Invasion of Privacy (30 page)

Southwest Airlines Flight 79 touched down at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport at 2:15 a.m. local time. Jessie and Garrett were first off the plane. They ran through the terminal and down the escalator, Jessie braking by an ATM at the exit and withdrawing her maximum daily limit of $800.

“Where did you get so much money?” asked Garrett.

Jessie stuffed the bills into her jeans. “Men are kind of sick. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Garrett held the phone to his ear. “There’s a voicemail from your mother. She says that we need to go to the police station. We can’t stay at DEF CON because we need to get away from the people who hurt your dad.”

“She’s just trying to scare us.”

“I thought that an informant shot him.” Garrett held out the phone. “You’d better listen.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Jess…”

“Garrett, I came here to get Rudeboy to help figure out who hacked into my mom’s phone. What part of that did you miss?”

“The part that says we might be in danger.”

“You sure don’t look like a wuss, Abercrombie.”

“What?” protested Garrett. “Who’s Abercrombie?”

Jessie walked outside and made her way to the head of the taxi line. “So you told your parents?”

“Are you kidding?” said Garrett. “My parents would have called out the National Guard by now if I wasn’t home. My mom waits up by the door to make sure I walk in before midnight. I’m not joking. By the door. I may be disobedient, but I’m not cruel.” Garrett caught himself. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Jessie had never thought of herself as cruel. “My mom’s just freaking out because I didn’t tell her where I’ve gone. Once we get to DEF
CON, if you see any guys in dark shirts and sunglasses looking at us strangely, let me know and we’ll get out of there.”

Garrett cued up the voicemail. “Just listen to her.”

“I don’t want to.”

“It’s your mother. She loves you.”

Jessie grabbed the phone out of his hand and deleted the message. “My mom thinks I’m a freak. She can’t stand that I don’t wear tight blue jeans or put on makeup or straighten my hair and that I hate Taylor Swift and that I’m fat and I don’t like to run or go to the gym. Okay? She may care for me. And yes, I know that she’s worried. But she doesn’t love me. Not really. My dad loved me. That’s why I’m here. You want to go, go. I’m staying.” She climbed into a minivan with an advertisement for a strip club on top. “What are you looking at?” she said.

“Nothing…I mean…oh, forget it.” Garrett climbed in and closed the door. “I’m staying.”

“Take us to the Rio,” said Jessie.

“DEF CON, right?” said the driver, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. “You guys are getting younger each year. Pretty soon I’ll be driving babies out there.”

“Hey, buddy,” said Jessie, “just drive.”

“Punk.”

They turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard and drove past the Mandalay Bay, the Mirage, the Bellagio, temples of neon. The lights reminded her of Bangkok, the night markets, the hotels lining the Chao Phraya River. The two cities were nothing alike, really. Maybe it was just being in another city where it was hot all day and all night, with so many tall buildings. All she knew was that it made her sad. Her dad had been alive in Bangkok. Mouse hadn’t been sick yet. And she hadn’t made her mom miss her dad’s last message.

“You okay?” asked Garrett, his hand touching her arm.

Jessie wiped at her cheek. “Be quiet.”

“Sorry.”

“I didn’t mean it. I’m just tired.”

“Me, too.”

Jessie leaned her head against Garrett’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

Jessie wanted to say for a thousand things, but the words tripped all over each other. “Just thanks.”

The cab turned onto Flamingo Road and Jessie saw the hotel at the end of the block, towering before them like a brightly lit birthday cake. It was big and pretty, but it didn’t look as glitzy as the others. That figured. Hackers and computer nerds weren’t glitzy either. They were just smarter.

Another turn and the cab pulled beneath the hotel’s porte cochere. Jessie paid the fare and added a dollar for a tip, getting out before the driver could call her a punk again. She led the way into a lobby the size of a football field and spotted the placards for DEF CON at the entry to the East Corridor.

