60.
Sienna
I checked in with Welch via phone and got hurried off the line. The man sounded busy, too busy to hear from me that I was right but had no evidence to back it up, so I hung up and just flew right back to my hotel. I figured shutting myself away from humanity was about the best thing I could do with the rest of my day, so I did it.
I took another long shower, trying to get rid of the stink of my swim, but after an hour I could still smell it, so I wrote that one off as a bad job, as the Brits say, and came out to a few missed calls waiting on my cell phone. None of them were J.J. or Veronika, unfortunately.
All but one of them was Dr. Quinton Zollers.
I ignored him and called back the other one.
My phone claimed it was an Arkansas number, but I didn’t know anyone in Arkansas, so I just listened in suspense as it rang, until I heard a quiet voice on the other end say, “Yo, Sienna.”
“Jamal?” I asked. I barely recognized his voice. Jamal always sounded mellow, but now it had me questioning whether maybe he was actually in Colorado or Washington instead of Arkansas.
“It’s me,” he said quietly. “Got your boy’s message. I heard you had some trouble in New York.”
“Have, present tense,” I corrected. “Yeah. I got something.”
“J.J. said you were worried about evidence being destroyed in these attacks,” Jamal said, cool as a cucumber. To say he sounded chill was like saying Minnesota was a little cool in the middle of winter. “I got some bad news for you. It’s gone. And the backups are gone, too. Like, across the board, and not just limited to the FBI and US Attorney.”
The ever-deepening crease in my forehead got a bit deeper. “Wait, how do you know?”
“I decided to take a look around in some systems across Manhattan while I was looking for security cam footage—”
“That’s probably a felony, and I didn’t need to know—”
“The digital backups have been erased,” he went on, ignoring my sudden squeamishness at crime. Like I hadn’t been ready to rip the memories out of a woman and assault my ex just an hour ago. “One of the best hackers in the biz did the job. ArcheGrey1819.”
“I don’t … even know how I would spell that,” I said, scrambling for the pen on the stand by my bed.
“I emailed what I found to J.J.,” Jamal went on. “Lemme bottom line it—there was a professional cyber-attack to go along with the big blow ups. Whoever hired ArcheGrey, they wanted complete destruction of whatever was on the FBI and US Attorney’s computer systems, and what they got was a cyber-attack on the infrastructure across Manhattan island that their cyber-crimes division is going to be unraveling for years. It’s broad based, but if you dig like I did, you see the things this hacker went after hardest, like it was his mission.”
“He went for the evidence,” I said.
“Looks like it to me,” he said. “But I’m not your ordinary investigator, and they’re probably gonna get at least a little snowed by the other, flashier stuff he did. I mean, he even left a note—”
“Where?” I asked.
“Not a real note,” Jamal said patiently. “Kind of … I don’t know how to describe it to you, but it’s basically a hacker calling card.”
“Like … a Tweet?” I asked.
“Sure,” Jamal said, and I could tell he was humoring me. “A Tweet. He tweeted it. Anyway, he said he was doing it ‘For Chaos.’” Jamal paused. “I’m guessing Chaos ain’t a real dude, but he makes it sound like one.”
“Fair guess,” I said. “So that’s a big bust?”
“Like a stripper who went overboard on the implants,” Jamal said placidly, and I wondered if, lonely, wandering guy that he was, he was speaking from experience.
“Great,” I said with all due lack of enthusiasm. “What about this Glass Blower who wrecked the US Attorney’s office?”
“I don’t have any better news for you there,” Jamal said. “First step of the cyber-attack caused a hiccup in the system that knocked out all the cameras in a six block radius on the north side of the building for about thirty seconds, so I’m guessing the action was up there. It’s actually still causing outages in coverage, and I suspect they’re going to have to take all the cameras offline to fix it. The problem is, that thirty seconds is—”
“An eternity when it comes to disappearing into a New York crowd,” I said with undisguised sourness. “So we don’t even know who the Glass Blower is.”
“The Glass Blower’s just a tool,” Jamal said. “Like ArcheGrey1819. You need to get to the wielder.”
“Pretty sure I found the wielder,” I said. “Nadine Griffin.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Queen of Wall Street? I could see that.”
“Can you? Because Scott stopped me before I could see it by ripping the memories out of Griffin’s slimy brain.”
“Sounds like you got kind of a Civil War thing heating up there,” Jamal said. “I wish I could be more help, but this ArcheGrey … he’s got skills. Beyond anyone I’ve ever seen, maybe even me.”
I frowned. “Does that mean he’s a meta?”
“Could be,” Jamal said, “but it could also mean he’s just got tools that no one else does. I really don’t know, I just know genius when I see it, and he did some genius here. I doubt the FBI will ever put it all together, because I don’t think I can, at least not well enough to track his ass down.”
“Well, thanks anyway, Jamal,” I said. “Did J.J. talk to you about—”
“I got a consulting fee coming, yeah,” he said. “Thank you. I’m still rolling around, but—”
“You could stop, if you wanted,” I said. “It’s not like the government was ever looking for you. I just … figured making exile your punishment would be a better choice than imprisoning you for the agency.” I shrugged. “I’m not going to press it if you go home and live your life, so long as you don’t resume your revenge-killing ways.”
“I think I got it all out of my system,” Jamal said, and he sounded a little haunted, his voice cracking. “But … not sure I feel up to going home again. I don’t, uh … anyway, whatever. Thanks. Give my best to Augustus, will you?” And he hung up.
I knew what he was going to say before he cut himself off. He didn’t feel up to facing his momma. I couldn’t blame him. I’d met Mrs. Coleman, and she was a tough customer. If she’d known Jamal had murdered people, he might have preferred to take his chances with the justice system than with her.
I stood up, casting my phone aside and strolling over to my hotel window. Below me, Times Square was starting to light up, the rush hour people and car traffic rolling through in perpetual near-gridlock. I watched a crosswalk flood with humanity and stared down. ArcheGrey and the Glass Blower could be among them, and I’d never know it.
Jamal was right. Those two were tools, used to execute an attack against the FBI, the US Attorney, and the SEC—the infrastructure that was supposed to keep law and order, to keep people like Nadine Griffin from thinking they were gods who could get away with ripping people off. However badly they’d erred in the past, and in spite of her protests in interviews about the “Old Boys network” being out to get her, she’d done terrible things to people who’d trusted her with their money. Whether other people had done similar things and gotten away with it was beside the point—for now.
First she’d done wrong, and now she’d done evil.
“Yeah … you’re not getting away with that,” I said, staring out at Times Square. Tomorrow, I’d begin again.
And I wasn’t going to stop until Nadine Griffin was locked away again, for good this time.