The hack she’d transferred to Frank’s phone let her eavesdrop on his conversations, read his messages, get his location in real time, and, most importantly, let her look at what he’d stored on his phone and his cloud. Even a few years ago, that would’ve been a lot more difficult, but the phone companies had progressively disabled any settings that might have hidden personal info. They still advertised their super strong interest in privacy, but the algorithms knew everything anyway.
Within ten minutes of digging through his phone she knew Frank’s situation was precarious. He was burning through credit at a rate that would have him broke within a couple of weeks. Good. That meant he needed another deal desperately. He couldn’t afford not to take her bait.
She rifled through his encrypted messages. Most of them were not worth the electrons used to store them. Why would anyone encrypt inane chatter with female admirers? The answer emerged after a while. A familiar pattern emerged. She hadn’t been the first woman he’d messed with for his financial advantage.
After a couple of hours, she found at least five women in different cities, who’d been burned in a similar fashion. His MO was pretty much the same, push them into doing something illegal that would ruin their IRX after getting a risk default swap betting on them doing it.
Maddie contacted all five. None of them wanted anything to do with Frank.
“I’m still recovering,” one said. “It’s touch and go, even hearing his name triggers me. Sorry.”
When she gave up on finding allies, she only had twelve hours left before she was to meet Frank. Part of her wanted to make that ten-thousand-to-one bet against Frank. To see him crash and burn while she cashed in. She gave up on that quickly because she didn’t know the first thing about investing in risk markets and risk default swaps.
The first outlines of a plan emerged after she analyzed Frank’s actions. It was easy to think he was just a run-of-the-mill misogynist, but there was something else. Frank knew he was attractive. It was his only asset. He used it to get what he wanted. Exploiting women was a means to get to what he called “scoring big.” And that’s how she was going to get even.
