Authors: Iris Johansen
NOW YOU KNOW.
She used her index finger to punch her reply one key at a time: COLBY.
Ten seconds went by. Then fifteen.
YOU NEVER STOPPED BELIEVING, KENDRA. TOUCHED BEYOND WORDS.
It was him.
After all these months of wondering, of watching over her shoulder … He was back.
She flexed her trembling fingers over the keyboard. Stay cool.
Detach. Concentrate.
WHY SHEILA HUNTER?
His reply was immediate:
DID SHE NOT DESERVE IT?
She replied:
NO. NO ONE DESERVES THAT.
Except Colby, she thought.
EXCEPT ME. THAT’S WHAT YOU WERE THINKING, WASN’T IT? I KNOW YOU, KENDRA. TOO WELL.
He did know her, she realized. All those years in prison, he was studying her, making his sick plans. She felt another surge in the pit of her stomach.
Hold it together.
She typed:
THEN YOU KNOW I’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU.
He fired back:
OF COURSE. I’VE BEEN COUNTING ON IT.
She believed him. He did know her too well.
YOU NEVER DISAPPOINT, KENDRA.
She held her shaking hands over the keyboard, weighing her next move. Bold, decisive strokes were the only things that ever worked against Colby, but did she want to go this far? She finally typed:
I’M THE ONE YOU WANT, COLBY. BRING IT ON. NO ONE ELSE NEEDS TO SUFFER FOR WHAT I’VE DONE TO YOU.
Long pause. Had she thrown him off balance? He finally responded:
I’VE ALREADY BROUGHT THE FIGHT TO YOU, KENDRA. YOU JUST DON’T KNOW IT YET.
REALLY?
He shot back:
OH, YES. I LEFT YOU A PRESENT INSIDE SHEILA HUNTER’S HOUSEBOAT.
She went still. She could only imagine what constituted a present from Eric Colby. She made herself respond:
IF YOU WERE REALLY THERE, YOU WOULD KNOW I COULDN’T GET NEAR THE PLACE.
I SAW. YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO TRY HARDER, KENDRA. I HAVE FAITH IN YOU.
Before Kendra could reply, he quickly signed off:
ENOUGH. YOU HAVE WORK TO DO. PLEASANT DREAMS, KENDRA. I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW MUCH I ENJOY THEM.
The document went blank. A moment later, her laptop screen went blank and the fan shut off.
She stood and backed away from the computer, still trembling.
He was back.
Her first instinct was to turn the computer back on, but she stopped herself. Best to leave the system undisturbed until she could get this thing to an expert who could figure out how in the hell Eric Colby had tapped in.
Which expert?
She wasn’t about to involve Lynch, and if she tapped the FBI forensic computer specialists, it would probably mean boxing up her laptop and shipping it to D.C. There was always a backlog for anything except national-security issues, and Colby’s future victims didn’t have the luxury of time.
Kendra stared at the laptop. She did know someone who could outgeek the FBI experts any day of the week. He was based in San Francisco, but his talents were sought after by clients all over the world. Even the Defense Department had their agents keep an eye on him because he was so valuable in protecting their sites from foreign hackers. But even if he was in the country, there’s no telling if he was available to help her.
One way to find out.
She picked up her phone and punched a number. Within seconds, her ear was blasted by blaring rap music and the sound of a boisterous crowd.
“Kendra!”
She recognized Sam Zackoff’s voice immediately even though he was shouting into the phone. The tension in her body eased slightly. It was good to be reminded that there was a happy and carefree world out there, far from the grim reality that had suddenly pummeled her.
“Sam? Where the hell are you? A dance club?”
“No, better. I’m at a video-game trade show, and one of the companies is throwing a killer party. Free booze and dozens of hot young ladies dressed like the scantily clad characters in their new game. It doesn’t get much better than this.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“You don’t have to. You can always join me.”
“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Where in the world are you right now?”
“I’m at the E3 computer-game trade show.”
“That’s supposed to mean something to me?”
“Sorry, I forgot you’re not as big of a geek as the rest of the people in my social circle.”
“That’s a relief for me and very depressing for you.”
