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“No, no, no, no! You don’t press the Windows key for that!”

The irritated voice blared through Jazz’s headset, and she bit her lip to keep from laughing. “I’m sorry. I thought you said press it. My bad.”

Tonight, instead of a confused old woman, she’d opted for a ditzy, clueless girly-girl. Appropriate for her mood, as she’d spent several days chastising herself about her brief weird interaction with Wolf. “No thing.” “Sure problem . ” He must think I’m an absolute nutjob!

The last few mornings, he’d come in, grabbed his coffee, and gabbed with Bill. He didn’t speak to her, but he did give her a finger twitch and one of those head things where his chin jerked upward in a “what’s up” gesture. Nothing else.

Argh! I’m such a dweeby dorky dork! Enough. Focus on the task at hand, yeah? “Are you talking about the key with the squares on it? Oh, I got it now!”

She scrolled farther down, then highlighted and deleted a big set of files that included several programs. In the background, she heard other agents and guessed she was dealing with another call center.

“We have to start over, ma’am. Don’t touch anything this time.”

Oh no, you don’t, buddy. She watched as the scammer tried to take over her home screen, and then she blocked him again.

He cursed in Hindi, and she had to mute herself before the mirth she held back exploded.

A glance at her Death Star clock told her she’d been on the phone with this guy for over two hours.

She had a bet going with Bomber123 about how long they could keep a call going.

Bomber had the record at three hours and twenty-three minutes.

During that time, he managed to keep three scammers going until he hacked their systems and deleted their files.

Jazz had heard of other shielders who’d done single calls for as much as eight hours.

She wasn’t sure she had the stamina for that, but she admitted to having fun when stringing along a scammer for a long time.

Another outburst came from the scammer. “You have to stop pressing the key!”

Jazz took a breath to tell the guy off and that she’d already caught on to his act, but her fingers slipped and she hit some keys in a random sequence on her computer. The screen blipped once and then filled with scrolling pages.

“Holy shit!” she said out loud, forgetting to use the voice modulator.

Dates, times, names, and numbers—thousands of them—appeared from all over the world, showing active calls and amounts being collected, all in real time.

This was a view of the call center’s entire operation.

Millions upon millions in different currencies were being added, converted to dollars, and then moved from place to place to clean it.

Deposits, withdrawals, new accounts created, old ones deleted, and more popping up as she watched.

She had no idea how she’d hacked into this live feed, but it was both amazing and terrifying as hell.

How many people did it take to support this kind of volume?

And what kind of havoc did it wreak on the hundreds of people getting robbed as the numbers flowed?

“What was that, ma’am?”

This was huge. She wished she had time to contact Bomber or Copperpot or any other shielder, but no one else showed online.

If she tried to get further into this ginormous network, she could insert her special virus and shut down the whole operation.

At least in theory. If not, she would at least do enough damage to slow it down.

Jazz remembered the guy was on the line waiting for an answer. She resumed her character and started typing again. “Oh, nothing. My… uh… roommate is playing video games in the other room, and she cusses, like, all the time. Isn’t that awful?”

She kept going, not giving the scammer any time to speak as she worked.

She spun a tale of her BFF marrying a no-good man who up and left her when she had cancer, how expensive the cancer treatments were, the bad attitude of her other friends and parents, anything her brain drummed up to keep the guy occupied while her fingers danced over the keyboard. She just needed to find a way in.

Her screen pinged with a notice, and she saw a call being made to a familiar area code.

Someone from this center had contacted someone right here in Pittsburgh.

A woman named Delia Best. Jazz jumped on it immediately.

The Wi-Fi at this person’s house was slow as fuck, but she hoped they had call-waiting.

“Hey, my mom is calling me. Be right back.”

“No, don?—”

She switched off to dial the local number. Her earpiece rang several times before someone picked up.

“Hello?” From the accent and tone, it sounded like an elderly woman. A scammer’s perfect target, and Jazz’s opportunity to piggyback from a different source into the massive network.

