Page 24 of The Orc of Wall Street

He catches my eye and gives the barest of nods in my direction. I give one in return and smile slightly, and he returns his attention to his work. Time to make my move.

Quietly, I inch my way through the crowd and out of the conference center back towards the hotel. I stick to the shadows as best I can and make my way towards the stairwell. The elevator might be faster, but it also has cameras, and it’s an easy place to get trapped in.

Looping the camera to the stairwell door, I slip inside. Upon reaching Craig’s floor, I see it’s locked with a key card. I grin as I swipe my master key card and the door opens with ease. Oh, if only everything could be opened with a master key card.

From my initial recon, I know there’s a supply closet near the stairwell. So I slip inside it and pull out my phone to check on the cameras in the hall. There’s someone leaning casually by Craig’s door. Checking the other cameras on the floor, I see a woman reading a magazine near the elevator.

At first glance, the woman wouldn’t seem like much of a threat. Except it takes her far too long to turn a page. That and typically when someone’s reading, their eyes tend to move across the words. Her eyes seem locked in the same place every time.

Now I’m really glad I didn’t take the elevator. She would have clocked me before I got two steps down the hall.

I need some way to get the guard away from the door. The ‘do not disturb’ sign is on the door, so pretending to be housekeeping is out. Luckily, I have a few ideas in mind.

It takes me all of a minute to hack the elevator controls. I send the elevator up to our floor and open the doors. The woman casually glances at it. But when no one comes out and the door doesn’t shut, she frowns.

She puts her magazine down and pokes her head in. I see her confusion only grow as she sees nothing. Then she makes the error I hoped she would and fully steps into it.

Immediately, I close the doors and take her down between the second and first floors. From the camera inside the elevator, I see her horrified face as the doors refuse to open. She speaks angrily to someone in her ear, and the man at the door rushes down the hallway, past my closet, and down the stairwell.

“Jackpot,” I murmur.

Trying to get his companion out of the elevator should distract them long enough. And they won’t call security if they can help it, so as to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

Tapping into the cameras from my phone, I start looping them and then come out of my hiding spot and get to Craig’s room. The pin pad will have to be the first thing I disable. Making sure first that nothing will go off if I pry open the pin pad box, I lift the top with gloved hands.

There’s a manual way to reset the pin pad so whatever I type will be set as the code. Then I can reset it again before I leave, and Craig will never be the wiser that anyone tampered with it.

It takes me a minute to activate the reset and then put the box back together. Then I enter a six-digit pin and swipe the master key card. I’m in.

I spray the room before I enter to check for any alarms that might have been set up. I’m also careful to avoid the clocks as they’ve most likely been replaced by cameras.

Craig’s suite is bigger than most apartments, and each room has a locked door. Thankfully, these doors are ones I can just pick. Taking what I know about Tarek’s suite, I find the door that will most likely be the office.

I pick the lock, and sure enough, sitting on a massive desk is his laptop. Carefully opening it up, I begin to break through the computer’s defenses. If his security on it is anything like his office cybersecurity, this will be the most difficult part.

After seven painstakingly long minutes, I’m finally in.

I insert my thumb drive to begin a full download, but suddenly the screen lights up red, and I know I’ve triggered something.

“Shit,” I whisper-yell.

It probably won’t trigger an immediate alarm, but if I don’t do something about it fast, it will. Then his security team will most definitely know I’m here, and I won’t have a lot of options for escape. Think, think, think.

It was triggered by the thumb drive. I bite my lip. Pulling it out will probably only make it worse. It’s looking for something that I didn’t give it. Or the thumb drive isn’t authorized.

Holding my breath and hoping it works, I type in several lines of code I noticed a lot in Craig’s security.

I wait and pray. The screen flashes green and then fades. Everything is back to normal, and I nearly pass out with relief. I begin a mass download of anything that looks remotely important. Then I run a sequence to make it look like the laptop so much as never powered on and slip out of the room.

I reset the pin pad again before making my way down the stairwell. Only when I’m back on the first floor do I release the poor mobster from the elevator.

I check my watch. Twenty minutes from when I entered the stairwell to when I entered the lobby again. Not my best, but considering the security someone had taken the time to put into Craig’s laptop, not bad.

As I reenter the conference center, a smile escapes me. Not just because of a successful mission, but because now I can show Tarek that I really am the best.

CHAPTER 12

Tarek

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