“The E3 show is always in L.A. I’m at the convention center downtown.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. I need to come see you.”
“It’s getting loud in here. Did you say you needed me?”
“I said I need to see you.”
“Okay, I heard you that time. You need and crave me with every fiber of your being. Got it.”
“God, you’re a geek.”
“Sorry, the connection dropped out for a second. Did you just say I was a god?”
“You wish.”
“If you really want my help, you’re not being very persuasive. What’s up?”
“My computer just got hacked, and I don’t know how. I was working on a Word file, and someone just started typing into it. They could see everything I was typing.”
“Easy peasy. A kid could do that. There are plenty of free software packages out there that can give anyone remote access to your computer. Tech-support people use them all the time to make adjustments to customers’ settings.”
“But something would still have to be installed on my laptop, right?”
“Again, child’s play. If your computer touches the Internet, all notions of security and privacy go right out the window.”
“Comforting. I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t urgent, Sam. This is a killer on one of my cases. I need you to look at my computer and see if there’s anything here that could possibly help me find this sicko. Could you do that?”
“Sure. You want to meet tomorrow?”
“Tonight. I’m driving down right now. This time of night, I can be in L.A. in less than two hours.”
“Whoa. I plan to be totally hammered by then.”
“I’ll take Sam Zackoff hammered over anybody else stone-cold sober any day of the week.”
“Now
that’s
how you get a guy to help you.”
“Where do we meet?”
He thought for a moment. “There’s an all-night diner just a couple blocks from the convention center. It’s called Riff’s. It’s on Figueroa Street. I’ll be there chugging coffee like a madman.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
“No worries. We go way back. If the only way I can touch base with you these days is to do an occasional favor, I’m here for you. I can never tell when your gratitude might overwhelm you. See you soon.”
* * *
ON THE HOUR-AND-FORTY-FIVE-MINUTE
drive down the I-5 freeway, Kendra glanced several times at her laptop on the passenger-side floor. She almost felt it was Colby himself down there, watching her, taunting her, and plotting his next move.
As she fumbled with the car stereo’s volume knob, she realized that her hands had never fully stopped shaking since her dialogue with Colby.
Enough.
She had beaten him once, and she would do it again. As much as he liked to boast that he knew her, she knew him, too. She would use his confidence, his arrogance, against him.
You’re going down, Colby.
* * *
KENDRA PARKED HER CAR AND
entered the narrow diner. It was a freestanding building, but was clearly designed to emulate the railroad car diners of the Northeast, with a long counter and a wedged-in row of booths. There were only two people visible at first glance—a medical worker in pink scrubs eating chili at the counter and a homeless man facedown in the last booth.
Wait. Not a homeless man, she realized as she glanced at his tousled brown hair and brown bomber jacket. That leather jacket was lambskin and very expensive.
“Wake up, Sam.”
“I’m already awake.” He didn’t lift his head or make any other move to look at her. “I’m just trying to summon the will. I wish you had called about two hours earlier.”
“Never mind. I shouldn’t have imposed. The FBI has experts who can deal with this sort of thing.”
He snorted and finally sat up with a lopsided grin. “You’re playing me, woman. If you really believed that, you wouldn’t have driven all the way down here in the middle of the freaking night.”
“You’re the best, Sam. And I’m not playing you when I say that.”
“I know you’re not. You’re the one person who has always held
all
my abilities in appropriate regard.”
He smiled again with that wonderfully cockeyed grin. Sam was thirty, thin, and his thick mane was everywhere no matter how long or short it was at any given time, complementing his brilliance with a distinct mad-scientist vibe.
She and Sam had a brief, stupid fling during her wild days, but they both quickly realized that romance wasn’t in the cards for them. But through all the years, he had always been there for her in a way that no lover ever had. She wouldn’t trade that kind of friend for the world.
Sam picked up the pot of coffee on the table and emptied it into his cup. He waved the empty pot at the waitress who had just emerged from the kitchen. “Keep ’em coming please. Be assured that my friend here tips
insanely
well.”
Kendra turned back toward the waitress. “I do. Make sure he gets anything and everything he wants.”
