CHAPTER SIX-2
419 Words
“I’m sorry. There’s nothing else we can do,” the cybercrime specialists Mason had brought in told him. “The guy that did this burned all his bridges really well. There’s no getting it back.”
Toby had managed to not only steal from Mason’s company but had also managed to hack and corrupt its Cloud storage – something that Mason could tell both frustrated and fascinated the tech geeks sitting across the desk from him.
Even more damning, Mason’s copies he’d been keeping at home were, as he suspected, not recent enough to contain the last-minute breakthroughs they’d had to solve the last few glitches.
Allen knocked, then opened the door before Mason could respond.
“Hate to interrupt you guys, but you’re going to want to see this, Mason,” he said, his face red with fury.
Allen strode over to the large display monitor on the wall and turned it on, then fired up the keyboard and mouse, navigated to the industry’s premier magazine’s webpage, and clicked on a header to open the article.
Mason’s heart sank to his knees. There it was, in black and white.
Toby Mitting had stolen all their data, all right – and judging by who he was posing with in the picture, he’d shopped it to their biggest competitor.
“We’ll send our final report over,” the leader of the independent IT team said. “I’m so sorry, Mason.”
Once their visitors had filed out, Allen shut the door.
“What do you want to do next?” he asked Mason.
“I’m honestly not sure,” came the weary answer. “All of our spare capital was tied up in this, Allen, you know that. We leveraged everything against this one project. I’m not even sure how we’re going to keep the doors open, much less try to go after anybody in court.”
“You need a break, Mason.”
“I can’t. I have to try to figure something out, man. I can’t just run off somewhere.”
“Mason,” Allen intoned. “You’ve been beating your head against this rock since Toby skipped out on the meeting. You’re wearing yourself out. Take a couple days, use my cabin. Unplug. Step away from this and take a break. It just might help you reset so you can figure this out.”
“Nothing left to lose, right?” Mason said wistfully.
“Exactly,” Allen said as he pulled out his key ring, took a worn silver key off the chain, and handed it over.
“Okay,” Mason conceded on an exhale. “Okay.”
“And if you drink all the whiskey in the cabin, just replace it before you leave, that’s all I ask.”
Mason grinned for the first time in over a week.
***
- Writer
