by David Hosp
‘So you killed her and framed me.’
‘I killed her. You framed yourself.’
‘And this?’ I waved my arm around the room.
‘This is the way I put all of this behind me,’ he says. ‘This is Josh’s little hobby room. I knew neither one of you would go away easily, particularly her,’ he nods at Yvette, who is still groggy. ‘She wasn’t going to let the man she loved go to prison without a fight, and she’s a hell of a hacker. This way, I give the cops their easy solution. They’ll find the LifeScene I planted on Josh’s computer and assume Josh killed you both, and then accidentally killed himself while jerking off. Auto-asphyxiation can be a tricky business.’
‘So here we are,’ I say.
‘Here we are,’ he agrees. ‘I’m not happy about it, but I have no choice.’ He reaches into his pocket. ‘Fortunately for you, I’m not cruel, and I like you.’ He tosses a bottle of pills at my feet. ‘Take those, and you won’t feel a thing.’
‘What are they?’ I ask.
‘Rohypnol. It’s a high concentration – the same thing I gave her,’ he nods again at Yvette. ‘If you hadn’t been early, she would never have been aware of any of this. Seriously, who comes to something like this early?’ He laughs at his own joke. ‘You always were the conscientious one, weren’t you?’
‘You didn’t . . . ?’ At this point I’m not sure even why the answer matters to me, but it does.
‘Touch her?’ Jackson smiles. It’s the first time I’ve really seen the evil in his eyes. ‘This isn’t about sex for me, Nick. This is about money and power. With the information that NetMaster and I have access to, through the system, we can make more money than even Josh could have imagined, and the amount of power we have is immeasurable.’
‘He’s dead,’ I say.
Tom hesitates. ‘Who is dead?’
‘NetMaster. I killed him.’ It’s only partially true, but I’m trying to rattle Tom as much as possible – trying to buy some time. By the look on his face, I have.
It takes a moment for him to respond, but he regains his composure. ‘An inconvenience, to be sure. But I have access to his networks, and it’s the information that matters most. People across the world log onto our system, and give us their names and their identification numbers and their credit-card numbers. They let us watch as they surf for porn, and email old lovers and order hookers. And all the while they assume that their information is safe. Why? Because we tell them it is. They’re willing to stick their heads in the sand because we offer them convenience – one-stop shopping for everything they want to do. They believe their information is safe because we tell them it is.’
‘You have stock in the company,’ I say. ‘Why would you need this?’
‘I want both. And I wanted the ability to tell this asshole to fuck off.’ He points his gun briefly at Josh Pinkerton’s corpse. ‘You never had to deal with him very often. His idea of a management strategy was to humiliate those who worked hardest for him.’ He looks around the room at all the implements of torture. ‘Apparently that was a theme that ran through his private life as well. He had no idea what was happening anymore, right up to the point where I came up behind him.’
‘You don’t have to do this,’ I say.
‘Yes, I do. Now take the pills.’
‘No.’
He walks around me, brandishing his gun the entire way, moving over toward Yvette. She is still chained to the wall by one hand, still wobbly. Her free arm dangles loosely at her side, and she’s leaning heavily against the wall. He puts the gun to her head. ‘Take the pills, or I’ll kill her now.’
‘You’ll kill her anyway.’
He cocks his revolver. ‘Now.’
‘Okay!’ I shout. I lean down and pick up the pill bottle. I open it and take one out, pop it in my mouth and swallow. I look at her. ‘I’m sorry, Yvette.’
‘It’s not your fault. Are you ready?’ She’s slurring still, and for a moment I don’t understand what she is saying. I give her a curious look. ‘Are you ready?’ she asks again. Suddenly she straightens up and her free hand grabs for the gun pointed at her head. ‘Now!’ she yells.
