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“Were?” Renata’s eyebrow perked up. “Not anymore? Do you think he hacked you?”
“What? I… I don’t know, actually. It all just happened last night, and I haven’t talked to him since then. It just freaked me out really bad, mostly because Idon’tknow.”
She nodded. “Okay. I’m going to assume you don’t know his real name?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. Okay… give me a second… this is a personal computer, or you use it for school or business?”
“Business,” I answered. “I help build marketing campaigns on it, manage social media, communicate with my scientists, and production team, and keep up with financial records—”
“Okay whoa,” Renata laughed. “I’m sorry, let’s backtrack – what is your name, and what is that you do again?”
I returned her laugh. “Sorry, we did just dive right in, didn’t we? I’m Monica Stuart, owner ofVivid VixenCosmetics.”
“Seriously?!” she shrieked. “I use your Luxe Vixen hand cream – that stuff is amazing! And I’m wearing your polish on my nails right now, it’s—”
“Jalapeno Face,” I finished for her. “I noticed, actually. The green is beautiful on your skin.”
“You cannoteverstop selling this color, okay?”
I laughed. “Scout’s honor.”
“Okay. Okay, enough fangirling,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Now, as far as your computer, I can see exactly when the virus was introduced, directly on your machine. Do you always have this computer with you?”
I shook my head. “Irarelyhave it with me, unless I’m in my office at work. What does that mean though?”
“It means that, this type of virus… you don’t get it by clicking the wrong link in an email, someone had access to your computer, and installed this. There’s a keystroke logger – which would be used to capture passwords, a screen recorder, and crawlers, looking for specific keywords and anything connected to those keywords, on your computer. There’s also a component that infects anything that you connect this computer to with the same virus, unless you had some pretty intense security, which most people don’t.”
I pushed out a sigh. “Wow. Um… can you see what files or whatever they’re after?”
“I can. And… Monica… you should probably take this to the police.”
I frowned. “The police? For what?”
“From what I can tell, there’s a heavy interest in your business dealings, copies of your patent filings, chemical formulas… this could be the work of a rival company, either stealing from you or looking to sabotage you. Either way, I don’t think this is a phishing scam from Russia, or some teenage hackers playing around. This iscriminal.”
“No, I don’t think—”
“Monica,” Renata interrupted. “Seriously. I… used to be in the FBI. Cybersecurity was my specialty. I know exactly what I’m looking at. You need to take this to the police, and you need to figure out who put this on your computer. It’s been there since last year, and I bet that a whole lot of your company’s sensitive information has gotten into the wrong hands between then and now.”
For a second, I simply sat there, stunned. I didn’t want to believe her, but the sincere urgency in her voice had my heart racing.
Someone Iknewhad hacked me?
Absently, I nodded, agreeing with Renata’s words. “I…uh… yeah. Yeah. I’ll do that.”
“My friend Marcus is one of the guys in charge over atSecurity. He still has contacts in the police force here, I’ll get him to set up a meeting with a detective for you, okay? Let me get your phone number and other information.”
Shit.
“I… my phone. I haven’t even turned it on again since last night.”
Renata chewed at the side of her lip. “It was connected to the same network? Your Wi-Fi at home?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, then probably so. Okay, we have phones, so I can get you one of those. And a laptop to use, because the police will probably want to keep yours, and the computer at your house, as evidence. But, youcannotconnect either of them to your home network, not until the virus has been stripped. Right now, it’s just waiting on something new to infect.”
