My pulse kicks up despite the numbness that's been clouding my thoughts for hours. "You found something."
"Found something?" Malcolm laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Darhg, I found everything! But this is big, man. This isn't just a simple tracking app. Someone used Asterion’s backend as a full surveillance system on Rona Quinn."
The words take a moment to penetrate the fog in my head. When they do, rage begins to build between my ribs like a slow fire.
“Explain.” When Malcolm’s eyes become fiery with excitement, I know I have to restrain him. “In plain language. No need to go into details.”
Malcolm seems a bit disappointed that I don’t want to get into the specifics, but he nods and sets his laptop on the kitchen table, shoving aside one of the paint tubes to make room.
"Someone with high-level access to Asterion Media Group has been tracking Rona's location through her phone," he explains, fingers flying over the keyboard. "But hear this, they didn’t just pin her location. No, they've been monitoring her calls, her texts, her app usage. Everything."
Anger makes my vision blur at the edges.
"How long?"
"A few weeks." Malcolm's expression is grim as he turns the laptop screen toward me. "Look at this."
He gestures theatrically as lines of code scroll across the display, meaningless to me but clearly damning to Malcolm. He points to specific entries, his voice taking on the rapid-fire pace he gets when he's excited about something most other people don’t even begin to grasp. Including me.
“This is the installation time stamp.” He points to a line of code with a date embedded into it. The date is a week before the deepfake leak. “But listen to this: the malware was planted with legitimate Asterion Safety admin credentials, meaning whoever did this has insider access to their systems. High-level access.”
A cold hand furrows up my spine, and the hair on my nape stands up. This is not what I expected.
I frown. “Why would someone within Asterion Media Group attack Rona Quinn?”
“That is the million-dollar question, my friend.” Malcolm shakes his head, his eyes glued to the screen.
She’s a young woman, graduating from college in a few months. It’s highly doubtful that she has any enemies. Making her a target makes no sense to me.
But she’s also the daughter of a powerful senator. What Rona lacks in enemies, her mother certainly makes up for. Senator Melissa Quinn certainly knows how to ruffle feathers.
"There's more," Malcolm continues, pulling up another screen. "Whoever did this needed not only an Asterion admin access, but access to Rona’s physical device as well. Or at least be close enough to send a short distance signal to her device."
My hands clench into fists so tight my knuckles crack. “So it’s definitely someone she knows?”
“Well, it’s someone who knowsher, that’s for sure. It’s someone she wouldn’t mind being close to her.”
Anger churns in my gut and turns into rage. Cold, icy rage. This is personal, then.
"Can you trace it back to the source?"
Malcolm makes a face that tells me he’s been incredibly frustrated by that same question.
"They’ve been clever in hiding their tracks. I’ve pulled my hair out trying to pin their IP address, but all I managed to do was run around in circles.” He shakes his head, and his eyes narrow into slits. “They’re either super genius, or they know Asterion inside and out like they programmed the app themselves."
His fingers dance across the keys, pulling up more screens, and his slim face slips into a feral grin.
"But here's the interesting part. I can trigger an alarm on their phone when we're in close proximity."
I lock eyes with Malcolm as what he tells me registers.
“If we get close enough, you can turn their device into a beacon for us?”
“Yep,” Malcolm hoots. “And they won’t have a way to turn it off. It’ll just keep blasting and blasting.”
“You can do that?” I frown at him, honestly a bit frightened of the tech guy. He may be lanky and hate everything to do with nature and manual work, but it would be a mistake to underestimate him. He’s clever and ruthless.
“Oh, my friend.” Malcolm chuckles. “They’re good, alright. But I’mthe best. Once I trap that asshole, I’m not letting go. I’ve even set a tracker on the beacon. I’ll follow them to the other side of the globe if I have to.”