Her attack takes both Tom and me by surprise. Tom’s arm jerks upward and the gun goes off. I can hear the bullet ricochet off the rock ceiling, and feel a rush of air as it passes close by me. I dart toward the two of them, my shoulder lowered, driving into his chest. He is thrown back into the leather-covered wall, loses his gun. It clatters across the floor to the other side of the room. I pull my fist back and I hit him hard in the stomach, knocking him to the floor. I’m on top of him, pummeling away at his face and torso.
‘Get him!’ Yvette screams. I can see her, frantically trying to free her other hand from the wall, but with only one hand to work on the straps, it doesn’t look like she’s having much success.
Tom is so shocked by the instant turn of events that it takes him a moment to react. Once he does, though, he fights back hard. He manages to block two of my blows in succession and lands two of his own, right in my face. I’m knocked back and hit the wall, stunned. It’s odd – they were decent punches, but they seemed to have a greater impact on me than I would have expected.
I flail around, trying to grab something to fight with. My hand grasps something long and thin and metal, hanging from the wall. I pull it free and get to my feet, holding it like a spear.
Tom is struggling to get to his feet, his face bloodied. He looks for his gun and sees it across the room. I swing the pole at his head and hit the mark – the point opens up a gash above his right eye. I bring the pole back and ready myself for a second swing, but as I do, my vision blurs, and the momentum of my backswing carries me to the floor. I try to get up, but my legs don’t seem to be working. I realize that the drug is taking effect, and the recognition makes my struggle to control my muscles more desperate. I feel like a fish on land, though, as I flop and toss myself to try to get vertical.
Tom sees my distress and clambers to his feet. He walks steadily over to his gun and picks it up, walks back to me and looks down at me.
I can no longer move. I am lying on the floor, my eyes open, just taking it all in. The drug is so powerful that I no longer even care, really, and I am willing to accept my fate.
Tom points the gun at my head. ‘I’m sorry, Nick. I really am.’
Behind him, I sense movement, and even in my haze I’m curious about what it could be. Tom’s mouth opens wide, as though he’s going to say one last word to me, but no sound comes out. He looks so odd, just standing there in silence, his gun raised at me.
I see it come through his chest. It pokes out at first, like a worm trying to get out of his shirt. The fabric tears and I can see the sharp point as the red stain on his chest appears and grows. The tip grows and gets longer, sticking out of his chest like a horizontal flagpole. Then it withdraws and disappears. Tom still stands there, looking at me as a dribble of blood runs from the corner of his mouth.
He collapses, and once he does I can see behind him. Yvette has managed to free her hand, and she is standing there with a sword she’s taken from the wall. She’s holding it like a warrior, the blood running down the blade.
I smile at her. ‘You’re a remarkable woman,’ I say. ‘Can I say it now?’
She nods.
I take a deep breath. ‘I love you, too,’ I say.
The world narrows and fades to black as I pass out.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
I open my eyes and she is there, lying next to me in her bed, half covered with the sheet. I can see the soft curve of her shoulder and the undulation of defined muscle where her shoulder rolls into her triceps. Her back is lean, her skin smooth, marred only by a two-inch scar where she cut it on a fence when she was thirteen. I remember when it happened; I was there. She and I were drinking down by the old junkyard by the water, sipping some God-awful Mad Dog she’d boosted from the bottle that her dad kept under the kitchen sink. It was one of those nights that sticks in the memo
ry like a marker in time. Our lives have moments like that – primary moments – from which everything else flows. The day my father died . . . the night I lost my virginity . . . the day I left MIT: these are the turning points that tie the other events together. Everything else is before or after. That night with her in the junkyard is one of those nights.
I can still remember exactly how she looked just before she leaned in to kiss me. My heart was beating so hard it felt like my ribs might shatter. And the moment her lips touched mine and I realized that she would let me touch her – that she wanted me to touch her, and that she wanted to touch me – was a moment of discovery and awakening as powerful as any other in my life.
