by Tiffany Snow
“The outfit?”
Now my mouth caught up and I winced. “I like to cosplay,” I said with a shrug.
“Cosplay?”
“You know, dress up like fictional characters.” It wasn’t uncommon for those who had never heard of cosplay to give me the exact same look that Clark was giving me at the moment. “It’s fun,” I muttered, looking away.
“Okay, let me get this straight. You like to . . . dress up. And Coop knows this, thinks it’s great, and has a favorite costume?” I nodded. “And he meant a Star Wars costume?” Another nod.
The confusion in his expression cleared, a smirk slowly spreading on his face. “Coop, that dawg,” he snorted. “There’s only one Star Wars costume that every man fantasizes about. And you have one? Princess Leia’s metal bikini?” He looked as though he couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or laugh.
“It cost a fortune,” I said, defensive. “I wanted it to be as authentic as possible. And for the record, it’s from Return of the Jedi, not Star Wars, which refers to the franchise but I think you’re confusing it with A New Hope.”
“Whatever. How often do you wear it?”
My face was burning again. “I don’t.”
His eyebrows flew up. “You don’t? Why the hell not? It’s Coop’s favorite, apparently.”
“It chafes,” I muttered. He’d talked me into trying it on for him, but thankfully it hadn’t been on for very long.
Now Clark did burst into laughter and I gave him a dirty look, which he ignored.
Thank God we pulled into my driveway then and I didn’t have to continue the conversation. I was up and out of the car the moment it was safe to do so, hearing Clark follow me as I went into the house.
I stopped short. “Oh no,” I moaned.
Clark jerked me back, moving me behind him, and his gun was in his hand. “What?” he asked, glancing around the living room. “Did you hear something?”
“No, not that,” I said quickly, alarmed. I hadn’t thought of what Clark’s reaction would be. “It’s The Doctor.”
“The fish?”
I pushed past him to my fish tank. “I wasn’t here to feed him last night.” The tank was pristine and clear, but The Doctor was floating on top. Clark appeared next to me.
“Missing one feeding shouldn’t have killed him,” he said.
I scratched the bridge of my nose. “I might’ve missed more than one.”
“How many is this now?” he asked. Clark knew of my difficulty in keeping my goldfish alive. It was why I’d named him The Doctor, so I could just keep the same name no matter how many iterations of fish occupied the tank.
“This is number seven.”
“Wow.”
“Don’t judge.”
With a sigh, I fished (ha!) The Doctor’s body from the tank and consigned him to his final resting place in the North Carolina sewer system.
My Leia outfit was in a special box underneath my bed. Pulling it out, I lifted the lid up on its hinges. The bikini lay on a bed of purple satin. Clark crouched down next to me.
“Any chance you’d try it on?” he asked. I shot him a look and he shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
Searching the metal cups, I found nothing. There was nothing extra inside the box either. Pulling out the bikini bottoms, I glanced inside them.
“Found it.”
There was a small metal box with a magnet on the back, stuck right in the crotch.
“Hate to say it, but I like his style.”
I ignored Clark’s commentary, pulling the box off. I handed it to Clark as I carefully replaced my precious costume and pushed the box back underneath the bed. Clark had opened the box and held up a thumb drive.
“Looks like we found his Get Out of Jail Free card.”
“Damn it!”
I wanted to throw something in frustration. We’d found the thumb drive all right, and Jackson had encrypted it so well, I still couldn’t break into it and I’d been at it for hours.
“I thought you could hack into anything,” Clark said. He was lounging on my couch, booted feet up on my coffee table, arms locked behind his head. The television was playing some action movie.
“I never said that,” I snapped. “And I’ve never tried to hack something of Jackson’s.”
“So what now?”
“I think I’m going to have to take it into Vigilance.” I had about half a dozen people on staff who could probably hack into it.
“You can’t do that,” Clark said, unfolding his arms and dropping his feet to the floor. “If something on that drive implicates Gammin or the president, the last thing we want to do is expose it to a network they have access to.”
“No one would give them information I haven’t cleared,” I said.
“Bullshit. Everyone has a weakness and I don’t believe for a second that Gammin doesn’t have someone on the inside of Vigilance who’s loyal to him and him alone.”
It was depressing how much I wasn’t surprised at that information. I really hated working for the government, especially a part of the government that was as secretive and clandestine as Vigilance.
“Okay,” I said with a sigh, taking off my glasses and rubbing my eyes. It was a good thing I didn’t wear mascara or I’d look like a raccoon. “What do you suggest?”
“Don’t you know anybody?” he asked. “Hackers all kind of know each other, right? Isn’t there somebody else you could ask for help? Somebody off the grid?”
I thought of Kuan. “Yeah, there is.” He wasn’t local, but he still might be able to help. Unfortunately, despite repeated attempts to reach him, he wasn’t online. He would’ve been my hacker of choice, but there was nothing I could do if he was out in meatspace.
An hour later, I was still typing furiously on my laptop. I had multiple chat windows open and was hitting dead end after dead end.
“Hackers are so paranoid,” I muttered as yet another contact told me to commit an anatomically impossible act.
