I wake up mid-afternoon and drag myself into a shower. Between the sleepless night of worry about Caroline and the unexpected but brutally satisfying sex reunion with Jason, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. Steam, soap, and then sliding into a belted caftan for a coffee run all help me feel a bit more human.
But my bravado that maybe everything is going to be fine only lasts until I step outside, and I find Jason waiting for me, leaning against the side of his car.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I tell him.
He raises an eyebrow, either at my premise or choice of words, I’m not sure. I don’t care. Frustration swells in my chest.
I gesture at the car, and his suit, and the sweltering heat of the late D.C. summer shimmering around us. “How long have you been waiting here?”
“Half an hour.” He points to the passenger door. “Get in.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Except I know why.
“It turns out, I don’t have your number.”
“Weird.”
He shrugs. “I was waiting for Wilson to track down one of your neighbors when you came downstairs.”
“I was just going to get some food. We didn’t make it into my kitchen, but the cupboards are quite bare.”
“We can pick something up on the way. Or get delivery.”
“And where do you think you’re going to take me?”
“The office. Wilson has some things to show you.”
I hesitate. “Something good?”
“I’m not wasting your time, Ellie. Get in the car.”
We don’t talk about our early morning boundary-obliterating sex. We don’t talk at all as he navigates through the busy afternoon traffic, or on the quiet and quick elevator ride up from the parking garage to the third floor.
It’s reassuring, actually. This isn’t Jason vs. Ellie, this is Melinda Gray being invited to the Horus Group offices for a reason that isn’t yet clear.
We don’t go to the boardroom. Instead, Jason leads me to Wilson’s cavelike command central of an office. He’s the only partner who doesn’t have a window, by his own preference.
Jason stops me at the door. “How do you feel about signing an NDA?”
I jut my chin at him. “I’d rather try my luck with the wi-fi at the coffee shop downstairs and whatever teenage hackers I can find on Reddit, thanks.”
He sighs. “I thought that would be your answer. So I’m going to ignore you said that and tell you some shit anyway, because maybe the only way to get you to trust me is to show my trust in you. But everything you see and hear in this office is off the record, background only. Understand?”
I nod.
Inside, the hacker is waiting for us. Spread out over three screens are the contents of a classic Horus Group dossier.
Jeff Mayfair, their client.
And one of the screens shows Mayfair with a young girl, too young to be in a photo with a grown man. I recognize the setting immediately. “That’s Lively’s private plane.”
“Hello to you, too,” Wilson says. “And you’re correct.”
“You don’t think the photo is real.”
“Mayfair insists that it’s not, and we believe him. He has provided comprehensive travel records, and there is zero overlap with Lively. In fact, Jeff had gone out of his way over the years to avoid Lively, which makes targeting him an interesting and not particularly well-thought-out decision.”
“Interesting.” I scour the other screens. “Was the blackmail all via email?”
“Yep. And it dropped off immediately when we had Mayfair get ahead of the NDA story.”
“I thought that had your fingerprints on it. So he’s not running for office?”
“Never.” Wilson smirks.
“Who else has been blackmailed?”
They don’t answer. I look back and forth between Jason and Wilson. “Do you not know of any other targets, or you can’t say?”
“We don’t have any other clearly identified targets. But we suspect there are others.”
“Of course there are others.” I think hard about how much I want to share. Protecting my story isn’t just about getting the headline, or not wanting to be scooped. It’s about who gets to control the narrative. And these two are kings at twisting narratives to suit their purposes. “There are rumors Lively had a massive document collection. Video, photographs, emails. But it didn’t come out in discovery, and now that he’s dead there’s no reason for the Feds to keep it private—and from some of my sources, I’m told they have told survivors that they don’t have it. They believe it’s just a rumor.”
Jason’s jaw twitches. “Is that what Caroline was working on?”
“No.”
He eyes my rapid response with suspicion. “Are you sure?”
“She didn’t work on Lively’s case. Wrong jurisdiction. He didn’t have a residence here, none of the crimes were committed here. And you know that.”
“Not the sex trafficking,” he acknowledges. “But I’ve heard things too. Money laundering. Campaign finance violations. And those could be investigated in Virginia.”
I don’t respond to that. It’s off-topic, and a fishing expedition. “The Feds don’t have these documents. If they did, there would be no value in the blackmailing efforts with fakes.”
