Wayward

by Gregory Ashe

  Hazard pointed at the computer.

  “I already turned it on,” Somers said. “Password protected.”

  “Let me see.”

  “Oh, suddenly you’re a hacker?”

  Hazard smiled in spite of himself as he pulled out his phone. “You sound like a 90s movie.”

  “Good,” Somers said, turning on the computer. “90s movies were the best.”

  After a moment, the Windows 7 logo flashed on the screen. Then the log in screen appeared.

  “Here,” Hazard said, passing his phone to Somers. “When I tell you to read this, read it.”

  Hazard restarted the computer in safe mode with command prompt. He waited until the black and white text had finished loading.

  “Ok.”

  “Restart computer—”

  “No, I already did that. The next part.”

  “Type ‘net user.’”

  Hazard typed. A list of user accounts for the system appeared. There were only two: rsackeman and administrator.

  “Next.”

  “Type ‘net user’ and then the username.’

  Hazard typed in the phrase followed by rsackeman. This time, a prompt appeared, asking him to set a password for the user. He keyed past the question, keyed past the password confirmation, and saw The command completed successfully. Then he repeated the process with administrator.

  When Hazard restarted the computer, he let it boot normally, and less than a minute later he was staring at the login screen. He clicked on rsackeman, hit enter in the empty password box, and the login screen changed to a desktop.

  “Holy crap,” Somers said. “When did you become a hacker?”

  “I’m not a hacker.”

  “That looked like hacking to me.”

  “I had a client a few months ago who wanted something from her ex-husband’s computer.”

  “What?”

  Hazard started with Bob’s recently used files, running a quick eye over them. Judging by how the files were named—for example, BOB SACKEMAN FIrst DRAFT FUND-RAISING SpEECH DRAFT 1 COPY 1 JAN 27 2019 DO NOT DELETE—he came to two conclusions: first, Bob was not exactly a savvy computer user, in spite of his tendency to dress like an accountant; and second, Bob had a lot of material for the Bright Lights movement on this computer.

  “Why?” Hazard muttered to himself as he continued scrolling through the recent files.

  “I just want to know.”

  “Huh? What?”

  “What did you get off the guy’s computer?”

  “Oh. Pictures of their dog. The woman got sole custody, but the ex wouldn’t give up the pictures.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not really. It was a Yorkie. It was cute.”

  “Wow. That’s . . . unexpected.”

  “No, Yorkies are traditionally very cute.”

  Nothing from Somers. After a moment of the silence, Hazard glanced over his shoulder and found his fiancé bright eyed and biting his lip.

  “What?” Hazard said.

  “Please—” Somers’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, obviously struggling with some strong emotion. “Please tell me you’ve got some sort of personal taxonomy of cute animals. Maybe a hierarchy. Maybe a scoring system. Maybe you even have one in mind that’s like the Platonic ideal of cuteness.”

  Hazard narrowed his eyes. “If you’re finished?”

  “No. I need this. Please? It’s been a bad week and I really need this.”

  Something had eased between them tonight; working together, feeling the old, familiar rhythm between them, that had helped. And for some reason, so had that ridiculous game of shouting. Hazard was still hurting, deeply, but he could recognize now that the anger had mostly been a reaction to that pain.

  “Yorkies are a 7.2.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Now can we work on this?”

  “I love you so much.”

  Hazard rolled his eyes.

  “I’m going to learn every cute animal on the Hazard Taxonomy of Adorableness and get them for you.”

  “That sounds like my nightmare. I do not like animals. I do not want a pet.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Cuteness is an objective factor. I still don’t want a pet. About the only thing I want less than a pet is still being inside Bob Sackeman’s house when he comes home. Can we work?”

  “Yes. Let’s work.”

  Hazard turned back to the computer.

  “And you can tell me your top three.”

  “Fuck off,” Hazard said absently as he went back to the files. “Look, all this work is current. Speeches, event planning, invitations, lists of guests. He’s even got spreadsheets with cash donations.”

  “You think there’s something in there.”

  “Maybe. But that’s not really my point. My point is, why is Bob still using an old computer when Windows 7 was made forcibly obsolete? Microsoft basically mandated an upgrade.”

  “He doesn’t like change,” Somers said.

  “We know that much. His whole political movement is about that.”

  “I’m serious. Some people just don’t like change.”

  Hazard kept reading through the files. Most people who weren’t avid computer users—or gamers, or video editors, or professional photographers, etc.—tended to buy machines with much bigger hard drives than they needed. After all, a few text documents, pictures from Nana, all that nonsense, it tended to take up relatively little space, and hard drives were cheap these days. That was an easy place a computer manufacturer could get a big number on the box—two terabyte hard drive—and consumers would be appropriately impressed without realizing they’d never get close to using all that space.

  Sackeman definitely fit into this category of consumer. Most of his files were text documents. He had a few pictures in the appropriately marked folder—kids that Hazard assumed were nieces and nephews, adults who looked enough like Sackeman to be siblings or cousins. But that was about the extent of it. Maybe Sackeman hadn’t upgraded the machine because he didn’t need to.

  Hazard was ready to call it quits when he decided to check the hard drive’s properties.