“This is it.” Excited, she jogged the length of the hall. A blue banner with the words
Capture the Flag
hung above the entrance to the Miranda Ballroom. Jessie dialed the number for Linus’s former teammate and announced their arrival. A few minutes later a short, skinny guy with a few days’ stubble and messy hair came out of the ballroom.

“You Jesse?” he said, looking at Garrett.

“Actually, I’m Garrett. She’s Jessie.”

Max shifted his gaze in her direction. “You’re Jessie?”

“Didn’t Linus tell you I was a girl?”

“Guess he forgot that part. He just said you were smart as a whip and we’d be idiots not to let you join our team.”

“Guess you’ll find out soon enough.”

He stuck out a bony hand. “Max. Good to have you aboard. Here, put on your shirt.” Max thrust an orange, yellow, and black T-shirt at her. “Welcome to the Ninjaneers. And here’s your ID. Wear it around your neck at all times when you’re on the playing floor.”

Jessie pulled on her T-shirt and strung the ID over her head. Her sadness and anxiety fled. She was at DEF CON. She was a Ninjaneer, and she was about to play Capture the Flag against Rudeboy. It was pretty much the coolest moment of her life.

“What about Garrett?” she asked. “He’s pretty good with code, too.”

“Sorry,” said Max. “Eight men to a team. Garrett, if you’d like to watch, there are stands all around the game floor. The room opens at seven-thirty, thirty minutes before start of play.”

“No worries.” Garrett thrust his hands into his pockets. “I’m going to get something to eat. I’ll see you.”

“See you.” Jessie stared at him hard so that he wouldn’t even think of doing something cheesy like try to kiss her.

“Later.” Garrett headed off down the hall. Jessie adjusted her shirt, bending to get a look at the design of a cartoon ninja putting his samurai sword through a laptop. The drawing was lame, but she didn’t care. She was a Ninjaneer now, too, and she wouldn’t allow a word against her team.

“Come with me,” said Max. “We’re doing some warm-ups. Root-the-box problems. Standard stuff. You’ll need to meet everyone and let them know what we can expect of you.”

He pushed open the door and Jessie followed him into a cavernous ballroom. Only eight out of two thousand teams had qualified for the finals. Each team occupied a
U
-shaped configuration of tables arrayed around a central command square. A scoreboard on one wall listed the teams. Besides the Ninjaneers, there were the Plaid Purple Pioneers, Team Mutant X, Big Bad Daddies, the Mummies, Team Koo Teck Rai, Das Boot, and, finally, Rudeboy.

“New rules this year,” said Max. “We’ve got a TV audience, so they’ve shortened the game. We’ve got eight hours to solve four problems. Each problem is broken up into parts—‘flags’ that you have to win.”

“That’s all?”

“Short and sweet. Fewer hacks, but harder.”

Max arrived at the Ninjaneers’ command post. Six guys in team T’s were in various states of preparation—attaching network cables, plugging in laptops, lining up bottles of Red Bull for easy access. Max introduced Jessie to each member of the team. All were polite enough; none of them tried too hard to hide his skepticism. Jessie looked at the other teams. Of course she was the only girl.

“We divide our team into three squads,” said Max. “Attack, Research, and Defense. Attack analyzes the problem we’re given—usually it’s an admin code—for vulnerabilities. Once we find one, we hand the problem over to Research and they figure out any possible ways of exploiting the vuln. Defense keeps a watch on our own board to stop the other guys from stealing our flags once we get them.”

“I’m Attack,” said Jessie.

“I’ll make that decision.” Max pulled up a problem on his laptop. “Show us your stuff, hotshot.”

Jessie scanned the code. Within a minute she’d spotted three “vulns,” or vulnerabilities, and called each out to Max. “How’d I do?”

“Like I said, you’re Attack.” Max pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. “Linus said you want to beat Rudeboy.”

“I have to beat him.”

“No one has ever beaten him,” said Max. “But if you can spot vulns that quickly when the game starts, we just might have a chance.”

Tank parked the Ferrari next to an old oak on a deserted side street in East Austin.