“Ma’am, did someone just call you saying they’re from Amazon?”

“Yes,” the wavering voice answered. “How did you know? Who is this?”

“I’m Jazzyhands, and the call you just got before mine is a scam. Are they still on the line?”

“A scam? I’ve heard of those. Yes, he’s on the other line. A very nice young man.”

Cool beans! Jazz’s fingers scrolled and typed in a flurry of motions to trace back and link into the scammer’s computer. “You need to hang up, and if they call you back, ignore it.”

“But he says they have a refund for me.”

“Have you bought anything recently from Amazon?”

“Well… no. It’s been a few months since I ordered anything.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this, ma’am, but there’s no refund. These people will do their best to take as much of your money as they can.”

“How do I know you’re not the scammer?”

Good question, Jazz thought. Anonymity was essential for the shielder to be effective, but she didn’t have time to spin anything else but the truth.

“Because I’m right here in Pittsburgh, just off the river in the Morningside neighborhood near the zoo.

I work for Madge and Bill Comer at their coffee shop down on Miller.

You know it? Coffee and Cakes? They got scammed out of their life savings a few years ago. Did you hear about it?”

“Oh, I love the zoo. I used to take my children there. I know Madge from another church. She makes the best sugar cakes.”

Jazz smiled as her hands kept moving. “For sure. I love the drizzle she puts on top before baking.”

“Oh, yes, that’s the best way to make that kind of cake. Shame what happened to them. Are you the pretty blue-haired girl they talk about?”

Jazz nodded, even though Delia couldn’t see.

“Yes, I am. My name is Jasmine, but most people call me Jazz or Jazzy, or Jazzyhands online. The zoo is one of my favorite places too. Anyway, that other guy, you really need to just hang up on him. Or I’ll tell you what, let me hack into the call and I’ll take care of him for you, okay? ”

“Do I have to pay you?”

She caught herself this time as she shook her head. “No, ma’am. This is something I do for free just to help people like you and Madge.”

The silence on the end of the phone told Jazz the woman was thinking about it.

“Okay, go ahead. You need my number?”

“No, I got it covered. You just let me take over, and I’ll handle these jerks. You can stay on the line if you want to hear what happens, but please don’t make any noise or anything to give it away, okay?”

Hacking into a landline was difficult but not impossible.

The challenge was keeping up with the scammer trying to get into her system and at the same time engaging with Delia’s caller.

If her computer could protest the amount of data she made it process all at once, it would have given her the finger and crashed.

It took some skilled finagling, but somehow she got it all done as she bounced from line to line.

Delia’s cyberattacker sounded like one of the really big call centers with pretend phone agents and pretend supervisors.

The classic script of the overpaid refund started.

Jazz’s voice modulator didn’t match the old woman’s voice exactly, but the amount of money they wanted to take kept their focus locked on the scam.

She found the window she needed to get into their system and pulled out the virus file.

“Take that, assholes,” she muttered as she hit Send.

It would take a while for the virus to work its way through the system, but it was the strongest she’d ever created and would render that network completely dead with no chance of recovery if it wasn’t checked.

Its potency rivaled anything else she’d ever seen, and she didn’t use it every time she took down a scammer.

She watched the computer screen with glee and flailed her hands in the air, wiggling her fingers. “Gotcha!”

One by one, the live calls dropped as the scammers frantically tried to save their system. Jazz imagined a lot of curses filling the air in that place as all the transactions got blocked and their data disappeared line by line, page by page.

“Jazzyhands?” Delia’s voice tentatively asked.

“I’m still here. The scammers are gone. I messed up their system pretty badly. They shouldn’t bother you again.”

“I’m so grateful. Thanks for helping me.”

Jazz leaned back and smiled in satisfaction, and Freya jumped up onto her lap. “No problem. You have a great night. If you ever get over to the bakery, I’ll treat you to a sugar cake and coffee.”