“So,” she said briskly, “what do you know about a game
called Shadowland?”
He slid the vegetables into a skillet. “Sometimes you
wanna go where no one knows your name,” he said, then turned to her with a grin
that didn’t reach his eyes.
She was genuinely shocked. “You play?”
“Here and there, between calls at the firehouse. It
passes the time.”
“Well then, David, dear, do I have a story for you.”
Monday, February 22, 10:45 p.m.
Micki and Jack were in Abbott’s office when Noah got
back. Jack and Micki were reviewing case notes and Abbott was absorbed in his
computer screen. “What’s with Abbott?”
“He’s playing the game,” Jack said. “Shadowland sucked
him in.”
“I am not sucked in,” Abbott retorted. “I am
investigating Ninth Circle.”
On Abbott’s screen a male avatar mingled. “That’s
you?” Noah asked
“It is. I’ll never attract a looker like Eve’s Greer,
although that’s probably for the best. My wife wouldn’t like that too much.”
“Where did you get the avatar?” Noah asked.
“Bought it from Pandora’s website in the game.”
Noah blinked. “You? I thought you were clueless.”
“I wanted Eve to think so. But everything she told us
was spot on. Our killer doesn’t have to have a lot of technical know-how. It is
an amazing place, though.”
Shaking his head, Noah went back to the table. “That’s
too weird,” he murmured.
“I know,” Micki whispered. “I think he’s been playing
dumb all these years, making me explain things. I’ve got his number now.”
“I can hear well, too,” Abbott called and Micki rolled
her eyes.
“What do we know?” Noah asked.
“We found the snake,” Jack said with a grimace. “What
was left of it.”
“Timber rattler,” Micki said. “Outside in the snow.
The head had been shot off.”
“I thought the timber rattler was endangered,” Noah
said.
“It’s threatened,” Micki said. “Rarely found this time
of year. They hibernate in the wild. I’m thinking this was likely a specimen.
We’re making calls to the zoos and universities. So far nobody’s missing one,
but hopefully we’ll be able to track it down.”
“But why?” Noah pressed. “Everything else was the
same, except the snake bite.”
“Because he’s fucking
nuts
?” Jack asked.
“Fucking nuts and knows forensics,” Micki said. “So
far no prints, hairs, nothing.”
The phone rang and the three of them went silent when
Abbott picked up.
“Olivia,” he said, then sighed as he listened. “They
got the Siren Song employee list,” he said when he hung up. “Cassandra Lee was
cooperative when she heard the news.”
Noah sighed. “Christy and Samantha weren’t on the
list, were they?”
“No. Web, get the list of participants in Eve’s study
and figure out how Samantha Altman links. Micki, do we have anything from
Martha’s hard drive?”
“Not yet,” she admitted. “Whoever wiped it, did good.
It’s like she never used it.”
Noah went still. “Mick, do you have those photos of
Martha’s messy apartment?”
“In my folder.” Micki spread the photos on the table.
“Dammit. She had two monitors on her desk before,”
Noah said, tapping one of the photos. “We only found one. And her computer in
the picture is high end. We took a cheap one. I wondered why a consultant would
have such a cheap PC.”
Micki scowled. “I’ve wasted time searching the hard
drive of a decoy computer.”
“This guy is very good,” Jack said thoughtfully. “Very
smart.”
“He took Martha’s computer because he knew we’d find
evidence of Shadowland on her hard drive and in her Internet cache,” Micki
said. “We’d be able to follow her movements and maybe even who she talked to in
the World.”
Abbott looked grim. “Then it’s important. We need
access to Martha’s and Christy’s game files. Someone altered their avatars. We
find out who, we find our man.”
“You want to hack or ask to be admitted through the
front door?” she asked.
“Front door,” Abbott said. “Jack, kick up the search
for the panty pervert, Taylor Kobrecki. Right now he’s the closest thing we
have to a suspect. Noah, get a list of Eve’s test subjects and everyone meet
back here at 8:00 a.m.”
Monday, February 22, 11:15 p.m.
“You can go home, you know,” Eve said to Callie, who’d
arrived with Eve’s keys shortly after Noah Webster had departed. “David’s back
from the corner store.”
“Yes, he is.” Callie watched David whipping a cream
sauce with a wire whisk. “I’m hoping when he finishes dinner he does something
that makes him hot and sweaty.”
Eve sighed. Women everywhere had the same reaction to
David. She might have, too, had they met under different circumstances. Instead
David had been a man she’d learned to trust when her world had been a very dark
and scary place.
“Leave him alone. I want my dinner.”
“Fine. So why did he just bring you two disposable
cell phones?”
“He was going out for heavy cream for his sauce
anyway. Mine had curdled.”
“Don’t be a smartass. I got you a lawyer. The least
you can do is give me a hint.”
“I appreciate you sending Matt, and he did a great
job, but I don’t want to put you in a bad position. The less you know, the
better for you. Just go home. Please?”
“You’re not making me feel better and I’m not going
home. At least let me help.”
“You didn’t cause this, Cal. You shouldn’t have to be
involved.”
“You didn’t cause this either. You didn’t force these
women to play your game.”
Eve thought of Christy Lewis, who’d never heard of
role play games before she’d seen their ad for test subjects in the local
paper. “Yeah, Cal, I kind of did.”
“Good God. Who taught you to shoulder the burden of
every person you meet?”
“I know who,” David said dryly from the kitchen. “You
can’t fight it, Callie. It was hardwired into her by one of the best.”
“Thank you,” Eve said, touched, and he smiled back,
but his eyes were troubled.
“Callie’s right, Evie. None of this is your fault. Let
the police do their jobs.”
