CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Falls Church, VA
Friday, 7:15 a.m.
VALERIE HID IN A DARK cabinet at the end of the row of washing machines, clutching the HOG’s tooth against her chest until she was awoken by the sound of someone starting a load of laundry. Remarkably, she had dozed off sometime after midnight when she decided no one was going to find her hiding spot.
She had debated making a run for it in the middle of the night, but worried that Duncan’s men might still be around watching for her to sneak out. Morning made more sense. If she walked away from the building like a woman on her morning commute, she could easily escape notice.
Five minutes after the laundry room door closed, she eased from the cabinet and slid to the floor. Yellow morning light streamed through a wide window in the door, chasing away most of the shadows. The cold from the linoleum tile seeped through her jeans. Every angry muscle sent a protest in the form of pins and needles and cramps. So she sat against the wall and took long, slow breaths.
Her limbs hurt almost as much as her heart.
Scott had sacrificed himself for her. For us. She had to force herself not to speculate on what his night had been like. Her imagination was far too vivid.
Squeezing her eyes shut against useless tears, she gently worked her muscles until she could stand. Once stable on her feet, she tucked her hair up under her beanie and donned a pair of sunglasses she had stashed in the outer pocket of her bag. She had worn her jacket and gloves all night.
She slung her tote bag over one shoulder and walked out into the dawn. Orange and pink clouds painted the sky in an optimistic display that she couldn’t appreciate. It would make more sense if the sun never rose again.
Moving with purpose, but not haste, she walked about half a mile to the nearest drugstore and bought a bottle of medium brown hair dye, a birthday card—because a fugitive wouldn’t do that—a pack of gum, black eyeliner, berry red lipstick, and a bag of Skittles in holiday colors. Because sugar.
“Breakfast of champions,” the skinny twenty-something cashier said, holding up the candy with an amused grin before he stuffed it into a bag.
Valerie smiled. “Right?”
The cover of The Washington Post caught her eye. Both her and Scott’s photos were positioned above the fold, along with a picture of police cars outside the apartment building last night.
Her heart boomeranged in her chest. Stay calm. Their images might be plastered all over the news, but most people never expected to actually see a wanted criminal in person. No one would notice her. Plus, in her current state, she looked very little like the woman in print.
And yet, some people were more observant. They knew Scott had been arrested, knew she was on her own. What if one of the store’s customers was an off-duty cop?
Come on. Relax.
She paid for her purchases and forced herself to walk slowly out the door.
What she needed was a computer with Internet access. She couldn’t risk using hers within WiFi range again. For all she knew the malware on it would automatically connect and send information about her location, even if the WiFi appeared to be disconnected. She’d only kept her laptop to see if she could find the malicious code and decipher it. Offline.
But right now her priority was checking the forums. Duncan would be even more alert now that he knew she was in Virginia and had broken into Aggressor. And while she was pretty good at surveilling an unsuspecting target, her old boss would not be so easy.
Fifteen minutes—and a quick stop at another drugstore—later, she strolled through the front door of a three-star nationwide chain hotel and nodded at the thin, twenty-something black man behind the front desk as she headed for the elevators, just another guest returning to her room. She even took a minute to fill a paper cup with coffee on her way, not a care in the world.
On the third floor, she found the vending machine room and initially stood in front of the snacks as if trying to make a decision. No one passed by or came out of the room across from her. Thanksgiving must have made it a slow weekend for a hotel that likely got much of its business from visiting defense contractors.
Eventually, two housekeepers started working the floor. Surreptitiously studying them as they cleaned separate rooms, she noticed a pattern. Both of them were in and out of each room several times and ended by taking in the small toiletry bottles, and then spending about another thirty seconds in the room, presumably for a final check.
Valerie waited until both women were out of sight, one running the vacuum, before she took the stairwell down one floor. Here, there was only one housekeeping cart located two doors down from the vending room. The small space housed an ice machine and a trash can and provided a good vantage point from which to observe the housekeeper.
