CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Kate saw a list with the heading “Active Scavenger Hunts.”

She scanned the list of eight or ten names and blinked in recognition. “That’s my name.”

“Remember what I told you,” Jack cautioned. She realized she had been a little louder than he would have liked.

Kate glanced around. “Sorry.”

Jack watched her a moment to make sure she was going to remain calm before he turned back to the screen.

“It’s been a while since I visited the site. I wanted to know if they had found out about you. Unfortunately, it looks like they have and they’ve added your name to the list. Most likely because you’re related to Everett and John.”

“Great,” Kate said under her breath.

He clicked on her name and another page opened.

Kate was stunned to see that the photos that had been on John’s refrigerator were all posted there. She pulled out the photos in her pocket, the photos she had taken from the pocket of the man she had fought, the man Jack had killed.

They were the exact same photos. All of them had been uploaded to the Scavenger Hunt site.

Kate held up the stack, showing them to Jack, unable to find words.

He nodded in sympathy for her silent anger.

She glanced around, checking the people wandering the store, then pointed at the price for her life under her name.

Two hundred bitcoins.

“That’s nearly a hundred thousand dollars,” he said.

“Why so much more than for John?”

Jack clicked the back button so she wouldn’t have to look at the photos of herself meant to help killers identify her. “It’s a reflection of your ability. A reflection of how much they want you dead.” He gestured at the page with the names. “No one else is bringing that much of a bounty.”

“Some honor,” she said.

The prices ranged mostly from twenty to seventy-five bitcoins. The highest she saw was one hundred, for a man named Philip Morgan. There was a check mark after his name. Underneath, it said, “Scavenger Hunt ended.”

“Where do they get this reward money?” she asked.

Jack shrugged. “They aren’t simply killers. Most are into all kinds of crime—robbery, cybercrime, drug dealing. They see people like you as a professional liability. This is pocket change for them. In Israel the terrorists had all the money they wanted for rewards to kill those like you.”

Kate reached in and clicked on her name to take her back to the page with her photos. She scrolled down the page where there was information about her.

“That’s my Social Security number. And my address. That’s my cell phone number and my license plate number. There’s the address where I work, even the floor.”

She looked back at Jack. “Brian, one of the IT guys at work, said that he had gone to a lot of effort to keep information about me off the internet. He had been trying to protect me, the same as he did for other executives. He said he wanted to make it difficult for anyone I’d fired who might want to retaliate to find out any of my personal information.”

“Personal information is a commodity on the darknet. There is no longer any such thing as data security. That’s an outdated concept. Hackers routinely break into every company, store, agency, even the IRS, and scoop up all the personal information. They steal information on hundreds of thousands of people at a time, every hour, every day, seven days a week.

“If you work for the government, have health insurance, have a bank account, a credit card, a driver’s license, have a mortgage, shop online, have email, are employed, visit social media, register a new appliance, own a car or home, then your personal information has already been stolen and your digital life is for sale somewhere on the darknet.

“Large criminal organizations have sophisticated data-mining departments that sort all that information, slice it and dice it, in any way their customers want. You can buy identities by the dozen or by the tens of thousands, complete with account numbers, passwords, and your mother’s maiden name.

“Everyone’s digital life is available for sale on the darknet. People have no idea how easy it is for bad guys to get access to this kind of personal data.

“Your information would have revealed that you do security audits and have a security clearance. That makes you a much higher-value target. It’s easy to kill someone like John. It’s a lot harder to kill someone who deals in security issues. Your security job is an indication that you have above-normal intelligence, which means you are likely to have a more highly developed ability. A higher ability is a larger danger to them, so that makes you a higher-value target.

“You said that a man was arrested near your office and he had your name on a piece of paper in his pocket?”

“That’s right.”

“He most likely got your name and where you work here, on this site. By how amateurish he was, he was probably a lurker on this site and didn’t really understand its broader purpose. He probably simply got the bright idea that he could make a lot of money and have some excitement doing it. He was undoubtedly coming to kill you.”

“And he killed Wilma instead …” Kate said.

“Like I said, an amateur. A super-predator who can recognize your ability by your eyes would have plotted to capture you so he could have done whatever he wanted with you.”

“Can you change it?” Kate asked, feeling a crushing sense of vulnerability. “Can you go in there and change this information to make it harder to find me?”

“No, unfortunately there’s no way for me to do that,” Jack said. “Wish I could, but I don’t have the site credentials to do that sort of thing.”

“So then they know everything about me. They can find me.”

“If you continue your standard patterns, I’m afraid so. That’s why it was so important for me to get to you first so I could help you.”

