Chapter Eight

Snooping and Hacking

"Did they go to sleep yet?" Sydney asked, drumming his fingertips on his knees. His legs were crossed and he had his laptop resting on his legs. He was sitting in the den, all lights in the house were off, and so his computer illuminated the room in a bright blue glow.

"Hold on," Patrick replied from where he was crouched at the top of the stairs. He watched as his sisters closed the door to their room and waited for the light to go off before he turned and hurried back down the stairs to his brothers. "Light's off, go ahead."

Noah quietly walked back from Ronan's room, using large steps and stepping on the balls of his feet so the wooden stairs wouldn't creak as he did so. Patrick and Sydney watched, waiting patiently as he rounded the couch and pulled himself up onto the arm rest. "Ronan's been out for the past half hour, I don't think that he's going to wake up any time soon."

"Good," Sydney booted up his laptop and brought up the Google search engine. "First what we need to do is get all the facts about this chick." He crossed his arms over his chest and squeezed his eyes shut. "Being a teenage girl, what do you think she would be interested in besides Dak and WayneWayne?" He leaned forward and rested his chin in his hands. "Besides the obvious, I mean."

Patrick looked over at Noah, who shrugged in reply. Patrick then frowned as he laced his fingers together, resting his elbows on his knees, life he usually did when he was thinking hard. There wasn't much for them to go off of, just the letters that they had seen, and Lizzie's phone call. Plus, they only had her first name, so there really wasn't much to go off of from there. Patrick moved his eyes up to the ceiling as he continued to think about what sort of clue they could go off of. It wasn't really that odd, fans got carried away a lot of the time, but he even had a weird idea about it when Rugby had been barking at the bushes when they were at Dak's house that one day and Dak didn't find anything.

Riley wasn't lying when she said that Rugby only barks if something is there. Patrick let out a sigh as he rubbed his forehead. "You think she has a blog or a twitter or something?" He asked after a second more of thought. "Most teenagers today do, but you never know, her parents might not want her to have one."

"If anything she probably has a ScuttleButter to follow all of our ScuttButts and everything." Noah murmured, rubbing his mouth with his hand. "But even if she does, it'll be hard to find her, especially since there's so many Melissa's out in the world.

"Yes," Sydney nodded once. "But how many of them like both Dak and WayneWayne?" Sydney asked as he started to type on his laptop. "I don't mean to be mean, but realistically, fans usually like one person more than someone else. Just like BTR, you can like the whole band; someone's going to be their favorite. So we can narrow it down there."

"Plus, you need to factor in that she sent mail to Dak's NY and LA address as well as to WayneWayne's hotel." Patrick agreed. "How many people would be smart enough to figure out exactly which hotel he was going to be staying in?"

Sydney snorted as he shook his head, keeping his eyes on his laptop screen. Obviously they didn't realize how easy it could potentially be. With all of the ScuttButting they did with their friends and their fans, and the fact that some of them didn't take off the location on their posts, it wasn't that hard. Considering WayneWayne was always talking about going to Vancouver with his Dad and taking as many pictures of the hotel room as possible, anyone that has been in Vancouver can easily figure out which hotel it was. And since Dak was going to be in Denver to do the show Legally Blonde, it wouldn't be hard to find the auditorium that the production was going to be held in as well as the closest hotels and restaurants so she could "accidentally" bump into Dak.

"It's not that hard," Sydney murmured. "Let me check the recent ScuttleButter mentions with the two of them," He scrolled over the page and Patrick and Noah leaned over so they could see as well.

Noah shook his head. "Nothing but the mentioning of their bromance." He muttered. He then sat up straight and looked at his brothers seriously. "Is it just me or have a lot of people been getting really into the bromances from our bands and everything?"

"It's not just you," Patrick replied with a slight shake of his head.

"Nothing," Sydney cracked his knuckles. "Ok, let's try something else," he minimized his web browser and brought up another application that was sitting on his laptop desktop. Patrick and Noah watched with rapt interest as he typed in a few words in a little box and then sat back as numbers and letters started to whiz by on the screen.

"Uh, what are you doing?" Patrick asked, scratching the back of his head.