  “John, look at this.”

  “That’s a very impressive pie chart.”

  “It’s not a pie chart, it’s his hard drive usage. See? It’s almost completely full.”

  “Huh.”

  “I can’t find the files. Where’s he hiding them?”

  “He probably just made them hidden.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, you just check this little box and they don’t show up. Hold on. Let me—see, and then you can see them if you click right here—there you go.”

  Hazard stared at the folder labeled PRIVATE.

  “Maybe you’re not a hacker,” Somers said. “That’s how I used to hide all my porn. It’s pretty basic.”

  Hazard clicked on the folder, and a prompt for a password appeared on the screen.

  “Shit,” Hazard said, staring at the blinking cursor. “What time is it?”

  “Almost eleven.”

  “Shit. Ok.”

  “Just do that thing again where you type a bunch of words and it opens.”

  “It’s not a magic spell, John. I knew how to get past the login screen. That’s about it. I have no idea how to start with this, and we don’t have time for me to do the research on it. Hell, we don’t even have time to sit here and try possible passwords. Sackeman’s going to be out of the fundraiser any minute.”

  “So we come back another night.”

  “No, he’s going to know we were here. He’s going to know someone was here, I mean. I erased his passwords. As soon as he tries to log on, he’ll know someone messed with his computer.”

  Somers let out a frustrated breath. “Ok, fine. We make it look like a burglary. We take the computer, a few other things.”

  “Yeah. Nobody’s going to
remember a pair of guys carrying a computer for two and a half blocks in one of Wahredua’s suburbs.”

  “Brainstorming is supposed to be collaborative, Ree. You can’t just shoot down my ideas.”

  “I can if they’re bad.” Hazard held up a hand when Somers opened his mouth to respond. “Ok, I think I’ve got it,” Hazard said. “Can you run back to the car and grab my work bag?”

  “Anything else you want me to fetch, master? Your pipe and slippers?”

  “Ok, smartass, you can stay and install the hard drive cloning software.”

  “You know what? I’ll get the bag.”

  Hazard grunted and got to work.

  By the time Somers came back, Hazard was ready. Somers, puffing, a red glow in his cheeks, eased the bag off his shoulder and set it by the desk.

  “What do you have in there? A tactical missile?”

  “It’s not that heavy,” Hazard said, digging through the pockets until he found the external hard drive. He kept digging for the cables. “Besides, you needed a job.”

  “I needed a job?”

  “Yeah,” Hazard said, fishing out the correct cable and attaching the drive. “So you didn’t feel completely useless tonight.”

  “Wow.”

  Hazard double checked the settings and ran the hard drive cloning program. As the progress bar began to tick up, he let out a breath and relaxed.

  “Wow,” Somers said again. Louder.

  Hazard worked a finger in his ear.

  “I didn’t know I was useless,” Somers said.

  “I didn’t say you were useless. You brought me my bag. I said I didn’t want you to feel useless.”

  “Thank you,” Somers said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “No, I—” Somers made a strangled noise. “Why are you so goddamn impossible sometimes?”

  “Because,” Hazard said, raising an eyebrow, “you teased me about thinking animals are cute.”

  Somers looked like he was trying very hard not to smile. Instead, he stomped around and picked up some books and tried to act like he was snooping. After a minute, he asked, “Are you sure that’s going to work?”

  “Yes. That’s the whole point of this program: it can copy encrypted material because it clones the disk sector by sector instead of trying to access the files.”

  “Right, uh huh. And we’re going to be able to see what Sackeman had on his computer when we get home?”

  “No; it’ll still be encrypted. But this way, even if Sackeman tries to purge his computer after he realizes someone’s accessed it, we’ll have a copy. We can worry about cracking the encryption later.”

  “Maybe it would help if you said something like ‘We’ll just root the kernel and reroute this through a firewall escape hatch. Omega Protocol.”

  Hazard blinked. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “I just made it up. But I’m liking nerdy Hazard. I liked nerdy Hazard in high school, before you got all bulky and distracted me with your muscles. I want to cultivate this side of you. Maybe we should get you a leather duster like in The Matrix. And some glasses. Definitely some glasses.”

  “I honestly never understand what is going on inside your head.”

  “Ditto,” Somers said with a grin.

  When the program had finished, Hazard packed the hard drive and cables away, uninstalled the cloning program, and shut down the computer. Sackeman would still notice someone had used the device, but no reason to leave him any more breadcrumbs than necessary.

  “That’s it?” Somers asked.

  “One more thing,” Hazard said.

  “What?”

  Hazard pointed to the bag as he strode out of the office. “Bring that.”

  “I hate you.”

  Over his shoulder, Hazard said, “Just want you to feel involved.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MARCH 28

  THURSDAY

  8:01 AM

  HAZARD’S PHONE RANG while he was still getting Evie ready for preschool. She had insisted on wearing her denim jacket inside out because apparently it hurt to wear it the normal way—a fact she informed Hazard of several times in a piercing shriek. As they tugged the jacket into place, Hazard said, “Shoes,” and Evie trundled off to her room. Hazard answered his phone.

