Kill Process

by William Hertling

  He disconnects his computers, wipes them, and logs in with his alternate identity. He connects through an onion network. All of this so that there will be no connection between his two identities. Then he tries again to book a flight with a new credit card under this identity.

  Also denied.

  He checks online to see if any outages are reported for the airline websites. None.

  A chill passes through him. Has Angie done something to him? No, she couldn’t have. Even if she knew someone was monitoring her, messing with her, how could she ever trace it back to him? The most she could know was the article he’d posted, and that could have come from anyone. Not possible.

  He checks a different reservation site, gets the same problem.

  He has one remaining identity he can use. On the off-chance his location is blown, he has to make the attempt from somewhere else, rather than risk contaminating his last ID. He packs up his bags, loads the car, and checks the vehicle for transponders with a handheld scanner. All clear. He runs a surveillance avoidance route to a random hotel. Sitting in the lobby, using the free wi-fi, he tries the third identity. No luck. Tries again with an alternative credit card. Still can’t book a flight.

  Jesus H.

  He grabs his suitcase and yanks it after him. He’ll pay cash at the airport.

  Thirty minutes later his car is in short term parking, and he’s waiting in line at the airline counter with the rest of the sheep. He tries to channel non-presence to blend in with everyone else, but he mostly wants to scream. Two kids behind him keep bumping into him and after the third time, he abruptly about-faces.

  After a glance at his expression, the mother blanches and yanks the kids back.

  He doesn’t think he would’ve hit them, though the idea runs through his mind in a pleasing way. Maybe he should forget the kids and take his retribution out on the mom. He takes a few deep breaths. Plaint will get a piece of his mind when he gets back.

  The line moves with a frustratingly irregular pace, airline attendants occasionally calling over coworkers for help, sometimes three of them at a time working on one passenger.

  At long last, he reaches the counter with his ID and a wad of bills. He expects problems paying for the flight with cash, but there’s no law against it.

  Things stall as soon as he passes over his ID. The attendant calls over another, apparently more experienced, attendant who asks Daly to wait.

  He grits his teeth. This shouldn’t be happening. He’s not the first customer to require multiple employees, but he can’t be sure if everyone here is merely incompetent or if there’s something genuinely wrong with his information.

  The mother and kids are now being helped at the next counter over. She’s already getting her boarding passes.

  Screw it. He grabs his bags, leaving his ID with the attendant, and walks away.

  “Sir, please wait a moment.”

  He pretends he doesn’t hear, and walks steadily toward the door.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a group of DHS officers, a few hundred feet distant, coming in the general direction of the check-in counter. He carefully keeps his pace steady. The doors are only a dozen paces away. As he approaches, he uses the opportunity to check behind him. The officers are double-timing it now, fortunately still focused on the counter, not the exit.

  He walks out to the curb and scans the line of cars. Without breaking stride, he heads for an idling car three spots down, the driver hugging someone goodbye. He steps out between the cars, and his wheeled suitcase gets caught on the bumper of the car in front of him. No time now. He abandons the bag and keeps going, barely pausing. He pulls the door open, tosses his shoulder bag into the passenger seat, gets in and shifts the car into gear before he’s even finished closing the driver door.

  He peels away from the curb to the distant sound of yelling behind him. He speeds down the road and catches a glimpse of flashing lights in his rear view mirror. He pulls off at the next exit, a strip mall. His first thought is to switch cars, but he sees signs for a light rail station and abandons the car in the first parking spot he finds. He heads for the waiting platform, keeping an eye on the two police cars that pull into the nearby parking lot. A few minutes later, the downtown train pulls up, and he hops on.

  He takes a long, slow breath as he sinks into a seat, now carrying only his shoulder bag. There’s no doubt this is Angie’s doing. She’s found his alternate identities, disabled his accounts, and did something to trigger a security response at the airport. She not only discovered the general investigation, she also somehow pinpointed him and his alternate identities, despite his operational precautions.

  Phones are the most likely culprit. He digs his current device out of his pocket and extracts the SIM card in case he needs it later. He does the same for the other phone in his bag. At the next train stop, he dashes outside, throws the phones in the trash, and reboards before the train leaves.

  Fucking bitch. She’s making his life hell.

  He gets off at a downtown stop, finds a store to buy two new phones with cash. He’s got a few hundred bucks on him, a small laptop, and now two burner phones. He left loads of equipment and his gun at the rental house, and there’s a bug out bag in the trunk of the car he abandoned at the airport. Unfortunately, there’s no telling how big the response at the airport will be, or what’s under observation now. It won’t be safe to go back to either spot for a few days.

  That leaves him operating without backup, resources, or weapons. It’s not so much that he gives a shit about standard operating procedures, but rules exist for a reason. Statistically speaking, operating without recommended resources could end up killing him.

  He weighs his options. If he calls the office for help, it will trigger an investigation into his online profile and how he’s spending his time. He plays it safe with his side jobs, but he can’t withstand that level of scrutiny. No one can. The resources he’s marshaled so far to investigate Angie are only a tiny percentage of what the government security apparatus could apply to him if they were motivated to investigate his activities in depth. How many side projects and clients has he taken on over the years? At least a hundred.

