The Two Sided Coin: Log 6: The face of an angle

[x-invisiblegirl.livejournal.com]

XFI starts looking into people who might benefit from the information from Keller Industries.
"Thank you for letting me help out." Hope remarked shyly. "I feel much better with being able to do something to hopefully help prove my innocence."

Sue span a laptop around and pushed it at Hope, "The more the merrier, it's a big wide internet and we could use another pair of eyes. There aren't a lot of companies that could use this data, but there is a lot of information surrounding them."

Warren felt that he could disagree with Sue, but it was smarter not to. Information was information, and any company could delve deeply enough to find what they wanted. It wasn't so much the matter that they couldn't use the data as is, but that they could corrupt it and make it worse. A little bit of knowledge was worse than ignorance sometimes. "To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why I'm here, considering all I can do is google this.....wait, did we try that? Is this why I'm the boss -- for my executive thinking processes?"

"That and the cocaine in your desk drawer in case we need a pick-me-up later." Quentin shrugged and leaned over his own laptop. "You sure that it's another company who stole from you and not just some solo jackass who wants to use the info for themselves? There's no shortage of lone psychos in this city."

"You're right," Sue allowed, "But even if a lone criminal decided to break in and steal the data at some point somewhere there would be a leak or a news story somewhere. Besides," the Blonde grimaced, "A thief with the guts to walk straight into the lions den and steal the data right out from under the nose of Keller Industries? I don't think that's going to be just a random crazy."

"They'd have to planned it carefully. They didn't only take my authenticator, but also managed to get around my password. Which says to me they have means and patience. They knew my habits." Hope commented as she considered this.

"Or they got it from somewhere, somehow. Possibly by hacking, or..." Bobbi bit her lip a little, thinking of a gentle way to ask the question her mind. "You didn't have your password written down anywhere they could've found it by any chance? I hate to ask but, well, we have to cover everything just in case."

"No." Hope shook her head. "One of the things I would never do."

"Yeah yeah, you're perfect and didn't make any mistakes." Quentin shook his head. "If this is really industrial espionage, then the thief's probably working for a desperate rival. What exactly was stolen? Who's Keller's competition? And who's got enough resources to get through all this?"

"Me," Sue noted with a shrug, "Any other tech firm large enough to be able to loose a payment to a contractor for this. we could all use the research. A working hydrogen fuel cell, that's a huge deal. The company that perfects it can pretty much write their own cheque and give it to the auto industries. For just about any firm that's worth a little bit of corporate espionage."

"A firm like Hammer Industries?" True to his word, Warren had been googling away. "corporate espionage 2016', 'who would steal from hope abbott' and 'help me obi-wan kenobi' hadn't yielded anything but it had started giving him a few ideas of different industries in New York that would actually want this information, secretly or not. "I mean, other than WI, StormTech or Keller Industries, which I think we can all safely rule out, this one's kind of on the same playing field. And look at this guy," Warren added, swiveling the laptop around. "Is that the face of an angel?"

Bobbi squinted a little. "Uh, no? But it's definitely the face of a guy that's worth investigating further." She started typing away herself to do just that, pausing when something popped into her head. "Wait, do over. That's the face of an angle we can look into." She blamed the relaxation time with Warren for her trying to make with the funny, especially when it fell flat like that.

The look Quentin gave Bobbi at her pun was one he usually reserved for someone like Donald Trump or Starbucks patrons who hold up the morning line by ordering grande, quad, nonfat, one-pump, no-whip mochas for their whole office. "I hate you so so much."

"Definitely not the face of an angel, as much as he'd like you to believe that, an angle maybe, if we're thinking an acute pain in my ass," Sue commented looking over at Warren's laptop. "Hammer Industries should be able to use something like this, it'd be quite a coup for them. Hold on, if they wanted to use it they need to show that they came up with it so it would need publishing." the blonde started typing furiously at her laptop as she started pulling up her access to various academic journals. "I don't know why I didn't think of this before."

""Finding anything?" Hope rapidly typed in some search terms of her own, though she chose to focus on more business related publications. "Hmmm..."

"That sounds slightly promising,'" Warren began, leaning back in his chair. He'd worked hard, it was about time someone else took over. "Sue, do you want to tell the rest of the class what you're looking at so we can all get on the same page?"

"Academic journals," Sue replied glancing up from her laptop, "Any scientist worth their salt, or anyone who wants to cover their ass in the case of stolen research, would have to let the community know that they came up with this new cutting edge research before anyone else can claim it. It's how you make your mark, and prove that you came up with it first. So if I had stolen the data, it would be the first thing I did. I have access to the trade journals they'd use so if it was a competitor who stole it that's where we'd see a trace."

Bobbi was familiar with research journals from her university days, even if those were biology oriented, so she'd been perusing them fairly speedily. She paused when something caught her eye then snapped her fingers, turning her laptop screen around to show Sue and the others. "This look like it could be it?"

"It could be, all the details match up with what Julian told us earlier," Sue agreed quickly scanning the laptop screen, "working on it for years, the procedures are the same. It looks like we have a suspect, and who would have guessed, he works for Hammer Industries."

"Me," Warren said. "I guessed. And I googled. And I conquered." He closed his laptop with satisfaction and grinned. "And I also am done working for the day. I leave all you much smarter people than me to deduce more. I have a date with a chocolate heiress."