  “Mr. Hazard?” a woman’s voice asked.

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Melissa Hall. You called?”

  The voice was gentle, polite. The perfect therapist’s voice. Everybody’s ok here. Everybody’s safe.

  “Absolutely not, young lady,” Hazard said to Evie, who had come back with plastic Disney-princess high heels.

  “Excuse me?” Melissa said.

  “That wasn’t for you.” Then, to Evie, “School shoes. We’ve talked about this.”

  Evie’s answer was a shriek about princesses.

  “School shoes,” Hazard said again. “Now scoot.”

  More princess shrieking, but after a moment, Evie scooted back to her room.

  “Mr. Hazard, you left a message asking me to call you back.”

  “No, I said if you didn’t call me back, I’d have your license revoked. And you still waited almost a full day. That’s pretty bold. Were you thinking about calling my bluff?”

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. What you saw the other night, that was a misunderstanding.”

  “Do all your misunderstandings involve a client tweaking you like he’s trying to pull them off? No way, miss. Shoes with laces. Comfortable shoes.”

  “Flops,” Evie said, holding out her flip flops.

  “It is way too cold, and you can’t wear those on the playground.”

  “Flops!”

  Hazard pointed back at her room, and after some rather impressive stomping—Hazard wondered where she’d picked that up—Evie made her way back to her bedroom.

  “Mr. Hazard—”

  “I’m coming over to talk about this misunderstanding. And to talk about a few other things. My threat still holds; I’d be happy to have a version of this conversation with the Committee for Professional Counselors, if you’d prefer.”

  Down the hall, Evie was singing something that Hazard was fairly sure came from a TV show, but her rendition was so garbled he couldn’t tell which one. Between bursts of shrieking came soft puffs, a noise that Hazard couldn’t quite place.

  “I have appointments—”

  “Cancel them.”

  “It’s not as simple as that. Many of my clients depend on me. Stability and routine are very important.”

  “I think you’ll figure out a way,” Hazard said. “I’ll be there at ten; I have to go now. I’m fairly sure my daughter is using my cologne as a squirt gun.”

  He was half right; the cologne was Somers’s.

  “You’re lucky your dad smells good,” Hazard said, studying the dozens of wet patches on Evie’s clothes where she’d applied the cologne to herself. “Come on. Let’s change.”

  He had Evie at preschool a little later than usual, but he still had time to swing by the office and make a few phone calls. Since November, Hazard had been building a network of informants in government and various industries. In some cases, men and women he’d worked with as a police detective were willing to continue helping him. Others, however, didn’t want to risk that kind of unofficial relationship, and so Hazard had found it necessary to build parts of the network from the ground up. It was a work in progress, and he had a feeling it would stay that way for the rest of his career.

  He wasn’t ready to pull out the big guns yet—it was worrisome that Donna May had disappeared so completely, but he didn’t have any reason to panic—so he started with the official channels for regional police departments and hospitals in Wahredua and Columbia. Nobody could match his description of Donna May, which he based on the photograph Courtney had given him, to any Jane Does or missing person reports. Hazard hadn’t really expected anyt
hing, but it had been worth a shot.

  At quarter to ten, he put Melissa’s address into his phone, and then he snorted. He probably should have guessed. Melissa’s house was located a half mile from Josh’s. In fact, her house was in the same neighborhood: Moulton Estates. Hazard got in the minivan and drove out toward the neighborhood and the lake. He wondered if Somers would be willing to count this as seeing a therapist, something Somers had been hounding him about—indirectly, cautiously—since last July.

  Melissa’s house looked like the rest of the subdivision: a colonial with a brick façade, a shuttered boathouse near the water, and a long, looping driveway. The only difference was that an addition to Melissa’s driveway went around the back of the house. Hazard parked in front of the house and then followed the asphalt addition to the back. Instead of the typical house design, where the back was relatively unadorned, perhaps with a deck and a sliding glass door, the back of Melissa’s house was almost as ornate as the front: another brick façade, a door framed with mullioned windows, neatly trimmed flowerbeds. Then Hazard saw the sign and understood. Above the door in vinyl letters—a curling, feminine script—were the words Mid-Missouri Premiere Mental Health.

  This was the business entrance. So, Melissa operated her practice out of her home. It made sense, and doubtless cut down on costs. The driveway addition allowed clients to park their cars out of sight and enter without risking being seen from the street. A nice touch of discretion. Probably an indication—if the house weren’t enough—that Melissa catered to expensive clientele. Successfully, it seemed.

  Hazard considered his options. Which entrance would she expect him to use? Which would throw off her rhythm? It might only affect her in a minor way, of course, but even that could prove an advantage. Before he could decide, the back door opened, and Melissa stepped out onto the porch, followed a moment later by a woman who resembled a potato.

  “You’re absolutely sure it’s no trouble?” Melissa said. The therapist’s dirty-blond pixie cut was perfectly styled this morning, and she wore a sweater and leggings. The outfit was probably described as casual and comfortable, but casual and comfortable didn’t mean the clothes weren’t expensive as hell. Hazard was starting to get an eye for that kind of clothing; his fiancé had pricey tastes.