After some small talk, Ross asked if they could go for a walk to discuss something. “Of course.” Julia beamed as she grabbed his hand and they strolled out of the building, down the concrete steps, and across the street toward a dirt path that led to Lady Bird Lake.
The sun was beginning to set as they meandered along the trail, hand in hand, telling stories about the past few months of their lives. Julia was still in love with Ross, and part of her hoped he had come to take her back. They eventually came across a tree that was wider than Ross stood tall. At its base there was a huge rock that rested on the water’s edge. They sat down together.
“So,” Ross said as he took a deep breath, preparing to tell Julia something important. “I just want you to know that I quit the site—I quit the Silk Road.”
“Thank God! That’s so wonderful.” She leaned over and gave Ross a huge hug, holding on to him for as long as she could.
The leaves above them sighed in the breeze as Ross looked out at the sun that reflected pink and yellow and orange off the water. He took another deep breath and began an explanation of why he had given up the site. It had grown too big; it was too stressful; it just felt right to pass it along to someone else. “I’m so sorry for telling you about it in the first place,” he lamented, “and I take full responsibility—”
“Thank you,” Julia said as he continued to talk, and tears began welling up in her eyes.
“I just felt so powerful running the site,” he said, then paused, as if he were reciting lines in a play. “I’m sorry.”
Julia thanked him again, both for the apology and for quitting the Silk Road. She leaned over and they started to kiss. After a few moments Ross pulled back and looked her in the eyes. “I just need to know one more thing,” he said. “Did you tell anyone else about the site? Anyone other than Erica?”
“No,” she responded quickly.
“No one?”
“No. I didn’t tell anyone else. Just Erica.” A pang of guilt came over her for having betrayed the secret at all. “I love you, Ross.”
“I love you too,” he said as they continued kissing, the sun lowering into the horizon behind them. “I just couldn’t move on without knowing that no one else knew.”
They spoke more about the past, and Ross told her about his travels—about Thailand and the beaches and jungles and a mountainous sculpture he’d seen that was made entirely of extra-large dildos; about Australia, picnicking with his sister, and that his travels had made him reflect upon his life and how thankful he was that he no longer had anything to do with the Silk Road.
The cold air was beginning to blow off the water and Ross suggested they walk back.
“So what are you going to do now?” Julia asked as they crossed Rainey Street back toward her apartment building.
Ross told her he was leaving Texas in a few days to move to San Francisco. He planned to build an app with an old friend from Austin, René Pinnell. “I probably won’t see you again for a while,” he told her solemnly.
She would be sad to see him go, she explained, but happy for him that he was free from the clutches of that awful Web site.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “I’m glad to be rid of it too; it was too stressful.”
As they approached the door to the studio, Ross leaned in and kissed Julia one last time. “I love you,” she said. He didn’t reply. He just held her there for a second and then turned around and walked away. Heading into the darkness, alone.
PART III
Chapter 32
CHRIS TARBELL, FBI
A question had been plaguing Chris Tarbell all day—in the office, at lunch, and now as he walked through downtown Manhattan with his coworkers. As the group crossed Broadway and turned right onto Center Street, he just couldn’t stop himself; he had to ask. “Okay,” he said to the men around him, “if you had to . . .” But before he could finish, they all began wincing, knowing full well what was coming. A “would you rather” joke from Tarbell was usually a distasteful, often comical query that always landed at a moment his colleagues least expected, intentionally catching them completely off guard. These often-crass jokes could range from the truly unpalatable to the truly bizarre. “Would you rather: sleep with your mother, or sleep with your father?” “Would you rather: be half your height, or double your weight?” “Would you rather have an erection for a year or hiccups for the rest of your life?”
“Where do you come up with this shit, Tarbell?” one of his coworkers asked.
“Come on. If you had to—like, you had no choice,” Tarbell continued, as they kept walking, his colleagues grimacing as Tarbell harangued them with questions like an older brother tormenting his younger siblings.
The badgering briefly stopped when the group came upon the Whiskey Tavern, a local dive bar on Baxter Street, sandwiched between two bail-bond storefronts that looked out on the New York Police Department.
All the cops and government employees in New York had local watering holes they burrowed into after work. The FDNY went to Social Bar on Eighth Avenue, the NYPD had Plug Uglies on Third, and the Cyber Division of the FBI’s New York office lived at the Whiskey Tavern. Special Agent Chris Tarbell of the FBI and his team of agents frequented the shit-hole dive bar at least five nights a week.
When they arrived, Meg, the freckled bartender, would greet them with a “Hello, boys,” then let them know, “The back room is all yours.” The area of the bar she was referring to was always reserved for the FBI cybercrime crew, and if they arrived unannounced, Meg would evict whoever was there.
Given that tonight was a special evening, Tarbell asked for a few bottles of champagne, pronounced “champag-nay.” (By “champagne” he meant Miller High Life—the so-called champagne of beers, which cost $4 a pint at the tavern.)
Most of the FBI agents at the bar dressed the same, wearing oversize dark suits and white button-down shirts, and could have easily passed for bankers or lawyers. That was not true of Chris Tarbell, who looked like a cop from ten city blocks away with his short buzz cut, young face that didn’t seem to fit his stocky 250-pound body, and swagger that exuded confidence.