  He’s got to fix this problem on his own.

  He lacks Angie’s skills with computers, and therein lies his primary mistake. He’s played so far on her battlefield, assuming his associates at BRI could match her skills. All they’ve done is gotten their ass kicked while they wandered around trying to find her.

  The hell with that approach. Angie lives in the real world, not cyberspace. He doesn’t have to beat her online. She lives, she breathes, she eats, and she shits. It’s time to take the fight to the world he knows.

  He thinks back to this morning. He checked on her three, four times, and every time she was sat at her computer, programming. It seemed a bit funny then, though it’s glaringly obvious now: she wasn’t at the office. She couldn’t have been programming all that time, not while she was completely fucking with his life. That was a ruse, some sort of trick. A script maybe, playing back some other day of programming. She was somewhere else. Maybe home, maybe not.

  Eventually, though, she has to return home.

  He’d been heading in the general direction of the local FCC office to see if he could pick up cash, a computer maybe. But he doesn’t need those things. The bit of money he has will go far in a hardware store. He can’t wait to see how a one-armed computer geek fares against two feet of steel pipe.

  CHAPTER 45

  * * *

  “ARE YOU SURE about this?” Igloo says. “I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone.”

  “I’ll be fine. We’ve got trackers on his new phones. He’s sitting downtown, probably grabbing wi-fi off that coffee shop. He hasn’t moved in twenty minutes. The logical thing is he’s going to go back to his car.”

  “I don’t like it,” Danger says. “Why don’t we all stick together while you build the transceiver thingy?”

  “Yeah,” I
gloo says. “I can help assemble it, then we can go to the airport together and disable his car.”

  “I want to cut him off from all his resources, not only his car. That means you guys go to the police station and report a man waving around a gun at his address.”

  “We can call it in,” Danger says.

  “No. Police won’t bust into an empty house if all they receive is a call. Too much videogame swatting going on. If you go in person, they’ll take the complaint seriously.”

  “Let me do it,” Danger says, “and have Igloo stay with you.”

  “No offense, Danger, but I don’t trust your execution. We saw how well Igloo did at the FCC. We need another performance just like that.”

  “Then why don’t—”

  I cut Danger off. Jesus, why can’t they do as I want without all the arguing?

  “I’m not sending Igloo into a police station by herself. Look, I’m a grown woman. I know how to enter my own house and lock the door. I can certainly put together a simple circuit and antenna. I’ll call you when I’m done, and if you’re still there, I’ll join you guys.”

  Danger pulls up outside my condo. The old engine idles roughly, the car throbbing.

  “Let us check out your place,” Danger says.

  Why does he pick now to become protective? “Go to the damn police station already. We want to cut him off before he gets anything from the house. If he picks up a gun or a wad of cash then we’ve lost half the benefit of what we’ve spent all day doing. Just fucking go!”

  I get out, slamming the door harder than I need to, and wave Danger on. They both give me hurt looks, but he accelerates away.

  I take a deep breath. Alone at last. I’m exhausted from a whole day in the car with both of them. An introvert’s nightmare. I need to be alone for what comes next. There are certain things they’re not prepared for, at least not yet. I let them in on the secret of the hacking because I required their help. I can’t involve them in the killing. That risks too much.

  I walk up to the building, a bag with two laptops hanging heavily from my shoulder. The rest of the equipment is still in the car with Igloo. Inside, I take the stairs to my floor, pull out my keys, and open the door.

  From the corner of my eye I see movement, a flash of something coming toward me faster than I could have imagined.

  * * *

  The world is fuzzy and gray. Something’s wrong, but I can’t put together the words for it yet. There’s pain, pain everywhere. I try to protest but can’t seem to speak, then I’m gagging, and my brain tries to put two and two together.

  I’m staring at the dining room fan, trying to remember why I’m looking at the fan.

  Oh, I was coming home. I entered the house. The movement.

  I thrash around instinctively, trying to escape, though I only succeed in wrenching my shoulder. Something’s holding me down. I try to scream, but gag indeed as I discover my mouth is stuffed with cloth. I try to budge my head at least, to look around, but the pain of my skin and hair pulling away stops me cold.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  A face comes into view to my right. This is the face from the identity records for Chris Daly, and Matthew O’Donald, and Steven Morgan. My stomach clenches, and I try to shake my head.

  “That’s okay, don’t get up,” Daly says. He reaches out, and looks like he’s going to caress my face. I try to pull away, loathing even the thought of his touch, but there’s nowhere to go. Instead he jabs a finger in my eye. Shock and pain surge through me, but I struggle to no avail. Tears come, and I choke on the gag in my mouth, struggling to breathe through a nose rapidly clogging with snot.

  “You thought you could mess with me. A federal agent. Did you think I was going to run home with my tail between my legs? Or that you could set me up to be arrested like the kid in Brazil? Are you kidding me?” He leans over, holds out a finger in front of my face again, and I flinch and cry harder.

