“They’re terrific, really. It’s amazing what you can do with phones today. But I’ll let you be the judge,” he continued, turning his phone around to face me. “Tell me, does this qualify as e-book research?”
On his phone, I saw a frumpy figure emerge from the corner of the screen. And although the video was shaky and the quality blotchy, I could make out Ghoul pacing back and forth. I realized that Garrett must have been sitting in the diner that day. Maybe even in the same booth we were sitting in just then.
The video panned to the small alcove across the street and showed the soft outline of a figure against the wall, hiding. It was me, but the quality was so poor Garrett could only be speculating that. A moment later, his phone showed a handful of lightning plunging into Ghoul’s chest, dropping him to his knees, the blue flash following like a trail of smoke. I turned away from the phone and stared out the diner’s window.
Night was coming, and the tall window reflected my face in a fluorescent silhouette. When I focused beyond the glass, I couldn’t even see the alcove amid the storefronts across the street. The skyline had turned the color of a bruise, leaving just the outlines of the buildings visible in the dusky light. They looked like a row of crooked teeth—with a diamond inset shining back at me. It was Garrett’s phone, now playing a video of Messenger. The pixelated face of a woman was visible in the backseat of the taxi. The taxi’s door swung open, and the bike messenger crashed violently, breaking his neck. And in the slanting glare of sunlight, the video showed me rushing across the busy street and disappearing into the city’s subway. The video of Messenger’s death was clear enough—that was my face.
A motorcycle flew past the diner in a gray blur, the sound of its exhaust pipes clapping the air with a throaty growl. The noise was enough to break my trance, and I glared at him.
“What do you really want?” I wasn’t going to try denying anything. He had enough evidence to prosecute.
I’d begun to sweat—a nervous and angry, hot sweat that stung the back of my neck. For Garrett’s safety, I had to turn away. I thought if I looked at him, I’d throw myself across the table and gouge the smugness out of his eyes. Instead, I started focusing on things inside the diner—the booths, the counter, the toasters, and the cook behind the grill. His broad shoulders rocked up and down to the faint sound of a seventies tune playing on an AM radio.
“Like I said, you’re going to kill my wife,” Garrett answered without looking around, without worrying about someone overhearing him. He shifted in his seat to make his suit jacket fall open just enough for me to see his gun. “I have to admit, I would’ve never found you if not for that great bit of software. Unique. Very good. Came upon it quite by accident. Didn’t know a thing about the Deep Web or what was out there—it’s a playground, you know. Amazing find for people like me. Crazy what you can order for a few bitcoins. Drugs, weapons . . . women too, or men, if that’s how you take your eggs. All kinds—”
“Who else?” I asked, shutting him up, wanting to know if anyone was working with him. “And what do I get in return?”
“It’s just me,” he said. “As for what you get . . . How about my silence?”
I couldn’t trust him to be silent. I couldn’t trust that he’d want just this one thing. There’d be more demands. But more than that, I could never go through with it, never even consider it.
His wife—his philanthropist wife—would be missed.
“Your silence isn’t going to cut it—you’re treading water in the deep end,” I told him, lowering my voice, trying to sound threatening.
On the inside, I was terrified. Sweat covered my skin and my face was on fire. I finished my coffee, steadying the shake in my hand, and let the silence stretch on until it became uncomfortable. We were playing poker again, and he was waiting for me to fold.
I motioned to his jacket with a flick of my chin. He raised his brow, and I nodded until he took the evidence bag out. “I’ll consider those as a down payment. Nothing is free. And I’ll let you know what the fee is.”
“Well, aren’t you all business?” he answered, dangling the evidence bag from the end of his fingers. I seized his hand, closing my fist around the bag like a prize and twisting my grip on his fingers until he grimaced. He fought to hold on as though we were arm wrestling, but then let go of the bag. “Okay, then! A down payment.”
“You don’t know what you’re fucking with!” I scolded with a rasp in my voice. I stood up to leave, slapping the basket of fries and sending them across the table.
