“Fuck!”
It was a male voice, and she lunged away from him, turning on her heel to nail him with a side kick. She missed his leg and threw herself off balance, landing on her butt. Her motion-sensitive floodlight went on. She scrambled to her feet, punching at her attacker, who was on his hands and knees on her sidewalk now, spewing curses.
“Scream, is that you?”
“Shit, Laney!”
She rushed forward, crunching glass under her shoes. Her ankle burned, and she realized it was bleeding.
Scream was bleeding, too. He pushed himself to his feet, dripping blood from a gash in his hand. He wore a T-shirt, cargo shorts, and combat boots.
“What the fuck?” He glared at her.
“What are you doing?” She clutched her chest, where her heart felt like it would pound right through her skin. She looked him up and down and resisted the urge to kick him in the shins.
Which, she now noticed, were bleeding pretty badly.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, looking around at the chunks of glass scattered across the pavement.
“My drink. What the hell are you doing skulking around my house at night?”
“I was looking for you.”
“You grabbed me!”
“I was kidding around.” He stripped off his T-shirt and wrapped his hand.
She stepped over to him, feeling guilty now that she could breathe again. She eyed the rivulets of blood streaming down his shins.
“Here. Come inside.” She picked up her pizza, which perched like a Frisbee on the hedge beside her door. She fumbled with her keys and managed to get the door unlocked, then tapped in her alarm code and dumped all her stuff on the kitchen counter.
Scream went directly to the sink and started rinsing his hand as Laney switched on a light.
“Damn it, Laney.” He plucked a shard of glass from his palm and dropped it on the counter.
“Hey, not my fault. You freaking attacked me.”
“I was joking. Christ. Good thing you’re not packing heat.”
A sour lump lodged in her throat. She swallowed it down. If she had been armed, she probably would have killed him.
Blood flowed from his hand as he held it under the faucet. She eased closer to watch. He smelled like cigarettes, and she took a closer look at him.
He’d put on weight since she’d seen him last. He was still thin, but his arms were more defined. The tattoo on his shoulder—a picture of Edvard Munch’s The Scream—had been embellished since she’d last seen it. Now it was framed by a ring of barbed wire.
Laney dampened a dish towel and crouched down to examine his injuries. The blood looked alarming, but when she wiped away the streaks, she saw that the cuts were pretty small.
“Ouch!” He scowled down at her.
“Fine, you do it.”
He stepped back and propped his foot on the counter, and she watched as he pulled a sliver of glass from his shin.
Laney tended to her own cut, squeezing out a thin splinter.
“What did you want, anyway?” He looked at her. “You’ve been leaving messages everywhere.”
She sighed. “You want a beer?”
“Hell, yeah. Something to numb the pain.” He smiled slightly, and she felt relieved. Teasing meant he didn’t need to go to the ER.
She switched on the oven and slid the pizza inside. Then she grabbed a beer and used the bloody dish towel to twist off the cap. Scream took his leg down and leaned back against the sink, and Laney had a sudden memory of Reed pinning her against that very spot. Had it really only been a few hours ago?
The two men couldn’t look more different. Reed was tall and powerfully built, with thick dark hair that curled at the nape of his neck, and just the thought of touching it again made Laney’s fingers twitch.
Scream was . . . odd-looking. Pale, thin, awkwardly long-limbed. At first glance, most people took him for a skinhead, but his body art didn’t fit. His tattoos included literary references, Egyptian symbols, Chinese characters.
“What about you?” He swigged his beer, watching her.
“I’m not thirsty.”
She eyed his cuts again and felt a tug of guilt. She dreaded asking for favors, and she wasn’t good at chitchat, but she at least needed to try. She tossed the bloody towel into the sink.
“So how are you?” she asked.
“Fine. You?”
“Fine.” This was why she hated small talk. She crossed her arms. “How’s business?”
“Can’t complain,” he said. The smug tone of his voice told Laney he was making money hand over fist.
Scream’s underfed homeless look was basically an avatar. In reality, he was a millionaire several times over.
Scream sold zeros for a living, which was one of the reasons Ben hated him. Ben believed he operated without code. Not computer code but ethics. As in, Scream had none, at least not according to Ben.
Once upon a time, Scream had been the best cyber-intrusion expert at the Delphi Center. During his years at the lab, he’d built a name for himself.
But then he’d gone rogue. He’d gone from helping companies test and fix their security vulnerabilities to selling those vulnerabilities on the black market as zeros. Fresh zeros, or zero-day exploits, were hugely valuable because they’d been known for zero days, which meant they could be exploited until someone had a chance to fix them. Individuals, companies, and even the U.S. government spent millions of dollars a year buying up zeros to gain unauthorized access to computer systems all over the world. Another lucrative part of the market was companies that purchased their own zeros to prevent rivals from snapping them up.
