Page 26 of Shattered Truth (Off The Grid: FBI #15)

Chapter Fifteen

"May I have it?" Matt asked.

She handed him the drive. "Can you open it?"

"I can. Let's go into my office."

She tossed down her napkin and followed, her stomach churning with a mix of anticipation and dread.

Matt sat down at his desk and powered on his laptop. She stood behind him as he handled the tiny silver square with surprising gentleness, easing the microdrive into a card reader attached to an adapter.

The screen blinked once. Then a message came across the monitor: Drive Locked. Encrypted Volume.

"This is a good sign," Matt said. "If it's encrypted, it means there's something valuable on it."

"But how are we going to open it?"

His fingers flew across the keyboard. Several windows opened, with black and white code scrolling across the screen, and then another message: Enter Password.

He paused, glancing back at her. "Any ideas?"

"He wouldn't have picked something easy. It could be a string of code. I have no idea. He was the computer whiz, not me." She felt a wave of helpless frustration. "I don't know what to tell you. He was always on me to change my passwords, to use a password-locking app, to be more careful."

"But you weren't always careful, were you?"

"No. I try to be better, but I'm sure most of my passwords could be guessed by someone who knew what they were doing."

Matt gave her an assessing look.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"That Landon would have figured you'd be the one to find this, to have to open it. He'd want you to be able to figure it out."

She stared at the monitor. "I don't know, Matt."

"What's your favorite password, one he might have teased you about?"

"There were a couple. I used one of our old addresses with some exclamation marks for a while."

He pushed his chair back to give her access to the computer. "Give it a shot."

She typed in the address, hands sweating. The denial message hit her like a slap in the face.

"Try another one."

She did as he suggested, but it was wrong, too.

"Did you have a nickname? A dog? A favorite food? An inside joke?" Matt asked. "Could it be something with North Star? He thought of you as home. What else did you do that made him feel safe?"

She thought for a moment. "Hot fudge sundaes on Sunday night," she said.

"I'd melt a piece of chocolate to make the fudge, and sometimes when we couldn't afford ice cream…

" Her voice cracked as an old memory ran through her mind.

"One Sunday, on Landon's tenth birthday, my mom had told us there would be a cake and ice cream, but she left on Saturday night and she didn't come home the next day.

Landon was so sad. I told him I was going to make it all right.

We went to the store, but I didn't have enough money for it all, so I…

I bought the chocolate bar, and I stole the ice cream, just one of those small cups, just enough for Landon.

I put it in the pocket of my jacket, and I was so scared the manager was going to say something.

He gave me a really sharp look when I gave him money for the chocolate bar, but he let us go.

And when we got home, I made Landon a sundae, and I sang Happy Birthday to him. "

Matt's lips tightened. "Your mother should have been prosecuted."

"I was the one who stole the ice cream."

"Because of the horrible circumstances you were left in. You were fifteen, right?"

She nodded. "Yes. It wasn't the only time I stole something, but I tried not to. I knew it wasn't right, and I didn't want Landon to see me. That day, I made him stand by the door, so he wouldn't notice." She paused. "But I think he might have figured it out."

"Maybe the password is hotfudgesundae ."

"No. I think it's Finley's. That was the name of the market. We always said, 'Let's go to Finley's'. And if he had to use numbers, maybe that date." She typed in Finleys without the apostrophe and the date of Landon's tenth birthday. The cursor blinked, then the screen opened. "It worked."

"Let's see what we've got," Matt said, moving his chair closer to the computer as he started to type.

She held her breath as the folder structure came to light: Project_K – tests, logs, drafts, security.

He clicked into the first sub-folder, labeled Tests , but all of the individual files needed new passwords.

The log folder contained screens of data and numbers that made no sense to her.

"This is all encrypted," he muttered.

"Can you get through the encryption?"

"Not on this computer."

He opened the next folder labeled Drafts , and, finally, she saw a regular-looking paragraph.

It appeared to be notes for some kind of paper.

Timing is key. It’s not the market that creates volatility; it’s perception.

