“Boss, I’m really sorry!” I told him, fearing for my job, as we finally sat in the car.
“What for?” he sounded genuinely surprised.
“I should’ve come to you and excused myself as soon as I realized they could be Jack’s parents. I knew if their kids came home and told their parents about me, it would mean trouble. I just wasn’t done running the scripts yet, and by the time we finally had the results, they already stood in the living...”
“Kid!” he interrupted me. “Listen, I admit, when I suggested you leave, it was to save the contract. And my reputation. But don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have blamed you for it even if it hadn’t worked out. All of us know that you have nothing to apologize for when it comes to stopping the guys who harassed you in school! None of us would ever buy that crap about you just running around, beating up other students for no damn reason! In fact, when that girl said you beat up half their football team and I leaned into you, I wanted to know if you beat them up all at once or in succession.” He laughed by the end.
“Then making me Mia’s chauffeur isn’t your way of punishing me?” I asked skeptically.
“Kid, I did you a favor there.” he laughed, but realized he had to elaborate. “Look. Her parents are paying us to keep them all safe. That comes with a certain set of privileges, and a certain degree of authority.”
“Fine.” I answered after mulling it over. “But I’m warning you upfront ... she’s bound to complain, no matter how considerate I behave.”
“All the spoiled little shits do when you restrict their freedom. Now we gotta talk about the job. I should’ve thought about you probably being able to help after what you did in Austin. So ... is there anything else you could do to help? He was almost caught once. I don’t think it’ll stop him from trying again, but he’ll probably wear a mask next time, so the cameras might not be enough. They agreed to have one of us in the house for the next few weeks, but after we fortify the building, it’ll take our guy a moment to get outside as well, and the perp could run. Any ideas on how we can gather extra evidence?”
I thought about that for a moment.
“Well, we know he carried his phone when he came here the last time and, since he won’t learn about my access to the mobile tower, he won’t have any reason to leave it at home the next time he tries. I could set up an IMSI-catcher, but that’s just as legally admissible as the phone logs I pulled from the cell tower ... We could just set up a public WiFi Access Point in the house that doesn’t actually allow access to the internet or their network, and reduce the transmission power so it won’t reach the fence. Most phones are set to automatically join any public WiFi in range to save on their data plans by default, so if he enters the property again, we’d have his phone’s MAC-Address documented in the log files of the router, and our Hotspot’s SSID in his phone’s network history.”
“Do we have everything you’d need for that?”
“Yeah. In my basement.” I referred to my office, since I was the only one working down there. “I could even set it up so it would send me a notification as soon as a new device connects. It would give us a short warning period before he reaches the door.”
“Prepare what you can today, and set it up in their house tomorrow morning before taking the girl to school. If I understood that right, you’d have the family’s and our own phones already connected while we make the installations, so they won’t cause false alarms in the evening.”
For someone who claimed not to understand anything about computers just two years ago, he grasped the concept surprisingly quickly! The rest of the drive was silent, until we reached the company parking lot. After we all got out of the cars, Bill handed me the keys.
“This is now officially your company car. Use it when she needs you to drive her around. Since that could be any time, just leave your Jeep here and drive home with this one. Also, drop by accounting to get a gas charge card before you leave. And now that you have that car...” he leaned in closer to me, so the others wouldn’t be able to hear him. “Buy a safe for your apartment and get that mountain of cash out of the office. While you watch the girl, we’ll use that opportunity to redo ‘Your basement’, as you keep calling it.”
“Nice!” I replied and got on my way, first stopping by accounting as asked to receive my card.
We had talked about the renovation of the server room many times. While it was my office, it was still an ordinary basement featuring unplastered walls, uninsulated pipes, cables openly running along the walls, and I didn’t even have proper power outlets. The only reason for my workspace being down there, was the server being down there as well. And the only reason the server was down there was the cooler temperatures. With any luck, the next time I’d go to the office, I’d have an actual office.
