I Spy

Saturday, September 12

Despite his mother's offer to drive them out that day his parents had switched at the last moment and his mother had gone off to meet Kathryn Miller and her other friends for breakfast and then to do some shopping and so Logan now found himself in the passenger seat next to his father has they drove across town to the headquarters of Smith Industries. In the back seat Victoria was sitting on Dustin's lap on one side of the car while Sharon was sitting on Charlie's lap on the other side. Heather was squeezed in the middle with Isabella on her lap and looked like she was about to start screaming bloody murder and elbowing everyone to get more room for herself.

Although Logan tried to hide it Daniel could see Logan's annoyed expression every time he glanced at the backseat of the car. He knew Logan was looking at Sharon sitting on Charlie's lap and wondered what had happened between them. The Ravers had a very extensive surveillance system in the Manor that Daniel and Audrey had expanded, much more than most people would have imagined, even Robert didn't know the extent of the system. It covered the walls, garden, main floors, hallways and other key location. The bathrooms and bedrooms and a few other rooms were excluded. Even so it came as a surprise when one very nervous and embarrassed tech at Ravers Enterprise came to Daniel and Audrey with a copy of Logan and Sharon at a hidden corner of the garden.

Audrey had been excited that her son had hooked up with one of her best friend's daughter, but Daniel held no long term hope for the couple. His own experience with Monica told him this teenage love would probably fizzle out. He didn't know what had happened or even why they had tried to keep it hidden but it seemed the romance might be over.

Daniel pulled up to the building entrance at Smith Industries and watched the kids scramble out of the car and Isabella climbed over the seats to sit up front. "I'll be over at the office. When you're done call me and I'll pick you guys up." Daniel said raising a finger to stop Heather before she said anything. "I'll bring a van and we can go for burgers."

"Thanks Uncle Daniel" Heather said with relief, she didn't want to spend another ride packed like sardines.

"Ok guys go on and do your homework or whatever you plan to do." Daniel and the kids said goodbyes and he drove off back to his office.

When they entered the lobby one of the receptionist greeted the kids and then guided them through the building. Walking down the hallway Logan couldn't help admire the older woman's long legs, short skirt and slim waist and forced himself not to look at her round butt. He felt relief when they finally came to the IT Department and she led them to a corner room with a view of the Azure Rock where Grace Smith, Alice Philips, Duncan Lennox and Scarlett Soren were waiting for them.

Duncan and Scarlett were sitting off together in a corner in front of two computer monitors playing video games and waved at the group when they came. Logan noticed Sharon and Scarlett gave each other the evil eye for a moment before ignoring each other.

Grace and Alice were at another, larger desk and seemed to be giggling and whispering to each other. Grace was sitting at a large desk with 6 large 34" computer screens and two sets of keyboards with two mouse controllers in front of her.

"Hey guys" Vicky said has she waved to the four kids and the rest of her friends did the same while they walked over to join Grace and Alice. They all looked at the 6 screens in awe "You really work with all of them at the same time?" she asked in wonder.

"Nah." I got other stuff over there." Grace said waving to the other monitors and started pointing at each one in turn. "There I'm downloading some moves, got two... searches running, that's a BBS "

"Right now I'm just using these two." she said. pointing to the two monitors in front of her.

"What do you have?" Logan asked sitting down next to Grace.

"Well on this screen I hacked my dad's office. I only have video cause the last time I did it people overhead what he was saying and he mad at me... Because people overheard what he said, not because I hacked his office, but I'm not supposed to do that anymore. Anyway he's got some meeting with Jay-Z, J-pur or something like that."

"Jairsur?" Heather asked curiously.

Grace shrugged, "I guess. Anyway, I'm just curious who he's meeting. But this is where I'm having fun." she said pointing to the second monitor.

Logan looked at the screen and all he saw were a jumble of words, prompts, etc. "What is it?" he said in confusion.

"It's a prank I'm running on Alex, the IT manager." Grace said and giggled when the screen updated.

"Well… what is it" Sharon said confused and annoyed thinking the prank was on them instead of this so called Alex.

"I got a Daemon running on the server." Grace started to explain. "Last week I sneaked it into the server when he wasn't looking. Every time he changes any of his passwords or usernames the Daemon records it and sends an FTP file to the service log folder and disguised it has a regular log but the 15th character lets me know which one is legit and which one is mine. This way I know what his Username and Passwords are. Then I connect to the server through a port I have and log on to the server with HIS ID. Then I open up HIS e-mail and send him an e-mail with his new password from his own e-mail account. He's been going crazy all week trying to find out what's going on. Watch!" she said and started to type.

"Hey Alex. You know. 46zfg%^Qlvg7et5srt56(6- is a pretty good password for the screen saver but it's hard to remember. If you want, I can help you with some quick and easy passwords. You know I'm only a keystroke away if you want my help."

"Now he's going to go crazy." Grace said and she and Alice started giggling again.

"Can't he find your demon?" Logan asked

"It's a Daemon not a demon." Grace corrected Logan. "And... he can't. He's been looking for it but he thinks it’s a virus, a worm or a trojan but it won't show up. What I did was open up one of the background processes and rewrote the program with the Daemon inside it. So, it's always running has a standard process and he won't find it unless he looks at the file size and see's it bigger than it should be."

