Free Wish Her Well by Meg Silver Page B

big deal?”
    “Because there’s no fantasy on the books, is why. Which means someone’s been screwing around in the database even more than we thought.” He leaned sideways, and hollered into the hallway. “Thomas!”
    Amanda cringed and reared back as Scott tossed things around, digging, shoving, trying to find something.
    She clicked her tongue again when a photocopy of Derek’s list of codes, the one that had been taped to the wall, rode the top of a wave of paper in her direction. It wasn’t the complete version. Their photocopy had only those first three codes filled in, the ones Brent had given up so easily.
    “See?” she told him. “That’s from the fantasy.”
    “What? Where? Show me.”
    She picked up the list and held it out. “It’s an earlier version, anyway. Only three of the codes are filled in. I figured out the pattern later and wrote them all in order.”
    Scott snatched the paper from her, and immediately began to swear in such depth and variety, and at such great volume and length, that she raised her brows at him. “What’s the matter with you?”
    “Do you remember the rest of the code?”
    She looked at the first three codes, and remembered the first half was a list of states in the order they’d been ratified, starting with New Hampshire. The last half was an infamous computer game cheat code.
    She wrote it all down for him, he stared at it for a few seconds, then leaned forward to rest his forehead on the edge of his laptop.
    “What? What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
    His voice was muffled from the way he was sitting. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been working on this? How many resources I’ve used, trying to parse that damned code?”
    “Why? It was made up. Part of a fantasy.”
    Scott leaned forward and began to type on his laptop. “No, it’s not. It’s passwords and answers to security questions. Oh, God. If this works… Cheat codes as passwords? Really? Mother-fu…”
    He typed for a minute, paused to stare at the screen, then leaned back in his chair, sinking his fingers into his hair, and making fists. “You have got to be shitting me. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Thomas! Get in here!”
    Thomas leaned in, smartphone still pressed to his ear. He made a ‘what the hell is the matter with you?’ face. Scott gestured at the laptop screen, then gave him two thumbs up.
    Thomas’s shoulders sagged. Into the phone he said, “Hang tight. I’m on my way.”
    Then he hung up, and Scott explained what happened. Next, he said, “That clinches it. There are three distinct users accessing DriveRate servers from Fantasy Heights.”
    What?
    Thomas looked as if the entire world had stomped his last nerve, but there was no swearing, no theatrics. He simply picked up the phone, dialed the resort, and asked for Jerod Hughes. “Stand down, Jerod. I think we got what we need. Pick up Derek and hold him. Then find Ridley and lock her ass in the holding cell until further notice.”
    While Thomas set the receiver back down, Scott frowned at him. “Why go after Ridley?”
    “Because she filed a complaint. She watched Derek interrogate Brent from an observation booth with a client, so she knew Derek was after those codes. And we need to find out who her client was.”
    “Ah, shit.”
    “Get to work. See if you can break their encryption and find out what they were sending back and forth. Find out who the three users are.”
    “One of them is easy,” Scott said. “Ridley Pierce.”
    Thomas took hold of Amanda’s upper arm and led her to the door, telling Scott, “Seems obvious. But you still need to prove it.”
    Scott gave him a brisk nod.
    Out in the hallway, Thomas urged her forward at a brisk pace. “You come out here to rip open my investigation, or was there some other reason?”
    She was still busy trying to figure out what had happened. So far, they only thing she understood was that Derek and Brent and their crazy organic script hadn’t