“So you know this photo is a fake?”
I nod grimly. “I sure do. I’ve poured over a lot of photos from Lively’s plane. See that bar in the background? That was replaced with an extra chair almost a decade ago. But this photo of Mayfair is newer than that.”
“It’s not a single image, at least not one that Mayfair has access to,” Wilson says. “I ran image comparisons against every photo I could get my hands on, and nothing pinged. It also has a couple of weird pixel spots where it could be doctored.”
“A composite image.” I think about my conversation with Detective Browning. “If they’re this good, it will make it very hard to trust evidence. That benefits chaos agents more than anyone else. And the mission discipline to keep this from exploding—this isn’t being outsourced. We’re looking at chaos agents who have the capabilities to do all of this in-house. International bank accounts, masking digital trails, and photo manipulation.”
Jason points to the photographs. “What if the entire rumored massive document collection that you’ve heard about is fake? Could these blackmail attempts be an effort to validate the existence of something which does not actually exist?”
I run that scenario through the loose connections I have in my head. “It’s possible. A red herring. But we know that Lively took photos—so it makes sense that there are more, a lot more. The red herring theory could be a red herring in itself.” I sigh. “But finding it is proving impossible. Whoever does could be leaking the biggest hack of documents since the Panama Papers.”
If that person is me, I’m going to call them the Pervert Papers. I keep that part to myself.
We run through the all the facts a few more times, coming at them from different directions, until my stomach rumbles.
Jason immediately offers to order in dinner. He points at Wilson. “You want something?”
“From where? That Filipino place?”
“Yeah.”
“Get me my usual.”
The deja vu is fucking with my head. And the ordinary office-ness of the whole exchange, when we’ve just been talking about blackmail and misdirection at the highest levels…it’s bizarre.
Jason turns to me. “And you?”
“I’ll have one of everything,” I quip. “No seriously, I’ll have whatever you’re having. And maybe whatever Wilson is having too. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“I hope because you were sleeping.” Jason gives me a look like he doubts that I was, except I was, and I don’t need to tell him either way.
I smile sweetly until he leaves. Then I turn back to Wilson. “Can I ask you another question?”
“Shoot.”
“Hypothetically, if this stockpile of incriminating evidence is so hard to get our hands on…could we assume it’s behind an air-gap protection? On a closed network?”
He gives me an impressed look. “Nice hypothesis. Do you have one in mind?”
“I was just wondering if there’s any data in the images that might give us a clue to how they were removed from that system.”
“You think maybe the fakes come from the same network? Why not keep the real documents in a secure location and not worry about the fakes?”
“Someone like Mayfair has all the resources in the world to throw at proving something is fake. You have to make it at least a little hard. So just in case…I wonder if there is signature data somewhere.”
“The EXIF data was wiped,” Wilson said. “One of the first things we looked at. But let’s look at the other metadata.” He right clicks on the image and opens the properties tab. It all looks exactly as one would expect, with no flashing lights that pointed to an evil enterprise having created it.
It was created the day it was emailed to Jeff Mayfair, which doesn’t surprise me. The time matches up to the email almost exactly, so the previous metadata was wiped. It wasn’t actually created four and a half minutes before being emailed, it was just copied into existence in its new location then.
I frown.
Four and a half minutes.
“Show me the other email. The other image. The times.” I trace my finger over the metadata on the screen. Four and a half minutes again. “That’s weird, right? And it’s not precise, it’s a few seconds off. But the files were created, then roughly four and a half minutes later, they were emailed. What if that’s how long it takes to transfer the images from one part of a network to another?”
“That’s a slow-ass network.”
“Dial-up speeds.”
Wilson does some quick math on a pad of paper. “Worse.”
“What if they’re using something like that, a dial-out technology, to create temporary connections across a network?”
He shakes his head. “Yeah, I mean it’s possible. But I have another idea. It’s possible to use FM frequency signals to cross an air-gap to a closed network. Usually it’s a hacking scenario, but what it could be used deliberately.”
My eyes light up. “Wait, it can be used to hack into a system?”
“Sure. Easier for an insider to do it than an outsider. But not impossible. There’s been some good research about jamming those networks with radio waves, too. How much do you know about closed systems?”
“It’s not connected to the internet, so there’s no way for hackers to get in. And they can’t order takeout.”
He laughs.
