He sounded a little unhinged, and Kate knew he would not let anything stand in the way of his goal.
“It seemed a little too coincidental. I mean, he’s not the first hacker who’s faked his death, but dying so soon after I doxed him and hacked his girlfriend made me wonder, you know? I admire the steps he was willing to take. That’s the thing that separates people like Ian and me from all the others. We’re willing to put in the work, to do what it takes.”
“Ian is nothing like you.”
Zach ignored her comment. “I thought about dropping the whole thing after that, but there was just so much money on the line. I have to hand it to you, you’re a phenomenal actress. I never once saw you break cover to smile or laugh. And the tears and the red eyes. No offense, but you really looked like shit.”
“How did you find us?” she asked, hating his smug arrogance and herself even more for asking after she told herself she wouldn’t. But she had to know.
“I know a few hackers who live in Minnesota and don’t ask questions if the price is right. They’d already helped me out by watching the lobby of Ian’s apartment building after the accident and nosing around at the auto storage facility. I decided to send one of them into the food pantry last summer, and that’s when I learned you’d quit. I found that information very interesting, so I asked my friend to become a regular client of the food pantry. The woman who took your place treated him with kindness and compassion, but he told me Helena was his favorite. He said he even considered her a friend. Can you believe that, Kate?”
Six months ago, she wouldn’t have. But now that she used the same manipulative and deceptive tactics to get people to do her bidding and tell her what she needed to know, she absolutely could. Ian had been right; it didn’t matter how secure a network was. People were the biggest vulnerability in every system.
“You’d be proud of Helena. She wouldn’t say a word about where you’d gone, no matter how many times my friend tried to trick it out of her. I knew you were from Indiana, but I didn’t think that’s where you would go. I sent someone to make sure, of course. But strangely, you were never seen dropping by your parents’ house. So without knowing which way you’d gone, I was pretty much dead in the water. And then one day a picture appeared on Helena’s desk. Did you know Bert bought her a photo printer for Christmas? She’s got photos of her grandchildren all over that desk. She also has one of you. In it, you and a woman who looks like an older version of you are enjoying a glass of wine at a table outdoors. It took another couple of visits for my friend to snap a picture of the picture. Once he sent it to me, I made it bigger and clearer. There was a wine bottle on the table, and I could see the crest of a Virginia vineyard on it. I thought to myself, ‘Now why would Kate and her mother be at a vineyard in Virginia? Were they visiting our nation’s capital? Or did Kate’s boyfriend—the dead hacker—relocate to DC for his job, taking the lovely Kate with him?’”
“This isn’t Scooby-Doo. I don’t need to hear how you pulled it off. I just wanted to know how you knew where to look.”
“Scooby-Doo. That’s clever. I used to love that show.” He took one hand off the steering wheel and jabbed it in the air to punctuate his words. “I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids.”
Kate didn’t want to hear anymore, but Zach was really on a roll now, and she could tell he wanted her to know exactly how he’d done it.
“I think you’ll really appreciate the amount of time and dedication I put into this. A new city meant I had to start from scratch. The vineyard was in Leesburg, but that was a dead end because that wasn’t where you lived. It took me a while to make my way through the surrounding cities, and I’d almost given up by the time Middleburg came up on my list. And can you even imagine how many Realtors’ sales pitches I had to sit through? I bet I’ve thrown away ten burner phones because they wouldn’t stop calling me. I was almost ready to give up when I found Linda. I told her repeatedly that privacy was very important to me, and finally one day she mentioned that I reminded her of a couple who’d recently bought a home in the area. Privacy had been very important to them too. It seemed I was getting a little warmer, so I persevered and I strung her along for so long I nearly had to buy a goddamn house. She insisted on giving me all kinds of referrals I never asked for: contractors, decorators, painters. That’s how I found Jade. Following her around almost became a full-time job. I must have tailed her to the home of every client she had. But there was one house with a gate, and I had a hunch about who might live behind it. I couldn’t be sure though, and it drove me nuts. Then one night I followed Jade from a client’s house to a restaurant. I was hungry anyway, so I decided I might as well get a table. And then you walked in the door and hugged Jade and sat down at the bar with her. Can you even imagine what that was like for me? I made sure you never saw me, and I followed you to the home with the gate. Don’t tell me you can’t appreciate dedication like that at least a little bit.”
They would never be able to hide from him. If Ian gave him the money—and Kate knew he would—Zach would be back for more. Maybe not right away, but eventually. All he would have to do is be patient. Talk to the right people. Bide his time.
Maybe his next target would be their child.
The only way to ensure they’d never have to worry about Zach Nielsen again was if he spent the rest of his life behind bars. And the only way to accomplish that was to somehow let Ian know she was in trouble so he could send help.
