by Burke, Dez
“I know. But you were only twenty-two, not forty-two. I’m still upset that you were treated no better than a child predator.”
Erik smiles down at me and opens the door.
“No one ever believed us when we tried to explain it was all about the hacking. I miss those days. You learned so fast and challenged me to be better. Victor asked me about you the other day.”
“You spoke with him? Where is he?”
“Amsterdam. Could there be a better place?”
I laugh and shake my head. Victor was the third lead hacker in our group. He made it through our numerous marathon hacking sessions by smoking weed and drinking energy drinks. Amsterdam would suit him perfectly.
Erik glances around the living room.
“My crew looks like they’ve all found places to set up,” he says. “Tell me about these tapes that need cleaning. What are we doing?”
I let out a long sigh.
“I’ve been working undercover on an investigation of a motorcycle club in North Georgia. The ATF is trying to nail them on several different things, the two main charges being selling bootlegged alcohol without a license and gun running. The actual charges are quite a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the five-second version. I need any evidence the ATF can use against them erased from the tapes. The job has to be clean so the ATF won’t realize the tapes have been tampered with.”
Erik gives me a confused look.
“Wait a minute. Back up. You’re on the biker gang’s side?”
“It isn’t as bad as it sounds,” I explain. “They live in a dry county, which is hard to believe in this day and age. Basically they bring alcohol and cigarettes in from other states, mark it up fifty percent, and sell a ton to the locals. Their volume is equivalent to a large metropolitan package store, and they’re doing it without paying excise or sales taxes. The ATF has been watching them for a while. A local preacher turned them in for bringing sin into the county. His words, not mine.”
“I’ve heard of worse things,” he says. “It’s not as if they’re killing people.” A concerned look crosses his face. “They’re not, are they?”
“Oh no, of course not,” I say.
I’ll keep my suspicions about that to myself. There are certain lines of right and wrong that Erik would never cross. Even for me.
“What about the guns?” he asks with a frown. “That’s a major problem no matter how delicately you want to spin it. Guns are bad news.”
“I know,” I say. “To be honest, I don’t know much about the gun running, which is good because that means no one else at the ATF knows anything either. Just in case, if there is anything on the tapes about guns of any kind, I want it gone. As in completely erased or dubbed over. And anything else that sounds the least bit illegal. The case against the Steel Infidels needs to go away. I have to do this for them. They’re not bad people.”
Erik raises his eyebrows. “I’ll take your word for that,” he says. “In any case, this should be easy enough job. Time consuming, but technically uncomplicated.”
He walks over to instruct his crew on what to do while I put on a pot of strong coffee.
It’s going to be a long night.
Things will be okay.
Erik is here now.
I trust him with my life, and more importantly, with Sam’s.
***
Eight hours later, and we’re all getting tired and blurry-eyed. I convince the guys to take a break while I put on yet another pot of coffee. It’s 4 a.m. so nothing is open yet, or I would run out and pick up breakfast. It will be at least another couple of hours before the closest bagel shop opens their doors.
Erik walks into the kitchen and collapses in exhaustion into a chair. He runs a tired hand through his long hair and leans back to close his eyes for a minute.
“These all-nighters are harder than they used to be,” he says while trying to stifle a yawn.
“That’s because you’re getting old,” I tease.
“No, it’s because we pulled an all-nighter last night, too. We’ve been awake for days.”
He sits up again and pulls a box of photos sitting on the table toward him. After idly picking through the pile, he holds one up for me to see. The shot is of Flint, standing on the courthouse steps. He’s dressed for work as a lawyer in an expensive suit and sunglasses.
“Is this the reason we’re here?” Erik asks, pointing to Flint.
“No. Wrong brother. He’s married with a baby.”
“Ah...so I was at least on the right track then.”
I pour him a cup of coffee. Black with one sugar. Just the way I remember he likes it.
He picks up another photo. This time it’s of a bare-chested, muscle-bound Jesse.
“Has to be this man then, right? He looks about the age you go for. A little older than the last one.”
I shake my head again and hand him his coffee.
“What? Please no,” he says in surprise. “Don’t tell me it’s the younger one. Not this guy?”
He holds up a photo of a smiling Sam standing beside his bike. I reach across the table and take the photo out of his hands. I love this picture.
“Yes, he’s the one. Sam Mason.”
Erik takes a sip of his coffee.
“Your face lit up when you looked at his photo. Wow, I’m kind of shocked. Then again, now that I think about it, I can picture you as a ride-or-die kind of girl.”
“You think so?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “If that’s what you really want. I hate to be a bummer here, but you know this might all go south on you, right? What’s going to happen when this guy finds out you are working undercover? The motorcycle gang won’t forgive you and go on as if nothing ever happened. This isn’t a fairy tale. You could be in danger right now and not even know it.”
I let out a long, tired breath and sit down at the table beside him.
“I realize this isn’t going to end well, Erik. I’m not that naïve.”
