I stared at the screen for two minutes, pretending to review the information.
Then I stood, left the laptop open, and walked out.
Inside the kitchen, I poured a glass of cold water.
I stood in darkness and waited for Colin’s greed to overcome his caution.
He accepted the bait.
Colin saw what appeared to be an unsecured entrance to the core artificial-intelligence system.
He wanted the raw data to strengthen the fraudulent patent application.
Less than five minutes after I left the office, another alert appeared on my secure mobile dashboard.
Someone had attempted to access the address displayed on my laptop.
It didn’t lead to my real database.
It led to a honeypot.
A decoy network designed to resemble a vulnerable company server.
Kurt had filled its virtual drives with thousands of generated, useless files arranged to resemble my proprietary machine-learning algorithms.
The honeypot was a digital cage.
Its door was open.
I watched the live information on my phone as the intruder began downloading large amounts of data.
The moment the external computer interacted with the decoy files, the trap activated.
Kurt’s monitoring software began documenting the intrusion.
The dashboard filled with raw information.
It captured the source internet address downloading the files.
It recorded the browser and operating-system version used by the attacker.
The system generated a unique technical fingerprint associated with the device.
Every interaction and every downloaded byte received a precise network timestamp.
The connection route led back to a local internet provider.
Its geographical area matched the residential block where Shirley and Colin lived.
I watched the progress bar fill.
Colin was eagerly downloading gigabytes of worthless information.
He didn’t know that he was creating evidence against himself.
The electronic records were encrypted and copied to three secure locations.
They were verified and prepared for legal review.
I closed the dashboard and walked toward my bedroom.
On Wednesday night, light rain struck the windows of an almost empty coffee shop in the Seattle suburbs.
I sat alone in a rear booth, watching passing headlights blur against the wet glass.
The bell above the entrance chimed.
Colin’s girlfriend, Melody, entered.
She kept her head lowered and pulled her damp coat tightly around herself.
She sat opposite me with slightly trembling hands.
We rarely spoke during family events.
But she was the person who had sent the anonymous warning.
She didn’t order anything.
She reached into her pocket and placed a small silver USB drive on the table.
Before I could ask about it, my phone vibrated.
A secure message from Kurt had arrived.
He had found the original purchase record for the hidden cameras.