“Pull up your shirt,” said Mary. “Let me take a look.”

“I’m okay. Let’s check that key.”

“The key can wait.”

Tank reached for the tablet on the rear console and Mary blocked him, pushing him gently back into his seat, raising a warning finger to let him know there would be hell to pay if he tried it again. She opened the glove compartment and freed the flashlight. The tan seat ran wet with blood.

“Gosh, Tank. You really are hurt.”

Tank lifted the tails of his shirt, revealing a pale, corpulent midsection. Blood dribbled from a hole the circumference of a pencil eraser in one of his rolls of fat. She helped him lean forward. There was an exit wound on the opposite side of his love handle. “Went through.”

“I knew there was a reason I decided to put off getting in shape till fall.”

“You need to say a prayer tonight.”

Mary opened the car’s first aid kit and took out a roll of gauze, tape, scissors, and an antiseptic. Carefully she fashioned two bandages and put them on the center console. She cut another piece of gauze and doused it with disinfectant. “Sit still. This may hurt.”

“I played ball, remember.”

“One…two…”

Tank hollered and drove a fist against the armrest. “You didn’t say
three
.”

“Old trick. Now, relax. The second won’t be as bad.”

“The second?”

“I thought you played ball.”

“That was a long time ago. Be gentle.” Tank looked away, eyes watering, and bit back the pain as Mary finished dressing the wound.

“Try not to move too much. I’m not sure how secure the tape is.”

Tank pulled his shirt over the wound. “Can we check the key now?”

Mary grabbed the tablet and plugged in the flash drive. An icon of a hard drive appeared on the screen. It was named Snitch. “Let’s see what Mr. Stark has to offer the FBI.”

She double-clicked on the icon. A directory listing three folders filled the screen.

“Merriweather, Orca, and Titan,” said Tank.

“Merriweather. That’s the guy who accused ONE of extortion.”

“Your boy Fergus Keefe led the investigation that cleared ONE of any wrongdoing.”

“He’s not my boy.”

Mary double-clicked on the folder. It contained a list of over one hundred documents, Word files, photographs, and spreadsheets. Her eye landed on one titled “Prince Directive to Briggs/Nov. 10.” It was an internal e-mail from Ian Prince to a Peter Briggs, head of corporate security, and read: “Peter, pursuant to our conversation regarding M, follow up on attached list of target shareholders with a view to influencing positive outcome: our interests.”

“Clever,” said Tank. “Prince says everything and nothing. Doesn’t specify who M is, doesn’t come out and say, Extort the uncooperative bastards who won’t get with the program.”

Next Mary opened a file titled “Weekly update/Keefe to Prince.” It was an e-mail sent from Fergus Keefe’s private address to Ian Prince and offered a detailed summary of the latest developments in the FBI’s investigation into ONE. “Keefe was in Ian Prince’s pocket all along.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tank.

“You just might have your story.”

Tank started the engine. “I’ll need a lot more than that. One thing’s for sure. We can’t stay here and read it.”

“Where are we going?”

Tank pulled away from the curb and drove down the street, lights dimmed. “Off the grid.”

“Ed, this is Don Bennett.”

“Don…hold on…Jesus, what time is it?”

“It’s five o’clock here in Texas.”

Edward Mason cleared the sleep from his throat. “Five o’clock. Yeah, all right. Give me a second.”

Don Bennett stood on his back porch, gazing over his share of the American dream: a large, rolling square of crabgrass, dichondra, and dirt that made up the backyard of his home in Westlake Hills. Toys were scattered everywhere. In the dark he could make out a tricycle, a Big Wheel, baseball mitts, and a Slip ’N Slide that did double duty as the family pool.

He picked up his oldest son’s mitt, a black Rawlings Gold Glove Gamer. In his day it had been a Steve Garvey with a webbed pocket. Don Bennett had bled Dodger Blue his entire life. Vin Scully had called the play-by-play of his youth, and though he hadn’t lived in L.A. since he was eighteen, he was still a die-hard fan. He tapped the glove against his leg.

