Sarah's Prayer: A Sunset Single (Sunset Series 1.1) (10 page)

I hope I'm part of the reason.
"I know I would like for you to stay."

"You sound like you'd have to try to talk me into it, Sarah. The way my business works, I could live anywhere there's a cellphone and internet connection. I hope you know the reason I'm staying in Sunset is... you."

Sarah sat rock still, too stunned to move, her eyes locked on Michael. Her only movement beside the tear slipping from her eye was a hand sliding across the table seeking his.

"Did you not realize that, Sarah?" He held and stroked her hand gently.

"I... I guess so. At least I hoped that would be why you would want to stay. It's just that... I don't know... making a big decision like that just because of me. Wow, that's a lot to take in." She looked down, lost in thought. "This is something I've struggled with for a long time, Michael, not feeling worthy... of that kind of..."

"Love."

Sarah looked up, breathless.

"Yes, Sarah, I love you. I didn't think I would say that to a woman again in my life.
Certainly not one as wonderful and beautiful as you. I thank God every day for putting us together like this. So, love is the word you were searching for... hopefully."

Sarah searched for the ability to speak, not the words to say.
"... yes, love." She held his gaze for a moment to be certain she could do so without feeling unworthy of what he just said. She had felt that way for so long with so many people that this was a foreign experience. "Michael, I love you." The release Sarah felt was like being released from a dungeon of her own making and seeing the sunlight again as a free woman. "... and I didn't know if I would ever say those words to a man. I didn't know there was somebody like you in this world, Michael."

The lunch time conversation gave the drive home to Sunset a whole different tone and a much deeper level of intimacy between a man who lost love because of his injury and a woman who became wounded seeking love.

Chapter 13

After a glorious day with Michael, Sarah changed for bed and collapsed for the night. Or so she thought. She tossed and turned for most of the night.
Why can't I sleep? Sure, it was wonderful being with Michael today. What's bothering me, then... Wait... Did he want me to help him pick out furniture because he thought I might be sharing it with him one day? Oh, Sarah. Don't get your hopes up. Don't do that to yourself.

Try as she might, sleep wasn't going to happen, so she got up to write some emails to friends. She turned on the desk lamp and turned on the laptop screen. The message box on the screen surprised her. "
Upload in progress." What does that mean?
Try as she might, she couldn't get it to go away. She tried to restart the computer, but she couldn't. It was locked up.
This is frustrating.

Sarah walked away from her desk to get a glass of almond milk and a granola bar. When she returned, her computer acted normally.
I'll have to ask Michael about what happened.
She continued on with her emails until the nervous energy dissipated. A few hours of sleep was all Sarah got that night.

Sunday just didn't feel as
worshipful as Sarah hoped. She blamed it on lack of sleep, but in the back of her mind, she knew there was something not right about... something, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Her intuitive sense was a skill she honed in her line of work. It came in handy when dealing with patients and families who didn't know what they needed or felt themselves.

As always, it felt good to be with Michael. She usually felt safe, warm and secure around him. Today just felt different for some reason.
You need a nap, Sarah.

During lunch at the Diner, Sarah decided to ask Michael about her nagging concern, silly as it may be. "Michael, I know you don't do hardware, but I think I have a problem with my laptop."

"Okay, tell me what's going on. I may be able to help."

"Well, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep, so I got up to do some things on it and found a message box that said 'upload in progress.' I couldn't get it go away and couldn't do anything else until it went away on its own. Got any ideas?"

Michael perked up. "That's not a hardware issue. Do you use a cloud backup service that may have caused that?"

"Yes, but it's always running in the background and it's never done that before that I know of."

Michael looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "Huh. Well, if you don't mind me coming over to your place for a few minutes I can take a look and run a quick scan."

"Sure, I think I can allow that." Sarah's grin signaled to Michael that he could loosen up a little. He needn't be concerned about threatening Sarah's comfort zone any longer. They were in love.

Arriving at her apartment, Sarah escorted Michael into her bedroom to show him how she had her laptop and docking station set up. Turning around, she noticed he was nowhere to be seen. She backtracked into the living area to see Michael standing there looking a little flustered.

"Michael, are you okay?"

"Well, yeah, I guess. It's just, that... I didn't think you'd be comfortable with us being in your bedroom together, Sarah."

