Page 53 of Belle Amour
“Twenty-nine.” Eddie corrected him. “He's sixty-eight, and they've been together for six years. So he was sixty-two, dating a twenty-three-year-old who is five years younger than his youngest daughter. Tell me that isn't next-level gross.” He mimed throwing up.
“No, it is.” Robert had to agree. He wasn’t aware the girlfriend was so young when they started dating. “But she's not a child.” Robert looked up as Victor walked up to them and sat down. “How are they doing?”
“Had to have the cab pull over twice to avoid a nasty cleaning fee,” Victor said as he picked up the glass of scotch he’d left behind and took a sip. “I got them both some anti-nausea medication from the hotel convenience store before I came back.”
Eddie rolled his eyes, his irritation flaring back up at what Robert could only assume was jealousy that his father was looking after them. “Jesus, Dad, they're grown men.”
“Who are sick and refused to let me call their significant others to come back and look after them.” Victor eyed his son. “How often have I brought you sports drinks and aspirin after a night out?”
He didn't seem to have an answer for that and changed the subject. “So, have you heard from any of the girls?”
“Caroline texted me that they found the little person's door not too long ago.” Peter chuckled. “I don't know what that means, but I'm guessing they've found more bars than scavenger hunt items.”
Eddie exhaled nervously. “Well, that sounds great. I'll only hear about how my family and ex-wife got drunk at a dry bachelorette party during every argument Casey and I have for the rest of my life.”
--------------
Bastian
Bastian and Benji stood outside Eddie and Casey's hotel room and made sure they were alone. “Ready?” Benji asked quietly, pulling out the keycard Victor had requested at the front desk.
“Ready,” Bastian nodded. Benji inserted the card and opened the door; quickly stepping inside, they closed it and looked around. “What a mess,” Bastian wrinkled his nose asthe smell of stale French fry grease hit him. There were piles of clothes and fast-food wrappers everywhere. Casey was clearly craving McDonald's fries and hot fudge sundaes, judging by the number of empty cups and fry cartons scattered around.
“Are you surprised?” Benji chuckled softly. “You check around the bed.” After a few minutes of searching, Bastian found a pink laptop tucked under the bed and pulled it out.
“Got it.” He looked over at Benji who was opening drawers in the desk, and held it up. Benji turned around with a grin.
“And look what I found.” He held up a keychain with a USB hanging on it. “Looks like Casey didn’t want to carry anything extra. “Come on. We've only got a couple of hours.”
Bastian blinked in surprise and then let out a laugh. “Benji, I think I might love you; if you ever need a lawyer for anything, my services are free for the rest of my career.” Benji chuckled.
“I really hope I won't need them, but thanks, mate.”
--------------
Back in Bastian and Mirabelle's room, Bastian sent a quick text to Mirabelle, letting her know they had the keys so she could enjoy her night. He set up his laptop on the coffee table and got to work. Greg had sent him the screenshots, and he started uploading those to his Drive so he could remove all the identifying characteristics. Benji knocked on his door ten minutes later; Bastian let him in and directed him to the desk where he had laid Casey’s laptop. While he was setting up, Benji explained his thought process to Bastian.
“Basically. I'm going to upload a virus that will have your file attached to her email account. Whenever she sends an email, the virus will delete any attachments and send it with yoursinstead.” Benji’s fingers flew over the keys on his laptop at what looked like an inhuman speed to Bastian as he built the virus.
“Is this the kind of thing you do for your job?” Bastian asked curiously, wondering what a Cyber Security Analyst actually did.
“Not exactly. I build programs and firewalls to stop this sort of thing, but to do that, I have to have a really good knowledge of these things.” He had a look of intense concentration on his face as he worked, and Bastian had to force himself to focus back on his own task. “I used to be a hacker, probably one of the best in Australia, and I knew I had caught the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which is kind like your FBI, so I figured I should go legit before I ended up behind bars.”
“I created a virus and unleashed it on the bank I now work for. It was designed to skim twenty-five cents from every deposit made that had more than twenty-five cents worth of change in it across Australia. So if a cheque was deposited for, say, two hundred and fifty dollars and sixty cents, it would take twenty-five cents and deposit two hundred and fifty dollars and thirty-five cents and send the twenty-five cents to my account in another bank. But if two hundred dollars even or two hundred dollars and twenty-four cents was deposited, it wouldn’t touch it.”
Within a month, I had skimmed close to five million.” He explained, as he paused and read the code he had already entered, then started making adjustments. “I brought it to the CEO's attention and told him I would return the money and not go public if he gave me a job. I started work the next day. He's a good friend of mine now.”
“That's quite an audition for a job.” Bastian shook his head in amazement. “You probably could have skimmed waymore money than you did and disappeared. Who’s going to notice twenty-five cents missing from their deposits? Especially if the dollar amount isn’t changing?”
“That was my thought process. Depositing two hundred dollars and only getting one hundred ninety-nine seventy-five, you’d notice that, but ninety-nine percent of people wouldn’t double-check the cents.’ He grinned. “I actually got the idea from a book where a lawyer defends a hacker who does the same thing but gets caught because he was depositing the money in an account at the same bank. The lawyer ends up getting him a job at the bank instead of prison time. I'm just glad my boss decided he'd rather have my skills working for him than against him, too. But then again, five million would have set me up real pretty on a beach in Fiji.”
They worked silently for a bit, and then Benji gave a low whistle. “What's up?” Bastian asked.
“You gotta come see this.” Benji leaned back in his chair. Bastian came over and saw Benji had plugged in the USB. Looking over Benji’s shoulder, Bastian found himself looking at pictures of Mirabelle in various stages of undress. It was clear the photos had been professionally and tastefully done but had been photoshopped to give her some scarring or deformity. In one case, a rather grotesque third nipple and another, a vestigial tail.”
“Can you find the originals?” he asked curiously.
Benji pointed to the corner. “Veracruz Studios did them according to the watermark.” He turned back to his computer and searched, finding them on an archived page on the Veracruz Studios website. “Here they are. It looks like both she and Eleanor had the pictures taken two years ago.” Bastian thought about it for a second.