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James rubbed my arm gently. “It’s not your fault. I’m going to go see if I can help somehow.”
“Wait, shouldn’t Elizabeth go instead?” Jo raised an eyebrow at him. James frowned.
“Why?”
She rolled her eyes. “She’s the one learning from Yuri. She might be able to see if someone’s been hacking us or check to see if the issue has been fixed and we have nothing to worry about. Who knows, maybe Yuri fixed it without bothering to mention it.” She turned to me. “Think you could take a look?”
I bit my lip. “I’m not an expert, Jo. I barely know anything about hacking. I’m a software programmer. The only reason I was able to get the video last time was because Yuri showed me how to do it.”
She pleaded with me. “I know you aren’t confident in it yet, but you’re all we’ve got. Please?” I could tell she was worried about Liam, he was starting to look stressed out and James wasn’t any better. They both radiated irritation and could never seem to relax for long. I sighed.
“You know what, sure. At least I can check the system for bugs. I did that all the time at work. And some of the stuff Yuri showed me was pretty similar. I’ll do what I can.”
ChapterThirty-Two
Liam was yellingat someone on the phone when we arrived in his office. Since I didn’t want to disturb him, I used James’s computer instead. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, Yuri hadn’t gone into how to tell if someone was hacking you but I knew some stuff from work. I checked the program that controlled the camera for bugs, checked the internet security of the house to see if it was up and running, then checked the data flow of the cameras. That’s when I noticed something off.
“Does anyone log into the cameras when they aren’t at home? You know, to check and see how things are going?”
Liam was still shouting on the phone and James had wandered off but Jo sat next to me. She thought about it.
“It’s possible, though I doubt it happens often. Since there’s always people here, they wouldn’t really need to use them. They could just call whoever is working that day and ask how it's going. Why?”
“Because there’s a weird amount of network traffic going on from the cameras. If you mostly use them here, the traffic flow wouldn’t be changing so dramatically.” I’ve seen this before, when my old boss got a virus on his computer because he was looking at porn during work. His computer was working way harder than it should’ve been with what he had pulled up at the time. Seriously, how that man ended up in tech, I’ll never know.
“Can you see who’s logging in?”
I tipped my head. “Yes, but I can only see the IP addresses. I don’t know what they belong to.”
“Just look to see if there’s any that pop up outside the norm. There are only two computers here that should be connected to them. And no, no one but me can access them outside the house.” Liam was off the phone now. He came around the couch to stand behind me, which wasn’t intimidating at all. I hunched my shoulders a little, pulling up the recent logins to the camera.
I sucked in a breath. “There’s a new IP address that popped up the day before I was taken. It shows up every hour or so since then. Did you log in with a different computer?” Please please please.
“No. Is there any way to track that IP address?”
I flinched. “I don’t know how to do that. Can we call Yuri?” We were now in territory beyond my expertise. I knew how to look up my own IP address but that’s about it.
I was worried Liam would be pissed but he just sighed. “Is it all the cameras or just a few?”
I poked around a bit. “If I had to guess, I’d say all of them. I looked into a few of them and they are showing the same high network traffic.”
“Does this mean we are being watched?” Jo’s voice wavered.
“More than likely. I don’t like it. If they were just watching, say the front gate, I would get it, monitoring who comes and goes, everyone does that when they’re looking into the enemy. The fact that they’re watching everything makes me think they’re planning on coming to us.”
I swallowed hard. “James said you’d have to be suicidal to try and attack this house.”
“Or they’re just that cocky. Do me a favor and call Yuri. See if you can get him to fix the cameras so they can’t see anything but we can. I’m going to brief the guys. If they’re coming here, I want to be ready.”
* * *
It tookthe power of the Mafia Wives Club to get me in contact with Yuri. I don’t know what’s happening on their end but it sounds crazy. I could barely hear him on the other end as he told me how to do what Liam asked for. I begged him to do it himself but he said he wasn’t anywhere near a computer and didn’t have time. I took notes as best as I could before he had to hang up.
I was in the middle of doing what he told me to do when Liam flew into the room. I jumped, nearly dropping James’s laptop.
“Where’s Jo?”
“Kitchen. She got hungry. Is everything okay?”