“With good reason,” Clark replied. “Or do you not recall what you do for a living?”
That made me feel even worse. I liked to think I was the Good Guy, but if these hackers knew what I did, they’d label me a sellout, a traitor, or worse.
I hadn’t heard anything from Lance, which also worried me. If the lawyers had succeeded in getting anywhere with the DoJ, he’d have called to tell me. The only person I had heard from was Mia, who’d texted me two gifs that were circulating through social media: one of me putting Jackson’s sunglasses on, and another of him kissing me. I didn’t bother checking my Twitter feed, afraid of what it would say. Apparently the trending hashtags were #CuffsAreHot and #GottaWearShades.
“Who are we looking for again?” Clark asked.
“His name is Bulldog,” I said. “He’s an elite black hat who’s as paranoid as they come. I thought he was just a myth until a few years ago.”
“Why? What happened then?”
“I was at DefCon in Vegas and there was a contest. They always have them. Try to hack into this, find vulnerabilities for that, and a lot of times there’s money involved for whoever wins and how fast they can do it.
“Anyway, the biggest and baddest contest was hacking into Microsoft’s latest and greatest server operating system. They offered a million dollars to anyone who could hack it in under thirty minutes.”
“Did you?”
I shook my head. “It took me forty-five. But it didn’t matter. It was hacked in seven minutes and twenty-three seconds by a hacker calling himself Bulldog.”
Clark let out a low whistle. “I bet that really pissed them off.”
“You could say that. There was a lot of egg on their face and I heard over a dozen people got fired from Microsoft the next week.”
“Damn. So this is the guy you think can help us? And he lives around here?”
“Yeah. Rumor was he used to work in Silicon Valley but left a few years ago for the East Coast. Yash said he heard he’d set up shop here.”
“Who’s Yash?”
“A friend of mine. His specialty is cell phones, though.” And never leaving his apartment if he could help it, or letting anyone inside. But no need for Clark to know that my friends were . . . eccentric.
A line popped up on one of my chat screens. I scanned it, hope flaring inside, and typed a response. After ten seconds of anxious waiting, another line popped up.
“Yes!” I typed back. “We’ve got something.”
“Is it him?”
“I think so. I’m trying to convince him to meet us.”
“Why would he meet us if he’s that paranoid?”
“I have something he wants.”
“What?”
Pulling out the flash drive from my computer, I stuffed it into my pocket and shut the lid on my laptop. I grabbed my keys and tossed them to Clark. “C’mon. We have to take a drive. I call shotgun.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Clark asked as we parked and got out of the car. “That had to have cost a mint.”
“You have no idea.” I glanced around the deserted street. Cars were parked, but their owners were nowhere nearby. It was the middle of the night and broken streetlamps punctuated the darkness; only a few remained lit, their feeble light barely penetrating the shadows.
Houses built over half a century ago lined the street. Dilapidated and unkempt, but still occupied by the looks of many of them. The souls inside seeming to ooze hopelessness and despair. I shivered as though a living thing had stepped across my grave.
“He said he’d meet us at the empty Singer warehouse on the corner,” I said, nodding toward a three-story brick building.
“Yeah, that doesn’t look creepy at all,” Clark muttered, taking out his weapon and checking the magazine before shoving it into the front of his jeans.
“Creepy is just a societal image that’s been impressed upon you since you were old enough to understand fear,” I said. “In reality, we fear the darkness because it conceals the unknown.”
“It’s creepy, Mack,” he retorted. “An abandoned warehouse in the no-go district of Raleigh, in the middle of the night? Check, check, and check.”
I shook my head at his superstitions and headed across the street. Clark fell into step behind me. The shadows were thick and I told myself there was only my imagination to fear as we approached. Nothing was as scary as what the human mind could conjure.
The door was hanging slightly off its hinges and Clark helped me prop it open. Darkness even deeper than outside loomed beyond the opening. Taking out my phone, I turned on the flashlight and took the first step.
15
Clark followed Mack inside, watching the shadows carefully. Her trust in the hacker—whatever his name—was disconcerting. As was her persistence in wanting to help Cooper. He’d brought her nothing but trouble, but she was oblivious to it. He could only assume that her lack of experience allowed her to still feel that ridiculous optimism of a new relationship.
She walked into the warehouse, pushing the glasses up her nose in that gesture she made whenever she was nervous. Not that he could blame her. He’d been on plenty of missions before and regardless of what she said, this place was fucking creepy.
His weapon was in his hand and he longed for night-vision goggles. At least then he could see. As it was, he had to rely on his other senses: hearing and that sixth sense of being able to feel someone’s presence.
“He said to go to the third floor,” she said in something close to a whisper.
“So we’re just supposed to do what he says?”
She shrugged, aiming her phone around to light up the room. It was as bad as he’d feared, with dust and cobwebs, piles of unknown detritus, and little pellets of what could only be rat turds.
“There’s the stairs,” she said, and headed toward them.
Clark had serious doubts as to the integrity of the wooden staircase, so he stuck close behind Mack. As usual, she was oblivious to physical danger. On the second floor, a stair creaked and his arm shot out, grabbing her around the waist. And not a second too soon. The stair cracked and gave as he yanked her back.
