Alex O'Donnell and the 40 CyberThieves (The Fairy Tale Novels)

  By the time he reached Uncle Cass’s neighborhood, he slowed down and waited until his uncle’s car had vanished into the yawning garage and the heavy paneled door had slid back down. Then he pulled over to the curb.

  He rummaged around the back of his car (fortunately, despite Kateri’s attempts, it was still a mess) and found a baseball cap and a new pair of hedge clippers his mom had asked him to pick up at the store the other day. None of the omnipresent immigrant landscape workers were in evidence now, but hopefully the residents wouldn’t look too hard at a spare one working after five.

  Jamming the hat on his head and pulling the clippers off of their cardboard backing, Alex got out of the car, and carelessly strolled up the lawn to the bushes that surrounded his uncle’s house. He worked his way to one side, making judicious cuts and hoping Aunt Mona was out shopping instead of sitting inside looking at her shrubbery. When he thought he was out of sight of the windows of the opposite houses, he slipped into the concealing foliage and made his way to Uncle Cass’s office window.

  Sure enough, his uncle and dad were in there. They were both huddled over a computer, and he could hear them talking.

  His dad’s voice, “Are you sure this computer is secure?”

  Uncle Cass laughed. “It’s secure.”

  “How’s it connecting? Is it using your static IP address? If so, it could be tracked—”

  “Don’t you worry about that. Just go ahead and hack.”

  “I wasn’t hacking when I found this site,” Dad said, a little defensive. “I was just watching.” There was a pause. “Look, all I have is the sessions log from when I went in. In order to get in, we’ll have to get into two different web servers ourselves to access the Sesame program. I don’t feel comfortable…”

  “You’ll hack in there if I tell you to. And if you get stuck, I’ll take over.”

  Uncle Cass flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles.

  His dad sighed. “Well, let me show you the session logs first. I stored a copy on my web e-mail. Here.”

  There was silence. Alex slowly looked over the windowsill and saw both brothers leaning over the computer screen.

  “At first, I thought that Sesame was the program that cracked the password for the site,” his dad said. “But when I looked at the session log, I realized it wasn’t calculating that. It was finding the IP address.” He shook his head. “In other words, the address for this website changes constantly, maybe even hourly.

  The Sesame program is what tells you where to find it. See? The program looks for a post on a microblogging site, and decrypts it to tell your browser where to go.”

  “Interesting,” Uncle Cass said. “Probably proves the site is run by criminals.

  They don’t want anyone to find them. Let me see that microblogging site.”

  His dad typed on the computer for a moment. Then his uncle pushed him aside and stared at the screen.

  “I bet that’s the encryption key right there. See that symbol in the logs? Ha!

  With that, I can reverse-engineer this thing myself,” Uncle Cass said. “Move over. Let me take over.”

  “What are you going to do?” his dad asked.

  “Crack this code.”

  “But if you do a brute force… No John the Ripper is going to work here.”

  “Shut up.”

  Alex shot a glance in the window to see his uncle commandeering the keyboard while his dad inched out of the chair. After a few minutes, his uncle beamed.

  “How do you like that? Three minutes! Pretty good, eh? My job gives me access to a distributed cluster of rainbow tables. There’s nothing it can’t crack.”

  He pointed. “And see that? Not only does it give the IP numbers to tell us where to find this site—it also gives us the username-password combination. We don’t even need the Sesame program. All we need to get into the website is right here.” He began to type.

  “I hope you’re right,” Dad said, sounding unsure. “But I wonder why the other guy took the trouble to use the Sesame program? There must be something in there you need. If you don’t use that program, I wonder if…”

  “Hey, what happened? I just sent my information, and the screen went black.”

  “Guess it worked!” Dad said.

  Uncle Cass glowered. “You don’t have to sound so surprised. What’s this?”

  “Security questions,” Dad said. “I think I remember the answers…” There was a pause, more typing.

  “Wow!”

  Silence. Alex glanced in and saw his uncle transfixed, looking at the screen.

  His dad sat back, scratching his beard and looking worried.