“I have my priorities straight,” I point out.
We’re still talking about what those systems look like—including the wild potential of custom storage devices to avoid any USB thumb drive access—when Jason returns.
“Food’s here.” He hands Wilson a takeout bag. His gaze lingers on me. “Are you guys done? Do you want to eat in my office?”
A flush of heat sweeps through me. “Yeah. Almost, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Wilson doesn’t acknowledge the undercurrent, but I’m sure he caught it. Wilson doesn’t miss much. He opens his dinner—a rice bowl with spiced meat, pickled onions, and a couple of lemons on the side—as I flip through my notebook.
“So if there is a database locked away in a closed network like that, what you’re saying is, it would take being physically present to copy it, and then I’d need some way to read a custom storage device if we were able to even get to that point.”
He shrugs. “Pretty much. But data is all the same. Building a reader would be the easy part. Which is the thing that’s always the weak point. Data exists, ergo, data can be copied. Better to have tight op-sec than build a labyrinthian system. Besides, someone can always just take the entire computer. And there are downsides to an air-gapped network, too.”
“Like what?”
“The most obvious is that if the servers are destroyed, it’s gone. No cloud backup.”
I scribble down, what are the chances a narcissist destroys that kind of record?
Wilson reads my mind. “That kind of total destruction is always done as a last resort. People like Lively—and you and I both know there are others out there, exactly like him—they don’t think they’re going to get caught. He didn’t think he was going to get caught the second time, even after we took him down once.” He grins. “That was very well done on your part.”
But it wasn’t enough. “He still weaseled out in the end.”
“Yeah. They do that.”
“They?”
“Motherfucking assholes.”
“Amen.” I flip the notebook shut. “Thanks for the context.”
“Anytime.” He picks the lemons off his rice bowl. “I need to remember to tell them to leave these off next time.”
I laugh. “More for those of us who love them. I grew up eating them like oranges. Love me some acid on my food. Limes, too. So good.”
“Get out of my office,” he says fondly. “Jason is waiting for you.”
I grin. “I’ve missed this. Don’t tell him I said this, but I am genuinely sorry that I deceived you guys before. Working here was a genuine joy. You were my friends for real.”
“Your secret is safe with me.” He winks. “Now get out so I can be a picky eater in peace.”
I’m giggling as I arrive in Jason’s office.
“Wilson entertained you?”
“Something like that. He was always my fav, you know.”
“I’ll choose not to be offended by that,” Jason murmurs. His desk is spread with takeout containers, and the echo of a time long ago hits me right in the chest.
“You were my secret favorite for other reasons.”
“Were?”
“I don’t have favorites any more. Life got too complicated for that.”
“Fair enough. Sit. Eat.”
I dig in. “Wilson’s changed. He’s softer.”
“Becoming a father will do that to a guy, I’ve heard.”
My head swivels to the doorway, to the hallway I just came from, then snaps back to Jason. “He has a kid?”
He nods. “Two of them now. A girl and a baby boy.”
“Aww.” That makes me happy. “What are their names?”
Jason smirks. “None of your business.”
I deserve that. “Okay.”
“No, for real. He keeps that secret. We don’t know, either.”
That honestly doesn’t surprise me. “I’ve missed a lot.”
“You haven’t been watching?”
How do I explain that I left because I couldn’t spy on him? I turned my back, and I meant it. I stayed away for years. “No.”
His gaze is piercing. Analytical. “There’s more to it than that.”
“Isn’t there always?” I part my lips and tease the corner of my mouth with the tip of my tongue. Wet, slick. Pink. I’m offering him a distraction and we both know it. “Have you interrogated me enough?”
“I thought it was the other way around.” His gaze stays locked on my mouth.
Do you want me on my knees?
I would suck him off for the joy of it, but if he thinks I’m offering my mouth to get out of this conversation, that’s fine, too.
But he’s not done with questions. “Why Melinda?”
I smile. “It’s my name.”
“Is it?”
“I’m actually not very good at false identities, so I try to keep it simple. Variations on a theme, if you will.”
“And Gray…”
“That’s made up.”
“Any chance you’ll share your real last name?”
My smile is a proper grin now. “Nope.”
“Just checking.”
My phone vibrates in my bag, and I reach down to grab it. But it’s not my main phone. It’s the burner that I use with Caroline. Fingers shaking, I pick it up.