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“I’ve almost got it figured out!” she said after she closed the door behind her.
“Got what figured out?” I said, handing her the food. She smiled brightly at it and started digging in. “This is so good. I’ve had nothing but gas station food for two days.”
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“I drove out to Memphis,” she said.
“What? Why?” I asked, frowning.
“For help. I was trying to see if I could recreate the code that is on the phones, but there is a part of it that I couldn’t figure out. I could get it to do almost the entire thing, but the part where it wiped on its own if plugged the phone directly into a computer even before we tried to download data wasn’t working,” she said between bites. Tenoch was wagging his tail in the back of my head, seeing how animated and excited she was. “So I went on the dark web to look for the owner of the software.”
“The dark web? Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked.
“Only if you’re not careful,” she answered casually. “Anyway, I found this one guy who was advertising the software, but I couldn’t figure out who he was. His relay was well hidden, and I didn’t want to contact him directly.”
“Please don’t tell me you went to see him,” I begged.
“What? No? Of course not. I went to see an old friend, but he’s very paranoid. You can’t get in contact with him unless it’s in person. He’s fantastic at what he does, but because of that, he hates anything that isn’t fully secured. I asked him to contact the mysterious someone for me using one of his many secure aliases.”
She continued eating my breakfast tacos, and I was having trouble with all the little noises she was making as she ate. Like Goddess, was she doing this on purpose? Did she know what those little moans were doing to my body? At this point, I wasn’t going to be able to stand from my seat without showing what it was doing to me for the next hour.
“So, was he able to help?” I asked, trying to make her stop eating so I could calm my body down.
“Oh, yes. Sorry. This is just so good. Anyway, he contacted them and got me an invitation to a party.”
“A...party?” I asked skeptically.
“Yes. It’s an underground party. I’m to meet the man there and try to buy the software from him.”
“Like the raw code? You would be able to see how to get around it?” I asked.
“No. He would never do that. As I said during the interview, this work is our livelihood. He would be selling a phone with the code in it for me to use.”
“But we already have phones with the code,” I said, feeling really stupid right now. I couldn’t see the benefit of buying a phone.
“Yes, but we don’t have one we can turn on yet,” she explained, smiling. “If we have one that is synced to me, I have more room to find a way to look at the code. If we buy two, it allows me the chance to do some trial and error.” I sat back when I finally followed her train of thought.
“That’s smart,” I said and enjoyed the smile she gave me. “But I’m going. Not you,” I continued.
“What? Why?” she asked. “This is a party. There will be many people there. At most, they say no, and I come home.”
“I’m not putting you in danger. I’ll get the phones, and you work on them after,” I said.
“That’s not going to work,” she said; her eyes were spitting fire at me, but there was also a smirk on her face. It was a little confusing, to say the least.
“Why not?”
“For one, no one is going to trust you.”
“Why wouldn’t they trust me? I’m a trustable guy,” I asked.
“You look like a trustable guy. That’s exactly why they won’t trust you. Look at you. You look like a cop or worse. You certainly don’t look like someone who knows all about the seedier side of the web,” she finished smugly. I pouted, knowing she had a point.
“Well, Jo cou—”
“For another, this is an exclusive party. It’s by invitation only, and none of you have an invitation. It has to be me. My name is the one they’ll be expecting, and there’s no trying to pretend to be me.”
“You gave them your real name?”