Ms. Potts caught the commotion, her expression asking if I needed help. The cook circled the counter to join her, coming into full view: a tall, muscular man wearing a grease-stained apron and gripping a spatula like a hammer. He stared intently in my direction, ready for a signal to jump in and help. I met their eyes, gave them a look that said “I’m fine,” and then turned back to find Garrett picking the fries off his jacket. His face was full of disgust.
I leaned over and nearly touched his nose with mine. The smell of his cologne mixed with fries turned my stomach. I held my breath and added, “I don’t care what you have, but threaten me again and I’ll kill you.”
“What, no ketchup?” he asked, puckering his lips and blowing me a kiss before laughing.
At that moment, I really thought I could kill him. I backed away though, and gave Ms. Potts a final look, telling her I was leaving.
“I’ll be in touch with the details. Don’t forget to give me the friends and family discount.” I heard him say as I walked away.
By the time the bell above the diner’s front door rang out, I’d already started planning my next murder. I was inspired. I needed my ceiling-high whiteboard to get the designs down. And for the first time, I didn’t care if my next victim was going to be missed or not. I only cared that my family was going to be safe. Garrett’s hold on me would never loosen. I knew that. His demands would never end. I knew that too. The only security I had for my future—my family’s future—was to free myself of him.
And to do that, I’d have to kill him.
THIRTY-SIX
“What?!”
I jumped at Nerd’s sudden scream. The color drained from his face, and he stumbled backward, his foot catching a chair leg and sending him into his seat.
“Listen to me,” I said, trying to calm him.
“What do you mean, he knows? The cops know?” He began to pant heavily as his eyes bulged.
“It’s not like that,” I said cautiously, knowing what he could do in just a few keystrokes. Kill our company, wipe out any evidence we’d ever existed. He lunged forward, hammering his keyboard wildly, the sound of his fingers striking it like he was marking off a checklist. I stomped my foot and screamed, “Brian, just stop!”
He lifted his hands as if under arrest, his face wet and his eyes glassy. He rolled his chair back and forth, unsure of what to do next. He heaved a cry that sounded like a tortured animal.
“Amy, I can’t go to prison,” he began as he touched the screen, touched the evidence of what we’d done. “I’d never survive.”
“Nobody is going to prison,” I exclaimed, speaking cautiously again. “The cops aren’t after us.”
He blinked, a perplexed look surfacing on his face. “What do you mean?” he asked, sounding calmer although he feathered his keyboard with a few touches, continuing whatever he’d started.
I glared at his hands until he put them to rest in his lap. “Amy, I’ve got his profile open. He is a cop, you know!”
He spun his monitor around, showing me Garrett’s identification badge. He wore the same smugness in the picture as I’d seen in the diner. The image of him gave me a chill, but it also gave me an idea. Nerd hadn’t been deleting his source code or our company books. He’d already started to hack Garrett, to take a closer look.
“And what else can you find out about him?” I asked, circling his desk.
Nerd spun his monitor back around, typed a few commands. His screen immediately
filled with news clippings about Garrett and his wife.
“He’s married to Sophie Lawrence, of the Lawrence family?” he answered, jerking his head back. “Why the hell is he a cop? He married into the Lawrence family. I mean, why bother?”
“Not sure if he was a cop first, but that doesn’t matter. He’s not interested in our company, or in you,” I told him, bending the truth a little.
“But you said he knows,” Nerd scowled, the look of confusion returning.
“He knows all right,” I began, nodding. “But he won’t be making a case—or any arrests. He wants to do business.”
“It was the software, wasn’t it?” Nerd asked, shaking his head, putting on a face as though he’d failed. “I knew those links were a setup. This is all my fault.”
I closed my hands on the sides of his face, locked my eyes on his to reassure him, “Brian, are you listening to me? He’s not interested in making an arrest. He wants to do business with us.”