She stood, looking at him with a compassionate and appreciative stare. "You are so cute." She kissed him on the cheek, held his hand and with an overly gratuitous tone took Michael slowly back to show him her computer setup. "Michael, let's pretend that this half of the room by my desk is my office and ignore the rest of it. That way you don't have to be uncomfortable with it."

Michael turned his traditional shade of red. "Okay, Sarah. I can deal with it." He smiled and sat down to study her laptop. He expertly brought the system to life and conducted a system check. "Good laptop you've got here... operating system checks out... antivirus and malware protection in place. I'm going to log in to my site and run a system sweep to see if there's anything to worry about." Michael brought up a browser and connected to his secure website.

After a few minutes of watching various bits of data scroll and flash on the screen, Michael stopped the scan. "Sarah. I think I found the problem. Even though you've got a good anti-malware program, you've got yourself a nasty Trojan program running on your system."

"What's that? Is it bad?"

"Well, it's a program that sneaks on to your computer disguised as something simple and non-threatening. You may think it's a good thing like a game or even a picture that's linked to an email, but it's really a malicious program that infects your computer. I can't tell from here what
it's doing, but I know it doesn't belong here and needs to be killed before it can do any damage. Do you mind if I take your laptop to my place for a few hours and do a deep scan?"

"No, sure.
Whatever it takes. I'm beat and could use a good nap. You go play with your toys and let me know when you're done."

Michael smiled, disconnected the laptop and headed for the door.

Sarah gave him a quick hug and kiss. "See you." After seeing him off, she changed into her favorite jeans and t-shirt then fell on the bed for a blissful and peaceful nap.

When Michael arrived at home he didn't even bother to change clothes. He immediately plugged in a flash drive with a complete diagnostic suite and watched as the data rolled down the screen. He could have done any number of things in the twenty minutes it took to complete the testing, but he didn't. This bothered him too much. What he got for his wait wasn't what he wanted.

His worst fears were true. Somehow, Sarah's system had a mind of its own, sending information through the internet to an as yet unknown source. What and to whom Michael would find out. It was not only his nature, but this was Sarah's computer. And Sarah was... Michael couldn't focus on that now. He had a mystery, maybe even a crime to solve.

Digging deeper into the files, Michael found email attachments with various embedded malware, most of which the antivirus software caught and discarded. The majority, Sarah simply deleted.
Good girl, Sarah.
A few, however, were clever enough to make it past all the barriers. The source caused Michael's protective instincts to go into high gear.

A check into the deleted files showed a treasure trove of pictures taken over the last several months.
Hundreds of them. Many were so degraded Michael couldn't restore them, but the most recently deleted were easily reclaimed.
Just because you deleted these files doesn't mean I can't find them, sucker.

Michael double clicked on a file to see what the malware program had been up to. His default picture viewer went into slideshow mode, showing a different picture every second. The first few photos caused a total disconnect in Michael's brain. He felt like he was staring into a window of Sarah's bedroom instead of looking at her laptop in his own home. The images were photos taken by the camera on Sarah's desk showing her dropping something on the bed.
Why would she take pictures of herself...
Then reality struck. Michael's heart raced and he turned a deep scarlet. He quickly closed the laptop and walked away.
I can't believe this. What do I do? How do I explain this to Sarah?

The designer of the vicious malware created a zombie out of Sarah's computer at certain times of the morning and evening. Whenever it registered movement it took pictures at a specific interval and stored them on the hard drive. In the middle of the night or a week day afternoon if there were no activity on the system it would upload those pictures to a server then delete them.
Clever, but not too clever.

Michael was pleased that he solved the problem, now a verifiable crime.
The issues for him? He had to tell Sarah who did it and what he saw while solving it.

Sarah's deep sleep came to an end when her cell phone rang.
"Hi, Michael. Did you solve the mystery?" Sarah could tell immediately that something was wrong.

"Yeah, Sarah.
I did. We need to talk... soon. There are some things I found on your system that concern me. This may sound really strange, but when I show you what I found, you need to have one of your friends, a woman you really trust, with you when I do it. It's sort of the protocol anyway."

"What
protocol. What are you talking about?" Sarah started to worry.

"Well, what I found is evidence of a crime, maybe even federal level crime. In any other circumstance I would turn this over to law enforcement immediately, but since this is you, I want to talk to you and show you what I found. We need a witness and you need someone you can trust.

Sarah started to cry. "Michael, you're scaring me."