Once Scream’s original business was running smoothly, he’d started buying up zeros found and created by other people, then selling them to the highest bidder. And when he sold a bug, he didn’t care what his client’s intent was. Scream didn’t care if the buyer wanted it to hack, steal, or spy—he was all about the money. If the Net was a war zone and zeros were weapons, then Scream was an arms dealer.
“I need a favor,” Laney said now. “I understand you’ve been doing some work in the social-media space.”
He arched his eyebrows but didn’t confirm.
“I need to know if you’ve sold any zeros lately that could be used to target a dating website.”
“What’s it called?”
“Mix.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“What have you heard?”
He shrugged. “They’re small. Local. They’re trying to grow their customer base by appealing to the young demographic that comes to town every year for ACL Fest and SXSW. It’s a good niche. Some people think they’re headed for an IPO soon if their vulture capitalists don’t pull the funding.”
So he knew all about them, maybe more than she did. This was exactly why she’d wanted his help. Scream kept his ear to the ground. And as someone who dealt in information, he knew rumors had value, whether they were true or not.
He swigged his beer. “What are you investigating, a credit-card scam?”
“I can’t say.”
He rolled his eyes.
“It’s a sensitive case,” she added.
“Okay, what’s your budget?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Really, I don’t. I’m doing this on the side, sort of pro bono.”
He smiled slowly. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Laney.”
She hesitated to go into it. But if she wanted his help, he needed information.
“It’s for a friend of mine,” she said. “He’s a detective, and his department’s pretty cash-strapped.”
He sipped his beer and watched her, and she could see his interest in doing this favor was quickly evaporating.
&nb
sp; “What’s this detective of yours investigating?”
“A murder.”
He tipped his head back. “Shit, I should have known.” He looked at her and shook his head. “Always the crusader. You should have been a cop, Laney.”
She bristled. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Not.” He plunked his beer on the counter, and she felt a surge of desperation.
“But you have to. I don’t know anyone else.”
“Sure you do.”
“Not for this.”
He gave her a long, cool look, and she realized he was right. He didn’t have to. He didn’t owe her anything, and her guilt trips weren’t going to work if he truly had no moral compass. And she really didn’t know if he did. She didn’t know much of anything about him, not even where he lived. Scream popped in and out of her life at odd intervals, mostly without cause or explanation. He was temperamental and mysterious, and he liked that image and worked hard to cultivate it.
So the question was, would he help her for free? Because she sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep with him.
His gaze locked on hers, and she felt like he could read her thoughts.
Laney checked the pizza to stall for time. She needed a new strategy.
“Listen, I wouldn’t have called you if this wasn’t important,” she said. “I need your help.”
“And why do I get the feeling there’s more to this favor than you’re telling me?”
“There is. And you’re the only one who can do it.”
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” He said it in a high-pitched Princess Leia voice.
“I’m being serious here.”
“Then cut the crap,” he said. “What is it you really want?”
“There’s another zero I need. And there’s no one else who can get it.”
“You mean get it for free.”
“Yes. I need a way into the FBI.”
He stared at her.
“Specifically, I need access to their ViCAP system,” she said. “That’s the database where—”
“They store info about violent crimes, I know.”
She could tell he was intrigued, and she felt a flicker of optimism. Scream hated the FBI, so maybe he’d help her defeat their security just for kicks.
“I want to see if there are any similar cases out there,” she said. “The victims—”
“How many?”
“We don’t know. At least three with a similar MO, maybe more. The UNSUB goes to their homes and unscrews a lightbulb near his point of entry. Then he comes back to rape and bludgeon them.”
Scream was listening closely, but she couldn’t read his reaction.
Her phone chimed, and she rushed to answer it. It was Ben, so she took the call out on the patio, pulling the door shut behind her and giving Scream a chance to think. She had a feeling she’d hooked him.
“What’s up?” she asked Ben.
“Did you see the news?”
“No. Why?”
“There’s been another murder.”
“I know.”
Silence.
“So you’re on the case?” Ben sounded confused, and she didn’t blame him. She wasn’t on anything yet. APD hadn’t really hired the lab. She was essentially freelancing, and that wasn’t accurate, either, because Reed hadn’t officially hired her. But she had a sense that was coming. Whether he liked it or not, he needed her help.
“More or less,” Laney said. “We’re still trying to establish a firm connection between the cases.”
“What’s the holdup?”
“I haven’t seen all the evidence,” she said.
“Well, what else is new? We never see all the evidence. Do they realize the trail’s getting cold while they dick around?”
“I can’t talk about this right now, Ben. I have to go.”
“Call me in the morning.”
“I will.”
Laney stepped back inside and halted. The kitchen was empty now.
“Scream?”
She checked the bathroom and the bedroom, confirming what she already knew.
He’d left. She’d turned her back for one minute, and he’d taken off. She returned to the kitchen and glanced around. The pizza sat on the counter with a big wedge missing so it looked like Pac-Man. Beside it was a paper towel that had a message scrawled across it.