When we saw the police lights we immediately assumed that her father had sent the cops after us, and we ran. Clambering over the chain-link fence at the back of the property, she let out a little gasp, but we kept moving until we made it back to my house. Ma was out, still trying to drink off the pain of my father’s death years before. There, in my bedroom, I cleaned the cut on her back, put butterfly bandages and Band-Aids on it. She probably should have had stitches, but neither of us was anxious to explain to anyone what had happened. We spent the next hour there on top of my bed, exploring and touching and kissing. That bond of flight and excitement and discovery has never left us.
I reach over and touch the scar. She lets out a soft, tired moan and her back arches. I run the tips of my fingers along her skin, up over her shoulder blades and to the back of her neck, down the sides of her arms and up her sides.
Her body responds to my touch. It’s been nearly a month since that night at Josh’s, and there was a brief time when I thought we were both too damaged ever to let anyone touch us like this again. That fear lasted for about ten seconds after we were alone for the first time together. We fell into each other’s arms with a desperate passion, clawing at each other as though we could use one another to cleanse away all the darkness of the past. It worked, too, at least for a little while. In the end we both know that some of the darkness lives within us and always will. That’s okay, I suppose, as long as we understand it and learn to control the desires.
She rolls over and kisses me, trailing her fingers across my chest, down my stomach, between my legs. I close my eyes and let out a satisfied sigh as she kisses my chest, nipping softly at my nipples and moving her hands teasingly between my legs.
She kisses her way down my body, dwelling for a few moments on the more interesting topography, then slides back up so that she is straddling me, her hands on my chest.
She lowers herself onto me, and I watch as she closes her eyes, her face straining in exquisite pleasure. I want to hold her. I want to take her in my arms and bring her into me, but I can see that she wants to be the one in control at the moment, and that’s okay. It’s a game we enjoy that hints at the darkness, without diving in too deep. She is rocking slowly, sitting up so that I see her entire beautiful body, and the sight drives my need to take her in my arms. It is becoming a yearning that must be satisfied.
‘Please,’ I say softly, breathlessly.
She opens her eyes and looks down at me, smiling. ‘You want permission for something?’ she asks, the sexiest lilt in her voice I’ve ever heard.
‘Please,’ I say, again.
She is still rocking slowly on top of me, and I’ve never felt so alive. ‘Yes?’ she asks. ‘What is it?’
‘I want to hold you,’ I say. ‘Please?’
She gives me a mischievous smile. ‘Do you think you deserve it?’ she queries. ‘Have you been good?’
‘Yes,’ I say, looking deeply into her eyes. ‘I’ve been good. We both deserve it.’
Without breaking rhythm, she reaches down and takes my hands, bringing them up to her. I wrap them around her body, pulling her to me, holding her as tightly as I can, kissing her hard as our bodies meld into one, the frantic passion gathering desperate speed until neither one of us can hold off anymore.
The meeting at the police station should be a mere formality at this point, but I am still nervous. The past few weeks have reinforced the lesson I should have learned long ago: nothing is as it seems.
Finn, my lawyer, is with me. I wonder who is paying him at this point; his agreement to represent me was with Tom Jackson – Tom needed a top lawyer to get me out, so that he could try to take care of me, Josh and Yvette at the same time. I’m sure Tom agreed to pay a pretty pile for that to happen, but Tom’s dead now. Maybe Finn plans on collecting from Jackson’s estate. That would be satisfyingly ironic. If not, I’ll pay the fees; I need a good lawyer right now, and from what I understand, Finn is the best. A good guy, too, if most in Charlestown are to be believed.
Killkenny’s there, too. He’s the one who found us that night. After I’d left him on the street in Charlestown, he looked up Pinkerton’s address and headed up, in the hope that that was where all the action was going down. The action had already played out by the time he got there, but it was still helpful to have someone familiar with the back story leading the Marblehead cops through the investigation. I’m sure they’re good men, but the swanky neighborhood doesn’t see too many double homicides. Throw in the S&M angles, and I have a feeling the Marblehead Police Department would have been overwhelmed if Killkenny wasn’t there.
