Free Cattle Valley 28 - Second Chances by Carol Lynne Page A

before placing it in a separate sack and setting it beside the soup. “But I’ll be your soup lady every day of the week except Sunday. That’s my day off.”
Drake wrapped his knuckles on the glass case before picking up his two sacks. “It was truly a pleasure meeting you.”
Julie came out from behind the counter and walked Drake to the door, taking the time to hold it open for him. “I’ll see ya Thursday.”
“Definitely.” Drake felt dazed as he headed for his car. Was it possible that he’d made a friend? No way could it be that easy. Acquaintance maybe. Okay, an acquaintance that made soup. Yeah, he felt better with that label.
* * * *
    Drake was finishing a big bowl of chicken and dumpling soup when a knock sounded at the door. Probably Asa again , he thought, getting to his feet. “Just a minute.”
Sticking to his regular routine, Drake washed his bowl and spoon before he headed to the front door. He went through the process of unlocking everything before opening it to find Shane. “Hey, what’s going on?”
Red-faced, Shane blew by Drake and entered the apartment. “I was wrong.”
Shocked by the admission, Drake closed the door. “I didn’t think that was possible,” he said, trying to lighten Shane’s distress.
“Rare, but possible.” Shane sat down and opened the laptop he’d had tucked under his arm. “Those lines of code are gathering keystrokes—I was right about that—but I think he’s after something other than financial records.”
“Such as?” Drake crossed his arms and leaned against the wall in front of Shane.
Shane ran his fingers through his unruly hair. “I’m almost embarrassed to tell you. Fuck, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. I was so damn fixated on the programme itself, that I didn’t even notice the tag line used to upload it in the first place.”
Drake held up his hands. “Stop. Take a breath, and tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”
“The subject line was ‘DX12 Figure it Out’.” Shane spun the laptop around to prove it to Drake.
“Okay, so what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Whoever uploaded this wasn’t trying to steal from Montgomery. They were trying to figure out what’s wrong with the damn thing. More specifically, they were hoping one of those basement-dweller computer geniuses out there could fix the problems we’ve had with the software.”
“Are you sure?” Drake asked.
“Not a hundred per cent, but I overheard Mr Montgomery tell James Fitzroy that if his team couldn’t solve the problems with the programme, he’d bring in people who could. Montgomery Enterprises has a long line of brilliant men and women praying for a job here.” Shane shook his head. “It makes sense that someone, most likely Fitzroy, would go to these lengths to solve the problems.”
“But how does it work? If the programme’s been downloaded over two thousand times, how in the hell could Fitzroy, or anyone else, be able to follow the keystrokes of that many people to even know if the problem’s been solved?”
“He’s probably written a programme to catalogue the individual users. Once someone starts bragging about cleaning the bugs from the software, Fitzroy, or whoever, will find them in their catalogue and mimic the keystrokes used to fix the problem.”
“But if these online guys are so smart, wouldn’t they know someone’s recording their keystrokes?” Drake prodded, trying to understand.
“Definitely, but they’d probably see it as more of a challenge, a way to show off their genius. Hell, most of these hackers don’t even have a college degree, so they love it when they can prove they’re smarter than some MIT nerd.”
“So what’s this mean for us?” Taking the news to Asa wasn’t going to be pleasant, but it’d help if he could also bring along a plan for how to deal with it.
Shane shut his computer. “I think there’re two ways to go. You could bring Fitzroy in, get to the bottom of it, and shut the whole