  “So what are these piles of things? Is that where you can get gold, jewelry, things like that?”

  “I don’t know. The guy I followed didn’t go there. But he did go to the room with windows—there.”

  “Real estate, too?” Cass whistled.

  “I wouldn’t click on any of that,” Dad cautioned. “Remember, there are menus here you can’t see.”

  “So what did the guy you followed do?”

  “He clicked on a puddle of water.”

  Cass laughed. “I get it. Liquid cash. Okay, take me there.”

  There was silence.

  Now Uncle Cass chuckled. “The stone is their ATM. This is the bank. Let’s see if I can make a massive withdrawal.”

  He typed swiftly.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Just seeing how much they have,” Cass said.

  “Are you sure you want to use that snail mail?”

  “Should be fine! Can’t you tell this is an off the record system? It probably sends the address straight to the printer and deletes it. These guys don’t want anyone to know where they’re sending their money to. That’s obvious.” He seemed to relish his cleverness. “And the site just thinks I’m one of them.”

  Silence. Alex saw his dad shifting, a worried expression on his face.

  His uncle was typing rapidly and clicking. “I’m encrypting the data for safekeeping. Then I’ll send it down my reverse DNS UDP tunnel. No trace I’ve been here. Did you do that?”

  Alex’s dad shrugged. “I didn’t think to.”

  Uncle Cass laughed. “You didn’t know how to, is what you mean. I’ve kept up to speed, Alan. I’ve kept up to speed.” He cracked his knuckles. “So what happens now?”

  “We got a check in the mail at the address I had entered,” his dad said.

  “For the full amount?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wild,” Uncle Cass said. And chuckled. “You did the smart thing, showing me that site, Alan. I got the whole thing in here.” He tapped the laptop. “I can get in there any time I want, now.”

  “Hey!” His dad leaned forward. “You just closed out!”

  “Yeah—so what? I thought we were done.”

  “I just remembered,” his dad said. “The man I followed pushed a button on the cave wall to log out—and he logged out of the Sesame program on the SSH

  too.”

  “So what?” Uncle Cass shrugged. “We’re out, and there’s no trace we’ve been there.”

  “Cass, I’m sure we tripped some kind of alarm when we were there…”

  Uncle Cass waved his hand. “You have no idea how far removed my machine is from that destination. There were over ten authentic-looking hops.

  I’ve got the number one security system in the country. The same one our spies in the field use. No one’s going to be able to find me.”

  “Cass—”

  “Alan, I know what I’m doing. And don’t try to pretend you know more than me. I got tired of that game a long time ago.”

  His dad pulled a phone out of his pocket. “Well, if we’re finished, I’ll call my son to come and get me.”

  Shoot.

  Alex grabbed in his pockets for his phone. Should have seen that coming. He yanked it out and turned it off just as the Gladiator theme song began.

  “Is ther
e someone…” he heard his uncle say.

  Inching away from the window, Alex scuttled beneath the shrubs, grabbing the hedge clippers.

  He backed out of the bushes and started making his way around the house when he heard the flap of a dog door. Oh, crap.

  All at once the barking began. Realizing that there was no way to escape notice now, Alex faced the snarling Alaskan husky.

  “Hey, Persia—good doggie—hey girl—” he whispered.

  Sensing someone behind him, he raised his forearms and swung round to meet his uncle’s fists.

  Alex blocked the blow easily, but didn’t return it, his idea being to get away instead of starting a fight. But his uncle was evidently spoiling for one. He grabbed Alex by the back of the neck. “Get in here!”

  “If you’re finished with Dad—” Alex twisted around but his uncle clamped down painfully.

  “Get in here!”

  “Alex, come in,” Dad said from the back door. “Let go of him, Cass!”

  Alex lowered his arms and obeyed, but his uncle took advantage of this to yank the clippers out of Alex’s hands and push him inside. Alex ducked, but since he was in the doorway, he couldn’t get out of the way soon enough as his uncle viciously smashed the clippers on his shoulder.

