Deadly Pasts (Agent Nora Wexler Mysteries)

by CR Wiley

  “Really?” he asked. He’d been sweet to be subtle about it, but she needed to let him know beyond all doubt that she was ready to take it all the way.

  “Really. Maybe we can build up the anticipation. Do you have Skype on your laptop? Maybe I can talk you into a video chat one of these nights instead,” she proposed.

  “A video chat? I could be up for that,” he said, playing it cool. “I just need to figure out what Skype is.”

  “OK, you do that and maybe also think about a good time for you with the parameters that it has to be right after you’ve gotten back from the gym but before you’ve ducked into the shower.”

  “Sure. That would probably be right around the same time that you’ve taken off your work clothes but before you’ve put on your pajamas, right?”

  “I think it would. All right, Travis. I’ve got to go. And one more thing. Thanks for understanding,” she said. After hanging up, Nora glanced back at Lauren’s room and wondered what she’d have to do to figure out what happened to that poor girl.

  CHAPTER 10

  FBI FIELD OFFICE

  200 MCCARTY AVENUE

  ALBANY, NY

  Early Monday morning, Travis went to work feeling more energized and determined than usual. It wasn’t just the promise of a video chat and skin from Nora, nor was it the imminent briefing on the FBI data center hacking. For the first time in his long career with the army and then the FBI, Travis Greer was going to withhold information from his superiors.

  Since Saturday, when he’d told Boffman that he could use the credit card number to lead them to Danny Paulk, Travis was tossing and turning about the scope of the manhunt that would ensue. Travis was intimately aware of how they would pinpoint his location and close in, but for the life of him he couldn’t find Danny on the Internet no matter how many Google searches he did.

  “Big day today,” Boffman said, greeting Travis from the coffee bar at the office’s entrance. “Nine sharp.”

  Travis nodded, knowing that was when he’d need to hand over the card number. That left a scant fifteen minutes to get his own private operation going.

  He slid into the chair behind his desk, then pulled out his phone, and a new phone he’d bought the day before. Taking the new phone, his first move was to perform the same idiot Google search for hackers that a second grader would’ve done. It produced the same web forums and chat rooms, but instead of scrolling past them he opened one up and created an account with the username IHOP_SugarPackets, after Danny’s most prominent preoccupation when they had met.

  Starting a new chat window, Travis typed and then sent a two-word message to an otherwise vacant chat room. The two words were Danny Paulk.

  The only thing he could count on was that everybody else was better with computers than he was. If Danny wasn’t good enough to catch wind of this tiny message in the vast ocean of the Internet, he’d end up paying dearly for it.

  Hiding the new phone in a drawer, Travis picked up his old phone and proceeded to the briefing room. Boffman and a tech were already hooking up a few video links with the large monitors against the back wall. One was already connected, and Travis found himself staring at an oversized image of Seattle’s Agent Meron on the screen. He looked self-assured, relaxed even, after nudging Nora out of her job.

  To Travis’s surprise, he nodded cordially at Travis, who returned the gesture and took his seat. Travis should’ve guessed that Meron would be knee deep in this investigation. It made the prospect of handing over crucial information that much less appealing.

  Soon a video link with the FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC was in place. The grizzled face that appeared on the screen was that of Guy Bompart, the FBI’s assistant director and second in command. His face had suffered scars, burns, and deep wrinkles, but it was the deep scowl that seemed to be a black hole of happiness. Travis knew that the FBI’s mission required deadly seriousness, but he was glad his video chat with Nora wouldn’t be anything like this.

  “Are we all set here?” Boffman said. A few other agents had filed into the room. It piqued Travis’s interest to see who was and wasn’t involved in the operation. Some of these guys had no more computer expertise than he did.

  Guy Bompart’s raspy voice echoed through the speakers.

  “Let me start by congratulating Lores Meron on his recent promotion. Special Agent in Charge of the Seattle Division will be an excellent addition to your distinguished resume,” he said. Boffman clapped too enthusiastically while Meron nodded and allowed a grin to spread across his lips.

  “Thank you for that. All I’m trying to do is help the bureau to the best of my abilities,” Meron said.

  “Considerable abilities,” Boffman added.

  Travis paused. Boffman had been Special Agent in Charge for years. Why was he sucking up to someone who’d only just gotten the job? More than that, he marveled at the timing of it: Nora losing her job, Meron’s promotion, and the previous Special Agent in Charge, Johnson, getting brushed aside all in one week was a more dramatic shakeup than Travis ever remembered.

  “Quite right,” Bompart continued. “Since discovering the breach had occurred at one of our primary data centers in southwestern Montana last week, we’ve had an unnervingly difficult time figuring out what they took. We still don’t know exactly how they were able to enter the system. Other than the possibility of a phishing attack getting them in, it’s possible the recently revealed bugs in basic Internet encryption software provided an open window for the invasion.

  “The only identifiable indication we have about the hackers is a piece of code, known as command: sync. It is part of a digital signature, so to speak, of the group OpenSwordsed. The command was found embedded in a section relating to personnel, and the worst-case scenario is that the perpetrators have downloaded the complete record of our field agents and all currently running operations. This poses a grave threat; it could cost lives.