“Well then, I hope you have your exit strategy already planned. How do you see this playing out?”
“The best case scenario would be if the ATF closed the investigation and the Steel Infidels never knew about any of it. I don’t want Sam to ever find out about me. It would be better for him if he thought I just left town and that was it. You know, like a summer fling that ends when it’s time for everyone to go back home. Finding out about me would crush him. It’s not worth it. I can’t do that to him.”
“Are you sure about that?” Erik asks. “What if there is a chance he’ll forgive you? It’s not like you to give up so easily. The only way you’ll ever know is for him to learn the truth and then you try to work through it.”
I shake my head in regret.
“Not going to happen in this lifetime.”
“Then there will always be a place for you with us,” he says. “Come back to the group. This life you’ve got going on with the ATF isn’t for you.” He waves his hand around the room. “Look at what you’re forced to do to be yourself. You’re renting two places so that you can lead a secret life and hack in a dark room alone. You deserve to be with people who appreciate you. People that can make you feel alive again. Think about it. We could hop on a plane in a few days and meet up with Victor in Amsterdam. It will be just like old times. Don’t tell me the idea doesn’t appeal to you.”
“I’m not going to lie,” I say. “It’s very appealing, but I have to play this out to the end. I can’t think about leaving town until I know Operation Thunderclap is shut down. I owe Sam that much.”
“Always putting everyone else first,” he says. “You’re the most loyal person I know. Tell me this. Does he make you laugh, Delilah?”
I smile at the thought of Sam and his ridiculous banter that never stops.
“All the time,” I answer. “I laugh constantly when we’re together.”
Erik reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.
“Then for your sake, I hope it works
out. Above everything else, I want you to be happy again. But no matter what happens with Sam, you still need to leave the ATF. Promise me you’ll do that. Your soul is slowly dying there. One day you’re going to wake up and realize the girl you once were doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t want to see her evaporate.”
“I’m planning to. I don’t want to do this anymore. All I need to do is figure out how to leave without raising suspicions. Maybe I can fake an illness or something. Hack my own medical records and change them in case they check.”
“So you’ll consider coming back with the group if things don’t work out with this guy?”
“I will definitely think about it,” I finally say. “What is the group working on these days? Still hacking government websites?”
“No,” he answers. “It’s too risky and the reward is small. We choose our targets much more carefully now. I’m sure you heard about the last place we hit.”
He waits to see if I can guess.
My mouth drops open. “You’re behind the hack on the Ashley Madison website? I suspected that was you the moment I saw it on the news.”
He smiles, and I remember a time when Erik rocked my world. Things are different now though. I will always have the deepest respect and affection for Erik, but my heart firmly belongs only to Sam.
“The men using that site had it coming,” he answers. “And I gave them plenty of time and opportunity to pay up so their names wouldn’t be leaked.”
“You blackmailed them?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“We have to make a living somehow,” he says with a laugh. “It can’t all be about social justice. We like to think of ourselves as modern day Robin Hoods. We were able to furnish an entire school in Africa with books from the hush money we received from one man alone.”
“Who was he?”
“A television evangelist that shall remain nameless,” he answers. “Our motto is to take from the idiots and give to those less fortunate. It all works out in the end.”
“I have to admit that you make a very compelling case,” I say.
“And you haven’t even heard our plans for Black Friday this year. Denial of service attacks on all major retailers. We’ll shut all the online stores down for the weekend. Force people to buy from the small local retailers. We’re renting a chalet in Park City Utah for the week so we can snowboard during the day and destroy computer systems at night.”
“I like the way you think.”
“And we need you. The door is always open.”
***
I make a trip to the bagel shop as soon as it opens and return with bags of bagels, croissants, and cream cheese.
“Breakfast is here!” I yell out when I walk in the door.
Erik hurries over to take the bags from me and helps me unload them in the kitchen.
“The guys have noticed something weird about the tapes,” he says. “They thought I should mention it to you before they go any further.”
I stop taking the bagels out of the bag and turn to look at him.
“What do you mean?”
“We started from the most recent tape and worked backwards. There’s nothing incriminating on them so far. Not a hint of any illegal activity. No talk of guns, alcohol, or anything even mildly interesting. We’re over halfway done and there’s nothing to clean up.”
I stare at him in shock.
“That’s impossible,” I say. “I put a bug in their tattoo shop where they’ve been selling the alcohol out of for years. The surveillance cameras were pointed at the back door of the shop. I watched the first week of tapes and there were tons of transactions.”
Erik shrugs.
“I don’t know what to tell you. When were the bugs and surveillance cameras set up? Did you do them all yourself?”
“Yeah, I placed the bugs because I was the only one who could get access to the tattoo shop without suspicion. And I placed the surveillance camera on a utility pole two weeks before I went there to capture the back alley.”
“I have a suspicion about something,” he says. “There’s a possibility the Steel Infidels suspected at some point that they were under investigation. We need to look at the tapes and see when the illegal activity stopped. Maybe they were on to you.”