He blinked. His face went blank. “Garrett Williams, a cop, married to one of the richest women in the world, wants to put out a contract?”
“Yes. A contract.”
“We can do that,” Nerd said, shrugging his shoulders. Color returned to his face and relief creased his lips with a smile.
“Who’s the mark? I’ll start a profile. Let me guess—tax cheat let out on good behavior,” he joked.
“His wife.”
Almost at once, the color was gone again. “Sophie Lawrence?”
“The one and only.”
He shook his head to object.
I quickly added, “The world would certainly miss her.”
“You think!?” he blurted. “Famous philanthropist—probably get canonized by the Pope when she’s dead.”
I let out a laugh, but stopped it short. I didn’t want to make light of the predicament we were in. “Come on, let’s get to work.” I turned to face the whiteboard and began drawing out a design. “We have a murder to plan.”
“Amy, you’re not serious?” he asked. I heard the squeal of his chair, the wheels rolling as he moved over to me. Nerd’s hand went to mine, taking the whiteboard marker from my fingers. “Amy, we can’t. We can’t kill this woman.”
I took the marker back, drew a long line across the board with no particular direction in mind, just getting us started. When I reached the corner, I turned and told him, “The design isn’t for Sophie Lawrence.”
Nerd raised his shoulders, asking, “Then who?”
“We’re killing Garrett Williams.”
“Oh. Well, in that case—” he began to say sarcastically. “Amy, are you freaking crazy!?”
“Not crazy,” I said, refusing to turn around. I continued to draw instead, marking the whiteboard with a nonsensical design. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I didn’t want to have anyone try and talk me out of my decision.
“There’s a better way,” he said, the calm returning to his voice.
I heard the sound of keystrokes again and then heard him hammer the Enter key. The sound unnerved me enough to make me stop.
“You’re not going to talk me out of this,” I said. He turned the monitor around for me to see he was running Becky, navigating the police station. “What are you looking for?”
“We don’t have to kill anyone,” he said, clicking on the box next to Charlie’s office. “I’m going to hack the shit out of him . . . make it look he extorted money or something.”
A window opened on Nerd’s screen, showing Garrett’s face. I followed his eyes and listened to his breathing. The threat of danger I had felt at the diner was gone. His face was blank, save for a sad look in his hazel eyes. And then a spark. I told myself it was just my imagination, but then I saw it again. Another spark, and life coming into his expression with a slow dip of his chin. All his attention was focused.
Is he looking at the camera?
“He can’t see us, can he?” I asked.
“No,” Nerd answered. “Just a coincidence, probably someone standing behind his monitor.”
Garrett sat on the edge of his seat and perched his chin on his elbows, leaned in until his face filled the screen. “Brian, are you sure?” I asked again. “The camera’s green light is off, right?”
“Gotta be,” Nerd said, scrolling through a window of source code, paging down until he reached the routine that disabled the camera’s light.
Garrett stared and sneered at us before wagging his finger in the air.
“What the fuck!” Nerd said. “How the fuck . . .”
“Kill it!” I demanded, realizing that Garrett must know about Becky. Could he reverse the connection, turn our spy on us? “Delete Becky from his machine!”
“Way ahead of you,” Nerd said as the image of Garrett’s wagging finger flickered and then disappeared from his screen. “Not sure how—”
“We’re safe?” I asked.
“For now,” he answered with an uncertain shrug. “Don’t forget, though—Becky’s infection rate. Only a matter of time before she finds his computer and infects it again.”
“But we’re safe as long as we don’t remote into his machine?” I commented, hoping he’d agree, hoping to hear some assuredness in his voice.
He nodded and added, “That, and he’d have to be able to clear my routine to disable the camera’s light. Who is this guy?”
“He’s danger incarnate,” I said, unable to break my stare away from Nerd’s monitor. I was waiting for the green light next to the camera to ignite like a flame.
