns that start abruptly, repeated patterns…”

“What did you find, Sunni?” Kit says, guiding Sunni back to the topic at hand.

“First of all, there’s a lot of reorganization happening, especially at the higher levels. A group of new hires all came in around the same time, each assigned to different departments throughout the company: IT, legal, PR, even janitorial staff. The interesting part is that every single one of those new hires was directly assigned to your specific accounts.”

“We have had some new hires,” Blake confirms. “New cleaning staff, and I know there’s a new woman in IT. Emerson likes her a lot. I think she’s come up and had lunch with him a few times.”

“Interesting,” Sunni says, narrowing her eyes for a moment before they pop open again and she returns her attention to her screens, typing away. “So, it seemed odd that all the new hires were hired around the same time, and went to your specific accounts that you suspected might have been hacked or infiltrated. I looked a little deeper into these employees, and they all came through the same hiring agency. Then I dug a little deeper and found that every one of them had previously worked at X Media Corp.”

“What the actual fuck?” I say. “This sounds like some conspiracy shit.”

Sunni shrugs. “It gets better.”

“Better?”

“Or worse, I guess. It depends on if the information ends up being helpful.” She clicks a few buttons and pulls something up on the screen, turning it so our side of the table can see. It looks like rows and rows of numbers. I can’t make heads or tails of it. “This is essentially your company call log. It details all calls coming in or out using company phones,” she explains. Another few clicks, and the list gets smaller. “This is the same data, only isolated to the new hires.” She smiles and does a little shimmy like she’s proud of herself or just really enjoying herself. “I mentioned that I like patterns, but what I like even more is numbers. They just tend to stick with me. And wouldn’t you know it, there happens to be both right here.”

Sunni taps another button, and several lines of numbers change color, from black to blue, distinguishing them from the rest.