“You can’t ask for that!” Johnny exclaimed. “You have no right!”

  Zach smiled. “True. I can’t that of you, but” he pointed over to Mike,” I’m well within my rights to ask that of Mike here.” He walked back and forth. “And then take those documents over to John and have him look them over. “

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Why not? I wouldn’t even have to look at them myself. Not that it would be a problem, as both of you have said, these documents are routine.” He looked past Johnny. “Mike?”

  Mike developed a troubled look on his face. “Yeah, I could get that to you,” he said. “But what makes you think that those documents are tampered?”

  “Like both Johnny and Josh said, anyone present would notice if an email carried their signature that they had not signed. John has been in and out, with Sasha taking on his responsibilities. It’s the kind of flux where his forged signature could be missed several times over.”

  Zach turned his gaze back to Johnny.

  “Those documents, if you will. “

  Johnny reared back, ready to move, but froze mid-motion.

  Crackle!

  The small light of electricity traveling between the prongs of a taser shone close to the engineer’s nose.

  Zach smiled. “This isn’t my first rodeo.” He took his thumb off the taser trigger. “Now how about we go upstairs and talk about who dragged you into this mess?”

  “Who?”

  “I highly doubt that you woke up one morning and decided to borrow drilling equipment without permission to hide some copper.”

  Johnny fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face.

  Zach blinked.

  Grown man, crying. Not the reaction he expected.

  Two hours later, the group had coalesced in a different meeting room above ground. Sasha was now present and ticked.

  “You had better pay for the gas and time I wasted driving to Solutions HQ and back,” she growled.

  Johnny couldn’t bring himself to look up from the table surface. “Sorry.” A single security guard stood behind him.

  Zach took a deep breath. This was going to take more diffusing. Turning to the last addition, the head of the engineering company’s HR, he said, “Thank you for coming and letting us have this space. I have a feeling that johnny here has some important information that may be relevant to your company as a whole.”

  The head was unconvinced. “I’m still not sure that – ”

  “Especially since more than one Solutions’ employee may have been harmed through your company. It’s best that both companies share the information about this case, don’t you think?”

  The head shut up.

  He turned to Sasha. “I’m sure he will compensate you for that message that led to HQ.”

  She turned her frown to him. “I had to go through an extra security check there! Due to what? Some fire? And then you weren’t even there! It took nearly an hour to find someone who did know where you were!”

  He swallowed hard. “That should not have happened.” Let’s call this diffuse enough. He turned back to Johnny. “So, Johnny, why don’t we start with the who? The who that started all of this.”

  “I-I don’t know who they are.”

  Sasha slammed her palms on the table. “You don’t know?!”

  Zach held up his hand. “Sasha, that can happen. Especially in cases of blackmail of the digital variety.”

  “Blackmail?” She turned back to Johnny. “What could you be blackmailed? What could you have –”

  Zach held his hand before her face again. “Blackmail doesn’t have to be real.”

  Sasha gaped, sinking back into her chair.

  “How about if we let him explain how, okay?” He turned his pal up and towards Johnny. “Please continue.”

  Johnny shift in his chair. “You’re right, everything was digital. I started getting these messages. I ignored them at first, thinking that it was just spam. That is, until my bank account mysteriously emptied and refilled right before my eyes.”

  “Someone got into your bank account like that?”

  “I tried to tell my bank about it, but they had no records. It was like it never happened. And then I remembered those messages and read them. The most recent ones mentioned the bank activity and that I would do well to pay attention from now on.”

  “That means you were threatened,” interjected Josh, “not blackmailed!”

  Johnny squirmed in his seat. “Back in my high school days, I was part of a small cracker group.”

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  “Cracker?”

  “He means black hat hacker,” Zach explained.

  “Hacker? You?”

  “I didn’t know any better! We weren’t trying to destroy anything! The worst we did was hack into some government sites and leave prank messages just because we could.”

  “And that was it?” Zach inquired.

  “At first, yes. Then, one of my friends’ pranks resulted in someone getting injured. That was too far for me and I left. Never looked back.”

  “Yet, it came back to haunt you.”

  “They were able to dig up some of those old pranks! And then they threatened to ‘pad’ them and send them to the police if I didn’t sell them the copper.”

  “They wanted the copper, specifically?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know why?”

  He shrugged. “No.”

  “They also made a point of paying you. Making you complicit.”

  “Yeah…”

  “That must have made you nervous. No wonder you went to such great lengths to hide everything.”

  Johnny nodded. “I hid only the demanded amounts in that tunnel, where it couldn’t slide into the areas below the bunker, made a point of always being the one reviewing the copper production documents…” He trailed off.

  “And John?”

  “You’re right. If I could fake someone’s signature, it would be John’s. I had all of the necessary information to do it.”

  “He’s had so much going on!” Sasha snapped. “Why did you target him?”

  “Because he was the only one I could. A-and even then, if word got out, I knew that he’d be exonerated. After all, I made sure that some of those sales occurred when he couldn’t possibly have done them! Anyone who did a decent check would say that his identity was stolen, not that he did any of this!”

  “And you couldn’t be the one whose identity was stolen?”

  “If anyone found out about my history, I’d be the suspect, not suspected of being a victim!”

  The HR head chimed in, “Even so, you couldn’t have assumed that John would be so easily exonerated. You’re assuming that his whereabouts could be traced with ease.”

