AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Exactly.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket without disturbing Eddy, unlocked the screen, and handed it to her with the message open.
“I’m going to forward it to my email so I can poke at it some more and see what it shows.” After a few touches on his phone, she put it down and turned her attention to her laptop. Seconds later, the message came through completely garbled. “It’s corrupted when forwarded.” Her eyes ran over the lines of code that appeared on her computer.
“I’m sorry,” Cole said.
“No, that could be a good thing. It might mean there’s something to be recovered in it. Maybe a file that wasn’t fully attached. Something embedded, perhaps. I think Dad may have manipulated the email so that only someone with the right skills could get at it.”
“Someone like you.”
“Yeah, I need you to log into your email on my computer.” She turned her laptop so that it faced him and got up to take Eddy. The baby was just playing with the bottle now, so she removed it and paced around the kitchen with him while Cole used her computer.
“Here it is,” he said, and she sat down next to him. Her thigh brushed against his, distracting her from her task briefly. This close, she could smell his soap and the natural scent of his skin, sharp reminders of what had once been between them. She snapped her focus back to what was on the screen, handing the baby over to Cole so she could give the email her full attention. No distractions. She needed to find her father and clear his name.
She focused on the email, studying every aspect. Embedded files were often attached to an image or signature line, but that didn’t seem to be the case here. She kept looking until she noticed a slight aberration. Something was off with the K in her name. Her father had written,I need you to keep Kelsey and Eddy safe. The font on the K was slightly larger than the font used for the other letters. Someone might assume it was just the difference between upper and lower case, but Kelsey was familiar enough with common fonts to know better. She hovered the mouse over the K and right clicked.
“Bingo,” she said in triumph as a new window launched in her browser. “We’ve got an embedded file.” She hit a few more keystrokes to open it. The screen was immediately filled with code that would look like gibberish to most people. She scanned through it. “It’s encrypted.”
“Can you break through the encryption?” Cole leaned forward.
“Probably, with enough time.” Encrypted files could have multiple layers to sort through before getting to the actual content. She couldn’t guarantee success. “The problem is that it may require military clearance to get through all the levels of encryption. If that’s the case, I’ll stall out.”
“I might be able to help with that if you trust me to share this with Raymond and David,” Cole said. From what she remembered, David was the team’s tech specialist. That could be enough.
“I trust them if you do. Can you contact them? I’ll get started on the file, but I’ll want them on standby if I hit a wall.” The looming deadline of the end of the month lit a fire in her.
“I’ll do it now.” He turned to hand her Eddy. For the briefest seconds, they were face to face with their baby boy between them. It was an intimate moment, but Cole broke away first. He grabbed his phone from the table and headed into the dining room to make the calls.
Kelsey watched him walk away and wondered if she’d ever feel okay with the thought of him leaving for good and she knew the answer was no.
EIGHT
Cole installed the last window alarm in the guest room upstairs. He’d placed an order for security equipment at a big box store that delivered. Making sure the house was safe had kept him somewhat busy, but after two days of not leaving the house, he was beginning to feel seriously cooped up. He needed a run or a brutal workout to burn off his extra energy and break the tension.
And it wasn’t only him. It had been two days since Kelsey discovered the embedded file and began the process of breaking the encryption. She’d kept at it nearly day and night since, so he wasn’t surprised to see her sitting in front of her laptop when he walked into the kitchen to get lunch. Her hair was twisted up in a messy, pink-striped bun, and she wore sweatpants and an old T-shirt.
“Take a break for lunch,” he said. “What can I make you?”
“Nothing,” she muttered without looking up. “I need to use this time while Eddy’s asleep.”
He’d heard her put the baby down for a nap an hour earlier and had been listening for him to wake. Over the two days, Cole had helped as much as he could with Eddy to free up Kelsey’s time. They’d fallen into a natural rhythm that seemed to be working. As best he could tell, she’d doled out about thirty percent responsibility to him, which was more than he’d expected. He’d discovered that she could work with Eddy on her lap and still give him love and attention. That must be a special skill set of mothers. But as impressive as it was how much she was able to get done, all while taking care of a child, even she had her limits and he wasn’t going to let her hit them.
“Nope.” He appreciated her dedication, but she was going to wear herself out. “You need to eat. Close it up.”
She shot him a defiant look. “I’ll eat, but only because this program needs time to run. I’m leaving the laptop open.”
That was probably the best he could get her to agree to, so he scanned the contents of the refrigerator for a healthy lunch. He pulled out the makings for salad and sandwiches. “Tell me what you want.”
“Turkey and gouda on rye with lettuce, tomato, and mayo. Please.”
“Got it.” He fixed her sandwich, chuckling to himself at her decisiveness, and put it down next to her.
“Thanks.” She picked it up and took a bite, her eyes still on the screen.
“What do you hope to see there?” he asked, watching the flickering light of the computer reflect on her face.
“This is the third encryption cracking program I’ve run. The others both got stopped at the same place. I want to see if this one can get past that.”