  “Although we’ve known about this group for years, they’ve largely been content with the digital equivalent of horseplay. That includes messing with the websites of political groups, celebrities, or social organizations that they deemed hypocritical. This is their first foray into more sinister activities, and as a result we’ve upgraded their threat level.

  “The secretive nature of this group has long been vexing. Unlike other collectives that take credit for their hacks or even use social media, there’s no indication that anyone has ever acknowledged belonging to this group. We’ve got basic demographic information on a few of the founders, and we hope that once we get our hands on one of them the rest will fall.”

  Travis listened, took a few notes, and tried to follow along as things got more technical. The specific encryption loophole that allowed for the invasion had been eliminated as soon as it was discovered, but the FBI still had people combing through every line of code for unauthorized activity in case they’d installed a backdoor.

  Meron took a sip of water and then addressed the team. Behind him were another dozen or so agents assigned to the case.

  “Bringing in the leaders of this group before they can release any sensitive information is of paramount importance. If we can do that, we might be able to prevent any knowledge of this incident from getting out to the public at all. Now, I believe Agent Boffman’s team has intel that could lead us to the capture of one of these leaders,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s correct. Agent Greer,” Boffman said, turning away from the monitor and extending a hand to Travis.

  “Travis, excellent,” Meron said. “Seattle hasn’t been the same since you left.”

  The smile on Meron’s face seemed genuine enough, but it rang hollow in light of the contentious relationship they had while working on the prescription drug ring case. The pleasantness was extremely opportunistic, a sign of how badly they needed a lead on Danny Paulk. The briefing had given Travis information about what might’ve been taken and how the hackers got in, but it didn’t tell him what he really
wanted to know.

  At Boffman’s urging, Travis stood up and approached the front of the room. His shirt felt tight against his shoulders. He needed to walk a very fine line between pressing for information and challenging them. If he gave them any reason to guess he wasn’t completely supportive of the mission, he’d find himself out of a job as quickly as Nora did.

  “It turned out being in Seattle was more useful than I thought,” Travis said. “Agent Wexler was an old acquaintance of Danny Paulk, and she called in a favor to him, to help out with the Shotterham case. As it happened, I saw him use a credit card and tucked the number away in my memory.”

  “That’s excellent, Travis. We’ve got a terminal set up where you can enter it to begin the search. Paulk and the others don’t have anything registered in their own names, so getting a fix on a key alias could lead us right to him,” Boffman said, patting Travis on the back.

  “I’d imagine it would,” Travis said, typing just three digits into the box on the screen. “But I need a quick point of clarification. I realize much of it is conjecture at this point, but what is the established hypothesis that links Nora Wexler to the data breach?”

  He asked it casually, as if he wanted to know what the cafeteria was serving for lunch, glancing at the large screens featuring the two men running the operation. Meron had a pinched face but didn’t say anything. Bompart leaned closer to the camera in front of him, bringing is scars and burns into a clearer view.

  “You’re not holding this information hostage for something, are you, Agent Greer?” Bompart asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Greer said, feeling a tinge in his heart at having to fold so quickly. “I thought that would be part of the briefing though.”

  Bompart cleared his throat.

  “As you know, Paulk and Wexler had been acquaintances for years. While the weakness in the encryption masks the exact method of entry, there’s a strong reason to believe that Paulk developed a familiarity with our systems during his unapproved assistance on the Shotterham case. That allowed him to locate and gain access to the data center servers.”

  Travis felt extremely fortunate that Bompart had decided to volunteer that information. If he’d ordered it, Travis would’ve had to hand over the rest of the credit card number. But even such a slim explanation put Travis within reach of what he was looking for.

  “Understood completely,” he said, hoping he wasn’t about to push it too far. “The link between Wexler and Paulk is undeniable, yet still circumstantial as we all acknowledge. Hypothetically, once the OpenSwordsed leaders were captured and their methods became known, if it became clear that the nature of the breach did not reflect any conscious or unconscious assistance from Wexler, would she then be eligible for readmission to her position?”

  It was impossible to watch Boffman, Meron, and Bompart all at once. Travis had a hunch that tossing Nora out was personal for Meron, possibly even Boffman. But did a desire to use her as a scapegoat transcend the facts even for Bompart? The man’s face betrayed little emotion, just the unceasing calculations of a master.

  “I’m just not sure we can trust—” Meron began, only to be cut off.

  “I don’t see why not,” Bompart said. It was difficult for Travis to mask his sudden relief. “If there’s no longer any question about her loyalties or ability to safeguard confidential information, she could be a valuable asset getting Paulk to cooperate.”

  Before anyone could say anything, Travis completed typing the credit card number, allowing the search to begin. He glanced at the doors in the back of the room, knowing he had to get out of the room as soon as possible. Bompart had paved a road that would bring Nora back into the bureau, but it still required her to be right that she hadn’t materially helped Danny, as she believed. Not that Meron would tell Travis if she were innocent.

  “Then let’s bring him in and see what he knows,” Travis said, leaving the standing terminal and heading back to the rear of the room.

