Kate ends up bringing back an assortment of lukewarm gas station food, all of which was probably sitting out far too long to be considered edible before she bought it, as well as three large cups of coffee. Which is good, because Michael and I managed to print out over 100 pages of withdrawals and deposits before the motel printer ran out of ink, and they only go back about 4 months. Kate offers me a coffee, but as Michael's already pulling out a thermos for the extra caffeine, neither of them are surprised when I decline. I've never needed caffeine, I can usually pull off not sleeping for 48 hours if I'm not doing anything too exciting. I do take a box of the fries though. We get to work, Kate and Michael each taking a pile of transactions, and I scroll down to the ones we weren't able to print off. The files are limited in the data they show, with withdrawals in red and deposits in white, the date, as well as the company involved, but nothing about the cost or location. 

An hour later and we're still going through everything. I lean back,This is taking too long.  I'm going stir crazy over here. I drum my fingers on the body of my computer, thinking. I could... damn why didn't I think of that sooner? I open up a word finder program and set it to look for any duplicates. It immediately finds many, most of them being numbers from the dates, and after a second about a half dozen businesses are highlighted, showing the recurring charges. I scroll through them, all of them are scattered through the sheets, showing no pattern, except one that shows up on the 4th of each month, going back more than a year. After a quick google search, a flower shop in Minneapolis shows up, called Belli's Fiori, which I'm assuming is a play on the words bellissimi fiori meaning beautiful flowers in Italian. I doubt the fact that this shop is located in the same city we're in is a coincidence. I flip through all of their tabs, and use a trick I learned way back when to change from the customer's perspective to what a member of Belli's Fiori's staff would see, and in this case, I'm greeted with ordering forms, flower picture options, and most importantly, login and password boxes. It's a super simple hack to figure out what their login information is. I pull up my programming terminal, roll my shoulders back and start to type.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

-root@user:-# sqlmap -u /admin.php?id3856

PROCESSING...

FOUND...

[19:21:26] [INFO] fetching database names

[19:21:26] [INFO] the SQL query returns 3 entries

[19:21:26] [INFO] resumed: information_schema

[19:21:26] [INFO] resumed: bellisfiori_mems

[19:21:26] [INFO] resumed: bellis_out

Available databases [3]:

[*] bellisfiori_mems

[*] bellisfiori_out

[*] information_schema

-root@user:-# sqlmap -u /admin.php?id3856 -D reesefiori_mems -T users -C username, password

PROCESSING...

FOUND...

username----------- ADMINLGN

password------------ADMINPSW

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Really, this is too easy. I copy the login info over to the website and hit enter. Four extra tabs pop up:

BANKING STATEMENTS

CUSTOMER INFORMATION

COUPONS

SHIPPING AND HANDLING

I find Robinson's account and low and behold he's spending over $5,000 on flowers each month. "Hey." I look up to see Michael frowning at his page. "What's Bellis Fiori? I've seen it twice now." Kate looks up from her own pages. "I don't know. Fiori means flowers right? Maybe a flower shop?" She shuffles around a few pages and pulls one out, "It's on here too, the last charge being only three days ago." Michael frowns again, "Do you think this means something?" He asks her. 

"It does." They both look at me and I turn my computer around. "You looked up his account" Michael states, and I nod. "Kate whistles "$5,000 on flowers each month. And I thought the gold plated toilet seats were bad."

"Can you look up other people's purchases of similar items?" Michael asks me, and I start typing. 

"Do you think he's paying that much for a reason other than to spend money?" Kate asks, turning through more of the papers, and he shrugs. I find another account that bought the same package he did a few months ago and turn the computer back around. Michael reads the text and looks triumphant. "Yep he overpaid by about $4,600 for this flower set" Kate shakes her head. "That's still way too expensive for flowers in my book"

"I'll make sure to tell your future boyfriend that you prefer dandelions and weeds for your bouquet"

She lightly wacks him on the arm "As long as they're an odd number. Speaking of which, who did he send the flowers too?" I look up the delivery address "Louisa Areman" I state, not surprised, and Kate pushes back her chair and yawns 

