Keeping Secrets (An Anonymous Novella)

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The tapes had been tampered with.

Tony, his best mechanic and hacker, had worked round the clock to piece back together the damaged files. Four days after Jackson had sent his little sister and the Crown Prince off to the safe house, he got a call from him.

"I think you're going to want to see this." Tony said over the line.

The room where the palace's computer technicians worked had been dubbed the "control room" for as long as he could remember. It looked exactly what he'd always pictured control rooms to look like. Dark blue painted walls covered in monitors that spat out data and relevant charts. A cork board wall that had articles and print out readings all over it. Desk upon desk lined up along the middle, giving each individual a wonderful view of the monitor wall.

He made a mental note to have Avery bring in fans for this room. The stagnant air didn't seem very...productive. Between that and the dimness of the lights, it was a wonder anyone got any work done in here.

Tony's desk sat at the end of the row, right next to the only window in the room.

Almost half a year ago, Tony had spent most of his hacking time in the basement of his mother's house. After he'd done a job for Jackson's little sister and her friend that involved setting up a firewall the likes of which he'd never seen, Jackson had been sure to recruit the man.

The first time he'd met him, Jackson had gotten a vibe from Tony that he liked. He wasn't a talkative man, and he really could use a haircut, but the amount of criminals he'd brought in because of the awkward genius astounded him.

"Tony." Jackson stepped up beside the desk and tried to ignore the silence from everyone in the room as they noticed his presence. Lucky for him, the clack-clack-clack of fingers on keyboards started right up again.

"Commander." Tony spun in his chair, his shoulder length hair tied into a low ponytail. "Right on time. I found something that might interest you."

"Any luck with those tapes?" Jackson crossed his arms over his chest and readied for information he didn't want to hear. Anything to do with this bastard of a stalker would be something he didn't want to hear--unless of course it was that the stalker had been identified and accidentally struck by a stray bullet.

"The data stream was too mangled to do a full recovery. Whoever this guy is, he knows his technology. As I am not officially a video forensic expert, I didn't get as much, but I found enough."

"What did you find?"

Tony pushed his glasses further up his nose. "First, I found out your surveillance system's compression abilities suck. The files of each recording take up so much data space--no wonder you have someone specifically hired to go through and log it. Also, the quality of the cameras is questionable. I tried to make a high quality copy of the data I could piece together, which was another task by itself--"

"Tony." Jackson clenched his jaw. "The files?"

"Yes." He spun back around and pulled up a separate screen. "Here's the pieces I put together. I had to crop the original data file to get what I could."

Tony brought up a screen that Jackson immediately recognized--it was an aerial view of the changing room off of the pool. Cubbies lined the wall, clothes shoved into random spots. Along the other wall were changing stalls--the camera angled in such a way that the viewer couldn't see inside them.

"That one." Jackson pointed out one of the lower cubbies. "That's the one Elizabeth said she put her clothes in."

Tony shook his head. "It's still weird to hear her called Elizabeth." He muttered, then louder he said, "I've got three small clips. Here's the first--a small clip right before the incident. You can see someone run past the doorway. At this point, the kids are still in the pool having fun."