  With difficulty, Alex restrained himself again from striking back as he stumbled forward. It would have been easy to go straight for Uncle Cass’s throat, but Alex couldn’t see that any good would come of it.

  “How dare you,” his uncle growled, and raised the clippers again. This time Alex dodged to the side, and his uncle only succeeded in putting a gash into his drywall. Alex aimed a quick kick at the side of his uncle’s kneecap, and, stunned by the pain, his uncle dropped the clippers with a curse.

  “Stop!” Dad said, making a dive for the clippers.

  “I’m not finished,” Uncle Cass said, breathing hard, getting to his feet and lunging at Alex. “Alex started this, didn’t you, Alex? What were you doing, spying on my business?”

  “What were you doing, threatening my dad?” Alex retorted, hotly, circling his uncle. He didn’t want to fight, but he didn’t want to get hit again, either.

  Uncle Cass laughed, pushing aside Dad, who was fruitlessly trying to hold him back. “Your dad is a thief.”

  “Then so are you,” Alex said. “What were you just doing?”

  “Doing my job as a federal banking commission employee,” Uncle Cass said, closing in on Alex. “Investigating a fraudulent website. Nothing illegal at all. Unlike your family.”

  He threw another punch at Alex, but Alex ducked to one side and avoided it. Uncle Cass struck again, and again Alex dodged, blocking the punch and directing his uncle’s momentum. His uncle stumbled and narrowly escaped falling. He spun around and tore back into Alex, who evaded the punch again.

  Seeing as he wasn’t getting anywhere, Uncle Cass pulled himself together. “I could still have you both arrested—your dad for hacking, and you for assault—get out of here!”

  “I’d like to see you make the assault charge stick,” Alex said.

  “Okay, Cass, we’re going.” Dad ducked between the two combatants and pulled his son out the door with him. They hurried out into the summer evening air. Alex didn’t break the silence until he and his father were safely inside the car and had pulled out onto the highway. Driving with one hand, Alex felt his shoulder gingerly and was glad that at least his uncle hadn’t broken the skin.

  Then he took a deep breath.

  “Dad, tell me what happened in there. You know where the Mystery Money came from, don’t you?”

  His dad groaned. “Okay. I’ve told your mom most of this, but you might as well know too. It was this funny website I found with the MouseCatcher.”

  Alex listened intently as his dad described how he had followed a user who had turned out to be a hacker. His dad had watched him hack into a website and use a program called “Sesame” to get into a mysterious private website.

  Dad rubbed the lines in his forehead. “I guess whoever runs that changes the website address—the IP numbers—about every hour. That’s why the user I followed used the Sesame program to calculate the web address.” He sighed. “It might sound stupid, but I didn’t even realize I was asking for money the first time I went. I just entered a number sequence to make the form go away. But the computer sent me a check for that exact amount.”

  “One million some dollars,” Alex murmured. “Okay. That makes sense. So they sent you a check.”

  “Yes. And the computer must erase the address it’s sent to automatically, because otherwise I don’t know why they haven’t come looking for me. But I’m not sure they’ll do the same for Cass.”

  “You showed Uncle Cass how to get into the website?”

  “Yes,” his dad said. “He decided to get in without the Sesame program. He used some fancy password cracker he got from his job. And he didn’t log out correctly. Plus he gave them his home address to send the check to. That was a terrible risk.” He shook his head. “Alex, why’d you follow me?”

  Alex winced, rubbing his shoulder. “You expect me to hear him threaten you and stay behind? Sorry, Dad. I was raised to be loyal.”

  “And raised to be a fighter, too. Are you hurt?”

  “Just my shoulder. Serves me right for turning my back on a known enemy,”

  Alex said.

  “Cass isn’t our enemy,” his dad said sharply. “We’re brothers.”

  Alex shrugged. “So were Cain and Abel.”

  Dad fell silent, then said, “Cass might just be doing his job. For all I know, he’s doing research on cybercrime and will use the information to turn them in.

  But he made an awfully large withdrawal.”

  “How much?”

  “Five million.”

  “Five million—! That’s some research he’s doing!”