  “Actually, Johnny has a point,” Zach interceded.

  “How?”

  “Our cybersecurity people can sometimes be a bit paranoid. Solutions employees are to report when they are in and out of work at all times. This was to make sure that no one could try logging into someone’s computer, pretending to be an employee on vacation.”

  “You don’t have people logging in while on vacation?”

  “The cybersecurity department had some debatably paranoid choice words about that. Employees are no longer allowed to log in when on vacation.”

  “Which is why,” Sasha added, “it was so infuriating that no one knew where you were!”

  “Again, that should not have happened! You should have been sent to my superior. She knew!”

  “It took nearly and hour before I was sent to her. And she wasn’t even there, either!”

  “That’s – We’re getting off track.” He turned back to Johnny. “So you were threatened with falsified blackmail and did as you were told. What is that status of that now?”

  “I haven’t heard anything from the past week. With everything being found out, I don’t know how I’m going to … or stop …Haa.”

  Zach turned to the HR head. “Johnny here is still at risk. Our cybersecurity department may be able to help out with this mess.”

  “How so?” she asked. “The damage has been done. As far as I can see, this is something that will ultimately have to be left to the law.”

  “Johnny was and may still be targeted. Others in your company may be next. And with the arrangement, my company is being affected. This is something we need to be assertive about.”

  She thought it over. “I will still need to discuss the details with the CEO and others.”

  “Do that. Just don’t delay on it.” He turned to Sasha. “I’m counting on you to make sure this doesn’t get buried.”

  Sasha gave a stern nod.

  The head wasn’t pleased. “I still doubt that this exchange is the best way to handle I the situation.”

  “This isn’t just your problem! Why are you acting like we’re your enemies all of a sudden!”

  “There are procedures!” she snapped back. “This is a highly irregular, delicate situation! I can’t let someone waltz in and trample over everything and everyone!”

  “Your authority isn’t being undermined,” Zach reassured. “Sasha is now the person that you would first talk to about the situation.”

  It didn’t work.

  Let’s try something else. “Time can be of the essence to catching and rectifying something like this. Now, all of us here are aware of how a topic like this could expand so much that the original topic gets dropped. I am now asking you to please make sure that the others don’t fall into the trap of analysis paralysis and I’m asking Sasha to support you in that, okay?”

  The head grumbled but otherwise acquiesced.

  That settled, Josh had a number of questions himself. “Johnny, how did you even do it? The tunnel? The sales? Anything really.”

  Johnny took a deep breath. “I rented a truck to borrow and move a drill to the emergency exit. After that, I just drove it down there and used it at night when no one was there. It’s been years since I’ve used a drill like that, so the tunnel wound up swerving and longer than intended.”

  “But how did you drive the thing through all that brush in the back?”

  He rolled his eyes at this. “Three months ago, it was winter. The brush was gone.”

  “Ooh!”

  “The brush filled in when it warmed up.”

  Zach pinched the bridge of his nose at this. With all of the effort expended to hide things, he did not anticipate a simple solution for how the tunnel was made.

  “Okay,” Josh continued, “but what about the back door? Doesn’t that take a special access key?”

  “I have that key.”

  “You do?”

  Johnny rubbed his temples. “Yes.”

  “What about the sales, then,” Mike chimed in. “How did that work? Did you just retrieve everything and sell it out some back alley somewhere?”

  “No. I mean, I did retrieve it, but what happened is that they sent me a package to put it in and then mail it at a designated post office.”

  “Do you have a list of which post offices and when?” Zach inquired.

  “Yeah, I had it all documented, but not where anyone could find it. Including those ‘buyers’.”

  The head doubted that. “You said that these people were able to mess with your bank account,” she mentioned. “How could you hide it from them? Couldn’t they just get into your work or home computer?” Horror filled her eyes. “Did you use your work computer?!”

  “They could have broken into my house and not find anything on my stuff.”

  “How?!”

  “I have a theory about that,” Zach interrupted. He pulled a small cartridge and handed it to Sasha. “Remember this?”

  Sasha turned the item over in her palm. “Yes, I remember you showing me this last time. Didn’t you say that you found this in the brush out back?”

  “Yep.” He took it back and offered it to Johnny. “Look familiar?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “What is it?” asked the head.

  “Like what Sasha suspected, it’s a ROM cartridge. They used to be used in some older computing systems.” He looked to Johnny. “Care to take it away?”

  Johnny accepted. “Once they started demanded the sales, I tried to get the communication off my computer and onto something more secure, where I could hide my tracks. We have old but still viable computer parts gathering dust down here. I assembled some parts and set up custom communication there. I even made sure to make a physical key to prevent someone else from getting in.”

  “Physical key?” the head repeated.

  A Light dawned on Sasha’s face. “Oh! The cartridge!”

  “That right. No one could log in unless they had the cartridge.”

  “And hardware is a lot harder to hack than software,” Sasha completed.

  “Exactly.”

  “Yeah … Yeah, I remember you telling me about that.”

  “I even switched them up so make sure that they couldn’t try to fake the key at some point. This is one of the old ones.”

  “Where’s the custom build now?”

  Johnny stated to look sheepish.

  “Let me guess,” Zach suggested. “Is it in the pile of junk at the entrance now?”

  “Yep.”

  Zach started laughing.

  “What so funny?”

  “Our cybersecurity department is going to have a ball!"