The Devil Went Down to Austin by Rick Riordan

Author:Rick Riordan [Riordan, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: 2146
ISBN: 9781440763717
Publisher: RecordedBooks
Published: 2001-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

"Dwight, we're only talking about three people, here—how would the others not know?"

"You have to trust your partners in a startup—there's no time to check each other's work. A highlevel encryption program has millions of lines of code—millions of places to stash a back door."

"If one of the principals, a malicious one, gave Pena access to that back door ..."

"Matthew could destroy the betatesting," Dwight finished. "The other principals might never know what hit them. Once Matthew bought Techsan, he could fix the back door quickly, document the problem, blame it on the original programmers, then turn around and make a huge profit. He could afford to bribe his informant several million and still come out ahead."

I thought about that. There were only three principals at Techsan. One was now dead.

"You told Jimmy you couldn't help him," I guessed.

Dwight nodded slowly. "I couldn't go behind Matthew's back. Jimmy couldn't give me any more specifics. The conversation came to an impasse."

"But now you think Jimmy was right."

Dwight stared at his little Jesus on the rearview mirror. "The way Matthew was talking yesterday, about how quickly he would fix the software, yes. I think Jimmy was right.

But that's not what bothers me most, Tres—not how Matthew hurt your brother's company, but why."

I waited.

"I've seen Matthew do bad things," Dwight said. "Scary things. But this acquisition seems . . . special to him. I gave him a list of four or five possibilities in Austin. Not just Techsan. But he looked at the names of the principals and zeroed in on Techsan immediately. He's spent a lot of time on this project, more than anything else he's done."

"The money potential," I said. "You indicated it was huge."

"That's just it. He's making it huge. He could've made the same size IPO with any other company I showed him, probably with less work. But Matthew is pulling in all his markers with venture capitalists to make Techsan his biggest play. It's like he intentionally wants

to hurt these principals, make them know they've been crushed. He's being worse about this than I've ever seen him. Almost like—"

"It's personal," I supplied.

He nodded.

"Why would it be?" I said. "Pena ever meet Jimmy before?" "No."

"Ruby or Garrett?"

"Not that I know of."

"UT," I said. "That's where you and Pena met. That's where Jimmy and Garrett and Ruby met. No crossing of paths?"

"We must've graduated at least ten years after the Techsan folks."

He was right. There really wasn't much coincidence—a school with fifty thousand students. It was hard to find five people in Austin who hadn't gone there.

"What about before college—you know anything about Matthew's past?"

Dwight hesitated. "I know he was from a welloff family. I know he hated his parents."

"Because?"

"He said— I don't know why this would help you. His parents were doctors, lived in Marble Falls, did a lot of charity work in orphanages, homeless shelters, places like that. According to Matthew, he was like their trophy child. They gave him everything but never paid attention to him. When he turned eighteen, he pretty much severed all communication with them.

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