"Since a simple search of her interests through ScuttleButter and through the first few pages of Google didn't work, I figured I would go with my fail-safe method." Sydney replied modestly as he pulled his goggles off of his face, pushing it up onto his forehead, making the fringe of his black/blue hair stand straight. "Simply put, what it does is you put in a few keywords that you're using, add in the specifics that you need, and put it into this program and it cross-references everything that I have on my computer about said subjects as well as every page of the internet."

"Huh," Noah looked impressed. "So with this, how easy would it be to figure out the password to someone's computer? Do you have something that can make it do that?"

Sydney smiled. "I already have all of your guys' and Ronan's, and I'm now working on James'." He paused. "But don't tell anyone, I would probably lose all of my research and then I also wouldn't be able to do work on our CDs back here."

"Just as long as you only use my password to fix my laptop, then we're good." Noah said and held out his hand towards his baby brother. Sydney reached out to shake his hand, but Noah quickly pulled his back. "And you only use their passwords to hack into their computers when you really need it and not just for fun." He added pointedly.

Sydney pouted and rolled his eyes. "Fine," he grumbled and shook his hand. "But in the case of an emergency, all that goes out the window."

Patrick chuckled, shaking his head. As long as his brother's super brain wasn't directed towards him, it was perfectly fine. Patrick turned his gaze back to Sydney's computer and pointed, being careful not to touch the computer screen, as he had been warned many times before.

"Looks like you've got something," He said.

"Mhm," Sydney leaned forward and pressed a series of buttons, causing multiple images to go flashing across the screen before a new internet window popped open to a girl's tumblr. "Tumblr, I should have thought about that." He commented, shaking his head. "Look, she has a MyFace and a ScuttleButter as well. But it was would be hard to find," he pointed, motioning for Patrick and Noah to lean closer. "For whatever reason, she spells her name MeLissa, instead of the regular Melissa. But she wrote using block letters so you couldn't really tell the difference."

"So what does this mean?" Noah murmured as he placed his hands over his mouth. "Her tumblr is dedicated to Dak and WayneWayne, so what?"

"So," Patrick drew out the word as he leaned forward and pressed the down arrow key. "Most of the notes on her posts have to do with her being a stalker." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't think that that's a coincidence." He commented. He squinted as he leaned forward. "Then again, they're saying that she's a stalker because she always seems to know where they are. But," he shrugged. "It's like that Sarah chick that always comes to our signings and stuff."

"Stalker Sarah?" Sydney wrinkled his nose.

"Exactly."

"So, that's what any fan does." Noah commented with a careless shrug. "You know, when they have the money for it."

"Yeah, but how many people posts thing on tumblr about their parents being worried because she seems to have an obsession with these people?" Sydney brought up another window and placed it over the web browser. "According to this, if I have the right person, she's had some restraining orders put against her from YellowCard, Papa Roach, and Hawk Nelson. From Ryan, Jacoby, and Davin to be specific."

Noah's face twitched. "Can you trace her IP address to figure out her full name?" He asked quickly.

"Please," Sydney gave a modest smile. "That was the first thing that went through the computer as soon as I found her tumblr." He twisted his mouth to the side. "MeLissa Haggart, lives in Nebraska-"

"That explains the obsession, nothing happens in Nebraska." Patrick commented. "What's this?" Patrick noticed something bright in the corner of the screen. "It looks like an itinerary." Sydney brought it up and the three brothers frowned as they looked at the screen. "Two different flights to Denver and Vancouver." He made a sound at the back of his throat. "That's strange," he commented. "It's booked for the same day; the flights are only one hour apart."

"It doesn't mean that she took both of these though, she could have used one to see where she wanted to go first," Noah reminded them. He tilted his head to the side. "From what I can tell, she decided to go to Denver first."

"Maybe not," Sydney murmured. He tabbed over to an empty Firefox tab and typed in a new website, before browsing through many different pages.

"Uh, Syd, why are you looking through Qantas airlines?" Patrick asked, scratching the side of his head.

"Because we need to get to Denver, and we need to get there as soon as possible." Sydney commented with a determined smile. "And," he paused. "We're going to tell Riley and Rhuben about this tomorrow morning, and hope to god that Ronan doesn't find out."

A/N: So I needed to do another chapter with the Jacksons (even though it didn't show Riley, Rhuben, and Ronan) to help push Patrick, Noah, and Sydney's subplot along. What did you guys think? I don't know why these last couple of chapters has been short, but the rest will be longer. Only 7 chapters left.

Cheers,

-Riles