Peered Out- Chapter Four
"I'm Miles." The man standing in front of her was to put it bluntly hot looking. Tall with shaggy brown hipster hair and beard he stood while she looked at him puzzled
I'm…" She hesitates for a moment, "…I'm River." She decides on the name of one of her two favorite characters from Firefly.
He grins, "You hungry River?" He hitches his thumb in a direction up the block, "There's a really good, cheap diner about three blocks from here." Without waiting for an answer he begins heading up the street. His stride is so long she has to run to catch up with him.
The diner is a converted Airstream Trailer, the type that people used to travel across the country to national parks in the fifties and sixties. Inside, the fifties vibe carried throughout with red vinyl booths and Formica tables. Despite the kitschy feel she found she liked it. The waitress directs them to a small booth in the back of the trailer. They sit and pick up the plastic covered menus. It occurs to her that she is more hungry than she thought. Her last meal had been a bologna sandwich on white bread with a container of milk. She looks through the menu and quickly decides on a burger and fries. Miles has already placed his menu down and is looking at her intently.
"What?" She's both curious at this guy and irritated at how he keeps staring at her like she was a lab experiment.
"You know what your mistake was right?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." She's getting more and more irritated at his Sphinx routine.
"You went for too much at once. Next time, you need to get one or two pieces then see about getting the rest. It's safer for all involved." He stares at her and she feels herself begin to squirm under his gaze.
"I don't know what you're talking about." To cover up her nerves she reaches over and snags a pile of Sweet-n-Low packets out of the sugar holder, "Seriously, I don't know what you mean."
He smiles, "We've been watching him for awhile. I'm surprised you didn't know. Seems someone who can reach out to Ivor Dragovic would also know he's been under surveillance by both the DC police and the FBI. I guess once he got caught he turned on anyone he could."
She stops playing with the packets, "Yeah, well, I've been busy lately." She is thinking about her time at the Academy and a small frown darkens her features.
"I can help make this go away. That is of course, if you want my help?" He looks at her, brown eyes gazing intensely into her own. She doesn't trust him but there is something honest in the way he is looking at her. Still, she is suspicious.
"Look, thanks but I don't need any help." The last thing she needs is to get caught in another sting. She makes to leave the booth when Miles grabs her arm.
"Hey, I get you have absolutely NO reason to trust me or anyone else. How about this, after we eat I prove to you I'm legit. If you still want to leave then you can?" He lets go of her arm and she sits back down in the booth. She is rescued from having to answer when the food arrives.
The house he takes her to is in a rundown part of town. The house itself looks like it ought to be condemned and when she goes to the front door she can see the foreclosure sign hanging the window. Miles grins and shrugs his shoulders as he opens the door. Inside is a marked difference from the outside. The space is clean, plainly furnished, with obvious curb leftovers but in the middle of the room sits what is an outrageously expensive computer server system. Her apprehension is immediately replaced by a combination of awe and jealousy. She goes to the system. On the screen are lines of scrolling code, moving down the screen at a rate that she can barely keep up. However, she catches one of the lines and gasps.
It a code she wrote herself.
"How, when, how did you get this?" She's shocked at what she sees on the screen. The code was one she wrote as a response to a challenge in a hacker forum. It was also at least four years old, written before she left High School for the last time.
"I was the one who wrote the challenge." Miles smiles shyly at her, his words full of obvious pride.
"Yeah, well, it doesn't work. I could never get the quantum key to interface properly with the sub header."
"I know," Mile sits down at the computer and types in a few lines, "That because I didn't give a key piece of information necessary to make it work. Yours came the closest though." Miles hits a few keys and a text box opens up in the upper-right hand corner of the screen. In it he types 100 in 60 and hits enter. After a beat a reply comes back 100 in 15. Miles enters a few lines of code and sits back, "Watch this." He hits enter. On the screen attached to the computer the images shifts from lines of code to the Russian government website. Across the middle of the screen an animated image of Russian President Vladimir Putin rides shirtless on a unicorn. All of the icons changed to Lenin and Stalin Russian nesting dolls. She begins laughing and found the absolute absurdity of it causes her to laugh harder and harder. To try and get herself under control she points to the text box in the corner, "What's that?" She asks between hiccuping breaths.
"A bet." He answers simply before continuing, "I bet one of my other team members 100 dollars it would take an hour for the site to be taken down. He thinks it will be down in 15 minutes. What he doesn't know is it is time locked to 60 minutes." Miles looks at her eyes gleaming, "Easiest 100 dollars I'll make. Now, I think you have some work to do." He gets up from his chair and points at the screen. She sits down. Miles has opened up the DC police intake log to her file.
"It's all yours."
She gets to work.