  He reaches out and panic lances through me, my blood pumping faster; my legs ineffectually flail, unable to break free. He strokes my face, wiping tears away. He dries his hand on my shirt and his hand creeps down to my breast.

  I try again, every ounce of strength, to rip free, but I’m immobile. I gasp, trying to suck air through my increasingly clogged nose, desperately afraid I might puke with the gag in my mouth and choke on my own vomit. My vision narrows and my mind screams that I’m going to die.

  “Don’t worry, honey, you’re not going anywhere. Duct tape. You know, they even use it on the space station. It keeps things where you want them. But I can see you’re having a bit of trouble breathing. Would you like me to remove the gag?”

  I nod the microscopic amount my head can move. In my panic, I couldn’t figure out what had happened to me, since I can’t see a thing except Daly’s face, the ceiling, and the light fixture. But his mention of tape clues me in. He’s taped me down to my own dining room table. My arm is taped off to the side, my fingers free, and now I recognize the feeling of the wood beneath my skin. Knowing what’s happened helps the panic subside a tiny amount.

  “Now, before I take that gag out, you must promise not to scream.”

  I nod quickly, as best as I can. There’s little spots in my vision now. Give me back my mouth, you monster.

  “If you scream, I’ll put it back in, obviously. We could go back and forth like that all day. So I’m going to up the ante a little. If you scream, I’ll put the gag in, and I’ll break one of your fingers.”

  He’s deadly serious, but I’m so desperate for oxygen that everything he says is a warble to me. I keep nodding, hoping that’s what he wants.

  He smiles at me, and that’s worse. Even if I could appease his anger, he’d keep doing what he’s doing for the fun of it.

  “If you keep screaming, I’ll cut off your fingers and throw them down the garbage disposal. You can’t be much of a hacker without fingers. Are we totally, one hundred percent clear about the screaming bit?”

  I nod again, my nose totally clogged. I try to blow the snot out, but I can’t inhale, and now I’m left with nothing in my lungs. I thrash about.

  He pulls the tape off slowly, purposely lengthening the experience.

  Even when the tape is off, I can’t draw a breath around the cloth packed tightly into my mouth. He pulls out the cloth and air, precious air, floods my lungs. My stomach heaves and all I can do is gasp until the spots leave my vision.

  Still, my jaw aches, and my mouth is dry. I try and fail to form words. I distantly recognize the cloth as one of the dish towels Emily bought me for my birthday, and somehow my hatred for Daly grows for taking something valued and using it against me.

  “Now we can talk like civilized people,” Daly says. “Here’s what I want. I want to know what you’ve done to my records, how you did it, and how to undo it. Before you even ask, of course I’m not going to give you a computer. I’m not even going to let you within sight of one. I’m not an idiot. You could probably kill me with my electric shaver if you had a computer.”

  My eyes refocus on Daly when he mentions the electric shaver.

  He catches my look, and he’s momentarily startled. “Really? An electric shaver. I’m curious, I am, though not as curious as I am about what you’ve done to me. Talk. In exchange for you talking, I’m not going to torture you. That’s a good deal, right?”

  I look away from Daly, toward my bedroom, and try to work some moisture into my mouth, then turn back to him. “Who hired you?” It’s the only question that really matters.

  He laughs. “You want me to fess up, catch me on camera naming names, and bring that to the police? It doesn’t matter. The video cameras are recording to the hard drive hidden in your bed frame. Thought you were clever, right? That if we never saw the video streaming over your network connection, we wouldn’t know about the cameras. We know everything. We’ll wipe the hard drives.”

  “How much is Lewis Rasmussen paying you? Whatever it is, I’ll double it.
”

  Daly leans close. “You’re broke, Angie. You’ve got nothing and your company is falling apart. It’s not going to last the month. You can’t match even a small fraction of what Lewis paid.”

  Daly shakes his head. “You turned out to be a lot more complicated than I expected. Thankfully, there are escalator clauses for that sort of thing. A powerful man owes me favors now. You don’t have anything of comparable value.”

  He leans back. “Tell me what you did to me.”

  “I froze your bank accounts with automated fraud detection. The money—” I break off, coughing, my throat dry from being gagged. I continue in a lower voice. “The money is still there. I didn’t touch a dime.”

  “How do I regain access?”

  “Call your banks. I changed your address and secret questions, too. You’ll need to know the new info or they won’t let you restore access.”

  “What’s the new address?”

  “9800” I stop to cough. “9800 Savage Road, suite 6248.”

  “Very cute. The NSA.”

  “Can I get a drink of water? Please?”

  “I don’t know, Angie. How do I know you’re not going to attack me when my back is turned?”

  I stare at him dumbfounded.

  “Oh, yeah, the tape. I guess I can leave you for a second. If you do anything you shouldn’t, it’ll cost you a finger.”

  As soon as he turns his back, I use every fiber of my body to pull against the tape. My legs, the strongest muscles in the human body, I can’t budge them. My arm, I try tugging, twisting, pulling, bending. I ignore the pain of my hair being pulled, and strain every muscle in my neck trying to raise my head off the table.

  Nothing.

  I give up, breathing hard from my attempted exertion.