I Told You, Eli Oxley

Chapter Forty-One

If I understood correctly, they had been planning on hacking and robbing a bank for quite a while, long before I even thought about it. And they were going to use me and somehow find a way to place the blame all on me if they got caught. Or maybe they were just going to pile evidence on top of me so that it would be impossible for me not to get arrested.

I further deduced that I wasn't going to see any of the money.

But what could I do since the job was basically already over; all that I had to do was pick the money up, which obviously wasn't going to happen.

It then occurred to me that I was screwed in at least two ways: I wasn't going to get money for Colorado, and I was probably going to be arrested. How was I going to get out of this?

I had to figure out a way to turn the tables, to place evidence on them instead. I first had to push Colorado out of my mind and focus on not becoming incarcerated.

***

There are several ways to get caught hacking illegally: not deleting your logs (kind of like your browser history), having your i.p. address traced back to you, or not wiping or destroying your hard drives. I had taken the necessary precautions of deleting my logs and using a fake i.p., so I couldn't use those methods of pinning anything on Gabe or the others. But I (literally) held in my hands two hard drives with all the incriminating evidence on them that I had yet to dispose of.

But the question remained: how was I going to use that information against them and not me? And whatever I did, I had to do it quickly because the other guys were on their way back to the house.

Lightbulb! <==That signifies that I had a bright idea. Get it? Bright? Lightbulb? Lol.

All I needed to do was use Gabe's computer and hack back into the bank without using a fake i.p. address. I would go through the same hack I had done earlier but, instead of dispensing the money out of an ATM, I would just set up another fake account and transfer more money into it and let it sit there, waiting to be found.

I would also transfer the bank hack data from the burner hard drives to Gabe's computer before destroying them. This action would be the most time consuming, thus riskiest, but I felt it was an integral part of the whole thing.

***

Surprise! (note the sarcasm) The hack was taking longer than I thought it would. I was only halfway through when my walkie blared:

"This is JT, heading from DD1 to the nest, over."

I had to answer. "Loud and clear, over."

My hands and feet were a sweaty, shaky mess. Code was streaming from my fingers, but I was constantly making mistakes along the way. I had at least another fifteen minutes to go, which would be maybe five minutes too long – JT was sure to arrive before then.

"Brett here, good to go. Returning to nest, over."

"Loud and clear," I responded and wondered where his drop-off was and how soon he would be back.

My hands shook as if I were going through coffee withdrawal. I had set up the fake account, and all I had left was transferring money from other accounts into 'Gabe's'. I ended up choosing the first two accounts I found that had over ten grand in them. But I still had to cut and paste the lines of code, which is much more difficult than cutting and pasting things from the internet when you're plagiarizing your college essay (you know who you are).

I was finishing up the last few lines when headlights streamed through the bedroom window from a car pulling up the inclined driveway.

I was going to get caught, I just knew it. I took a chance and ran down the hallway and turned the bathroom light on and locked and shut the door and rushed back to Gabe's room, turned off the lights in his room and locked the door behind me. I hoped that if JT, or whoever had returned, came looking for me, he would think I was using the bathroom.

To muffle myself, I tried to glide my fingers over the keyboard instead of pecking them, which was more than slightly difficult since I was still shaking. I heard the front door open and footsteps leading down into the basement. His wrong direction would buy me another minute or two.

"Eli, where you at, bro?" I heard JT downstairs through the floor vents.

I guess he realized I wasn't in the basement, because he bounded up the stairs (much more quickly than I would have hoped for).

"Eli, yo – where are you? Oh, I see. You're just taking a shit. Hurry up. You gotta get going soon – someone's gonna find and take the money bags."

I still didn't respond. I wasn't talented enough to throw my voice to make it sound as if I were in the bathroom. But the lack of an "Okay" from me prompted him to continue down the hall. I heard him stop outside the bathroom.

"You okay in there?" he said.

Another non-response from me elicited a knock on the bathroom door.

"Dude, you're kind of freaking me out – quit effing around."

I finished up the hack and logged off. I silently unhooked the hard drives. I was done. But I was stuck.

"If you don't answer in the next five seconds, I'm breaking in," JT said, still talking into the bathroom door.

My options for escape:

1. Actually, I didn't have any options. I was screwed. The only thought I had was to climb out the window and down to my car and just jet. But my absence, as well as the whole bathroom being locked thing, would cause too much suspicion. But maybe they wouldn't be too suspicious? Maybe I could just take my walkie with me and tell them I went ahead and left for the dead drop locations.

And that was what I decided to do. I first had to maneuver around all the computers just to get to the window. Once there, I opened the window and looked down. It was about a ten foot drop. Not too bad, but I could easily sprain an ankle if I weren't careful enough.

I climbed out and hung from the sill, then dropped down. No sprained ankles for this guy.

The bad part, though, was when I heard JT's muffled voice. Through my walkie. Which was still in the bedroom.

Shit, shit, shit.

There was no way I could get back in there and grab the walkie. And I knew it would only be a matter of seconds before JT heard his own voice coming from Gabe's room.

I sprinted to my car and fumbled and dropped my keys before I was finally able to unlock the door and get in. I looked back toward the window where I had just dropped from, and I didn't see JT there. Which was only a little victory. He would still know that I had been in there.

I just hoped that it took him longer to figure out what I was up to than it did for the police to arrive at the house and arrest him and the others.