“No, I mean, it takes some serious skill to rework my code . . .” Nerd began to say, his voice trailing off as he thought through what just happened. “He manufactured the list, manipulated it so that we’d pick the cases he wanted us to pick . . .”
“What are you driving at?”
Nerd sat back in his chair and answered, “Amy, he hacked us.”
***
An hour and four energy drinks later, Nerd had secured us against any more of Garrett’s hacking attempts. The cyber wounds he had inflicted were only superficial, we discovered, had never given Garrett control or the same eyes and ears Nerd’s software had given us. Unlike the chess game Nerd played, Garrett (or whatever hacker worked for Garrett, as Nerd suspected) lacked the foresight to secure their next moves. While we had taken the bait with cases like Messenger and Ghoul, Garrett had left enough breadcrumbs that Nerd had been able to find the videos he’d recorded of me.
“Are you sure this is the only copy?” I asked while Nerd played back the scene of Messenger breaking his neck.
Nerd drank down the remains of an energy drink and anxiously popped the tab of another. “It’s a bit different when you see it . . . I mean, what we do.”
“Don’t get caught up in what you see. The world won’t miss him,” I said coldly.
“That’s what we say, but to see it . . .” His voice was soft and shaky and was quickly replaced with a slurp from his drink.
“Only copy?” I repeated, wanting to move on. “That, and the one on his phone?”
“It’s a bit vault,” Nerd began, closing the video window to show me a list of files. “Like a digital safety deposit box. And there’s a history and versioning and a backup that syncs every hour.”
“That doesn’t sound promising,” I muttered, trying to understand the depth and number of copies. “And what about his phone?
“He likely streamed it, which would create a cache, a local copy. I can take care of what’s in the vault, delete all the history, and force the sync.”
“But the phone?”
“You’ll need to get it. I can’t see it. And if I can’t see it, then I can’t hack it.”
Neshaminy Creek, I thought. When I was done with Garrett, I’d take his phone and throw it into the creek. The water levels would be high again soon enough to carry the evidence to the bay, deleting them forever. “Wait!” I called out. Nerd raised his hand. “He’ll notice something is different. We can’t raise any suspicion
s.”
Nerd considered what I said, then navigated back to the parent folder. “He won’t get any notification about the history or the backup, so I’ll delete those. As for the videos, he’ll know they’re gone.”
“And he’ll know we deleted them. What if you leave the filenames, but replace the video with something else?”
Nerd pitched his chin, agreeing. “Swap ‘em out Indiana Jones style.”
“Exactly! Replace them with something else, but leave the names intact so he doesn’t suspect any activity.”
He was already typing, searching YouTube to find replacement videos. “I’ll match the file sizes too, to leave all metadata the same.”
“Perfect,” I said, following the YouTube search. “Let me . . .”
“All yours.”
Nerd gave me his keyboard. I already knew what I wanted, and found the videos with a single search. “These. Use these.”
“Road Runner cartoons!” Nerd exclaimed, raising his voice. “Loved those.”
“You take care of the evidence, and I’ll take care of Garrett,” I began, but as soon as the words left my mouth the smile drifted from his face. “What’s the matter?”
“Listen,” he began, turning to face me. “The world will miss him.”
I stepped away from his desk—a flush of heat rising on my neck. “I know,” I admitted. “But I don’t think he’s ever going to stop.”
“Amy, scum or not, we’re talking about a cop,” he continued, shaking his head. “Let me hack the shit out of him—put him so far into the technological Stone Age, he’ll want to use a flip phone for the rest of his life.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. But the humor was only fleeting. Nerd would never be on board with Garrett’s murder. “And what about his phone?”
“Meet with him,” Nerd answered. “Make like you’re going to show him proof you’ve killed his wife, and then steal his phone. That’ll be the last of it.”
I shook my head. He was underestimating Garrett. “Dude, he’s going to know where his wife is,” I said, disagreeing with him. “With the news always following her, the world knows where she is.”
Affair with Murder The Complete Box Set Page 46