Page 104 of The Five Year Lie

I take a deep breath. “So the video’s a dead end.”

“Yup.” He clears his throat. “Sorry I snapped at you. But I saw it, and I felt so paranoid. Especially after the break-in at my apartment. And now this network attack seems personal, too.”

“Why?” I demand.

His eyebrows knit. “Because of the way they got in. It would take me a half hour to explain...”

“Right.” I sigh. “But you think someone is fucking with you on purpose?”

“Either that or I’m paranoid.” He winces. “Listen—there was another thing you wanted me to look at—the breakup email. And I just did that as a peace offering.”

“Oh.”Oh.“Well?”

“Took me a while to find it. But I don’t think Drew sent it. That email was spoofed from outside the network to look like a Chime Co. mail. There’d be no reason for him to do that.”

“Maybe someone cut off his access,” I point out.

“But so what? Spoofing is a pain in the ass,” Zain says. “If they cut off your email access at work, and you still wanted to email a girl, you’d just break up with your gmail account.”

“Oh, you sweet summer child,” Larri says from the bench. “It’s cute that you think that. But a guy breaking up with a woman in his personal email is just asking for a truckload of ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME blowing back on him.”

“Huh,” Zain says. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You must never get dumped,” Larri says. “Lucky.”

“Whatever,” he says with a sigh. “You’d have tohavea boyfriend to get dumped.”

Larri cackles. Then she points at Zain. “Do you like tacos?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. I’m making tacos for Ariel tonight. You’re invited.”

I shoot her a look, because I don’t remember agreeing to dinner. But she ignores me.

“I like tacos,” he says. “If I can get my work done, I’ll come.”

“Cool,” Larri says.

Zain turns back to me with an apologetic shrug. “I also spent some more time looking at our favorite fifty-three warrants. Everyone of them was routed through a single cop’s name—a Captain Whitman.”

“Let me guess—he doesn’t exist?”

“Yup.” Zain shakes his head. “So that’s another weakness—our system doesn’t store the name of thecopin the database—only the judge. So we can’t spot strange patterns. We’ve been too reliant on having the judges set up correctly.”

“And we know how wellthatworked out.”

“Honestly, this has been humbling. I thought I ran a nice, tight system. Now I’m worried I’ll find more fake judges. It’s the next thing I’m looking at before I can make a recommendation to overhaul the whole system.”

“Don’ttake this to Ray. Not yet.”

“Not yet,” he agrees. “But eventually I’ll have to. After I get a chance to pick through the whole system and document any and all fraud. But I’d never blindside you. You’ll see everything I have, okay?”

“Everything?” I demand. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” he says firmly.

“We can’t talk to Ray until we figure out why he’d let this happen. This judge thing could blow up the company. It wouldn’t make sense for either Ray or my father to risk it. Unless we’re missing something.”