"Of course they're to his mistress, do you think she knows what's going on?" I shake my head. I look around the table, they both look worn out. I start gathering the papers, and they automatically start to get up and clear the trash, sensing that the fact-finding mission is done. "I'll keep looking into their finances," I say and Michael gives me a grateful smile while Kate begins to cram everything into the tiny trash can. "Michael and I can go to the flower shop tomorrow before our not-so-legal voyage back into Mexico." Michael fake grins "ah yes, over a day on a train to get back to New Orleans, I know I'm excited to make that trip again." Kate nods and stretches "at least we'll be able to nap. Remember that time we had to stow away in that barge? It felt like every three seconds a door would slam somewhere." and they start getting ready to sleep. I, on the other hand, start going over the flower shop's finances.

A long time passes but I can't find anything suspicious. I consider my options, there's no way to see secure transactions without getting into their bank. Letting out a resigned sigh, I close the computer and rub my eyes. I really want to look at the hard drives I found, the suspense has started to make me go crazy, but a part of me also wants to keep it private. I don't know how the others will feel if they find out about me taking a risk like stealing what could possibly be sought after data. Or it could be nothing at all  I remind myself.  

I look at my jacket pocket. Damn my curiosity. I grab the hard drives from my jacket and plug one of them in. Turning my computer back on, the room is suddenly filled with the bright white light of the loading screen. I immediately flinch and slam the screen down. I seriously need to fix that. I grab my jacket off the couch and hold it up with one hand, trying to block the light from going towards Kate and Michael and I turn it on again. 

"Blue?" I drop the jacket onto the computer in surprise and look up to see Kate rubbing her eyes. She checks the clock next on the nightstand and exclaims in a raspy voice "Jesus Christ Blue it's 2 in the morning, I appreciate your dedication, but go to bed." She waves a hand at me, and I hold up my own hand. Five more minutes and she sighs and flops her head back down, burrowing further under the covers. Michael snores once, and she lets out a muffled groan. 

I bite the inside of my cheek and look at the slightly computer shaped blob in front of me and login to the desktop. My usual brightness settings dim the screen and the room is now only slightly lit up with a dark blue glow. I throw the jacket back onto the couch and I open up the drive.

ENCRYPTED... PIN [__________]

I pull out a hard drive of my own, this one containing an enormous program that took me months to create the framework for, much less the actual program. It's basically the Cerbeus of attack dogs. It contains an AI that allows for automatic Cold Boot Stepping, an attack that copies every single byte off the drives chip, compares them with flash dumps, and figures out where the PIN is stored. By hand, that would take over 48 hours, Cerbeus over here can do it in 10. I plug it in, pull up its terminal and I watch as numbers start appearing on the screen. I press the "Continue Running" setting and close the computer. The program still running in the background. 

 I make my way over to the couch. I sit and unstrap these small cushion like pockets that are sitting on my waist. I am tall but also far too skinny. So much so that if I were to wear a skin-tight shirt, somebody would most likely call a doctor on me. so I took advantage of that fact and made these two pouches that make me look slightly healthier by making me seem a little more filled out but also creates small hidden pockets that I can hide a good amount of things in. And short of getting X-rayed, they're virtually undetectable as they follow the natural curve of the body. 

I push them under the couch and lay down, trying to settle my thoughts. It's so quiet now without my computer running, I hear Kate turn over in her bed as I stare up to the ceiling. I hear the buzz of electricity as it flows through the walls, which is usual but for some reason tonight it's much louder. I close my eyes trying to block it out. The buzzing just gets louder and I snap open my eyes in frustration. Can't a girl get some sleep around here? I look around for the source and notice a bright pink glow coming from under the door. Tilting my head, a neon sign comes into view through the window I study it for a second, then glance at Kate and Micheal. They're facing each other, and with that, I ever so slightly extend my hand towards the light with my palm open. Focusing, I feel a slight buzzing going through my arm and I slowly close my hand into a fist, the neon light fading to black, and the sound fading away. I breathe a sigh of relief, now only hearing the noises I've become accustomed to over the years and somehow fall asleep.