I’m selling my truck,” Ross told all his friends on Facebook. “Make me an offer!”
Fall had blanketed over Austin, with 2011 nearing its end, and Ross had only two weeks to get his life packed into boxes and sell everything else before he left town.
Fudging Erica. If she hadn’t posted that tormenting message on Facebook about Ross being a drug lord or kingpin or whatever, he wouldn’t be in such a rush to leave the country. Weeks before the chaos erupted he had been thinking of going to see his sister, Cally, in Australia for a while, to get some space from Julia and his Texan friends and family, but now the trip was a must, and it was on fast-forward.
Ross was pretty sure he had deleted Erica’s terrifying post in time, but if he had not, and someone had actually seen it, he would find himself in more trouble than he was capable of dealing with. He also had no way of knowing if Erica’s Facebook outburst was the last he would hear from her. If she truly wanted to be vindictive, she could easily go one step further and tell the FBI or DEA, or even those senators who had painted a bull’s-eye on the Silk Road months earlier.
One thing was certain: Ross didn’t want to take any chances. He scrambled, getting his life in order to make a quick and easy break from Austin to Australia.
The truck sold quickly. His personal belongings were handed down or given away. He stuffed other things in boxes and hid them under his bed at his parents’ house, next to the box of Dungeons & Dragons miniatures he had painted as a child. He packed the few belongings he needed day to day, including his gray V-neck T-shirt, his single pair of jeans, and, most important of all, his laptop.
Paranoia had started consuming his thoughts, leaving Ross on edge about those around him. Was the DEA or the FBI hunting for him? Was he a cop? Was she? What did everyone know? But the most stressful thoughts centered around those whom he had told about the Silk Road.
It wasn’t that Ross had been stupid or naive in telling them about the site. Rather, back then, when he first shared his secret, Ross could never have predicted that the Silk Road would grow as big as it had. In his mind on opening day, he had imagined a few dozen people shopping in his online marketplace. That had quickly turned into thousands. Now, with the media, the senators, and who knew how many people in law enforcement looking for him, he needed to backtrack.
A few days before he left for Australia, his bags packed, his passport and laptop ready to go, Ross went over to his friend Richard Bates’s house and knocked on his door. Richard had all but stopped helping Ross with the programming problems on the Silk Road, fearing the site was growing too big and terrified by the attention it was receiving in the press. But he was still the only person besides Julia who knew the true identity of the site’s creator. Ross had to fix that before anyone else found out.
It was early evening on November 11, 2011, and for weeks nerdy Richard had been planning a party to celebrate the mathematical anomaly of 11/11/11, when the day, the month, and the year all lined up to create a string of elevens. Ross showed up before the festivities began, knocking on Richard’s door with a somewhat panicked rattle.
“I need to talk to you about something,” Ross declared. They both wandered inside Richard’s stark white, almost medically clean apartment, marred only by a few decorations for that night’s festivities. “Have you told anybody about—you know—about my involvement in the Silk Road?”
Richard spoke in his usual timid whisper, explaining nervously that he had almost told someone but then hadn’t, so in short, no. No one else knew.
Ross expanded on his question, telling Richard that someone had posted a message on Facebook about Ross running a drug Web site that the authorities would surely like to know about.
Hearing this, Richard felt that familiar wave of fear shroud him. Surely he was an accomplice to Ross, having helped him build the site and knowing who ran it. Frail Richard could go to jail for the rest of his life, as could Ross. And if there was one thing Richard was definitely not built for, it was life behind bars. “You’ve got to shut the site down,” Richard pleaded. “This is not worth going to prison over.”
Ross had anticipated this response. “I can’t shut the site down,” he replied.
“Why?”
“Because,” Ross solemnly said to his friend, “I gave the site to someone else.”