Her only hope was that he would call before they reached the airport, because Kate had an uneasy feeling that despite what Zach had said, he planned to take her with him anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
As the malware moved through each system, the wiper utility destroyed parts of it before linking it with the next. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, went dark twenty minutes after Columbia, and Raleigh, North Carolina, followed moments later. If the outages continued, Virginia would soon be affected. Once the hacktivists finished taking control of the utilities’ networks, they wouldn’t be linked to each other but rather the botnet, which would leave them holding the key. It would be the largest denial of service attack in history, and if they wanted to, they could hold the grid captive indefinitely. The attackers would make their demands, and the United States would have little choice but to give in to them. Freeing Joshua Morrison from prison would surely be at the top of the list.
The mood of the war room turned frantic. Voices rose and fingers flew across keyboards as members of the Cyber Action Team worked to stay one step ahead of the attacks.
Ian had an idea, but he didn’t think Phillip would approve it.
The Pentagon most certainly wouldn’t.
The president wouldn’t be too keen on it either.
The Department of Homeland Security would probably have plenty to say about it.
But no one could deny the United States was woefully unprepared for an attack on the power grid. Until it actually happened, there was no way to put an exact protocol in place for how they would defend themselves. Currently a team of specially trained cyber experts were working frantically to deploy botnet-removal programs to scrub the infected systems and bring them back online, but that could take hours, maybe days, and the reactive solution did nothing to thwart additional outages. All they were doing at this point was playing catch-up.
Ian shared his idea with Charlie. “We don’t know exactly which substation or utility they’ll attack next, but we know where every single substation, utility, and power cooperative is located, right? And we have access to those systems?”
“Yes.”
“We need to take them offline ourselves. As soon as possible.”
“You think we should take the grid offline?”
“Not the whole Eastern Interconnection. Just everything between here and DC. If they take the system down, the malware stops certain processes from running and annihilates parts of the hard drive, which means we’ll have a mess when we try to bri
ng them back online. But if the utility owners can power off their own systems at least there won’t be any damage left behind. If they’re already locked out, we’ll have to hack in and take them down ourselves.”
Charlie nodded. “That would stop the botnet from growing and give us time to catch up and scrub everything.”
“We’ll still be dark, but the overall outage will be smaller and more contained. And we’ll be in control of it.”
“Think Phillip will go for it?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know. Let’s go find out.”
Phillip pondered the suggestion. “How many hours would we be down?”
“At least forty-eight. Maybe even seventy-two. We’ll have to remove the botnet and all the malware. Some of the older systems will undoubtedly have difficulty coming back online. If we get started as soon as possible, we might be able to reduce that.”
“I’d have to get approval,” Phillip said. “From… so many people.”
Ian cocked his head toward Charlie, and they opened their laptops. “We’ll just get started while you’re doing that.” If there was anything Phillip should know by now, it was how bad his two best hackers were when it came to following the rules and how hard it would be to rein them in.
Phillip sighed, the stress and exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours etched clearly on his face. “Shut these assholes down. I’ll worry about the rest.”
“That’s the spirit,” Ian said.
For the next hour, everyone in the room worked without stopping. The agent running the map of the grid used blue lights to show the cities that were dark as the result of their defensive measures. Ian could no longer hear the din of the war room and was only marginally aware of the spike in noise level as substations in Norfolk, Richmond, and Alexandria went dark. But this time the lights were blue and the agents cheered.
Ian smiled and breathed a sigh of relief because he had more than one reason to celebrate. Kate should be somewhere in West Virginia by now, far away from the danger of a blackout and within an hour of connecting with her dad. As soon as they got things under control in Washington, he would go to his wife.
He pulled out his phone to confirm her location and stared at the app for a moment, forcing himself not to panic but trying to think of a single reason why it would say she was offline.
And no matter how hard he tried to come up with a good one, he couldn’t.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“I bet this car can really haul,” Zach said, as if they were two friends taking a road trip. He revved the engine a bit, and Kate would have bet money he was wishing he could see what the car could do. She stole a glance at the speedometer as it hovered at eighty and then rose to eighty-five. Higher, she thought. Trip that alarm.
Kate scoffed. “I’ve driven much faster than you’re going.”
“That’s quite clever of you, appealing to my competitive nature. Banking on the fact that I wouldn’t want to be shown up by a woman. If I drive too fast and get pulled over, there goes my plan. I can’t say I’m surprised, because I know you’re smart. Those sob stories you gave me back at the food pantry and those tears you manufactured on command were pretty convincing. You even had me fooled for a while.”
Though he reduced his speed, the minutes passed and the miles flew by quickly in the darkness. He hadn’t changed direction or veered from her route, so Kate assumed he’d booked the charter at an airstrip far enough ahead to give him time to catch up with her. She worried they might reach it soon.
The phone rang and Kate’s heart leapt, but it wasn’t Ian’s number that flashed onto the screen; it was Chad’s. “That’s my brother. If I don’t answer, he’ll just call back.”
That seemed to throw him. He scrubbed his hand over his face as the ringing filled the car, the sound echoing off the walls. “Make it short and tell him you have to go.”
He pushed the button to answer the call, and Kate said, “Hey Chad. I just stopped to go to the bathroom. I’ll call you right back, okay?”
