Page 68 of Sharp Force

“Surveillance is the first thing that comes to mind. Possibly a GPS tracker.”

“The state police are spying on the Secret Service? Well, I hope you’re wrong,” I reply.

“I need gloves if you have any handy.” Benton takes off his seat belt.

“I never leave home without them.” Inside my briefcase is a sealed plastic bag of purple exam gloves. “Here you go.”

He takes a pair, opening his door, the sound of traffic loud and relentless on the parkway. I keep up my scan for Trad Whalen, hoping he doesn’t reappear, perhaps catching us in the act of discovering his dirty work.

“What about an evidence envelope?” Benton asks.

“Coming up.” I give that to him next.

It doesn’t take long to find what the trooper attached to the undercarriage. Benton stands up in the wind, the sun seeping through breaks in the overcast, the noise of cars and big trucks pervasive.

He shows me the small device in his gloved hand, what appears to be a transmitter about the size of a credit card. It looks like a miniature circuit board, blue and wafer-thin with a magnetic connector.

“Do you know what this is?” I ask.

“I know it’s something that shouldn’t be attached to my damn car,” Benton says with a flare of anger.

He climbs back into the driver’s seat, and I take a photograph of what he found. Texting the image to Lucy, I explain thecircumstances while Benton places the device inside the evidence envelope. I dig into our breakfast bag, pulling out crumpled aluminum foil, smoothing it open.

Cleaning it as best I can with a napkin, I wrap the foil around the evidence envelope, creating a Faraday cage of sorts. It will shield all electronic signals incoming and outgoing, rendering the device useless if it isn’t already.

“I don’t want this going to the Secret Service labs. Not to your labs either,” Benton says as I tuck the foil-wrapped package into my briefcase. “Can you have it handled discreetly with Lucy?”

“Will do. And I have a feeling Trooper Whalen doesn’t believe we can prove he planted it. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but he’s not worried for some reason. Maybe he assumes we just fell off the potato truck and are clueless about what he did.”

“If we don’t say anything, he’s not going to know we’re onto him and his little Christmas gift. That’s how we handle this.” Benton takes off his gloves, stuffing them into the console.

“Wouldn’t he be aware that the device isn’t connected any longer?” I question. “That suddenly it’s not transmitting or receiving?”

“I don’t know what he’ll personally be aware of but doubt it’s much when it comes to technology. What’s most important is figuring out whose bidding he’s doing.”

“And is it connected to where we’re headed or to Rowdy O’Leary, who was calling Whalen about the Slasher murders?” I suggest.

“We can’t be sure what O’Leary was involved in, and now he’s mysteriously dead,” Benton replies as Lucy answers about the device in question.

What the trooper attached to the underside of the Tesla is an off-the-shelf wireless Controller Area Network (CAN-bus) reader modified with three extra antennas.

“Likely connected to a TPARTS game controller.” I’m reading Lucy’s text out loud. “All of this you can buy from Amazon. Obviously, an attempt to hack into your car by someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“Okay. Worse than I thought,” Benton says in a flinty tone.

“Much worse,” I reply. “Someone could have remotely taken control of the steering, the brakes, the navigation, anything. Causing a terrible accident, possibly a fatal one. And Trad Whalen would be the first to respond, making sure the device he planted disappears.”

I keep up my scan of the mirrors, watching for him as Benton drives back onto the parkway, turning off the flashers as scenarios mushroom in my mind. Should a hacker take over our SUV, we could find ourselves suddenly accelerating and veering into oncoming cars.

Or slamming on the brakes and getting rear-ended. Maybe rocketing through an intersection where pedestrians are crossing. Or ending up in the Potomac River, unable to open the electronic locks.

“We’re talking about more than illegal surveillance. What Trad Whalen did is attempted murder,” I add with a surge of anger.

“I don’t believe planting such a thing was his idea,” Benton says. “He’s not smart enough. But he thinks he is, and that makes him easy to manipulate.”

Quietly outraged, I put on my sunglasses as the haze continues to thin.

“He might not even know what the device is for. And doesn’t care.” Benton reasons through what’s happened. “He’s doing as instructed by someone far more sophisticated than he’ll ever be.”