Page 13 of Escape Girl

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I was about ninety-five percent finished with development, and I’d done a fair bit of unit testing. I was going to hire some testers to work with me for a few months to catch and fix bugs. All in all, I figured it’d be ready to release in five or six months.”

Her lips turned down at the corners. “I wanted it to be as close to perfect as possible before I made it official. I planned to release it free and open source, with some media exposure when it was available.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You weren’t going to sell it?” Even though products like GuardTower were free, many companies existed solely to sell products or services related to open-source products.

If Bella’s product worked as she described, she probably could have made a ton of money.

She lifted her chin. “No way. I’m a huge believer in the open-source software movement. I love the idea of a community of collaborators working together to make things better, particularly when it comes to something as awful as ransomware.” She sighed. “I was going to copyright my original code because, yeah, I wanted my name on it. I wanted to be known in the tech community. But I wasn’t going to sell the licensing to use it or modify it. I wantedeveryoneto be able to use it.”

She met my gaze. “I’m not overly altruistic. If my product became widely adopted among businesses that use GuardTower, it would have been a huge success for me. I would have made money in some way, either with a big new job at a top-tiercompany or with seed money from investors to start my own software business.”

My cup of tea was gone. I reluctantly switched to water before my eyeballs started to vibrate inside my head. I turned to a fresh page. “So you were ninety-five percent done with coding; you hadn’t brought in testers yet. This is when you went to the fateful conference?”

“Yeah.” Her hands went to fists on the table. “I’m still mad at myself for going. Furious with myself for what took place later. If I hadn’t, none of this would have happened.”

“You don’t know that,” I said matter-of-factly. “The same bad thing could have happened another way. This situation is not your fault.”

She blinked at me. “Thank you.” She sounded so surprised at the basic kindness that I almost got angry. Whoever else she’d met with had clearly done some traumatizing victim-blaming.

“The conference,” I said gently. “Tell me everything that happened there.”

*

Late afternoon, aftera slightly hoarse Bella left my office, I took an hour’s break to walk the city streets before returning to review my notes with fresh eyes. Bella hadn’t held anything back. I couldseethe events she described, almost like a scene from a movie.

A little more than two months ago, on July 13, Bella Bradley attended an IT conference in Chicago that focused on cybersecurity. I’d done another quick Google search to ask: “There are more than fifty conferences a year that focus on some sort of IT security. Why did you choose this one?”

“Two reasons,” she answered. “First, it was in Chicago, where I live. So I didn’t need to travel. It was an affordable option for me. But more importantly, I wanted to go because Cole Taggert was giving one of the keynote speeches, and I hoped to meet him.”

Cole Taggert. The name sounded familiar. Another quick Google revealed that he was CEO of a successful software company named SideDoor. I scanned through his bio. “Oh! I remember this guy.” I read a few more lines, my eyes widened, and then I fell silent for a few moments before looking up at Bella.

“Cole Taggert is the creator of GuardTower?” I asked quietly.

She met my gaze evenly. “Yes. SideDoor is his business, and it’s a well-known dev shop, even if it hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire lately. But Cole Taggert is even more famous for GuardTower. Out of nowhere, a couple of years back, he released it free and open source, with this really inspiring press release about how everyone deserved the chance to defend themselves from ransomware attacks—not just big companies who could afford the protection. He could have made millions upon millions of dollars selling it, but he released it for free.”

I nodded slowly. “The press called him the Robin Hood of code or something like that.” The vat of caffeinated tea in my stomach was starting to turn on me. Bella had warned me yesterday that a “famous CEO” was involved, but I’d just assumed she meant he was niche-IT famous, not “profiled in every major newspaper” famous.

After attending two full days of sessions without being able to connect with Taggert, Bella finally saw her chance right as the conference ended. The last event was a cocktail and networking event held in the bar of the conference hotel. Taggert was holding court in a corner booth, trading jokes with friendsfrom SideDoor and intermittently greeting other conference attendees.

“Why did you want to talk to him?” I asked Bella.

She cocked her head to one side. “Two reasons again. I wanted to fangirl a little over him and tell him how awesome GuardTower was. And I wanted to tell him about my product! I was so proud of it, and I thought he’d be interested since it integrated so seamlessly with his work.” She shrugged. “Maybe I was lonely after all of those months working on my own. Maybe I was hungry for some sort of acknowledgment that it wasn’t wasted time. That I’d actually created something great.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “So you met him at the bar?”

Bella had made her way to his table and bravely introduced herself. “I stumbled through it,” she remembered. “I was awkward and starstruck.” But Taggert had been immediately kind. He asked her to sit down at the table with his group.

Oooh. I perked up. “Did you mention your product in front of that whole group?” Potential witnesses of that conversation could be critical.

Bella shook her head. “Not in a useful way. I was still so nervous. I mentioned that I was building a GuardTower-related product, and one of the guys at the table said something obnoxious like: ‘You and a zillion other baby coders.’ It made me angry, but he was drunk, and I knew I could wait him out.”

After an hour, Taggert’s friends were leaving, and he waved to the waitress to bring the check, wondering aloud about the next Metra train leaving for Winnetka. Bella knew she couldn’t delay any further if she wanted to really talk about her work. “I pulled up a demo on my laptop,” she said, face flushing red. “I showed him the UI and how it would work and talked about my successful tests to date.”

Taggert stopped looking at the train schedule and asked the waitress for another round for the two of them instead of thecheck. He was dismissive to anyone else who stopped by the table, focusing solely on her. “He asked a lot of questions,” Bella said. “I was thrilled. He was clearly impressed. My head went straight to the clouds, thinking maybe he’d even endorse it publicly in some way.”

“How long were you at the bar?”

“Probably two and half hours,” she said. “I think it was about 8:00 when we finished up.”

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