“I am. Mostly.” She toggled her laptop screen to Ninth
Circle. “He could be there, hunting his next victim. I can’t just stand by. I
have to do something.”
David shook his head helplessly. “God, it’s like a
Dana echo in here.”
“Thank you,” she said again and he scowled.
“
That
wasn’t a compliment,” he said. “So what
are you doing that you shouldn’t be?”
“Reading blogs of ShadowCo people. You can learn a lot
from employee blog rants.”
“What do you want to learn from ShadowCo’s angry
employees?” Callie asked.
“I want a contact in the company. So I can hack in.”
Callie nodded. “That’s what I expected you to do. Can
I watch?”
Eve laughed. “Sure. If I’m lucky this marketing guy
who ranted about his boss, who works him like a slave, will still be in the
office.”
“At this time of night?” David asked.
“If it’s anything like law firms,” Callie said,
“people will work until midnight.”
“Besides, they’re in Seattle,” Eve added. “This blog
is from a marketing genius who included his title and phone number at the end
of his rant about the multi-million-dollar bonus given to ShadowCo’s CEO.”
“I don’t know why people are so stupid as to blog
about their bosses,” Callie said. “Anyone in the world can see it once it
posts. Idiots.”
“Well, this idiot’s name is Clayton Johnson.” Using
the disposable cell, Eve dialed.
The phone rang six times. “Johnson,” he said, clipped
and annoyed. Perfect.
“Mr. Johnson,” Eve said, “my name is Gillian Townsend.
I’m with Attenborough IT Services. We’re contracted to support your company
network systems.”
“So?” Johnson asked impatiently. “I don’t have time—”
Eve broke in before he could hang up. “We’re doing
server maintenance and I can see you’re still logged in. In a few minutes,
we’ll be shutting down your server.”
“No,” he said angrily. “I have a report to finish and
I need—”
“It’s all right, sir. We’re shutting down your server
and immediately starting up the backup. I can validate your account on my end
so that you won’t have any down time.”
“Oh.” He sounded mollified. “Well, all right.”
“What’s your user name and password, please?” She
looked up to find Callie staring at her like she’d grown two heads. David just
looked resigned.
“JohnsonCL and sonicsrule, all one word,” Johnson
said.
Eve smiled. “Thank you. You won’t see even a blip in
your service. Be sure to change your password first thing in the morning,
okay?”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“My pleasure. Have a good evening.” Eve hung up.
“That’s how it’s done.”
Callie looked stunned. “You lied to that man.”
“Yes I did. And he gave a complete stranger his
password and user name.”
“You
lied
to that man,” Callie repeated. “With
the cell phone David bought you.”
“Why do you think she wanted an untraceable phone?”
David asked. “But, Evie, that Johnson guy was just an innocent bystander. You
could get him fired.”
“That’s why I told him to change his password. If he
does, he’ll appear like he was security-conscious. Don’t worry. Once this is
over, I’ll tell Ethan and he can pay a sales call to ShadowCo and show them the
huge holes in their network security.”
David blinked. “
This
is what Ethan does for a
living?”
“Sometimes. I used to hack for him part-time when I
lived in Chicago. It’s a good way to get his consulting foot in the door. A
company’s biggest vulnerability is often its people. Ethan shows them the
security hole and offers to patch it up.”
“That’s…” David shook his head. “That’s dishonest.”
“It would be if he used their servers for personal
gain. He doesn’t. He’s a white hat.”
Callie’s lips twitched. “A white hat?”
Eve nodded. “That’s what they’re called, I swear. As
opposed to black hats who hack in with malicious intent. If a business tells
Ethan they don’t want his services, he tells them where the hole was anyway.
Most likely a high school kid’s already found it.”
“Don’t these companies get mad that you hacked?”
Callie asked.
“Usually they want the hole patched before the big
cheese finds out. In the end, everybody wins. How would you like it if your
bank’s server had a security hole?”
“They wouldn’t,” David declared, then his features
shifted uneasily. “Do they?”
“Remember when Ethan and Dana put the downpayment on
the house for all their fosters? That downpayment was a retainer from your
bank, buddy. Some hacker had already breached their system. They said they
wished Ethan had breached it first.”
“It’s still dishonest,” he grumbled, but without heat.
He brought her a plate of pasta and cream sauce, then perched on the arm of her
chair. “So you’re in?”
“Not yet. Johnson was a little fish. As a marketing
guy, his access rights are diddly. I need to elevate my privileges so that I
can get into the client files. That’ll take time.”
“Why didn’t you start with somebody with better
access?” David asked.
“Like an IT person? Because they probably would have
called the cops on me.”
“Will you call anybody else?” Callie asked, fascinated.
“Not tonight. I’m going to run exploits until I find
another, better hole.”
“English,” David murmured.
“Exploits are codes, scripts hackers use to find
security holes. Hackers see network security as one big Rubik’s Cube. It’s
there to be breached, a puzzle to be solved.”
“Like mountain climbers scale Everest because it’s
there,” Callie said.
“Absolutely. They create code that basically knocks on
the walls of network security until it finds a loose brick. Knock the loose
brick through and you’re in.”
“It’s part of the game,” David said. “Hackers make
holes, businesses patch them.”
Eve smiled at him. “Kind of like roofs. Some hackers
look for loose bricks for nefarious reasons, like they want credit card info.
But some do it just because it’s there. They share their code because it gives
them status. Hopefully one of these scripts will find a ShadowCo hole. Then I
can get into Martha and Christy’s files and check their movements, who they
talked to, and importantly, how their avatars were altered.”
“And then you’ll hand it over to Detective Webster,”
David said.