Mission accepted. But it’s going to cost you.
CHAPTER 12
By Monday morning, Bella Marshall’s murder was all over the news. By noon, Reed was in the chief’s office, and by late afternoon, he was back at Delphi, this time to meet with one of the nation’s top experts in cyber-profiling.
Reed wasn’t much on profiling, but he tried to keep an open mind as he rode the elevator up to the Delphi’s cybercrime unit alongside the guy who’d spent the night on Laney’s couch.
“You ever met Mark?”
Reed glanced over. “No.”
“We poached him from the Bureau a few years ago. He’s the best in the world.”
The doors dinged open, and Ben Lawson led him down a corridor lined with windows. To Reed’s left was a view of rolling green hills bathed in sunlight. To his right was a dimly lit computer lab with rows of glowing workstations. Reed quickly spotted Laney seated at one of them. Several men watched over her shoulders as she pointed at something on her screen.
Reed scanned the lab. Cargo shorts and flip-flops seemed to be the uniform. It was a large work space, and busy, but Reed wondered how much crime fighting actually got done with so many dartboards and basketball hoops around.
“Always interesting to watch Smurfette work.”
Reed looked at Ben. “What’s that?”
“Smurfette.” He smiled. “That’s her nickname. She ever tell you about it?”
“No.”
Ben propped his shoulder against the window and smiled. “Then I guess she never told you how she landed a job here.”
Reed glanced at Laney again. She was a female island in a sea of men. And most of them looked half Reed’s age.
“It goes back to this hack she did in college,” Ben said, determined to tell his story. “Not sure how she got tipped off to this, but there was a teacher at one of the local high schools who frequented this kiddie-porn site.” He glanced through the window. “So Laney hears about it, decides to check into it. She penetrates their system, has a look around. Turns out, it’s a major operation based in Phoenix. And this isn’t some jerkoff in his garage uploading photos, this is a sizable enterprise, one of the biggest in the country. At least it was back then. Anyway, Laney starts nosing around, getting pissed off, and decides to launch a DoS attack. You know what that is?”
“Denial of service.”
“Exactly. Basically, it crashes the site. So she uses what we call a smurf attack, which means she sends a ping from the spoofed IP address of the target to the network’s broadcast network. What happens is all the systems in the subnet respond to the spoof and flood the device.”
Reed didn’t really know what he’d just said, but he caught the gist of it. “So she took them down?”
“Man, she owned them. It was wizardly. Meanwhile, she sent an anonymous tip to a detective over at Phoenix PD explaining what they were up to and providing all kinds of details they could use for a bust. Only problem was, the FBI was already on to this shop. They had a sting operation in the works, and she basically beat them to the punch. So, you know, they were pretty pissed. They couldn’t figure out whether they wanted to arrest her or hire her.”
Reed looked at Laney again. “I thought she started out at ChatWare?”
“She did.” Ben nodded. “Worked there for almost a year, right after she graduated. That’s how long it took the feds to catch up with her.”
�
��A whole year?”
“Yeah, it was months before anyone could piece together exactly what she’d done.” He looked through the window, and Reed followed his gaze.
Laney was by herself now, leaning back in her chair and resting her feet on the desk as she stared at her screen. Ripped jeans again, black tank top. The streak in her hair was purple today, and Reed couldn’t explain why his heart was thrumming just from watching her at her computer.
“She’s a master at covering her tracks. That’s why the FBI wanted her.” Ben smiled. “Too bad we snagged her first.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Money,” he said. “Although, to tell you the truth, that probably wasn’t the real reason. Laney doesn’t really care about money. But Delphi’s got some other advantages. You can work flex hours, wear anything you want. And they pretty much turn a blind eye to hacktivism, so . . .”
“Hacktivism.”
“Doing it for a cause.” Ben looked at him. “You know, like that thing with that middle-school kid last year. The one who was getting bullied and tormented because he was gay, and so he hanged himself?”
“The boy in Houston?”
“Right. Some crackpot church was planning to picket his funeral with their ‘God Hates Fags’ signs. Laney and some other people launched a DDoS attack—that’s like a regular DoS but bigger because you use a botnet, which is basically a fleet of zombie computers programmed to ping the site all at once. They crashed their systems and then doxed the congregation, using the church’s own website to publish everyone’s names and emails so they’d get inundated with spam. It was a sweet op. Signature Laney.”
A man stepped out of an office down the hall. In contrast to everyone else on this floor, he looked over forty and wore a suit and tie instead of a Warcraft T-shirt. This would be Mark Wolfe, the former fed.
Ben stood silently by as Reed introduced himself.
“You coming to the meeting?” Mark asked Ben.
“I’ve got something else.”
“We ready?” Laney asked, appearing in the doorway. She had a file under her arm and didn’t make eye contact with Reed.
Laney’s boss led the way into a conference room. Reed waited for Laney to sit and took the chair across from her, where he wouldn’t be distracted by her closeness.
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