Page 13 of Wired Justice

“I’ve been stealthily studying Sophie Ang’s favorite things.” Jake winked and pointed to the pair of sterilized water glasses wearing little ruffled tops that rested on the sideboard next to the coffee maker. “Nothing beats a good drink at the end of a productive day.”

Sophie fetched the glasses and he splashed a couple fingers’ worth of dark amber liquid into each. “Cheers.” They clinked glasses. Sophie swirled the alcohol and closed her eyes, inhaling the almond scent, before she sipped. She so seldom drank. She would have to be careful. This situation was a set up.

“So. I am writing up notes from today and thought we could check the details.” Jake’s big fingers typed rapidly on the slim silver laptop. “I’ll begin with our meeting at the station, leaving Detective Freitan’s harassment out of it.”

Sophie’s skin prickled, remembering the uncomfortable scene at the station. She sipped her drink, savoring the delicious taste and the ball of heat it ignited in her belly.

“I’m more interested in finding out what happened with the Marshals and the body dump I discovered. I wonder if Freitan and Wong would give me any information if I called them.” She tightened her lips. She didn’t need to call them. She could use DAVID to hack the case file and see forherself.

DAVID, her rogue data mining program, was designed to penetrate law enforcement databases and collect and search data based on keywords, then use a comparison algorithm to test hypotheses. She could ask DAVID if there was a pattern connecting the family’s shooting with any other killings . . .

“Let’s not get into that kettle of fish—Hilo PD working with WITSEC on a quintuple homicide has no room for private agencies getting nosy. Instead, why don’t you use that laptop of yours to look for our girl online?”

“DAVID needs secure bandwidth to be used safely. What I mean is, the wide open Wi-Fi signal at this motel is not a place I’d like to use it. The program has firewalls, of course, but anyone in range of this signal could pick up some of the highly confidential data DAVID might access. I only like to use it when I have a cable uplink in a secure location.” But still, her fingers itched to input all the information about their missing girl. She went to her backpack and dug out her waterproof, satellite-capable laptop. “Even if I set up a secure hotspot with my sat phone, the data is vulnerable.”

“Look around you, Soph.” Jake gestured to the hideous décor. “We’re in Hawaii cattle country in a small town in the middle of the Pacific. What high tech cyber thief is going to be driving around Waimea with an antenna out, trying to steal data?”

“You never know,” Sophie said darkly. Because you never did know. People wanted DAVID and might be tracking it, and there was one particular Ghost that was . . . not an enemy, but no doubt watching her every move.