She sat across from Sam and put the laptop on the table between them. “Here it is. I’m not sure what you can do, but I’m hoping you can find out something that can give me some kind of trail back to him. Maybe through a software vendor or maybe an IP address … I’m not sure.”
The mere sight of her computer seemed to give him a jolt, making him more alert than the coffee had been able to do. “You never know. Even the most accomplished hackers are often terrible at covering their tracks. Let’s see what we have here.” He lifted her computer, then froze. “I thought you said you turned this off.”
“No, I said I didn’t turn it back on. It turned off by itself at the end of my and Colby’s rap session.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “No, it didn’t.”
“What are you talking about? I saw it happen.”
“No, you saw the screen and indicator lights switch off, and you heard the fan shut down.” He ran his fingers across the laptop’s underside. “It’s still warm. It shouldn’t still feel this way, not after two hours. You were meant to think it was off, but it’s not. For all we know, your laptop’s microphone has been transmitting our entire conversation back to him.”
“Shit. What do we do?”
He quickly popped the laptop’s battery off and placed it on the table. “There. That should take care of it.”
She stared at her computer, once again feeling that eerie sensation she’d had in the car. “Why would he do that?”
“Don’t know, but maybe we can find out.” Sam reached into the worn leather satchel on the seat beside him and produced a screwdriver. He used it to remove the laptop’s back cover, then the hard drive. He pulled his own laptop from his satchel and connected Kendra’s hard drive to it via an interface cable.
As he flipped up his laptop’s lid, Kendra saw an elaborately etched cartoon version of Sam on it, with the motto
BORN TO BE BAD
in a fiery font.
“You’re kidding, right?”
He shrugged. “A gift from a grateful client. He’s actually very talented. If I detached the top cover and put it on eBay, I could get thousands for it.” He switched on his computer. “Let’s see what malware your nasty friend put on your computer.”
“Aren’t you afraid of infecting your own system?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Please. This thing is bulletproof. I’ve had foreign governments try to penetrate my systems and totally fall on their asses.”
Kendra had once dismissed Sam’s pronouncements as mere braggadocio, but she now knew better. As proud as Sam was of his accomplishments, she was aware of the fact that there was far more he
didn’t
talk about, especially where his security-sensitive clients were involved.
Sam glanced at his screen as it booted up. “The thing about firewalls I build for myself, I don’t sell or license them to anyone. That way no one knows how to crack them. Trust me, my computer has nothing to worry about.”
“So what’s happening now?”
“I’m taking an inventory of the applications on your hard drive. I hope you don’t have anything on there you don’t want me to see.”
“Like nude pictures of myself?”
“Pfft. Seen that. Old news.” He shrugged. “Maybe compromising pictures of the new man in your life.”
“There’s no new man in my life.”
“I heard you were living with someone. But if you don’t want to talk about it…”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I was staying there for my own safety. Nothing more.”
“Uh-huh. And there was nowhere else you could stay?”
“Not like that. I’m telling you, it’s like a fortress.”
“You’ve butted heads with a lot of sickos in your time. You’ve never squirreled yourself away before, even when it would have been the prudent thing to do. There must have been something about this guy that made you feel safe. Protected.”
“Yes. His house. I’ve already told you. What are you seeing on my hard drive?”
“Still scanning.” Sam regarded her for a moment. “It’s not a sign of weakness to lean on someone occasionally, Kendra. I’m actually proud of you. I wish you’d do it more often. I think you’re so determined to show that you can now stand on your own two feet that you sometimes ignore the lifelines that people throw your way.”
“If you don’t mind, I think we have more pressing things to address right now.”
“Can’t you tell? We’re multitasking. If you’d prefer, we can talk about the weather until your hard drive is finished. Or maybe how I’ve ruined you for all other men.”
“Well, that might be the truth, but it wouldn’t be in the way you’re thinking.”
“All right, the weather it is.” He glanced back at the laptop screen. “Ah. Okay. Here we go. I can see that your system has been infected by some kind of remote desktop software. As long as you had an Internet connection, he was able to see everything you were doing. And that’s how he was able to type his replies.”