On Tenterhooks (13 page)

Chapter
1
7

Steve had
overslept. He
had
hit the alarm with dead accuracy
,
but
he fell
back to sleep. Twenty minutes after eight
,
he woke again and cursed at the clock
.
S
kipp
ing
the shave
,
he
d
r
essed quickly
, snatched up his keys, and
ran to his Jeep
.  Before he left the driveway, he
texted Randy
to say
that he would be a little
late
. Randy was
usually
flexible with
him
, but Steve still liked to account for his own time. He backed his Jeep out into the street and sped toward downtown Charlotte.

C
ountless nights with little sleep were making the transition back into the working world very difficult for him.
H
e’d upgraded to the extra large diet soda each morning, but the caffeine was
just
a delaying tactic
.
Somehow, he was going to have to find a way to get some sleep
.

By the time he got downtown, traffic was in full swing.
The bank’s corporate offices were
off
Trade Street
,
so he had to fight for every foot
of progress through Charlotte’s
m
or
ning
gridlock
.
As he waited for the light to change, he fiddled with
the radio
, looking for something to pick up the pace
.

A
loud knock on the driver’s side window
startled him
.
A
tall
man wearing
an orange reflective vest and neon yellow hardhat
was peering in, leaning on the tall temporary STOP sign on a pole
.
The portion of his face not covered by black
sunglasses
was
weathered
and
tan
.
H
e had the broad shoulders and deep chest of one accustomed to manual labor.
Startled that
the
man
had
got
ten
so close to the c
ar without
his
noticing
, Steve
rolled down the window.

“Mornin’!” said the worker in a cheerful
S
outhern drawl.

“
Morning.”

“Listen,” said the worker, “the road ahead of you is gonna be kinda bumpy
.
I’m gonna need you to be careful.”

“
Oh, okay
.
Are we going to hit
a detour or something?”
Steve asked, looking
ahead
for the imminent construction.

The worker chuckled.

“No, no sir
, not if I can help it
.
You just gotta s
tay with the course you’re on
,
and you
’ll
arri
ve where you need to be
.
T
ake it easy and watch where you’re going.”

“Uh, okay,” said Steve
, “thanks.”
The vagueness of the worker’s directions surprised him
.
And since when
did
they
come to your window and warn you
in person
?

As the light changed, he proceeded across the intersection and
looked up to see
the
worker
waving to him
in
his rear-view mirror
.
He kept his speed slow and his eyes alert for several blocks
,
but never
found
any sign of road construction.

H
e arrived
late to work and
t
he parking lot
was
almost
full
,
so he parked several rows out.

Grabbing
his
diet
soda,
he
gathered his rucksack and began the trek
through the rows of cars
to his
building
.
Steve worked for a regional
bank,
so his building was full of not only bankers
,
but all sorts of corporate support staff
—
administration, human resources, shipping and receiving, building maintenance, the bank’s regional call center and
,
of course
,
the other technology geeks like Steve.

As he walked through the offic
e
,
he could see
everyone else had already pushed the day into full swing
.
The
air
buzzed with water-cooler conversations
that centered on sports plays and last night’s reality show blunders. Phones chattered
,
and the
muffled sounds of closed-door deal brokering
wafted
from several offices on the first floor
.
The miasma of
stale
coffee and
burnt early-morning
popcorn
already
filled the air
.
Errand runners and
doorway meeting-holders
constricted
the corridors
.

It was a typical workday morning, and Steve was beginning to hate it more with each passing day. He kept his sunglasses on and his head focused forward, avoiding collisions and conversations with equal precision.
He
negotiated
the crowd and took the back stairs to his third-floor o
ffice
, taking the
stack of mail out of the bin hanging on the wall
before
he swiped his badgekey on the panel next to his office door
H
e said a silent prayer of gratitude that Randy had
moved
the senior technology staff members into their own private offices
.

His office was small, with no
windows and a plain
,
simple desk
.
His bookshelves were
Spartan
,
full of organized technology manuals, trade magazine
s and
photos of him and Julie. His few
mementos
included a replica of a Chinese abacus Julie had bought for
him
several Christmas
es
ago
and a
tiny
inunnguaq
stone statue he
had
bought on a trip they’d made last year to
Manitoba
.
He kept all of his tools and spare parts inventory downstairs, near the network operations center and server room. It was a small, simple
office
, b
ut it was his
.
N
ow, more than ever
before
, he was grateful for that. He had a door to shut and four walls to keep others out
and his personal demons in.

He plugged his laptop into its docking station
.
As he waited for it to load, he sorted through the pile of mail
.
Between the
most recently published
networking
magazine
s
and the latest
software
catalog
s
, he saw a
n
envelope
,
the same
lavender
color as the
one
he had
found
earlier
.
He flipped it over
.
This one also had his name on th
e front, written by hand
, but in a much gentler
style
than before
.
It looked like a woman’s handwriting
.
To Steve it looked like Julie’s.

He tore the envelope open
,
and inside was a
one-page
letter written in the same script as the envelope
.
Today’s date was at the top
.
Steve read it to himself:

Steve,

My God
,
how I miss you
too
,
baby
.
Hearing your words
makes me ache
. I know how great the pain is now
.
I feel it myself, even as these words are written.
I
t will get better. Y
ou must trust me on this.
You are strong Steve
,
and you have to stay that way for everyone’s sake
.
There is so much at stake here
,
and we are all watching, listening and praying.
Wherever you go, and whatever
happens,
know that I will be with you
at
each step
.
Yes, this is goodbye
—
a second chance for us both to say what is in our hearts
.
But then again, we shared everything, so we really didn’t need this
,
did we?  I was yours, I am yours and I will always be yours. This is only goodbye for now
.
Together we’re better, forever we’re strong. United as one we can never go wrong. We’ll walk hand in hand up to death and beyond. We’re better together, it’s where we belong.
Be strong and remember that you
will always have my love
.

Julie

Steve’s heart was pounding
.
He felt his adrenaline coursing
,
and he was ready to fight
.
S
omeone was
stealing his identity. They
were invading his life and his personal secrets.
He cursed himself for sending th
e
message
the night before
.
He had fallen victim to one of the oldest phishing scams in computer security
.
The
Say Goodbye to Me
site was a fraudulent
website
designed to lure visitors in and prey on their fears, convincing them to reveal confidential information
.

But he had never heard of such a complex approach
.
Typical
cyber
thieves cast
a
wide and
automated
net over thousands in
the
hope of
snagging
a potential victim or two
.
But they always relied on technology to help them
.
They used phishing emails with fake messages promising dire results if the recipient didn’t “click here now” to update their bank data or personal information
.
Or they promised wild riches
,
if the recipient would be so kind as to deposit a small amount of money into a US bank account for the rich
-
yet
-
recently
-
deposed African prince
in desperate need of help
.

He had received the invitation to the site in a handwritten letter!
They’d
breached the bank’s
network
defenses
, which was difficult,
(
but not unheard of
)
,
given
the safeguards the bank invested in.
Yet
rather than
swindling
him online,
were
these thieves regressing to paper form?  The handwriting on this note
looked
identical to Julie’s. Surely, they could have had samples of her handwriting by digging through the trash, but that would have
been
months ago, when she was still alive and writing.
Maybe they broke
into his house and found sa
mples of her writing:
recipes, legal signatures
or
her
address book
. I
f they were going to risk breaking in, why not pull a smash
-
and
-
grab?  There was enough computer equipment to make it worth their while, but how
did they make
it inside with no forced entry and no tripping of the security alarm?