The model isn’t about reaction. It’s about pressure, causation, and sequential actions.

Worldwide markets collide. Money moves. Power shifts. Who's in control?

"He's talking about something predictive, some kind of forecasting model," Matt said. "It feels like it might be about manipulating financial markets."

"Arjun said something about that, but it doesn't make sense."

"Doesn't it?" he challenged. "Your father committed suicide after losing all his money and some of his clients' money in a stock market fall."

"That's true. But Landon never expressed any interest in financial markets. He thought investing was a losing proposition, that it was like gambling. The house always wins."

"Maybe he found a way to ensure the house doesn't always win."

"You think he was trying to game the markets?"

"Or trying to understand how they work."

"He might have wanted to prevent someone else from suffering that kind of loss," she said. "I can't see him trying to concoct some scheme to make money for himself."

"Why not, Haley? You grew up poor. You stole ice cream to make sundaes.

Why wouldn't Landon want to make money? And look where he was—Westbridge University, a private college inhabited by rich kids, probably flaunting their wealth.

Maybe he wanted to have that life for himself, to take care of you for a change. "

She wished she could refute his theory, but a part of it did resonate, especially the part about Landon wanting to take care of her.

"He used to say one day he'd pay me back for everything I'd given him.

Of course, I told him that wasn't happening, that I could take care of myself, and I just wanted him to have a good life. "

"He wanted the same for you."

"I still don't know if that's what he was doing. He certainly didn't have extra money at the time of his death."

"Maybe that's because he hadn't used the algorithm yet, or whatever he was working on was stolen from him."

"Possibly," she admitted, her brain swirling with new questions. "What's in that last folder? The one labeled security ."

"Let's find out."

As Matt opened the folder, four video files appeared. He clicked on the first one, and her breath caught in her chest as the grainy images appeared to show a bedroom. "That's Landon's apartment. What is this?"

"Looks like he set up a security camera."

For several seconds, there was no movement. Then a woman walked over to Landon's desk. She pulled open a drawer and then stopped, looking over her shoulder. As she did so, the camera caught her very pretty face.

"That's Brooke," she breathed, feeling Landon's sense of betrayal as clearly as if it were her own. "What is she doing?"

"She's looking for something." Matt pressed play on the next video.

It had to be a different day or later that night, because the light was different.

It was darker, no light coming from the windows, which made the details more difficult to make out.

Brooke went back to the desk and dug through the drawers, pulling out papers, file folders, and several black notebooks.

"There they are," she exclaimed as she watched Brooke toss the notebooks into a backpack and zip it up. A man came up behind her, but all she could see was a shadowy figure, an arm, reaching for the pack. "Damn, we can't see him."

"There's a ring on his finger, maybe a class ring."

"Can you lighten the image?" she asked.

"Not on this computer."

They watched for another moment. After Brooke gave the backpack away and the man disappeared, Brooke turned and looked at Landon's bed. She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were upset. She shook her head several times and then, with her head down, she turned and left the room.

"She stole Landon's notebooks and gave them to someone else," she said.

"And your brother knew it. He saw these files before he put the drive in your necklace."

"He knew she'd betrayed him. But how long did he know?"

"I'm not sure. There's no date stamp on these." Matt clicked the next video, which was from a camera in a different bedroom, one she didn't recognize, but it was a smaller room with sports paraphernalia and clothes strewn about.

"Where's this?" she muttered.

"Maybe a room at the fraternity house?" Matt suggested.

They watched for several long seconds and then a man came into view.

He looked like he'd just gotten out of the shower, shirt off, hair damp, towel around his hips.

As he turned his face, she realized who it was.

"That's Drew Sanderson, Landon's big brother.

" She watched as Drew picked up a phone from the bed, read a text, and then tossed it back down.

"I wish there was sound," she said in frustration.

"Why would Landon put a camera in Drew's room? "

"There had to be a reason. There might be a way to zoom in on that phone and see what that text said," he murmured as Drew walked over to answer the door. "But again, not on this computer."