Chapter 194: Chapter 195: The Warehouse Meeting
HAROLD’S POV - 11:00 PM
The warehouse in Red Hook looked like something out of a crime thriller....abandoned, dark, surrounded by empty lots and shuttered industrial buildings. Harold’s driver had been reluctant to bring him here, had asked three times if he was sure about the address.
Harold had been sure. Desperate men couldn’t afford to be picky about meeting locations.
He stepped out of the car, carrying a black leather briefcase containing fifty thousand dollars in cash. His driver stayed with the vehicle, engine running, ready for a quick getaway if necessary.
The warehouse door was slightly ajar, a sliver of light visible from inside. Harold pushed it open and stepped into a vast, mostly empty space. Old machinery rusted in corners. Broken pallets were stacked against walls. The air smelled of oil and decay.
In the center of the space, illuminated by a single hanging work light, stood a man.
He was tall....maybe six-two....and lean, dressed entirely in black. His face was partially obscured by shadows, but Harold could make out sharp features, dark hair, and eyes that seemed to assess him with clinical precision.
"Mr. Ashford," the man said. His voice was the same one from the phone....slightly accented, cultured, dangerous. "Thank you for coming."
"I didn’t have much choice." Harold walked closer, his footsteps echoing in the empty space. "You promised information about Aria Chen."
"I did. And I’ll deliver. But first...." The man gestured to the briefcase. "The good faith payment."
Harold set the briefcase on a rusted metal table and opened it, revealing neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills. The man stepped forward, examined the contents briefly, then nodded.
"Excellent. You’re serious. That’s good." He closed the briefcase and pushed it aside. "Now we can talk business."
"Who are you?" Harold asked. "Why do you want revenge on Aria Chen?"
"My name isn’t important. What’s important is what I know about her." The man pulled out a tablet and swiped through several files. "You had her investigated by Luke. A competent investigator, but he only scratched the surface. He found the obvious things....her MIT education, her hacking background, her mother’s illness. But he missed the deeper secrets."
"What deeper secrets?"
The man turned the tablet to face Harold. On the screen was a photograph of a much younger Aria....maybe sixteen or seventeen....sitting at a computer in what looked like a basement apartment.
"This was taken nine years ago. Aria...., age fifteen, already making money as a freelance hacker. Not the white-hat security testing that Luke found. I’m talking about actual criminal hacking. Corporate espionage. Stealing proprietary data and selling it to competitors."
Harold leaned closer, studying the image. "You have proof of this?"
"Better than proof. I have victims." The man swiped to another file. "Three companies that had their research stolen and sold to competitors. Two pharmaceutical firms that lost millions in drug development data. One tech startup that went bankrupt after their prototype designs were leaked. All of them breached by the same hacker. All of them during the years when Aria Chen desperately needed money for her mother’s medical bills."
"Can you connect her definitively to these breaches?"
"Not definitively enough for a court of law. She was too careful even then. But the pattern is clear. The timing matches her financial need. The sophistication matches her evolving skill level. And I have something else...." He pulled up another file. "Chat logs from underground hacker forums where someone using the handle ’Nightingale’ discusses techniques, shares advice, and brags about successful penetrations."
Harold read through the logs, his excitement growing. "Nightingale. That’s her?"
"Medical reference. Florence Nightingale. Aria was pre-med at the time, already planning to go into medicine. It fits perfectly." The man pulled up more files. "I traced the IP addresses used by Nightingale. Most go through VPNs and proxies, but occasionally there are slips. And those slips trace back to locations where Aria Chen was documented to be at the same time."
"This is good," Harold said. "This is very good. But why are you giving this to me? What do you get out of it?"
The man’s smile was cold. "Satisfaction. You see, Mr. Ashford, one of those companies that Aria Chen destroyed? It belonged to my father. A small pharmaceutical startup developing a treatment for a rare disease. They were close to a breakthrough when their research was stolen and sold to a larger competitor. The company went bankrupt. My father had invested everything...his savings, his retirement, money borrowed from friends and family. He lost it all."
"And you blame Aria Chen."
"I know it was Aria Chen. I’ve spent years tracking Nightingale, years piecing together the evidence. But I could never prove it well enough to bring criminal charges. So instead, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to destroy her another way." His eyes glittered in the dim light. "And then you came along, with your very public vendetta and your very obvious need for revenge. You’re the perfect weapon, Mr. Ashford. All you need is ammunition."
Harold felt a surge of dark satisfaction. "What exactly do you expect me to do with this information?"
"Simple. You’re meeting Richard Blackwood soon...."
"Richard refused to see me. Refused to help."
"No, but Richard will see this evidence. You’ll make sure of it." The man pulled up another file. "I’ve prepared a comprehensive dossier. Everything I’ve collected on Aria Chen’s criminal past, organized professionally, documented meticulously. You’ll deliver it to Richard Blackwood before his dinner with Aria and Damien."
"He won’t accept anything from me."
"Then don’t deliver it personally. Send it anonymously. Or better yet—" The man smiled. "Send it to Richard’s head of security. Someone whose job is to vet potential threats to the Blackwood family. Someone who would be obligated to investigate credible evidence of criminal activity by his employer’s grandson’s girlfriend."
Harold considered this. It was clever. Richard might ignore Harold’s direct accusations, but he couldn’t ignore a security report from his own people.
"What else is in this dossier?"
