Page 102 of Only Fools Rush

Hi Priya,

I just left you a thumb drive that one of the execs dropped off at the front desk. Can you plug it in and then email me back if it works? They got it from a client and are waiting to confirm! Thanks!

-Lana Nguyen

I sent the email and hoped that Priya Singh was not as careful of an executive assistant as she needed to be. A few minutes later, my screen auto-populated with Priya’s username and password.

I grinned.

My interface populated with a complete mirror of Priya’s computer, giving me control over it and everything on it—including the calendars of all the high-level executives who worked at Vero Construction Inc. These were the private calendars of the people whoweren’ton the public company access list.

Including the calendar of Maximiliano Volpe.

An email from Priya pinged back into Lana’s inbox.

Lana,

I plugged it in and I’m not seeing anything? Do you need me to do anything?

-Priya

I typed up a quick reply, letting her know that Lana would tell the exec., and she could toss the drive for now, and then fired it off.

It was ridiculous, really. Why would an executive send Priya a thumb drive? Why couldn’t someone just plug it in at the reception desk?

But that was the beauty of internal phishing. The credibility of an internal email address surpassed common sense. Trust was their downfall.

By the time Vero Construction figured out how their system got hacked, it would be too late, so it didn’t really matter if these two talked in person and realized they hadn’t sent messages to each other.

I was in the system now, and they weren’t kicking me out.

I looked at Max Volpe’s calendar first.

And there, staring back at me, was a time block reserved for the exact date and time that Leona had sent. Chiara had wanted her to know about this event. But why?

The time block didn’t provide any other information besides being marked asbusyon his calendar.

I drummed my fingers on the desk before sipping my energy drink.

We knew Max planned to go to this event, but I still had no idea what it was or why it mattered to us.

Progress, but not enough.

Quickly using Lana’s access to the company directory, I cross-referenced the same event across the calendars of the other high-level executives. Three others showed the samebusyevent. No other details.

I went back to Priya Singh’s personal calendar, hoping she’d have some extra visibility as an executive assistant, and practically jumped out of my seat when I saw the title on the same date and time.VCI Board Meeting.

This time, there was a location geo-tagged on the event. A restaurant in the Upper East Side.

“Hell yes!”

A board meeting. Now, why did Chiara text Leona the date and time of the Vero Construction Inc. board meeting?

Before I could think, the phone rang. I scrambled to answer it when I saw the name.

“Leona,” I said when the line connected. The last I’d heard from them was when Obi called for a location on Kofler. “Is everything all right?”

“Hey, Ciel.” She sounded exhausted.