She Left Me Breathless by Trin Denise Read Free Book Online Page B

chair.     
    Sydney stood up from the chair. She paced slowly back and forth in front of Caitlyn’s desk. It was something she did whenever she was deep in thought. She stopped to look at Caitlyn. “I know we have different ways for customers to pay their invoices. Some do it over the phone and some have terms, and some send in checks, etcetera. For this example let’s say I’m Joe Blow and I get an invoice in the mail for $2,921.26. I call up Welsh to pay my bill over the phone with a credit card. Once the customer rep takes the payment and marks the invoice as paid, this rewritten program code kicks in and removes the twenty-six cents, changes the invoice in the system to reflect the amount as if the twenty-six cents never existed. The missing twenty-six cents is then rerouted into an unknown bank account. Is that correct?”
    “You got it. That’s exactly how it works. Slicing off pennies like you slice salami to make a sandwich,” Caitlyn smiled. “That’s also why this doesn’t have to be a public relations nightmare for us as you say. Our customers don’t need to know anything about it because they were invoiced the correct amount and they paid the correct amount. The money is being stolen from Welsh, not our customers.”
    “How did you figure this out?”
    “I told you that I made a mirror image of the system. On one side, I had our old system records and on the other was the new program. It just so happened that several customers happened to pay their invoices in between the time it took me to load up the new software.”
    Sydney grinned from ear to ear. “You compared the same invoices from the old and new software?”
    Caitlyn smiled with satisfaction. “That is exactly what I did. I had to make sure that all the data fields on the invoices were the same and they were except for the invoice amount. Do you know why that is?” Caitlyn asked.
    “Testing me again, aren’t you?” Sydney chuckled.
    “Just want to see how your logic is doing, that’s all,” Caitlyn teased.
    “It wasn’t the same because the new software you loaded does not have the same logic code to change the values,” Sydney answered triumphantly.
    Caitlyn clapped her hands together and smiled at Sydney. “Bravo, bravo. You are correct and you just won a new Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner.”
    “Why a Dirt Devil?” Sydney asked, frowning.
    “Because they suck better,” Caitlyn said, her expression serious.
    “I’m gonna ask although I probably shouldn’t. How do you know they suck better?”
    “It’s a matter of creating the correct formula in order to make calculations based on the pull of gravity, how quickly what’s being sucked in is pulled into the hose, and how many inches it travels over time once it’s entered into—”
    Sydney held her hand up to stop Caitlyn’s explanation. She shook her head and smiled. “I knew I was gonna regret asking.”
    Caitlyn laughed. “What’s the problem? I was explaining it in very simple terms.” 
    “Okay then ... how about we forget I asked and in that case, I would like one in candy-apple red please,” Sydney said with a laugh.
    Caitlyn chuckled. “I’ll get right on that.”
    “Now that we’ve got the vacuum settled, do you have an estimate on how long this code has been active in our system?”
    “Around seven years.”
    “Holy shit. You have any thoughts on the person or persons who would be able to do this?” Sydney asked.
    “Yes ... but you’re not going to like it,” Caitlyn said, shaking her head.
    “Try me.”
    “It has to be someone here at Welsh and I say that because whoever has done this had to have access to our system, our password protected system.”
    “Executives are the only ones with that type of authorization,” Sydney said, thinking of the implications.
    “Exactly, and to narrow it down further, this person has to have programming abilities, which means it could be anyone on the executive floor.” Caitlyn smiled. “I took the