Page 5 of One Cry Too Loud (Coastal Crime Unit #9)
N efarious. The name echoed through my head with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
I knew who Holly was talking about. Of course, I did.
Even before losing a year and a half of my life, Nefarious was an infamous entity.
He was, as I understood it, something of a cyber boogeyman.
He was a net based terrorist who fancied himself a vigilante.
If I remember correctly, he had stolen millions from at least two different insurance companies, distributing the money back to some of the company’s customers, the ones Nefarious thought had been mistreated by the company.
He gained something of a reputation from that.
In some ways, popular culture thought of him as a sort of new age Robin Hood, but that didn’t last long.
Nefarious wasn’t done. After bankrupting the company, Nefarious decided that wasn’t enough.
He cleared out the bank accounts of the company’s board members.
He financially took them to their knees and then he exposed their personal addresses and contact information.
Three people were murdered by disgruntled former clients because of that, including the sixteen year old son of the head of one of the companies’ underwriting departments.
That took the shine off of Nefarious’ legend status. Funny how a dead teenager can really turn the tide of public opinion.
That didn’t stop Nefarious, though. Though they slowed in frequency, the terrorist continued his reign of cyber assaults. He targeted whoever he thought needed targeting, and with a click of a keyboard button, he ruined lives.
“You think this Joe person is Nefarious?” I asked, my eyes wide.
“I would bet on it,” she said.
“And you brought this to the police?” I asked.
“They brought it to me,” she reminded me. “It’s why my pregnancy was scrubbed from any public records. The CIA said that any connection to a man like that would put the baby in danger.”
“So, why isn’t he in jail?” I asked.
“A few reasons,” Holly said. “We can’t prove it. Joe is good at what he does. He’s better than me, if you can believe that.”
“That’s a difficult pill to swallow,” I explained. “I’ve never seen anyone with the kind of skills you have.”
“Joe does,” she said. “He has better skills.” She shook her head.
“I’ve spent almost every second of free time I’ve had trying to find some kind of proof, some sort of cyber smoking gun that would connect him to Nefarious.
I can’t, though. He’s too careful. He’s too good.
” She ran a hand through her hair. Once again, her bracelets sang out with the movement.
“Not that it would matter. No one has seen Joe in almost two years. Even if I could prove who he was, I’m not sure I could find him. ”
“You let me worry about finding him,” I said. “What makes you think he’s responsible for your little girl’s abduction?”
“Not only do I think he did it, I think it was my fault,” she said, sighing so heavily that I thought she might disappear right then and there.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, concerned, filling me as I took in her expression.
“I found something in my computer,” she said shamefully, looking away from me as the words left her mouth. “Not my work computer. As far as I know, the CCU mainframe is still secure. When I was on my computer at home, though-doing a routine check of my system securities, I found something odd.”
“You’re going to have to explain that a little more,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t anything you could find on a computer’s system securities that wouldn’t look odd to me.”
“It was a tracker. It was embedded deeply in some junk files,” she said. “The artistry of it, the flawless way it was hidden, I’ve only ever seen one other person do it.”
“Joe?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“I have no idea how long it’s been on my personal computer, but it must have been long enough for me to put Cindy in danger,” she said.
“How could you have done that?” I asked.
“I looked her up,” she said, grimacing as though the words were knives in her chest. “The adoption was closed, and the entire thing was scrubbed by the CIA, but I’m me.
I might not have known how to get past firewalls like that without being detected before, but I most certainly do now.
” She nodded. “I wanted to see her. I wanted to know she was okay. So, I looked her up. I know I shouldn’t have.
I know I just should have been strong and just let her go, especially after all these years, but I couldn’t. I didn’t, and now he has her.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. “First off, we don’t know that it was Joe.
We also don’t know for a fact that Joe is Nefarious, and if he is, there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t have been able to find her himself.
You said it yourself. He’s better than you.
Even if he did this, it isn’t your fault. ”
“It is,” she said, tears staining her face again. “He wouldn’t have found her because he wouldn't have known to look. He never knew I was pregnant. I hid it from him. He didn’t know Cindy existed. She was safe from him.” She lowered her head. “Safe until I got her involved.”
“Holly, it’s-”
“Oh my God,” Nate said from beside us. Though I was deep in a moment with Holly, desperate to try to make her understand that she wasn’t the cause of any of this, the urgency and shock in Nate’s voice pulled my attention along with my eyes.
“What?” I asked, seeing the terror on his face.
“That truck,” he said, his features lit by the glow of headlights. I looked in the direction of his face and saw a silver box of a vehicle tearing toward us. “I don’t think it’s going to stop!”
And Nate was right. In the next few seconds, that truck would slam into this building, sending us scattering. I had to move quickly. I had to move now .