  “He swore his machine was untraceable, but I’m not so sure. I know he’s treated us like dirt, Alex, but I’m really worried for him. If that stash I found has five million dollars in it—all I can say is—I’m really worried for Cass.”

  “Then, Dad, you’re a better Catholic than me,” Alex said. “Because all I can say is ‘just desserts.’”

  This time when Kateri got off the bus, she was exhausted. Even though the bus ride was now four hours longer due to the O’Donnell’s move south, she hadn’t been able to sleep. Her parents had thought taking the job at the hotel was a wonderful idea. Her older brothers and sisters seemed to think it would be good experience for her. But Kateri herself wasn’t sure. Am I making the right choice? Moving down here when I’m not even sure I’m meant to be with Alex? Is this what God wants? Or am I just acting on my feelings?

  “Kateri’s back! Hooray!”

  Kateri blinked as she stepped off the bus. The entire O’Donnell family, clad in red and black shirts, was waiting for her at the bus depot, and set up a collective cheer, waving long-stemmed red roses, as she appeared. Staring at the laughing, cheering group, she felt unexpected warmth rising in her cheeks. Had they really missed her this much?

  “Welcome to Hunter Springs!” David and Sam swooped around her, hugging her. Alex parted the waves and came to her, kissing her cheek and taking her luggage.

  “So glad you came,” he said, as though he had doubted she would show up even though she had called him to say she was coming. “How was the trip?”

  “Endurable,” she said. “You look like you have something to tell me.”

  He smiled, a little less broadly than last time. “I sure do. But it can wait till later.”

  “Good to see you, Kat,” Mrs. O’Donnell said, leaning forward on her crutches to accept Kateri’s hug. “I’ve missed you!”

  “Good to see you, Kitty,” Kateri said, and smiled at the play on feline names.

  “Glad to be back. How are you holding up?”

  “Ready to see our new home?” Mr. O’Donnell asked cheerfully. He was wearing a red cap that said “Twilight Hills Hotel” in
black letters.

  Kateri regarded him a little grimly: he was the troublemaker who had generated this whole mess she was in. “Guess so!”

  The O’Donnells piled the six bags of clothes and personal effects she had brought into a white van with the Twilight Hills logo emblazoned on the back.

  “The owners threw it in with the sale,” Mr. O’Donnell explained. “It’s helped a lot.”

  “I think we should have it painted red, myself,” Alex said.

  The road led over and through mountain passes that revealed one beautiful vista after another, marred only by billboards advertising caves, water slides, and resort hotels. “Here’s our new palace!” Mrs. O’Donnell exclaimed as Mr.

  O’Donnell turned up a long, steep, black driveway.

  The road wound up and around, up and around, until Kateri wondered if they would ever reach the top. For a hotel, this place was remote. But at last the building came in sight.

  “There!” There was a collective sigh from the O’Donnells, who, Kateri saw, all had a sort of bemused rapture on their faces. The building coming into sight didn’t look nearly as impressive as the mountains. Three stories of concrete block and steel, the narrow side walls painted a jarring blue, its windows obscured by balconies, it looked like a slightly dilapidated 1970s hotel. Which it obviously was.

  It wasn’t exactly Kateri’s idea of a romantic honeymoon getaway. She had expected a grand old Victorian bed-and-breakfast, or a wooden lodge house. But the O’Donnells apparently loved it.

  “I can’t tell you how much fun it’s been to fit this place out,” Mrs. O’Donnell said. “We can’t afford to completely update the décor, but I’m almost not sure I want to.”

  “We’re closed for business right now while I upgrade all the locks on the doors,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “But we’ll have the grand re-opening this weekend.”

  Alex opened the glass doors to the lobby with their retro spiral-metal handles for her. As Kateri stepped inside, she felt physically assaulted by the violent yellow, pink, red, green, and purple of the carpet. The wallpaper was beige plaid, and the bank of counters that greeted her were lemon-yellow tile with green linoleum on top. Metal tube lights of yellow and green hung from the beige ceiling.