"Silicon Valley Tango"
Three minutes after joining her sister’s workout, FBI Special
Agent Dawna Shepherd brought up the stalker. From her treadmill, she shouted to
Bettijean, who was working hard on the adjacent elliptical. “Mom’s upset. Says
you told her somebody’s tracking your every move.”
“Figured it was Mom, made you rush up here.” Bettijean brushed
damp hair off her forehead. “She over-reacted. Nobody’s peeping my windows.”
Dawna eyed her panting sister. “She said, ‘Bettcha sounds like
she needs help.’” Mom had used the family nickname for her youngest, softening
Dawna up for the command that came next. “Told me to give you a hand, since I
had time off in your neighborhood.”
Bettijean snorted. “Somebody’s hacking into my computer
system. Not your specialty. We finish here, I’ll explain.”
Sunday, the instant Mom ended her call, Dawna’d phoned her
sister, asking for face-time. Bettijean insisted her only free nano-seconds for
a private chat in the next five days were during her morning fitness routine.
Dawna caught the pre-dawn flight on Monday from Orange County
airport to San Jose, rented a car and before 8:00 AM, she was at the three-story
mansion in Los Altos owned by her sister’s fiancé, Edward Ulrich Gustafson. A
sweating Bettijean answered the door, managed a sisterly hug and hustled Dawna
to the basement gym because she had to put in ten more minutes.
Dawna upped her treadmill’s speed and studied her sister. A
head shorter, Bettijean had darkened the Shepherd curly blonde hair to a
less-glam light brown and relaxed the kinks. Her smooth bob looked professional.
The rest of her did not. Bettijean was working the machine’s pedals as though
she were speed-walking backwards. Dawna didn’t bother telling her she’d appear
less silly going forward. Baby sister refused to learn the fundamentals of
athletic endeavors.
Naturally talented at sports, Dawna had turned her back on a
career in professional basketball to follow their police chief father into law
enforcement. Always the maverick, Bettijean turned her back on the family, fled
to California and re-invented herself as a software engineer. She kept the rest
of the Shepherds at arms-length. Though she and Ed had been engaged for three
years, she hadn’t yet brought him to Texas to meet the family.
Their mother phoned Bettijean every Sunday, maintaining the
bond with her youngest, hoping that a big family wedding at home would bring
them all together again. Bettijean’s recent evasiveness about her plans wasn’t
encouraging.
More alarming to both Mom and big sister was her remark about
being stalked. Before Dawna left LA, she Googled both Bettijean Shepherd and
Edward Ulrich Gustafson, searching the Internet for unsavory interest in either.
In addition to the usual bio data, she turned up a newspaper article featuring
hot young princes of Silicon Valley. Ed had sold his first Internet startup
eight years earlier for $2.1 billion and was striving to top that with twinkl, a
web-based social networking service.
Now, Dawna put her facts together with Bettijean’s reference
to hacking. Was Ed the target of corporate espionage?
Bettijean’s machine clicked to COOL DOWN mode and Dawna seized
the moment to ask about him. “Your fiancé gone to work?”
“Hours ago,” Bettijean replied. “Most days, he’s at twinkl
before the sun rises. When he’s here, he’s running in and out of his home
office, trying to answer questions from the rest of his crew.”
Dawna frowned. “Why is he busting his ass? He spend his first
billion so fast?”
“No time for that. We’ve been living in this place five months
and you probably noticed he hasn’t furnished it.”
Dawna recalled the bare rooms she’d passed through on the
ground floor. “You do seem a little short of chairs.”
“Man would rather sit on the floor than miss a minute at
twinkl.” Bettijean’s machine stopped and she hopped off. “And I’m due at my
current project in 45 minutes.” She worked for Garvin-McCarty Ventures, a
leading seed capital investment firm, as on-site consultant to new startups her
company funded.
Dawna padded after her into the oversize bathroom off the gym,
perching on the toilet lid while Bettijean showered. Water splattered against
tiles, warm mist boiling into the room. Dawna smiled at the array of trendy
hygiene products piled on the countertop, conveniently shrink-wrapped for
bargain sale in bulk.
When Bettijean emerged from the shower, Dawna asked the
question that had been nagging her cop’s mind-set. “Some of the startups your
investment company funds must be competing with Ed’s new venture. Isn’t that a
conflict of interest between you?”
“First issue we dealt with when he decided to start a new
company.” Bettijean pulled on her office clothes--flat-front slacks topped by a
silky tee in complementary shades of brown and beige. “Iron-clad rule: the only
work-related topics we discuss are those in the public domain. Either of us
brings sensitive information home, we immediately lock it up.” She combed her
hair and herded Dawna into the center hallway where she pushed a wall button
beside elevator doors. As they whispered open, she pointed to the far end of the
hall. “Ed’s workspace takes up the other half of the basement. Mine is in the
attic. We’ve got motion detectors every foot for the last ten yards before each
office and mine are programmed to sound an audible alarm. Office doors have
state-of-the-art keypad locks and we randomly change our codes.” Once in the
elevator, Bettijean inserted a key into the control panel, putting the car in
motion.
The mechanical hum echoed Dawna’s pondering noise. “Tight
lips, good security and physical separation are a start,” she finally said. “Any
other safeguards?”
“I have the only key that allows this car to rise above the
middle floor. Ed and I don’t have permanent house staff so that prevents
third-party spying. We take turns supervising the cleaning service that comes in
twice a week. And they don’t enter our offices.”
The elevator doors opened to a spacious top floor. On sturdy
bleached oak office furniture at its center sat a high-powered desktop computer
and all the accessory equipment. Yet another bathroom filled the end-space to
Dawna’s left, and a compact kitchen fronted by a breakfast bar stood to her
right. In the far wall opposite the elevator, Bettijean pointed out a locked
door that topped the staircase leading down.
Sunshine poured through six skylights, turning the hardwood floor buttery
yellow. Dawna smelled butter, too, an oddity explained when her sister headed
straight for the built-in microwave and inserted a popcorn bag.
Bettijean turned and patted the pager clipped to her trouser
waistband. “Ed and I use these to contact each other. No cell phone or e-mail
communication between us. I don’t carry a laptop because they’re so easy to
steal. We have separate Internet connections. We’ve eliminated any risk that one
of us might reveal sensitive information accidentally.”
“You mean that Ed might reveal anything to you,” Dawna
corrected. “He’s the star. These precautions protect his intellectual property
from somebody trying to go through you to snoop him.”
“My clients also have patent-able innovations,” Bettijean
insisted. “They want assurance that Ed won’t hear about their activities from
me.”
Dawna frowned. “The safeguards you describe work only if you
and Ed follow your own rules. Your clients are satisfied having no outside
enforcer to stop you leaking info to Ed?”
“Absolutely.” Bettijean moved to her desk and booted up her
computer. She turned to face Dawna. “My rep is golden and key to my success.
People have always been able to count on me to keep their secrets.” Her
expression darkened. “Until now.”