  “Once we’ve run this card, I want men at the address to pick him up as fast as humanly possible,” Meron ordered, clapping his hands. Suddenly everyone in the room was in motion, but none of them exited the room faster than Travis. With dozens of agents focused on combing through the data of prior purchases and identifying the location of its user, the next step would be reaching someone local to move in on the target until the closest agents could arrive.

  Travis had to reach Danny first, or else any chance of finding out what really happened would be gone.

  Even the walk back to his office took excruciatingly long. Travis broke into a run as soon as he turned the corner. He didn’t have a second to waste. He stormed into his office, darted toward the desk, and pulled the phone from the drawer.

  Bringing up the chat window on the screen, he saw that someone with the username cat_food had responded with a simple question mark. It had to be Danny, making a subtle reference to Shotterham’s Achilles heel. Travis’s pounding heart made it difficult to type his reply. If Danny wasn’t paying attention to the screen right this second, it could all be over. Travis had no doubt they were already closing in on his location.

  Hitting “enter,” for the first time in his career Travis knowingly undermined the FBI.

  “Get out now. They’re coming.”

  CHAPTER 11

  15 NW YORK STREET

  PORTLAND, OR

  Sitting in the first-floor apartment of a three-story Victorian building near the train tracks and the Willamette River, Danny Paulk stared at the words that appeared on the screen: Get out now. They’re coming.

  Danny snorted and began to type a response, asking if it was a joke. His self-made program trawling the Internet for mentions of his name, OpenSwordsed, and celebrity nude pictures had turned up a solitary chat message from someone who knew he liked to play with sugar packets at IHOP. How many people knew that? Not many. Danny guessed it was Nora.

  Assuming the message came from Nora gave it more credence than he originally allowed. He deleted the response he was typing, then started over. He simply typed “why,” but a sudden knock at the door erased any time for hesitating. Danny killed the browser window, which was preset to wipe browsing history and cookies, tore a portable hard drive from his computer, and went for the door.

  Another loud knock caught his ears, and he knew they were finally coming for him. As he passed through the hall he spotted a police cruiser out front and an officer moving left toward the backdoor. He was running out of options and had no choice but to take the risk of walking straight to the front door, which he imagined would bust open at any second.

  His eyes fixed on the door in front of him, he was just feet away when he took a sudden right into the bathroom.

  “This is the police! Open up now!” a voice shouted through the paper-thin walls. Danny had to be quiet and fast. Standing on the toilet, he undid an already loose screw attached to a ceiling light covering a hole to the apartment upstairs. In the back of the house, the door handle jiggled audibly.

  Danny stared at the hole in the ceiling before reaching up and putting his hands on the floor of the level above. It was slimy, hard to get a good grip, and Danny’s arm strength was zero, but he groaned and jerked himself high enough to grab a pipe underneath the sink on the second floor. He pulled himself up and dragged his legs through the hole.

  It only took one attempt to bust open the front door and give the officer free run of the apartment. Danny didn’t know how long it would take them to spot the screw on the floor or realize the ceiling light was being held up by a rubber band.

  “Dude, what’s going on?” Danny’s upstairs neighbor, Jarred, said. Jarred was tall and lanky, into first-person shooter games like Call of Duty. As far as Jarred knew, Danny was just another gamer geek, inclined to League of Legends.

  “Give me your phone,” Danny said, pulling his own phone out of his pocket. “Come on. I’ll make it up to you.”

  Odds were he’d never see Jarred again, whether or not he end
ed up in handcuffs. Jarred was dumb enough to make the trade. His neighbor’s smartphone in hand, Danny ran to a window. He yanked it open, cringing at the noise he was making.

  “Seriously?” Jarred asked.

  “It’s the bookies. I owe them some money. Tell them it’s under my bed,” Danny said as he stuck one leg out and onto the roof of the front porch. Loud noise came from the bathroom below. The cops were only one step behind. Danny had to move fast.

  With no time to waste, he ran to the edge of the roof and leapt over a wooden fence into the adjacent yard, tumbling onto hard dirt and patchy grass.

  He scrambled across the street, his neck turned and eyes fixed on the front of his apartment building should anyone be coming after him.

  “Hey, watch it!” a driver yelled. Danny had almost walked straight into his vehicle. He said nothing, brushing the car’s hood as he kept moving. The car continued on, but Danny spotted a sleek black sedan turning the corner onto the street. He rushed to his destination, the warehouse repurposed into an office building that was just across the street. He slipped through the door and raced up the flights of stairs to the third floor, where the lounge of a dentist’s office looked out onto his street and his home. The receptionist there would recognize him and rat him out should anyone ask, but by then he’d be long gone. He just had to find a spot where he could safely stay for one minute, long enough to collect himself and come up with a plan.

  Trying not to draw unnecessary attention, Danny slowly turned the handle and moved to the chairs against the window. Slinking down, he glanced back at his house while pulling out Jarred’s phone. The police had made it up to Jarred’s apartment and were questioning him. The black sedan was parked in front of the building and another police cruiser had appeared. The front door was wide open. Someone in a suit was carrying out one of his computer towers. Danny clenched his teeth.