Trouble at the Company

Later that evening, Aiden returned home and got back on his computer. According to the man who put Derek in the hotel room, he was hired by a third party. Aiden showed him pictures of both Lisa and Kain but the man didn't recognise either of them. It wasn't strange for people like them to order other's to do such things for them and the man told Aiden where and when they had met.

With the new information, he could search the relevant CCTV and figure out who the meeting was with. Fortunately, when he found the right image, the face of the other person was crystal clear. Aiden ran the image through facial recognition and almost immediately got a match.

The person that man had met with was named Henry Bensen. He was a low level employee of K Construction. That only confirmed Derek's assumption that Kain was involved but the question of why and whether he would do more, still remained. It also showed that Aiden probably missed something when he was investigating Kain and K Construction the first time around. With nothing else to go on at the moment, Aiden investigated the employee and set up more in depth search parameters for Kain Grant. There had to be something he was missing.

The new search would take longer than the previous one because there was a lot more information to sift through. In the meantime, Aiden tried to think of possible motives Mr. Grant might have gone after Derek in the first place. Unlike Lisa, who had obviously been trying to infiltrate the Montgomery family for a long time, Kain didn't seem to have any previous entanglement with them. K Construction also had no quarrel with other companies. Mr. Grant was rather rich so it was unlikely to be financially motivated either.

Still not finding anything relevant, Aiden decided to take a break. He didn't expect to solve everything in one go anyway. Checking his phone, he saw that it was around dinner time so he went downstairs to see what was for dinner. When he neared the kitchen, he heard Mrs. Hudson's worried voice. She seemed to be talking on the phone. Aiden didn't mean to eavesdrop but he couldn't help but overhear her side of the conversation.

"Oh, dear! Can you manage in time?...Of course…Would you like me to send over a meal?...Oh, alright but you still should eat something even if it's only a sandwich from the store…Okay…Yes…Alright, I will…Good luck!" After she hung up, Aiden went over to see if she was alright.

"Mrs. Hudson? Is everything okay?"

"Aiden!...Well, not exactly but I'm sure it'll turn out well. That was Derek on the phone. Apparently there was some sort of cyber security breach with the company and it's turning out more complicated then he originally thought. But, he has wonderful employees and I'm sure they can handle it." Mrs. Hudson then ushered Aiden into the dining room. "Now, you take a seat and I'll bring out your dinner." She brought out the food and Aiden ate quickly. He wanted to find out just how bad the situation was. Mrs. Hudson was surprised at how fast he finished his meal but before she could scold him and warn him about the chances of getting a stomach ache if he ate like that, Aiden had already thanked her for the meal and rushed back upstairs.

He immediately got back on his computer to take a look and he was dumbfounded by how easy it was to gain access to Derek's company. He narrowed his eyes at the screen and let out a long frustrated sigh. He shut down his desktop computer, grabbed his phone and laptop, and ran back downstairs. He had no time to contact Milo if he wanted to get to the company in time to fix the huge mess that was unfolding. Aiden called out to Mrs. Hudson as he sped towards the door.

"Sorry Mrs. Hudson! I'm going to the company by taxi. I'll explain later!" He was out the door and waving down a taxi without waiting for a reply. Urging the driver to go as quickly as possible, he even used GPS to help navigate around congested traffic. When he arrived, he paid the fare and ran inside. The security guards saw him in a rush and were concerned.

"Is everything okay, sir?" One of them asked.

"It's fine. Where's Derek right now?"

"Conference room one, on the top floor near his office."

"Alright, I'm going up. Please have someone call ahead and tell him to have two computers and an extra keyboard set up when I get there." Aiden didn't wait for confirmation and immediately hopped into the elevator, pressing the button for the top floor. It felt like it took forever for the elevator to get there and he impatiently hit the same button a few more times. Logically, he knew that wouldn't actually make the elevator go any faster but, oh well.

As soon as the doors opened, Aiden zoomed out of the elevator and down the hallway, looking for the door to the conference room. It turned out to be half way down the hall. He knocked on the door but didn't wait for an answer before opening it and walking inside. Derek had just hung up the phone and two other people were setting up the computers Aiden needed.

"Aiden," Derek walked over to him, clearly confused. "What are you doing here?"

"Those are for me, right?" Aiden pointed at the computers.

"Yeah, but why do you need them?...What's that look for?" Aiden was smiling warmly and his entire face was lit up with happiness. He spoke softly so no one but Derek would hear him.

"I just thought it was really nice that, even though you're really busy and had no idea why I wanted you to set them up, you still did it anyway with no questions asked. It gave me this warm fuzzy feeling." Derek smiled too. When he did, all the employees in the room stared in disbelief. They couldn't believe their eyes. The cold, strict, intimidating CEO smiled?

"You know that didn't answer any questions, right?" Derek asked.

"I know. I'll explain in a minute." Aiden went over to where they set up the computers. He set his laptop down next to them and started it up. "Oh!" He looked up at Derek again. "Can all these people leave?" Derek nodded and immediately dismissed everyone.

"Everyone out." Most of them glanced around but made their way out of the room but the few higher level employees weren't happy.

"What?! We don't have time to be playing around! Who even is this?!" One of them started shouting. Derek narrowed his eyes and the room seemed to get a few degrees colder.

"Out. Now." With no courage to argue any further, the last employees left the room. Then, Derek walked over and stood behind Aiden who was busy typing. "So, what exactly is all this?"

"Well, you see," Aiden hesitated. He trusted Derek but there were still a lot of things about himself that he wasn't quite ready to share yet so he just left a few details out. "I happen to be pretty good with computers and after I overheard your phone call with Mrs. Hudson earlier I…may have hacked your company to see what the problem was." Derek raised his eyebrows.

"You hacked the company?" Aiden nodded.

"Yeah, it was surprisingly simple."

"Are you kidding? It should be anything but simple. The company pays a lot of money every year for cyber security."

"...About that…I was curious about that too so, um, I kind of took a look at the company's finances." Derek's expression returned to a neutral one.

"I don't even know if I should be surprised anymore. So, what did you find out?"

"Someone's clearly embezzling funds. The security software that was used is an extremely weak one when considering the type of data needing to be protected. It wouldn't even cost half the amount that was supposedly spent. Also, because the cyber security sucks, the system is already filled with all kinds of malware."

"There's more than one?"

"A lot more."

"Hah!" Derek sighed and massaged his temples with both hands. "So what you're saying is my company is a sitting duck."

"In shark infested water. Really hungry sharks." Aiden looked up at Derek and grinned. "But, I can fix it."

"Are you sure? Do you need any help from the IT department?"

"You mean the people who couldn't tell that there was more than one problem? No, thank you. I think it'll be faster on my own."

"...Good point." Derek pulled a chair over and sat down where he could watch Aiden work. He was amazed at how fast his finger's were moving across multiple computer keyboard's as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Derek didn't want to distract him so he kept quiet and simply watched the process.