“I’ve saved some of your brother’s user IDs to your desktop. You can simply click on one and it will bring up his activity.”
“So I’ll be able to see his messages. He does that a lot on his video games.”
“Yes, you’ll see them, but just because he’s talking to his friends, doesn’t mean he’s hacking.”
“Friends, yeah right. He doesn’t know any of these people in real life. I tried to warn him about internet trolls but he doesn’t listen to me. I’m apparently not cool.”
“True.”
“Hey, I thought you were going to be nice today.”
“I never said that. I said I’d help. And I’m going to start helping by looking up those whom he interacts with online.”
Hunter watched as the instructor left and the hacker began. He marveled at the speed and accuracy of her typing. Her hands were almost doing a virtual dance, smooth, graceful, and hypnotic.
“Gotcha,” Byte enthusiastically said.
“What did you find?” Hunter asked, both dreading the answer and thankful she’d found it.
“He’s talking with an undercover policeman on this game,” Byte said, pointing at the screen.
“Then on this game”—she pointed to a second icon—“he’s talking with a man in his forties, who’s posing as a twelve-year-old.”
“How do you know this? I mean, it’s not like their ages and occupations are visible.”
“Years of knowing monikers and markers.”
“Markers?”
“It’s like a signature left behind by the user. I’m going to dig a little deeper into these games. Those are the ones I know off the top of my head, but my company will be able to delve into the players.”
“ALIAS does that?”
“No, my company, Karma. We work online to find pedo-holes and abusers pretending to be teens. We gather all the intel and pass it along to the FBI.”
“That’s amazing. Is it legal?”
“If your brother is being targeted by a pedophile, would you care how you caught the person?”
“You’ve got a point.”
“We only gather what is actionable, then pass it along to the Feds. They are the ones who have to do the work on their end, but with our intel, they know where to look. That is legal.”
“Thank you for doing that. In fact, thank you for doing that for other children. The web is a scary place and most parents don’t know the first thing when it comes to tracking their children.”
“Generation gap is an unsub’s greatest tool.”
“Come on. Would you like to go out for dinner or order in? Your choice,” Hunter said as he offered his hand to Byte.
She wasn’t sure what to do. He’d gone from being nasty to her to now wanting to dine with her. And now he was offering his hand to help her out of a chair. She only saw that happen in movies.
Ignoring her doubts, she accepted his extended hand and was shocked when he didn’t drop it. Instead, he led her upstairs and asked again what she’d like to eat.
“Um, whatever. I’m not picky. Pizza, maybe?”
“Pizza, it is,” Hunter said, lightly squeezing her hand before dropping it to open his delivery app.
Their training had ended and what Byte could only call a date had begun.