“No way,” I say. “And I swear I’m not imagining things. Take a look at the first week of tapes and you’ll see what I mean.” I follow him into the office and pull out the first day of tapes. He cues it up then fast-forwards the tape.
“There!” I say when the back door of the shop opens and Sam steps out into the alley. “Slow it down.”
We watch in slow motion as a man walks up and hands Sam cash. Sam reaches back inside the door, pulls out a bottle, and hands it to the man.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Erik says. “Looks like we’re in business now.”
As the tape rolls, a steady stream of customers files in and out of the alley behind the shop. Every time I see this, I want to reach through the screen and throttle Sam. Watching him casually break the law right out in the open where anyone could see him is infuriating.
“Cleaning this up isn’t going to be easy,” Erik says. “Look at him. Half the damn town is swinging by after work to do business.”
“Can we dub over it with another tape to make it look like the alley is empty with no activity?”
“That’s the only thing we can do. There’s no way we can fix each individual incident. There are too many. Has anyone else from the ATF seen these tapes?”
“No, thank God,” I say. “It’s my job to collect and organize all of the tapes. Then to go through them carefully and lay out the case.”
Erik looks worried.
“You’re putting yourself on the line here. Big time. If there’s one tiny lag or mistake in the tapes, they’ll trace it back to you. With your hacking background, they will suspect you right away.”
“That’s why I called you. You don’t make mistakes.”
“Obviously I do make mistakes, and you went to juvenile detention because of it,” he replies. “I don’t like the position you’re putting yourself in here.”
“Do you have any other ideas? Because I’m open to suggestions.”
“Only one,” he says. “I’ll have the team fast forward through all the tapes and pull the ones that need doctoring. My gut tells me it will only be the time period before you arrived in town. Then I’ll send the crew home to rest for a few hours. The only person I can trust to do this job is me. I can’t take the chance of someone making an error and you paying for it again.”
“You’re already exhausted,” I argue.
“I’ll take a nap on your couch once everyone clears out. Don’t try to argue with me about this. If I can pay back a tiny part of the big debt I owe you, then please let me. Okay?”
I nod.
“Deal.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sam
I can’t believe it’s been over forty-eight hours and we still haven’t located Lila. According to Flint’s men in Atlanta, she hasn’t made an appearance at her office, her apartment, or her parents’ house.
I haven’t slept more than a few hours since she left town. Now it’s Sunday morning and I’ve worked myself up into a mental wreck, thinking of all the various possibilities of how this might go down.
Trish and Jesse finally chased me out of the house because I was driving them crazy with my constant pacing and ‘what if’ questions.
Something in the back of my mind keeps niggling at me.
It’s hard for me to believe that Flint’s men wouldn’t have found out something by now. Lila couldn’t have just disappeared off the face of the Earth. She has to be somewhere. I’m beginning to wonder if Flint knows where she is and isn’t telling me. In fact, I’m almost sure of it.
On Sunday mornings, Flint keeps Josh while Kendra makes early rounds at the vet clinic. Maybe I should pay him a visit. Without telling Jesse where I’m going, I climb on my bike and head toward Flint�
��s.
When I arrive at his cabin, he’s already waiting for me on the front porch.
“I heard you coming up the mountain,” he says. “Let’s talk outside. Josh is taking a nap and I don’t want to wake him. I just got off the phone with Jesse and you were my next call.”
He’s found Lila.
“Where is she?” I ask. “You found her, right?”
He hesitates a moment and motions for me to sit down in a rocking chair. I’m too nervous to sit and lean against the porch railing instead.
“Yeah, my guys found her Friday night.”
“What?” I yell. “You’ve known since Friday night where she was and you didn’t tell me? What the fuck, Flint! Tell me where the hell she is right now.”
Flint holds up his hand. “Calm down. There are a few things you need to know first. It isn’t that simple.”
“Spit it out then,” I say.
“My guys finally tracked her down to a house in Atlanta, not her apartment. She’s been holed up there all weekend and hasn’t left the place except to go out for bagels yesterday morning.”
I pull out my cell phone. “What’s the address?” I ask.
“I’m not giving you the address,” he replies. “She’s not alone.”
“Not alone? What do you mean? Who is with her?”
“A man showed up Friday night. He hasn’t left the house. They spent the weekend together.”
I’m shocked.
Of all the things Flint could have told me, I wasn’t expecting this.
Another man? Lila has another man in her life?
No fucking way.
I don’t believe it. I won’t let myself believe it.
There has to be a mistake. Flint’s information is wrong. Maybe the guy is another ATF agent and they’re working on the case together.
“Are you saying she was alone with another man in the house all weekend? Just the two of them?”
“No, that’s the weird part. There were other men coming in and out. A group of four. They left last night though. All of them except for the one man.”
I’m confused. Nothing makes sense.
“So Lila spent the weekend holed up with five men? What the hell were they doing? Going through the shit she has on us? They must all be ATF agents.”