"Huh..." Logan said in awe of what Grace just told him but not really understanding anything she just said.

Alice quickly realized Logan confusion and tried to help "What she did was write a program that tells her what his user and passwords are and he can't find it."

"Oh I get it now" Logan said understanding what she was doing even if he didn't understand how she did it.

"Damm That's pretty smart. Shouldn't you be in the Computer Club at school?" Heather said admiring the way the other girl worked.

"Nah!" Grace waved off the idea. "All they teach there is the basics. I learn more in one day with Alex than in an entire year in that class. There’ll just wanna be nerds... -cept Gavin, he's the only one there that really knows what he's doing, He can run loops around everyone of them, even the teacher, he just doesn't want to make him look like a fool. Guess he's just in it for the credits."

"So?" Grace said looking at Logan "Vicky said you need my help with something?"

"Can you hack into someone smartphone?' Logan asked and when Grace nodded, he continued "I want to send some stuff from Dylan phone to some kids and add in some teachers and parents. Make him look really bad."

"Sure I can do it." Grace said "Problem is I have to be like right next to him to do it and it has to be like super quick so you can’t do much unless it's like a 'send all' kinda thing but if I'm that close he might notice. Unless you can steal it from him."

"That sucks..." Logan mumbled "guess this won't work."

"Much easier to spam it from his School Account or from his own e-mail." Grace said. "I can make it look like he sent it from home or from inside the school from his own account. Should be much easier and..." she said with a wicked smile "The school can't track me."

Logan eyes lit up "Really! Don't they have special software to stop that kind of stuff?" He asked.

"They do, that's why I get into his computer and account and not the companies." Grace explained. "It's much easier than trying to hack his phone on the fly. So, what do you want to do?"

"Okay this is what I want..." and Logan start to explain what he had in mind. He and Grace bounced some idea around with Heather and Charlie adding in a few comments.

****

While they went at it, Vicky and Alice quickly grew bored and tuned then out. "Hey Vicky?" Alice asked "Did you see Sylvie's work?"

"Yea! It looked pretty great." Vicky said. "Peter asked me if I helped her out with it, he said he was surprised by what she wrote."

"I know he asked me the same thing, but I didn't see it until yesterday" Alice said.

"Well someone helped her." Vicky said. "Came out pretty good. Peter said he sent it out last night to the printers so it should be out on Monday. Next week he wants us to work on an article about bullying, how to recognize it and what teachers and kids can do about it."

"Really?" Alice asked and Vicky nodded. "Is it because of the fight?"

"Yea, it is." Vicky said. "He thinks it might help kids who are being bullied around."

"You think it might help?" Alice asked and Vicky shrugged. before she could say anything else, they heard Charlie whisper.

"She is really hot." Charlie whispered almost to himself as he sat next to Sharon and looked over Grace's shoulder to the screen spying into her father's office.

"Errr What!?" Grace said has she narrowed her eyes has she stared at him thinking he was talking about her. "What did you say about me?"

"Em nothing." Charlie said defensively has he pointed to the screen. "I was talking about her."

The teens turned around to look at the screen and saw a tall beautiful asian woman shaking hands with Grace's father before she sat down. "I think she's hot."

"Really?" Grace and Victoria said at the same time as they looked at him. Charlie looked around and all the girls were looking at him and shaking their heads with disapproval.

"Hey...I'm just a guy." Charlie said raising his hand, Victoria and Grace both rolled their eyes at him "Perv!" they heard Duncan yell from the other side of the room and the kids started laughing and soon even Charlie chuckled at being caught staring.

While they were laughing they heard a voice yelling in the hallway "GRACE!!! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!!!"

"Oh shit!" Grace whispered "I think he figured it out."

A tall thin man in his mid-thirties with glasses furiously barged into the room and stopped halfway in when he saw all the kids. He stopped, took a deep breath and pointed at Grace "Grace Smith. You get your butt into my office right now and fix whatever the hell you did or else!"

"You're not going to tell my dad are you? Please Alex don't tell my dad?" Grace begged.

"Worse!" he said sternly "If you don't get you butt in my office right now and tell me what you did and how you did it I won't ever teach you anything else you got it!"

"Alright! Alright!! I'm going! I'm going!" Grace jumped out of the chair as if her butt was on fire and started running down the hallway.

When Alex turned to the kids, they could see he had a big proud smile plastered all over his face. He raised his finger to his lips and winked while he whispers "Wait here, give me 15-20 minutes and she'll be back." and with that Alex left the room. While he walked down the hallway they could hear him yelling "GRACE!! YOU BETTER NOT HAVE FUCKED UP MY SERVERS AGAIN!!"

****************************

Later that night

"Gracie." her father said while they ate dinner. "I talked to Alex at lunchtime today."

'Oh shit I'm screwed.' Grace thought quickly how to get out of it.

"Alex told me you were with the Ravers kids this morning." he said.

"Mm, Yeah we... have a school project to work on and they came over to... work on the school project."

Her father looked askance at her and said "Alright." he nodded "Just be careful with the Ravers, you better not start hanging out with them."

"Why?" Grace asked.

"Just try to stay away from them and their friends. Just that." he said before turning to his wife and switching topics