Beating Ruby by Camilla Monk Read Free Book Online Page B

not. He was with those Feds. For some reason he worked with them.
    A cold sweat dampened my back as he spoke. “So? What gives?”
    That young Turtle fan greeted him with an apologetic look. “Not much. The only thing I’m sure of is that Roth is the one who launched the program. I can place him in the clean room during the time frame, and it’s his security pass that was used to unlock the doors.”
    Wait . . .
    “Besides him, Chaptal was the last one to connect to the server. She disconnected at 8:34. Whether she actually helped him prepare the attack, that part I’ll leave to you.”
    Wait, wait, wait. What attack? And what was this guy implying about me and Thom?
    Alex’s expression darkened. Gone were the gentle, ever-amused brown eyes sparkling under thick and expressive eyebrows. Something tore in my chest, because it seemed I was seeing him, really seeing him for the first time.
    “What about the attack itself? Did you find anything?” he asked Turtle-boy.
    His colleague shrugged. “Nope. The app normally generates extensive backlogs in a NoSQL database that would contain every single bit of data sent and received, every method executed, when—”
    Alex cut him off sharply. “In English, please.”
    His tone made me shudder a little. Turtle-boy, on the other hand, appeared used to it. “All tracks got erased right after Ruby was shut down. It’s a complete disaster. All I can tell you is that Roth copied Ruby on a distant server around midnight, then the local version got launched at 2:41. From there, several terabytes of data got exchanged. Then it was shut down at 3:37, and someone wiped all logs, all remote backups, and physically destroyed all the disks where Ruby had been installed. Totally degaussed them—that requires some serious hardware,” the young guy explained, pointing at several racks that seemed to have been disassembled.
    Holy shit. What exactly were these three accusing Thom of? Stealing Ruby before destroying every single trace of the program in EMT’s mainframe?
    Alex turned his piercing gaze to Ellingham’s subordinate. “Is EMG done assessing the losses?”
    “Yes. Ninety-seven bank and trading accounts accessed. Six hundred—” The bald guy’s voice faltered. “Six hundred and ninety-eight million, four hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred and ten dollars . . . and eighty-two cents missing.”
    I clenched my fists until my knuckles hurt. Ruby had been used. Unbridled. On actual bank accounts. And nearly seven hundred million bucks had been stolen. I couldn’t believe this. It wasn’t possible. Well, it was , but only if someone had bypassed all security systems to replace Ruby’s simulation scenarios with real targets. None of this made sense, though. Why would Thom have done such a thing? He had never shown any sign of being greedy, and the Ruby project was his fricking chef d’œuvre!
    I focused my attention back to the three men in the clean room, where a long sigh had just escaped Alex’s lips. “And we have no idea where that money has gone?” he asked, his gaze traveling back to Turtle-boy.
    “Nope. Ruby hammered the banks’ systems, and once it got in, it performed thousands of micro transfers to some obscure offshore banks, and just as many dark pool transactions. By the time the banks’ security systems started automatically blocking the accounts showing suspicious activity, the money had already been transferred so many times it was untraceable.”
    Alex raked a hand in his messy brown curls. “All accounts belonged exclusively to EMG?”
    There was a brief pause, during which I heard the bald man breathe in and out several times, until he seemed to find the courage to speak again. “Yes. Ruby targeted very . . . specific accounts.”
    “What he means is that EM’s saving several billion dollars each year through tax evasion schemes, and all the accounts targeted were located in tax havens,” Turtle-boy supplied with a