Which brought him full circle back to Will Crawford.
Will wasn’t a survivalist, though if pressed, he could easily live off the land for days or weeks. Like Xander, his father had brought him up out of doors, with the forest to guide him. No, while Will could manage quite nicely in an emergency, that’s not where his interests lay. He was, and there just wasn’t a nice word for it, a hacker. An extremely talented hacker who worked with a team of very talented hackers who spent their time using their computer skills to break into government systems. Nameless, utterly incognito and rarely off taking public responsibility for their hacks, they were incredibly dangerous, and incredibly secretive. Unlike Anonymous, the group of hackers who were doing their best to destabilize the world in retaliation for the capitalist spirit that guided most modern countries by publicly claiming responsibility for their hacks and openly recruiting additional talent.
Will’s group was much more subtle. They stole the information and put it to use for themselves. They were information gatherers, and for the right price, you could quietly purchase whatever you wanted to know. They didn’t discriminate—so long as you could pay, you could have the info. Which meant some seriously nefarious people could wreak havoc should they choose.
The site Will ran that Xander had been on the night before the attacks was just one of thousands he had under his purview.
So who had been mouthing off about the attacks, and why had Will panicked and shut down the site? It wasn’t like him to react to external stimuli—the sites he ran were so deeply off the beaten path that without strict instructions no one could even hope to find them, much less get in once they did. Which meant Will and his cohorts knew the guy who’d been talking. He must have been one of their own.
Well, of course he was. It wasn’t some random guy’s chatter, it was one of Will’s men.
And it took him six hours to come to that conclusion. He was slipping.
The exit for Dillon was about three miles ahead. He woke Sam, who sat up rubbing her eyes like a little girl.
“I just had the most delicious dream.”
“Was I in it?”
“You were, yes.” She smiled at him and his stomach flipped. “Where are we?”
“About five miles from my folks’ place. You ready for this?”
“Of course.” She flipped the visor down and started attending to her hair, running her fingers through it lightly, then swiped on some lipstick. She didn’t need much in the way of maintenance, Sam was a beautiful woman naturally who took advantage of that fact to enhance herself, rather than overload her face and hair with makeup and products. Just a touch here and there and she was incredible.
“Good. I hope they’re still up. They’re going to love you. I know this is an awkward way to do this. I appreciate you being so kind about it.”
“Xander, meeting parents, family, friends, it’s always awkward. There’s no good time. So we’ll just go with it. How much have you told them about what’s going on?”
“About you? Or about the case?”
“Both?”
He laughed. “About you, they’ve heard quite a bit. About the case, though, not a lot. My dad knows more, he went to the Crawfords’ with me today. Just FYI, I think I have a lead on the situation with the website. We’ll go talk to my friend again tomorrow, and I’ll see if he won’t give us the rest of the information we need. He’s not one for the greater good, but we can try.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“So for the time being, I figure we can say our hellos, if they’re up. My mom will want to ply you with some dandelion wine, plus a whole new wardrobe, since you didn’t have time to pack a bag, then we can go to bed and start fresh tomorrow. Between the two of us we might have had three hours of sleep in the past two days, and we both need to recharge.”
“I couldn’t agree more. I’m beat.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Dandelion wine, huh. Is it good?”
“Actually, it’s not that bad.” He turned off the highway, narrating about his little town, then they were up the side of the mountain and in the driveway. The lights were on in the house, inviting them in, and he heard Sam take a deep breath. It made him feel good, knowing that she cared about what his parents thought of her. He liked that feeling a lot.
Chapter 30
Washington, D.C.
Detective Darren Fletcher