“Sure, Kate—”
Zach disconnected the call before Chad could say anything else. Kate had been monitoring their route on the navigation screen, and by her rough calculations, she figured Chad and her dad were somewhere in Ohio by now. If Zach stayed on course, they would soon be less than half an hour away from each other.
Kate tensed when the phone rang again less than a minute later, but her heart filled with joy when she realized who was calling. “That’s Ian.”
“Keep it short and don’t say anything that will cause a complication for me. Trust me when I say my way is better for all of us. If you freak out and start screaming, things will become much more difficult for you. But if you do what I tell you, nothing bad will happen.”
But Kate didn’t believe him. Anyone willing to put this much time and planning into achieving his goal would stop at nothing to attain it. If he was pushed into a corner, Kate would see exactly what Zach Nielsen would resort to, and she knew it would be far more violent than his calm demeanor illustrated. Money had a way of turning people into monsters.
Zach answered the call and jabbed his finger at Kate.
“Hey, sweetness,” Ian said. She could hear the fatigue in his voice, but she heard wariness too. Had he noticed the tracking on her phone had been turned off?
“Hey!” She forced herself to sound cheerful and upbeat, praying that Ian—the most observant man she knew—would pick up on the slight tremble in her voice. Before he could utter another word she yawned loudly and said, “Sorry about that. I need a cup of coffee.” The sentence wouldn’t seem strange to Zach. She’d been driving awhile and it was late, so coffee would be an obvious choice for anyone in her situation and should not arouse suspicion.
“Coffee, huh?” There had been a pause that seemed a bit long before he said the words, but Zach hadn’t seemed to notice, so maybe it only seemed long to her.
“Yes. I stopped at Starbucks on my way out of town and got one of those silly Frappuccinos Charlie’s always talking about, and I could use another.” Kate almost gagged. Coffee itself was bad enough, but it was especially nausea-inducing when she thought of it combined with a sickly-sweet flavoring. She swallowed hard and kept talking. “You said I wouldn’t like it because it would be too sugary, but Charlie was right when he said they put just the right amount of syrup in. I told you he always has my best interests at heart. I was right about him and you were wrong.”
Zach twirled his finger in the air: wrap it up. She didn’t want to stop talking. She needed to hear Ian’s voice because it was the only thing grounding her at the moment.
“Sounds like I was wrong about him. Hey, sweetness. Let me call you right back, okay? Somebody needs me real quick.”
“Okay—” She barely got the word out before Zach disconnected the call and her heart sank. Ian was the smartest person she knew, and Kate clung to the belief that the real reason he’d hung up was because he’d understood. He would need a few minutes to gather his thoughts and determine the best way to move their conversation forward in a way that would not arouse Zach’s suspicion.
“That was good, Kate. Somehow I thought your conversations would be a bit less boring, but that’s marriage for you, I guess. When he calls back, make sure you stick to some more of that uninteresting Frappuccino conversation. And keep it short.”
She turned her head away from Zach and stared out at the darkness as tears filled her eyes. At that moment, she would have given anything to be enjoying one of those marriage moments he found so dull. Oh, Ian. I need you. But there was no time to feel sorry for herself, because they still had work to do.
Kate did take comfort in one thing. When it came to her and Ian, Zach Nielsen had no idea how smart they were and just how well they worked together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Ian set the phone down on the desk. The hum of the room faded away, and he no longer heard the sound of celebratory voices or fingers typing on keyboards. He’d heard what Kate s
aid, had picked up on the slight difference in the cadence of her words. She was scared but trying to hide it.
There was no way she would stop for coffee considering her aversion to it, and the only reason she’d said that was to get his attention. It was the second part of the story she’d really wanted him to understand.
I was right about Charlie and you were wrong.
Charlie hadn’t been the one who’d doxed him. But the only way she could know that for sure is if the person who had was in the car with her, and that was the part he was having trouble wrapping his brain around.
The next thing he did was send a text to Chad and Steve.
Ian: Don’t call or text Kate. I’ll explain in a minute.
Chad: What’s going on? I tried to call her and she practically hung up on me. She said she’d call me back but hasn’t. We’re worried.
Ian: Give me ten minutes.
Whoever had hacked them hadn’t used the garage camera to find out the kind of cars they drove. He’d used it to hack the cars, none of which had been driven since.
Until today.
He didn’t have time to sit around and beat himself up for the mistake, because Kate needed his help. He took a deep breath and called her back.
“That was quick,” she said.
“Sorry about that. I can’t talk long. Pretty busy right now.”
“That’s okay. I understand.”
“How’s everything going?” He held his breath as he waited for her answer. Would she remember the signals from their social engineering assignment?
He wanted to hear the word “great,” but what she said was, “Couldn’t be better,” and with three little words, she confirmed she was in trouble. But she sounded so cheerful that for a split second, he questioned whether he’d mixed up what the responses meant. Is this really happening? But he knew he hadn’t.