Sitting next to Killkenny in the interrogation room in the Back Bay station is Detective Sergeant Tom Welker. I still haven’t heard him speak, but at least he’s regarding me with less hostility than in the past. I suppose that’s something.
Standing behind Killkenny and Welker are three men. One of them I recognize as the Suffolk County District Attorney. The other one has been introduced to me as the Police Commissioner. Apparently this matter has garnered the attention of all the VIPs in local law enforcement. Every one of them wants a piece of the glory, now that it looks as though it’s been solved.
‘I just want to be clear,’ Finn says, taking control of the gathering. ‘My client is being granted immunity from prosecution for anything he tells you about, with respect to the investigation he conducted into these matters, is that correct?’
‘For anything excluding murder,’ Killkenny says. He means it as a joke, but it’s not to me. I’ve posed the hypothetical to my lawyer: I participated in the kidnapping and assault on NetMaster, and he died as a result. That makes me guilty of felony murder. The fact that I wasn’t the one who turned the dial on the battery up, and flipped the switch, is irrelevant. So is the fact that NetMaster was a pederast scumbag who deserved to die. I’m just going to have to leave that part out of my answers to any questions, and rely on the competence of Cormack’s men in disposing of the body. If I have some sleepless nights over it, I suppose that’s a mild penance.
‘Do you have the written agreement?’ Finn asks.
Killkenny slides a sheet of paper over to Finn. He reads it, nods to me.
‘What do you want to know?’ I ask.
‘We’ve dug through the computer files at NextLife, and we think we have a good handle on how all this went down, but we want to make sure it lines up with your understanding.’
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Where do you want to start?’
Killkenny shrugs. ‘How about the beginning? How did this all start?’
‘Some of this I’m guessing at,’ I say. ‘I obviously wasn’t there at the beginning.’
‘I understand. Anything you can tell us would be helpful.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Tom Jackson was a friend,’ I say. ‘There was a time when he was a good guy, and he was always a brilliant mind. He was tasked with raising revenue for the company while not upsetting the “organic” nature of the services we provide. It’s not an easy task. I’m guessing he started out thinking that if he could break the algorithms that protect people’s identity in the system, he could use that information to generate research on how people were spending their time and money on the site. That would help him drive revenue.’ I’m thinking about those first days at MIT when I met Tom. ‘I
don’t think he started out planning anything illegal.’
‘So, how did that turn?’
‘I don’t know. But I would guess that it’s such a huge amount of information that, in the aggregate, he probably wasn’t even able to break it down. On the other hand, he would have noticed certain people engaging in unethical – maybe even illegal – activities on the site. He could have thought that those people deserved to be targeted, and he probably started by dabbling in identity theft and online extortion. It’s fairly easy and low-risk. And he used that money to prop up the company’s revenue.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, he would have realized pretty quickly that there’s a huge revenue opportunity, if that kind of behavior could be regularized. He wouldn’t have had the resources or knowhow to do that, though.’
‘So he convinced Pinkerton to hire NetMaster?’
‘He admitted that much to me,’ I say. ‘But then Josh started seeing Kendra. And when Josh started getting too aggressive, she started looking for something to keep him at bay. Apparently she managed to get a look at the company’s finances, and she realized there were things going on that weren’t quite kosher. She thought Josh was behind the whole thing, so she went to Tom Jackson and told him. Of course she had no idea that Tom was behind it. At that point, he realized that he had to find a way to make her disappear.’
‘So he got Michael François involved?’
I shake my head. ‘François didn’t have anything to do with Tom. He was just a psychopath who was using the system to practice murders. He was one of the subjects in the pilot programs that Gunta was running. I’m guessing he seduced the good doctor and convinced him to tell the parole board that François was cured – that he was not likely to repeat the sexual assaults that landed him in jail in the first place. Once out, though, François picked up where he left off, but this time he escalated the violence and started killing people. When I started investigating, Tom found out about François. I’m sure he went onto the system and figured out that Kendra was one of the likely victims.’