When the plump woman grabbed several tiny bottles, Valerie walked slowly past the open doorway. The housekeeper smiled and nodded at Valerie’s “Good morning” as she exited the bathroom, shutting off the light, and turned toward the beds.
Valerie’s heart triple-timed as she slid silently between the cart and the doorjamb and stepped into the darkened bathroom. She crouched and scooted as far under the wide counter as possible. Her pulse throbbed in her ears, but she took slow, shallow breaths through her nose and curled up tight, closing her eyes so she wouldn’t flinch or react when the other woman walked past.
An interminable number of heartbeats later, the door to the hallway shut with a loud clank that made her jump.
She sat in place for another five minutes before closing the bathroom door and turning on the light. After laying out a washcloth on the counter and setting a bath towel next to her on the other side, she removed the bottle of dye and a pair of scissors she’d purchased at the second store, setting them silently on the small white towel.
The housekeeper would hear the water if she ran the shower or flushed the toilet—which she badly needed to use before she left—but the sink should be quiet enough. With luck.
Forty-five minutes later, she checked her appearance in the mirror. Gone were the long, honey-blond strands, replaced by chin-length, mousy brown hair. She’d shortened her bangs to about an inch above her eyebrows and given them a slight U-shape, lined her upper eyelids with liquid black, extending the line out beyond the corners of her eyes to create “wings,” and added red lipstick. The retro look changed her appearance so much she barely recognized herself.
After adding square reading glasses, she wasn’t even sure Scott would know her on the street.
The hair dryer was too loud to risk, but someone might notice a woman stupid enough to go out in the cold with damp hair, so she sat at the room’s desk and spent the next two hours scanning her computer for malware and reviewing her notes on everything she’d done since she had turned fugitive.
The malicious code was well hidden, and she couldn’t be sure she’d removed all of it, but at least Scott hadn’t gone to jail based on an unfounded fear.
As if that were worth celebrating.
A deep ache set up camp in her chest. His sacrifice was for nothing, since that was exactly what she had. Without Jay or the emails, it was Duncan’s word against hers. A former black hat hacker and daughter of a convict versus a respected, successful businessman and former Air Force officer.
Valerie didn’t stand a chance without definitive proof of her boss’s duplicity.
A little after ten, her hair was dry. She could probably stay longer without detection, but with her luck the room would be given to someone with an early check-in. Better to leave now.
She tidied the bathroom the best she could, leaving the damp towel and washcloth tucked under the far corner of the counter, as if they had been overlooked by housekeeping.
In case the front desk attendant was unusually observant, she turned her tote bag inside out so it showed the powder-blue liner, and rolled the bottom of her jeans. She checked her reflection once more. Still startled by her appearance, she folded her parka over one arm, grabbed her bag, and looked through the peephole.
The housekeeping cart was no longer in visual range, so she waited with her ear against the door until the vacuum started running several doors down. Quickly, she exited the room and strode to the stairs—pausing only to stash a twenty between two towels—hoping like hell if the front desk attendant noticed her on the hallway cameras, he didn’t realize she had exited an unrented room.
She made her way to the lobby, ignoring the guy at the desk, who was deep in conversation with a heavyset man wearing a tool belt. Just off the main hall, she sat in a small alcove with two computers and a printer. One monitor faced the front desk, the other faced the elevator lobby.
Taking the latter, she enabled the browser’s private mode and used a free online VPN that would make it harder to trace her location—about the best she could do for security on a computer like this—and started checking her lures and shady hangouts.
After an hour, during which only two people used the other PC, discouragement had started to set in. So far, none of her queries had produced anything useful. She’d checked her fake social media accounts. Cathy Hollowell had accepted Valerie’s friend request, but her account had been scrubbed of anything useful, and now she’d be on alert. She’d know better than to click on a link or image of any kind, even one from a “friend.” Dead end.
Working through the forums, the bad news continued. No one seemed to know, or have anything on, Duncan. She’d been unable to locate any offshore accounts for him or any of his close family, found no shell corporations, or any obvious signs of laundered money. His wife came from a wealthy family, so even if his lifestyle exceeded his means, the money might be legit.
