Chapter 36 - The Decoy
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Ben walked into the legal fund office looking as disheveled as ever, a dusting of snow on his shoulders. He bypassed the junior attorneys and marched straight to Evelyn’s desk, dropping a heavily encrypted hard drive onto her blotter. It landed with a heavy, metallic thud.
“What is this, Ben?” Evelyn asked, looking up from her settlement drafts.
“Insurance,” Ben said, pulling up a chair and collapsing into it. “I finished the final audit of the old Crownline servers. We handed everything to the FBI, right? The ledgers, the routing protocols, the communications.”
“Yes. Agent Keene has the complete package.”
“Well, I built a decoy,” Ben announced, a proud, slightly manic grin spreading across his face. “Thorne’s network is dismantled, but the algorithms he used to hide his money are still incredibly valuable. Black market valuable. I realized someone might try to hack the federal servers to steal the architecture.”
Evelyn frowned. “You hacked the FBI?”
“No!” Ben said quickly, raising his hands. “I’m not crazy. I built a shadow server on the dark web that looks exactly like the Crownline architecture. I seeded it with digital tripwires. If any remnants of Thorne’s syndicate—or any other corporate espionage group—try to sniff around looking for his old backdoors, they will find my server instead.”
“And what happens when they find it?”
Ben’s grin widened. “It locks their entire system, encrypts their hard drives, and automatically emails their IP address, physical location, and search history to Agent Keene’s direct inbox. It’s a digital mousetrap.”
Evelyn stared at the young engineer. He had started as a quiet coder, terrified of Nathan’s temper. Now, he was laying traps for international syndicates just to keep his skills sharp. She had empowered him, and he had thrived.
“Ben,” Evelyn said softly, “that is brilliantly ruthless.”
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“I learned from the best,” he replied, tapping the desk. “I just wanted you to have the master override key. Just in case.”
Evelyn looked at the drive. She didn’t need it, but she appreciated the gesture. It was a testament to the loyalty she had earned, not demanded. “Thank you, Ben. Keep the servers running. Let’s catch some mice.”
