Free The Gambit by Allen Longstreet Page B

money than it actually is. They are making it seem like more money is coming in so they can steal some of the real money that is. If the Government were to audit us, we’d be fucked. Our internal auditors are turning a blind eye to it. I just wonder how much of a cut he is giving them.”
    I was impressed by how extensive Grey’s research was.
    “Dude, have you not reported it yet to corporate? Won’t you lose your job for not stopping it from occurring in the first place?”
    His expression looked troubled as I said that. But, behind that veneer I sensed confidence. He had a plan.
    “Yes, technically I would. It has taken me nearly a month to compile all of this evidence against him. I was going to report it to corporate on Friday, to give them the weekend to look over it. That is until you came to my door today.”
    My brow furrowed in confusion.
    “What does any of this have to do with me?”
    Grey smiled. “Let me finish, Owen. You of all people should know I have a plan.”
    He was right. In high school, I remembered the class discussions and debates. Grey was always a couple steps ahead of everybody. He was quiet…but his mind was loud.
    “Enlighten me,” I replied.
    “Remember the senior prank I did in high school?”
    “Ah, the infamous Grey Maxwell’s gift. How could I forget?”
    He laughed from me mentioning what it was called amongst our circle.
    “I told you what I did to make that happen, right?”
    “Well, at the time, you were more worried about being allowed to graduate than revealing your secret to your friends. You might have said something about it, but I forgot. I just remember being released from school shortly after we made it into homeroom.”
    “I used to take that advanced computers class our senior year, and part of our training was learning how to clean out the computers in the office and accessing the registry. So what I did was put a key log on one of the administrator’s computers. All they had to do was enter their credentials, and all I had to do was open my email to retrieve it. So the night before the prank, I stayed at the school late to ‘work on a project’. I used the credentials to log in, and then I did a system-wide hack which created a glitch that nullified every username and password that was presently used.”
    “And that’s why we had the day off.”
    “Exactly,” he grinned. “Then I realized that when my computer teacher was questioned, he would point out to the administration that I was the brightest in the class…and if he were to look into the right computer, he would see where I set up the key log. I figured out a way to turn myself in and giving the administration the data in exchange for me being able to walk at graduation. I gave them the forged data on how it was an experiment to show that the school’s system was not secure. As upset as they were, they just gave me two weeks of suspension, as I’m sure you recall.”
    I smirked from his statement. “I remember it quite well. You spent the last two weeks of the school year smoking weed and playing World of Warcraft.”
    “The deed was well worth the punishment,” he replied with a wink.
    “You cocky bastard…”
    “Anyway, back then in high school I was decent at hacking, and not very well-versed in what it takes to write script and execute it properly. During college, I learned quite a bit more about software engineering in general, and the group of friends I hung out with were into hacking too. We were white-hats though—good hackers. We hacked and then revealed the information to the people we hacked in order to make their information more secure. Black hats are the famous hackers, the ones who hack into government websites, retail stores, banks …”
    I glanced up at him with curiosity.
    “Grey, you aren’t thinking of...”
    “Yes, but just wait, it gets better. At Wells Fargo, my position gives me clearance to perform extensive background checks. Any kind of information I want,