Chapter 13

Pete emptied one of the lightly used cabinets and the shelves above. The girls needed a temporary place to keep their school supplies and clothes until the study hall was open for business. He set up a downstream server to anchor a new branch of his office network. When they logged on with their iPads or laptops, the network would automatically control the cams. There were other features Pete could initiate as needed. He would tell the girls before it occurred.

Five naked girls furtively entered the conference room. "Pixies, you can relax. The front door is locked." He said, "Until we can finalize other arrangements, this is your study area. I've cleared a cabinet for books and other school stuff. You will dress for school here."

"For now, set up to do the make up assignments and homework. I'll link your devices so you have Internet access. Your laptops will log on to a downstream server, called 'Pixie', which will link to the office server, called Base, which connects to the web. Basically, you are behind a firewall. The path is: you to Pixie to Base to the world. The extra stage will not slow your access. It will disable your webcams. You cannot send images without administrator intervention. That administrator is me. So if you have to use a picture or a scan to complete an assignment, we can do it. But you cannot accidentally upload something which will come back to bite you."

The teen spread out their books, iPads, laptops, etc. Mary passed out the teacher notes and they started their homework. As they needed access, Pete gave them their user names and passwords. Mary was Butterfly/Pearl; Lisa, DragonFly/Garnet; Kim, BlackWidow/Topaz; Cam, Scarab/Ruby.

Allison became LadyBug/Opal. Pete took administrator duties as Scorpion/TigersEye. The teens were not to know his logon. He walked them through the steps to get on the Internet and went to his office to get the ball rolling on the renovation. Allison started her food inventory for the week and planned dinner.

He called Ari's son, Kristos. Kris greeted him, "Pete, dad gave me the plans. I have the permits and the bill of materials. It's doable, but I have to ask: What's up?"

"According to Ari, I'm making myself crazy. Lately, I've been put in a position to help rescue some friends of my assistant's daughter. I could let one become homeless, and two others get sent to some cult in New Zealand or make them a safe home. I had no real choice." Pete said, "I couldn't turn them away and feel like a human."

'You're a good man, Pete, loony but good. My kids are a handful and my little sisters are worse. I think Dad is trying give them to you."

"Since they were eleven. He's not helping my sanity one bit. So before I come to my senses, I'll confirm the job. We will be out around 4:00 PM Friday. You have the keys. And add an eight-foot privacy fence around the perimeter of the roof. I don't need anyone perving on the girls. I'll install razor wire later if necessary." Pete added, "Give me your banking info and I will transfer the estimated cost to your account. We'll settle the over/under later."

Kris told him the amount and Pete agreed. "I expected the bill to be a lot more, really." Pete keyed the transaction.

Kris laughed, "Dude, we did the original remodel. You don't have load-bearing walls where we will be breaking things. We're moving walls, adding plumbing and a bunch of wires. Wall outlets every six feet, soft zoned lighting overhead, toilets, shower, vanities, sinks, etc. Overkill wherever possible, or they will be in your bathroom and you will have to move to your office." Kris assured him. "We'll make it nice. It's a big space, but teen girls take up a lot of space. We estimate no more that seven days to completion."

"Kris, thanks for taking this on. I might have to ask you to put the furniture in place if it gets delivered before we come back, but I'll have to get back to you on that one."

"No problem. I'll have the bodies in place. Just tell us where to put them. The girls will correct us later no matter where the stuff goes." Kris warned." They don't think like normal people."

"You're preaching to the choir." Pete chuckled. "We'll have a beer later and tell war stories after it's done. Thanks again. See you when the dust settles." Pete hung up.

He called the furniture guys next. He ordered four units, double-single bunk bed combos. That gave them bed space for twelve girls. He had seen some school/work desks designed to allow two people to study at the same time. He got four of those. Bedside tables and lamps came next. Pete tried to keep it as easy as possible for them to just move in.

Pete considered the cost of this whole project. Three of the jobs planned after their vacation would pay for all of it. And to have the girls around was worth every penny besides. He could afford it even if he didn't have the upcoming contracts.

Suddenly, his main server complained loudly. Someone was trying to access Mary's laptop from outside the building. The firewall blocked the incoming traffic, but the attempt was troubling. "Mary. Stop what you're doing. Don't touch another key and step away from your computer. Get out of camera range." He hurried to the conference room, taking his laptop. The intruder was getting pushy. "Mary. Tell me exactly what happened and where you were."

"I was on the school's website to get to the library and everything slowed down. A Window popped up telling me to enable a cookie. Another popped up saying a script was trying to run and had failed. It said I had to run it again by clicking 'OK'. Then you called. Did I break something?" Mary asked timidly.

"No. Someone or some program at your school is attempting something uncool." Pete soothed her, "Give me a minute. Crap. Someone is trying to enable your laptop camera without your knowledge. That low-budget cookie and script warning is bullshit. The firewall won't let him turn it on remotely and he's trying to trick you into doing it for him. If you allow the program to run, you give him control from the background. But you don't know. Lisa, Kim and Cam, you also step out of camera range. We have a Peeping Tom and he isn't working for your best interests. By the way, even if you ran the script, our system will stop the outgoing video stream anyway. Your tits are secure."

"So, he's watching kids in their bedrooms, doing their homework. Kids don't turn things off. He can see kids dressing, going to the bathroom, with their friends, everything. That's fucked up, Boss." Lisa fumed.

"Kick his ass, nobody fucks with your girls." Kim giggled. "And I like that you call us pixies."

Cam was raging. "Take his perv ass to school." She wanted blood in the streets, now.

"I don't know yet where he is, but I can turn his cam on the same way. Arrogant bastard doesn't have a firewall of his own. Probably thinks the kids won't be smart enough to notice and can't stop it if they do. Arrogant Bastard. There, I'm looking at him." Pete turned his screen toward the teens.

"You know this guy?"

"Yes. That's the Vice Principal. Son-of-a-bitch. That asshole is spying on the students." Kim burst out.

"Bet he's selling it to porn sites. Can you kill him from here?" Lisa asked.

"Take him down hard. He's fucking with Pete's Pixies. Nobody does that but Pete." Cam wanted pain and suffering.

Pete snooped around. "Hmmmmm. There it is. I have the name of the computer people who service that system. I know the woman who owns it. She has kids. I'll call her right now."

He dialed her on the landline. "Hello, Shirley. Pete O'Neal here. Hope your family is doing well."

"Sorry. New clubs won't fix his game."

"Yeah, business is good. But I'm about to complicate yours. I was helping a friend's kid set up a laptop and found something disturbing. Briefly, someone is using the high school mainframe to access the students' webcams without warning and in the background."

"Right, watching the kids in their bedrooms. Voyeurism, using their own computer cameras."

"A warning. I turned his script around on his butt. The perv is the Vice Principal. He is unaware that I took his picture."

"Kids here ain't crazy about him either. Here's the plan."

"Hell yeah. He's going down. He will have to call you soon."

"He is bound to have traces of porn sites, if not cookies, then tracks in the '.dat' files. You'll know where to look. I'm giving him a present that will crash the whole system, website and all. I'll give you the fix. Nothing will be lost but the whole thing will be a door stop until you bring it up again."

"You play fast pitch too, Shirley. When the fix spits out that the virus came from a Dutch porn site, look in his hidden folders with your sys admin tools. The evidence will be there. The fix will also highlight suspect programming. I'm sure you will find enough to hang the creep."