Moving on, Valerie searched for known snippets of code that matched what had been on her computer, but found nothing with a cursory search. Anything more thorough required time, access, and resources she didn’t currently have.
She had to get Scott out of jail, and to do that, she needed something to exonerate them both. Despair clouded her mind with a darkness she hadn’t experienced since watching her dad die. Despite all of her skills and efforts, Duncan had bested her, just like her dad’s murderer.
Once again, she’d failed the person she loved most.
With enough time, she could find something that would put her old boss away, she was sure of it. No person, no company was unhackable. But she didn’t have the luxury of unlimited time or money, and her foe understood exactly who he was up against, which made him more formidable than most.
It took everything she had not to lay her head on the polished wood desktop and bawl her eyes out. Or give in to sleep.
Instead, she worked her way through a handful of Skittles and dug through the last few forums before she had to hit the road.
And that’s when she hit pay dirt.
Between walking and riding the bus, it took Valerie more than an hour to get to Duncan’s house in McLean. She carefully navigated the quiet street through a slushy drizzle that made the sidewalk slippery, and hunched further into her parka.
If her plan worked, she’d either have Duncan by the throat, or he’d have her in custody. Or worse.
A stiff breeze cut through her jeans and the cold soaked into her tennis shoes, turning her toes numb. She’d donned her beanie, but why hadn’t she taken an extra fifteen minutes to buy some boots?
As she approached the Hollowell house, she scanned the enormous homes that surrounded him. Many of them had their front doors open, letting heat and warm, happy light escape through the glass storm doors. Inside, the homes had garland-wrapped bannisters and family photos lining the long entrance halls.
It had always bugged her that people left their doors open year-round here, and not just in the most affluent neighborhoods. Were they being inviting to neighbors or were their foyers too dark?
Or maybe it was a southern thing. Northern Virginia didn’t feel like the south as much as Richmond did, but the roots were still there.
Unfortunately, the open doors signaled that the homes were occupied, but surely one of Duncan’s neighbors was gone for the holiday. It was Thanksgiving weekend for God’s sake.
And…bingo.
The imposing white colonial with green shutters just this side of her target had two newspapers on the front walk and a yellow padded envelope tucked between the storm door and the cherry red front door. All of the blinds in the second floor windows were turned down three-quarters of the way, as were those on the side of the house visible to her as she approached.
Turning up a stamped concrete path as if she belonged, she mounted a short set of stairs. A square-cut evergreen hedge lined the front porch from end to end, providing a cozy—if cold—private hideaway complete with wicker chairs and a two-person swing.
Three oak trees that had refused to shed their rust-brown leaves conspired with the elevation of the house above street level to hide Valerie from view once she moved away from the steps.
Cupping her gloved hands around her eyes, she peered through tall mullioned windows, her view hazy through ivory sheers flanked by thick velvet drapes. Unlike her quarry’s home where the lights blazed brightly against the gray day, the first floor full of elegantly gaudy—and probably ridiculously expensive—furnishings was dark, buttoned up tight, all blinds turned down and shades drawn.
The owners probably had lamps on timers to make the place appear lived in at night, but anyone seriously casing the place could tell the occupants weren’t home. Alarm stickers on every door and window left no doubt that the house was protected, but that was fine. Valerie had no plans to break in. She just needed their location and a bit of privacy.
Nerves and excitement made her jittery, and she thought of Scott—freewheeling Scott who liked to sleep outside under the stars and never wanted to be stuck behind a desk—confined to a small cage.
Hang on. If all went according to plan, Duncan would be a wanted man by the end of the day. Then again, if he didn’t have anything incriminating on his home computer—or she couldn’t get in—she was back at square one. Lose-lose.
She opened her fully charged laptop and fired up the scanning software she needed. Within minutes she had located the Hollowell family’s wireless router and confirmed that he still used the same brand she’d seen in his living room at the company Christmas party last year.
