Page 31 of Her Dark Lies

“It’s good to see you,” I say as warmly as I can, biting back my concern.

“You, too, Claire. You’re certainly blooming. The sea air agrees with you.”

She’s going through the motions; her voice is flat, empty. Something is definitely wrong. Is she sick?

The rest of the family ignore this exchange and start talking about the details of the weekend, and I’m amazed at how calm and collected they are.

Jack plops down next to me, his plate full.

“Should I call Katie? I hate that she’s missing dinner.”

Jack shakes his head. “She’s crashed in her room. Fatima checked on her.”

Fatima. I look up to see her watching me intently. I hadn’t even noticed her standing in the corner of the room, hovering like a benevolent spider. I smile, and she smiles back.

“That was kind of her.”

Jack feeds me a piece of parmesan. “This is the best cheese you will ever have. They make it north of here and we bring it in by the boatload.”

It is amazing. I follow it with a strawberry, then some champagne. I am feeling the surreality of the moment bleed away, and realize I’m starting to enjoy myself. I am a part of this family now. With a few words and the stroke of a pen, I am one of them. I know it’s not official until we wed, but this feels...right.

Until Elliot explodes.

“Shit!”

“Language,” Ana says automatically.

But Elliot’s face has gone from white to livid red.

“What is it? What’s up?” Jack asks.

“Um...we have a problem. The fucking servers have been hacked.”

“What do you mean, hacked?”

“I mean someone’s gotten into our private servers and wiped them clean. I don’t know who, but everything’s gone.” There is something sharp and frightened in his tone.

Brice shakes his head. “You mustn’t have logged in properly. That’s impossible.”

Jack nods. “With as many firewalls and redundancies as we have, surely there are backups.”

Elliot, still tapping hard on his laptop, shoves a hand through his hair. “When I say it’s all gone, I mean, it’s all gone. I’ve been searching every server. There’s nothing left, anywhere. Even the backups are gone. Jesus, we’re screwed.”

Brice’s phone rings on his son’s final syllable, and he glances at the screen, staring as if the caller ID is in hieroglyphics.

“It’s the SOC in New York.” The SOC, I know, is the Security Operations Center, which houses the company’s exceptionally advanced cybersecurity team. Jack told me how their company works last month.

Brice clears his throat and puts the phone to his ear. He listens for a moment then explodes.

“That’s impossible. How could you let this happen?”

Ana lays a hand on his arm, but he shakes her off, starts issuing instructions rapid-fire.

“Get Karmen, right now.”

“Is it a DDoS attack?” Jack asks Elliot, who is white-faced.

“I don’t know what the fuck is happening. If some little shit thinks he can try to ransom the servers...” He punches numbers into his phone and the deadly calm in his voice chills me to the bone. “Get me into the SOC call with Brice, right now.”