Before I move on to the rest of my tasks, I check with Andrea, finding her sitting cross-legged on the couch, typing on her laptop. She has changed into something comfortable—a sleeveless shirt and basketball shorts. Both mine.
“You’re getting anywhere?”
“Not yet. I saw you were working on Iris’s security feed, which gave me an idea. If we could tap into the security feed of Becker’s New York penthouse and his other residences, we might find something interesting. Or hear things, you know?”
“That’s a good idea. How are you approaching it?”
“I found the contractor who installed it and the on-call service he uses for security. As you can imagine, it’s tight and nearly impossible to get in. I’m looking into his teenage kids right now, as our way in. I don’t want to alert Becker’s team, since they must be on edge after the recent cyberattack, so I’m aiming for his kid’s close friends instead. Hacking into the emails and socials of his son’s best friend was ridiculously easy. That idiot has variations of ‘bigtiddies69’ for everything,” she explains with a deadpan. “Right now, I’m working on a Trojan horse I could send Becker’s son through one of those accounts, which would give us access to the household’s connection and thus, the security feed.”
Impressed by how clever and careful she’s being about it, I offer her a nod. “Do you need help with anything?”
“I think I can handle it alone, but if you want to take a break, I’d love to learn from the master himself.”
“The heist you pulled was bigger than anything I’ve ever done,” I humbly reply. “You’re the master in this case.”
“Your humility is noted, baby, but I only managed because I used your old work.”
She pats the cushion next to her, inviting me to join her, and I immediately comply. I sit close enough for my thigh to be under her folded knee and look at her screen while she continues working.
Much like her coding at work, she’s efficient, organized, and meticulous. I quickly gather that she’s making a fake website for some entertainer that Becker’s son is a big fan of. She’s purposefully making it hard to access from a smartphone to ensure he’ll open it on his laptop.
“How will you get him to download the Trojan horse?”
“I was thinking of a downloadable sample of the artist’s next song, and piggybacking it, the virus.”
“How will you procure that next song?”
She switches to another tab and presses play on the YouTube window that opens. Something electronic and loud that I wouldn’t even consider music starts playing. I can’t tell if it’s the poor quality of her laptop’s speakers or the music itself, but it’s… not good.
“I can do that in ten minutes,” Andrea explains, unimpressed.
“And you can probably do better with nothing but pans and a wooden spoon. Is that really what the youth listen to these days?”
“The youth?” she repeats with a giggle. “Remind me, how old are you again, Grandpa?”
“Too old, it seems. Can you stop it? It’s overwhelming.”
She pauses the “music” and returns to the window she was working on. As I suspected, I’m not of much help. It looks like she knows exactly what she has to do, and there’s very little I would change. It’s fascinating to see how her mind works. Sometimes, she does exactly as I would. Sometimes, she surprises me by taking a simpler, more efficient route. And sometimes, she takes detours, but before I can say anything, she always reaches her goal.
Three hours fly by in a blink, and her stomach rumbling with hunger takes us out of it. “Ugh, I need to refuel,” she says, closing the laptop.
“I’ll see what I can cook.”
“You want to cook?”
“Yes, why? Would you like to order in? Bring back the old habits?”
“I mean… you can cook if you want, of course. But I’m also fine with ordering some food.”
I scan her thoroughly to figure out what she really wants. What’s her genuine preference. I know her too well not to realize what’s on her mind. “Burger King. That’s what you want.”
“Jesus, have you learned how to read minds or something?!”
“Only yours, my little raccoon. I’ll get our old phones. You can use mine to order whatever you’d like.” She’s practically dancing with excitement when I walk away.
Getting our dinner delivered allows us to work a little more in the evening. Andrea joins me with our food in the hidden room, and we put her work to the test, seeing if it’ll be enough to get into Becker’s security feed.
“Let’s sleep on it,” she suggests a little after midnight. “We can’t mess it up, and I’m sure Becker has strong antivirus software on every device around him, given how many times we went after him. We can’t mess it up, or he’ll tighten his security even more.”