Garvey. Valenzuela. Kershaw.

It was all about loyalty.

“Hello, Don—sorry about that. I had to get clear of the wife. I don’t imagine you’re calling with good news at this time of night.”

“It’s about Mary Grant.”

“Christ…what now? Did something happen to her?”

“She stopped by the impound yard where we were keeping the Ferrari, posing as an FBI agent.”

“Asking about the car?”

“Yessir. Details are sketchy, but at some point there was an exchange of gunfire and a significant explosion. One woman was slightly injured.”

“And?”

“She stole the Ferrari.”

“Mary Grant stole the fucking Ferrari?”

“She was in the company of a tall, dark-haired male. We assume
it’s Tank Potter, the reporter who drove her to the airfield yesterday. Apparently his car was towed to the same yard after he was arrested for a DUI. He must have seen the Ferrari when he came to claim his vehicle.”

“And this happened when?”

“Thirty minutes ago. I’ve been working with local police trying to locate the vehicle, but so far we’ve come up empty-handed.”

“She came at three-thirty posing as an FBI agent to steal the car?”

“That’s about all of it, sir.”

“Shit,” said Mason, almost to himself. “That’s where it was. He must have told her.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, Don. Just thinking out loud.”

“So you have an idea why she wanted the car?”

“This matter doesn’t concern the Austin residency.”

“A question of national security. Yessir. I remember.”

“That’s right.”

“But you see, Stark worked at ONE. Even if it’s a question of national security, as SAC here in Austin, I think I ought to know about a case involving one of the biggest corporate concerns in my area. At least about what angle Joe Grant was following.”

“If you needed to know, we’d have told you already.”

Don Bennett laid his son’s mitt on the porch and set out across the lawn, the dew cold on his feet. He told himself that he was an obedient man. He believed in the chain of command. He was a reliable man. Above all, he was loyal to his own. And that included Joe Grant.

Bennett was thinking about the call Mary Grant had asked about when they’d met for lunch two days earlier. Who, she’d demanded, had called 911 to look after Joe?

Bennett hadn’t answered, though he’d already heard the call himself. It was standard practice in a homicide to gather data from emergency responders. Since then he’d listened to it so many times he had it memorized.

“This is Special Agent Joseph Grant, FBI. Send an ambulance to the Flying V Ranch on Highway 290 exactly nine miles outside of Dripping Springs. I’m parked in a blue Chevy Tahoe. The victim is suffering from a gunshot wound.”

“What is his age?”

“He’s forty-two. Look, I don’t have time. I have to make another call.”

“Is the wound life-threatening?”

“I don’t know yet…I mean, yes, it is—possibly fatal. Send someone. Hurry.”

“Sir, do you know the victim’s name?”

“It’s me. Do you understand? Now do it. And hurry.”

Bennett winced at the memory. Joe Grant had known he was about to be killed and had called in his own evac. And the other call? It was to his wife. The voice message that had been mysteriously erased from her phone. The message that Edward Mason had ordered him to do nothing to help restore. And that was what had Bennett so upset: why hadn’t Joe called him or any one of the other agents at the Austin residency? Why had he called his wife instead?

Edward Mason went on. “Where are they now?”

“No idea. The police tried to follow them, but they didn’t have any vehicles able to keep up.”

“It’s a fire-engine-red sports car. There can’t be too many on the streets at this time of night. All right, then. Get a team out to her home, and to Potter’s, too. I want both of them brought in for questioning.”

“I doubt they’re there. I mean, given the circumstances…”

“She’s got to be somewhere. She’s a mother, not a criminal mastermind. Just do your job. Find her.”

“And the car, sir.”

Bennett could just make out a mangled expletive before the phone went dead.

Inside his home, Don Bennett poured himself a shot of whiskey. He took the glass and sat at the kitchen table, drumming his fingers on the surface. A minute later his phone rang. He checked the number and answered.

“You get that?” he asked.

“Every word.”

“And now?”

“Just do your job.”