“Oh! Oh wow. That could’ve been really bad.”
“No shit,” he grumbled, sounding calmer than he felt. Protecting Mack sometimes felt as though he was one step behind in a game with rules only she knew. She was tiny and if she’d have let him, he’d have just kept her tucked under his arm the whole time they were in there. But even as he thought it, she was squirming to be released.
“Thanks,” she said as he reluctantly put her back down.
“Be careful,” he admonished. She started up the stairs again, moving more slowly than before.
The creaking of the aged wood did nothing to soothe his nerves, and he didn’t like it at all that she was taking point.
Another flight and they’d reached the top floor. If possible, it was even creepier up here. Dusky moonlight filtered through the dust-encrusted windows, lighting up a more dismal scene than the floors below.
“He lives here?” he asked her.
“I doubt it,” she replied. “This is like a demilitarized zone where he can meet clients.”
“There isn’t even any electricity,” he said. “How can he possibly do anything?”
She searched the floor. “Appearances aren’t always what they seem.”
Just as Clark was about to ask her what that cryptic statement meant, she stopped and crouched down. Her thick ponytail swung over her shoulder as she examined something on the floor. She turned, looking in the opposite direction. In a flash, she was on her feet and moving. Clark hurried to catch up just as she reached a panel on the wall. Swinging open the cover, she flipped something, and the lights came on.
“How the hell did you do that?” he asked, scanning the room for any threats as well as ways of escape.
“It’s an old trick,” she said. “Not a big deal if you know what to look for.”
Which, obviously, she did. As usual, she acted as if it were no big deal that she was the smartest person in the room . . . by far. Clark wasn’t fooled into thinking he ranked anywhere close. Not that she seemed to notice or ever mention it.
He moved closer to her, not liking the exposure the space provided or how they were easy targets through the dark windows. “So where is he? This master hacker?”
“Who’s the tool?”
Clark swung around, shoving Mack behind him. He trained his weapon on the man who’d just stepped out of the shadows.
Five foot nine, two hundred pounds, with hair that was in need of some kind of style, the hacker looked every inch the disgruntled high school grad who’d never gotten his due.
“Bulldog, I’m guessing,” Clark said.
“Duh. My shoe size is higher than your IQ. Where’s the girl? She said she had it. I’m not doing anything until I see it.”
“I’m here,” Mack said, stepping out from behind him. “And yes, I have it.”
Sticking her hand in her pocket, she pulled something out and opened her palm. The gold ring glinted in the light.
Bulldog inched closer, his mouth falling open slightly as he stared. “One ring to rule them all,” he whispered in an awestruck voice.
Mack abruptly closed her hand, hiding the ring. “Only four rings were made for use in the film. Two were given to Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis. One is on display at the shop of the goldsmith in New Zealand who crafted them. The last one—the one used for scenes with Sauron—that one was stolen by a crew member and lost, reappearing for sale on clandestine parts of the Internet.” She paused. “I’m its third owner.”
Bulldog swallowed, reminding Clark of an addict in need of a fix. “All right. So what do you want for it?”
Mack held up the thumb drive. “I need this decrypted.”
He snorted. “That’s all? No problem.” Unzipping the backpack he carried, he pulled out a laptop and rubber keyboard. After booting it up, he plugged in the thumb drive and opened a black command-prompt scre
en. He typed a few things and responses came back. “Looks like he’s encrypted a volume within a volume,” he mused, typing a bit more.
“I know that,” Mack said. “But brute force wasn’t working and there was no foothold for guesswork.”
“The thing is,” Bulldog replied, “it’s like being a fortune-teller at a fair, where you have to read your customer to know whether you’ve hit the right phrases. Hacking isn’t guesswork, it’s knowing your target and how a computer works. Nothing is random, so even though the encryption thinks it’s all just ones and zeroes, in reality there’s always a pattern.”
Clark rolled his eyes. That’s what they needed right now: a lecture on the creative genius that was hacking.
Mack didn’t say anything, she just watched, and Clark wondered if she could understand what Bulldog was typing into the screen. He assumed she could. The text reflected off her glasses as she bent over his shoulder, watching. It all looked like Greek to Clark, but he wasn’t paid to do her job. He was paid to do his, which was why he started exploring while they dealt with the files.
The deserted warehouse was nearly a full city block long and had been built in the early part of the last century to make sewing machines, first the manual kind, then electric. What it lacked in height with only three stories, it made up for in raw square footage. The hallway outside the room they were in seemed to go on forever, a gaping maw of darkness just beyond the reach of Clark’s flashlight.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled and he abruptly switched off his flashlight. It took roughly twenty minutes for the human eye to fully adjust to seeing in the dark. He instinctively knew they didn’t have that much time. He double-timed it back to Mack.
“You done?” he asked. It looked like they were. She was busy reading the screen while Bulldog was examining the gold ring. Why anyone would get so enthralled over a movie prop, Clark had no idea, and he really didn’t want to know how much Mack had paid for it.
“Yes,” she said slowly, still looking at the screen. Reaching around Bulldog, she typed something and the window closed. “We can go.” She yanked the thumb drive from his computer.