used?
Harry hitched her chair in closer to the desk, her fingertips tingling. There were lots of commercial tools out there that kept your secrets safe, camouflaging your files till they melted out of sight. You couldn’t view them, delete them or modify them. As far as the operating system was concerned, the files just didn’t exist.
Harry plunged back into her forensic toolkit. The operating system may have been gullible, but her box of tricks wasn’t. She rattled her fingers across the keys, setting up a search. Her copy of Garvin’s hard drive was more than just a replica of recognizable files. It was a bit-by-bit image, and that included deleted data, unused memory and hidden information. She wouldn’t be fooled by a bunch of skulking files claiming to be invisible.
She launched her search for camouflaged files, then sat back in her chair and waited.
Her eyes roamed the room, coming to rest on the office safe. It was smaller than Garvin’s, about the size of a filing cabinet, and she used it to store evidence from Blackjack’s investigations.
Security and privacy.
Harry shook her head. Technology was supposed to safeguard your secrets, but did it really? She thought of Garvin’s vault, protected by his own fingerprint.
Something you know, something you have, something you are.
The security mantra ran through her head. Something you know: a password. Something you have: a keycard. Something you are: your fingerprint.
Harry shuddered, picturing Garvin’s killer scrabbling at the dead man’s fingers. Biometric security had its uses, but there was nothing she wanted hidden badly enough to put her own body parts on the line.
The computer beeped, and her eyes shot back to the screen. The search had come up empty.
Harry frowned. No covert files. Most likely it meant that Garvin had nothing to hide, but she shoved the thought away. Right now, hidden files were all she had.
‘Harry?’
Imogen was holding the phone out to one side, her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s him again, you sure you don’t want to take it?’
Harry’s skin prickled. She shook her head, registering Imogen’s frown as she turned to make excuses into the phone. It was probably a legitimate caller, but disclosing her whereabouts to anyone right now seemed like a bad idea. Harry tried to ignore her drumming heartbeat, and dragged her gaze back to the screen.
She chewed on a fingernail. Maybe Garvin had used a less sophisticated approach than commercial privacy products. Her mind drifted back to her first Blackjack case. Her client had been an angry, middle-aged woman who’d wanted evidence that her husband was cheating. It hadn’t taken long. His laptop had yielded a slam-dunk photo of himself with his nineteen-year-old secretary. To hide it, he’d simply renamed it from susie.jpg to su.123. Without the .jpg extension, the picture viewer didn’t pick it up. And trying to open it with anything else just spewed gibberish on to the screen. Either way, Susie stayed incognito.
Bogus file extensions were quick and easy, and people used them all the time. Harry rummaged through her toolkit and fired off an extension checker search. In less than a minute, two filenames flashed up on the screen:
VW-Stock.got
VW-Cargo.got
Harry stiffened. Two phony extensions. It looked as though Garvin had tried some sleight of hand. She stared at the doctored file types. ‘GOT’ for Garvin Oliver Trading?
Normally her toolkit could figure out the true file type, but this time it played dumb. She checked the file locations. They were stored alongside dozens of spreadsheet files, including the stock inventory she’d opened earlier. Chances were, she’d unearthed two more spreadsheets, but it was hard to find an innocent explanation for their disguise.
She opened the first file, VW-Stock. A blizzard of symbols filled the screen: Russian and Greek script, hashes and squiggles, all of it densely packed. The familiar gobbledy-gook of unreadable data.
She opened the second file. More hieroglyphics.
Harry squinted at the screen. Had she got the file extension wrong?
She shook her head. This time she was throwing in with her instincts, and that left her with one explanation: the files had been encrypted.
A shiver scampered down her spine. She felt like she was grappling with one of those nested Russian dolls. Data inside encryption, inside hidden files, inside a vault. What the hell had Garvin needed to hide so badly?
She frowned at the illegible garbage on the screen. To unscramble it, she’d need the encryption key and that could be just about anywhere. Maybe it wasn’t even on the hard drive. She was beginning to think Garvin was more technically savvy than she’d given him credit for.
Harry drummed her fingers on the desk, glaring at the filenames on the screen. What the hell were they hiding?
She checked the timestamps on each of the files. They’d been encrypted eight days ago, locked into riddles that no one else could read. And once a file morphed into ciphertext, its plaintext version was deleted.
Or was it?
Harry scooted in closer to the desk and kicked off a search for deleted files. What were the chances that Garvin’s plaintext still lurked in the cracks of the hard drive?
A list of recovered files unravelled up the screen. One by one, she sifted through them, looking for a match.
Nothing.
She slumped back in her chair. No plaintext, no deleted data, no encryption keys. Garvin’s files were locked down tight, and her chances of cracking them open didn’t look good.
Her phone trilled from deep inside her bag. She fished it out and checked the caller ID. Private number. Harry licked her lips, but her mouth was dry. The man with the baseball cap had her number from her card, but that didn’t mean it had to be him. She hit the silence key and stuffed the phone deep into her bag.
She hunched back over the keyboard. There had to be something else she could try. She thought for a minute, then straightened up. It was an outside chance, but worth a shot. Her fingers flew across the keys as she set up her final search. This time her target was temporary files.
Hard drives were riddled with them. Conscientious programs created them as backups, saving temporary copies of your files while you worked on the originals. They came in handy if the program crashed before you’d saved your data.
Garvin would have worked on his files in plaintext before he eventually encrypted them. It was the backup of those plaintext files that Harry needed to find.
She beat a tattoo on the desk with her fingers, her eyes fixed to the screen. Temporary files were usually deleted when the original file was closed, but not always. With luck, the ones she needed were still lying low on Garvin’s hard drive.
And if not, she was all out of tricks.
The computer beeped. Her pulse quickened. She stared at the filenames listed on the screen:
VW-Stock.tmp
VW-Cargo.tmp
‘Harry?’
Something fluttered in Harry’s stomach. She fumbled with her mouse. Supposing they were just backups of the encrypted files?
Imogen appeared at her side. ‘You really need to take the call this time.’
Harry bit her lip. Then she pointed her mouse at the first file. Held her breath.
Double-click.
The file opened.
Crystal-clear plaintext filled the screen.
‘Harry, it’s the police.’