Professional curiosity might have driven her to peek behind the television…
The router was—as expected—locked down tight, but she’d found the key on a zero day exploit forum, which listed hardware and software vulnerabilities that hadn’t been fixed yet. It was called a “zero day” exploit because essentially, the company had zero days to prevent a hack now that someone knew about the security hole.
Valerie had spent hundreds of dollars worth of bitcoin for access to this unpublished “backdoor” into the router, but it had been more than worth it. Within minutes she had injected malware into the system that would give her access to any computers connected to the network as long as they weren’t shut down—access undetectable to anti-virus software.
The biggest risk to her was that her computer might be transmitting her location. Now that she was part of her boss’s home network, the risk was real, despite her attempts to root out the code his spiteful flash drive had installed.
Every few minutes, she looked up from her work, expecting Duncan or one of his henchmen to march up the steps and shoot her in the head.
The image spurred her to move faster, and not too long after attacking his router, she had located his computer and pushed her way inside. The beauty was, he didn’t even have to be logged in.
Trying to stay aware, even as she was sucked into that zone where she forgot the outside world existed, she attempted to go through his files, but the entire hard drive was encrypted.
She’d been worried about that. For convenience, decryption was probably tied to his computer login, which meant she either needed to figure out his password—and since he wasn’t a moron, it probably wasn’t “123456” or, better yet, “password”—or wait for him to log on.
Could she get him to use his computer without arousing his suspicion?
She chewed on a fingernail and ran through common password patterns that even the smartest people sometimes used. Duncan should be smarter, but she didn’t want to rule it out. That’d be like kicking in an unlocked door.
Her password cracker was running when he logged on.
Yes!
Now she had his password and could decrypt his hard drive again later if needed.
She systematically went through his files looking for anything useful, starting with keyword searches that turned up nothing. It had been a long shot, but sometimes people got careless. More than one hacker, online predator, or undercover cop had given himself away by forgetting to use a VPN to mask his actual location. Given that, it wasn’t hard to imagine Duncan keeping a file with her name—or the name of one of the companies she’d hacked for him—in it.
And even with her on the loose, he was probably fairly confident about his home security. Undeservedly, but confident nonetheless.
Valerie was an ice block by the time she found the prize: a folder called TRAVEL. All thoughts of cold fingers and toes disappeared as she opened document after document of damning information.
Pure gold.
Communications with his buyers, who appeared to be Chinese. Confirmations of money deposited to an offshore account under a different name. The terms of his payment for a sniper. All under innocuous names like Bermuda, Tenerife, Santa Barbara, Flights, Hotels, and Cars.
Her heart sped up, excitement warring with disbelief. I own you now, asshole.
She resisted the urge to let out a triumphant whoop, but allowed herself a quick fist pump.
Without delay, she directed the entire contents of TRAVEL to upload to a public folder she had on a cloud service, not bothering to check all of the files for relevant content. She could pick through them later.
A loud engine rumbled down the street and stopped in front of the house with the squeal of worn brakes.
Valerie bent over and squinted through a gap in the hedge. “Shit.”
A package delivery truck was parked in front of the house on the other side of the road. A thirty-something man with an athletic build jumped down, opened a roll-up door at the back, spilling rap music into the frosty air, and hefted a wide box, fast-walking it up the neighbor’s driveway.
She let go of the breath she’d been holding and slumped back into the rocking chair.
While the files uploaded directly from Duncan’s computer, Valerie switched to her email client and reviewed the draft of a message she’d written weeks ago. It contained a link to a web page she’d created to publicize any evidence against Duncan that she found and would be sent to a distribution list that included several journalists she admired, two random agents at the FBI, a Fairfax County police officer who had been her neighbor for a couple years, everyone at Aggressor, and the network administrators at the companies she’d been duped into hacking.
Once the files were copied to the cloud, she’d find a place to go through them in more detail and post the most incriminating ones on the site. The only problem was that many of the recipients would fear clicking on any link she sent. For that reason, she had picked a popular blogging site and hoped that at least the journalists and feds would be willing to check it out.