“Help me? Good god, Jack,” she said as she gestured angrily at the screen, “how the hell are you going to help me if some psychopath can find me this easily?”

“Kate,” he said, speaking softly to get her to do the same, “I can’t change the world. The only thing I can do is show you what’s really going on and then teach you what I can so that you can better protect yourself. Last night you proved that you have it in you to do what you must to live. You didn’t give in to being a victim. You fought for your life. Whether or not you choose to defend yourself in the bigger picture, or how you choose to do it, is up to you.”

He wiped a hand back across his eyes. “I can’t make this all go away, Kate. I wish I could, but I can’t. I’m only the messenger.”

“I’m sorry.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I know this isn’t your fault.”

He showed her a sad smile as he started to reach for the thumb drive.

“Wait,” she said, grabbing his wrist. “What’s this?”

She moved the cursor to a small box on the left side that said, “Book reviews. Earn extra money.”

“It’s not important,” Jack said, making a dismissive face. “Just more of their hostility.”

Kate clicked on it anyway. It slowly opened a page that had a picture of Jack’s book. Beneath that was the back of the book, showing a photo of Jack standing with his arms folded, leaning a shoulder against a tree. In an unusual twist on the typical author photo, his face was in shadow just enough to be unrecognizable, except that Kate could recognize him by his body language.

Kate read the copy under the book. It explained that the Scavenger Hunt site was paying one bitcoin for each negative review of the book planted on sites like Amazon.

Reviews had to be posted on the Scavenger Hunt site first to prove they originated with a member of the site, and then that same review had to later appear in the reviews section of online book retailers. If it did, it would earn a bitcoin.

Kate clicked on the link to the reviews. When the page opened she scanned down the long list. With a sense of icy recognition, she saw that they were the reviews she had read the night she had met AJ. Under each review it said, “One bitcoin awarded.”

She scrolled down and at the end there was a section with directions on writing an effective negative review. It advised saying that you were a law enforcement professional, or a criminal profiler, or some kind of authority figure on the subject. It gave pointers on how to be dismissive of the book, giving key words to use. Kate recognized all the pointers as having been used in the reviews she read.

She felt sick to her stomach.

She felt her face turning red at the memory of how she had been swayed by those reviews. She prided herself on being a levelheaded investigator able to see through false narratives … and yet she had been duped. Worse, duped by calculating, corrupt people with an agenda.

“These people don’t like the public to know about them, so they try to discredit the book.” Jack gestured to the screen. “When they post these bad reviews, it encourages others to join in. The internet gives people a way to act out while remaining anonymous. It gives them keyboard courage, much the same way hiding behind white pointed hoods gives members of the Ku Klux Klan courage.

“Terrorists have embraced the internet because it’s a perfect environment to incubate hatred and slaughter. It’s all the same base mechanism at work.”

She looked back over her shoulder at him. “But this isn’t fair. Can’t you do something about it?”

“One of the things you need to learn in order to stay under the radar is never complain, never explain.”

“But this keeps you from making a living.”

“The Israelis, remember? I do this because it’s a calling. I have my own reasons for this book and for the new one I’m working on.”

“But if the book sold better,” Kate said, “you could find more people like me.”

He suddenly looked tired and a little defeated. “I’m only one person, Kate. As far as I know, there’s no one else with my ability, no one else like me who can recognize those like you. As it is, I have more people to help than I can handle. Most people I do reach don’t want to hear what I have to say. The book helps me reach others, like it did with AJ, and that led me to you. The simple truth is I can’t help everyone.

“This is all connected to something much larger. This is a speck of dust in the mountain ranges of history. The darknet is a part of that connection. I have to keep my focus on what small part I can play in it. In that context, the reviews are irrelevant to my purpose.

“Much like the industrial revolution changed mankind forever, the internet—and the darknet in particular—represents another paradigm shift in the delicate balance of mankind, but this time it is accelerating nesting events in a negative way.

“I can’t save the world any more than you can. You need to have the right mind-set—survival. This is but one nesting event among many in the great span of time, but one that is monumentally different.

“This time, it may be an extinction-level event.”

Jack pulled the thumb drive out of the computer.

“I don’t understand all of the connections you talk about, or how I fit into them,” Kate said. “I don’t understand what you mean about nesting events.”

“Of course you don’t. I haven’t explained it to you yet.”

“Don’t you think it’s about time you did?”

He peered at her for a moment. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Okay, let’s get something to eat and I’ll explain it.”

Kate had the feeling that her view of the world was about to again shift under her feet.