Thunk, thunk, thunk. “Hey,” a deep voice said, more surprised than suspicious.
She jolted. The delivery man stood on the porch holding two shoebox-sized packages. A spike of adrenaline hit her like a lightning bolt.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
Oh, God. Why hadn’t she kept track of him? How had she missed that his truck hadn’t started up again?
“Uh.” She cleared her throat. “Just getting some fresh air.” She should have had a prop pack of cigarettes or something. Who else sat outside in weather like this? “My parents keep the heat jacked up. Old bones…” She gave him a conspiratorial smile and a little shrug.
He narrowed his eyes at the darkened windows, but gave her an insincere smile in return and set the packages at the top of the stairs. “Okay, then. Have a nice day.” His shoes pounded the steps as he retreated.
Dammit. He was so going to call the police. If this was his regular route, he probably knew who the neighbor was, probably knew that a woman sitting outside next to the Hollowell house with a computer was bad news.
She snapped her fingers repeatedly at the computer. “Come on,” she said under her breath.
Internet service providers prioritized downloading over uploading because most Internet users spent a lot more time downloading files—web sites, emails, and videos—to their computers and televisions than sending information back to the Internet.
So, the files were only about half done. Not that she needed to stick around for them to finish, but she had planned to keep watch in case something went wrong.
Now she had to bail.
Damn damn damn.
Her fingers hovered over the laptop monitor, reluctant to close the lid. Even now the cops could be on their way. What if they caught her as she ran away and no one knew what she’d found? Would they bother to look at the files?
She couldn’t risk it.
Working as fast as possible while keeping her ears tuned into the world around her, she modified her email message. She deleted all of the recipients except the reporters and systems administrators—no need to have Duncan’s own people alert him that she was in his home network, and given the holiday the others would likely take too long to view her message—then she swapped out the web page link for a direct link to her public folder on the cloud.
Once she had the folder set to View Only mode to prevent someone from deleting the documents, she attached the three most incriminating files she’d found directly to the email message.
Tires crunched the frozen asphalt and several smooth engines rumbled up the street, stopping just beyond her hiding space.
Mouth dry, she leaned down again. “Dammit.” Two navy and white Fairfax County Police cruisers were parked at the curb.
Valerie clicked SEND. Come on. Blood rushed her ears. She rocked anxiously in her seat as the message lingered in the Outbox.
Come on, you lazy-ass mail server.
Car doors shut quietly. A heavy shoe scuffed the concrete.
The message sent.
Valerie disconnected from Duncan’s router, slammed her computer shut, and stuffed the laptop into her bag. Rising to stand, she left the tote next to her feet.
A woman in a gray and black police uniform with her blond hair pulled into a sleek ponytail approached Valerie with her hand on the gun at her hip. “Ma’am. Do you live here?”
Better to be taken by the cops than by Duncan. “No. I’m Valerie Sanchez.”
Within minutes, she sat shackled in the back of a police cruiser while the officers stood around talking.
All around her, people had come out of their homes and huddled in small, animated groups in front yards and on sidewalks. Duncan strode onto his porch dressed in tan slacks and a white sweater, his wife at his side wearing a similar outfit.
His gaze met Valerie’s and bounced away, as if loath to make any contact with a criminal. He leaned close to Cathy and opened his mouth as if to speak, and then did a double take. His eyes widened almost comically.
That’s right, asshole.
The color drained from his face.
A woman in uniform approached his house and Duncan stepped back, bumping into his wife. Cathy rubbed her arm and narrowed her eyes at her husband. Her lips moved, but her words were inaudible from behind the bulletproof glass of the squad car.
It didn’t matter. The high color in the woman’s cheeks and her pinched lips said it all.
Duncan shook his head and pushed past his wife, his face a dangerous shade of red. She clutched at his sweater, but he shoved her away and fled into the house.
It was his turn to run.
Valerie let her head fall onto the hard seat behind her, closed her eyes, and smiled.