CHAPTER 8
“Zane Alexander. My man. What's up with you nowadays? How's civilian life treating you?”
Hitting the cell's screen to switch the call to speaker phone, Zane smiled at the enthusiasm the Navy SEAL computer god Will Weber never failed to show.
“Life's damn good. And when you decide you've had enough of the Navy, give me a call. GAPS could use a man of your vast and unique talents.”
Will laughed. “No doubt. But I thought Rudnick hired a computer guy for you.”
“Jon did. A good one too. But we've got him tied up on some projects that are enough work to keep two men busy.”
That was the truth, but there was more to it. Zane wanted to keep Brent's case separate from GAPS.
Since he was handling this case himself, and not charging his old friend for the service, he couldn't in good conscience tie up already scarce and valuable GAPS resources for the job.
Zane continued, “We're actually opening another office in D.C..”
“I'm impressed. Good for you. I knew if anyone could make it work it'd be you two.”
Zane let out a short laugh. “I'm glad you knew because I sure didn't.”
It was nice that Will had been confident in the success of their company since he had had plenty of doubts himself.
That first year when it didn't look like they'd get the start up funding they needed, and then when they did get the money from Missy's father and he was afraid they'd fail and lose it, were some of the most stressful days of his life.
“So what can I do for you? I know you didn't call to just shoot the shit.”
“Am I that transparent?” Zane asked.
Will laughed. “Not at all. I just doubt you called in an effort to seriously try to convince me to come work for you so it must be something else.”
“As usual, you're right. I was hoping to pick your brain about something.”
“Sure. Shoot. What d'you need?”
“Let's say if, hypothetically, I wanted to find out more about who someone was communicating with on one of the social media sites, but this other person was using a screen name and didn't have any other information listed publicly—”
Will expelling a single choice curse word interrupted Zane's question.
Zane paused and then asked, “What's wrong?”
“Please tell me you don't want me to help you spy on your girlfriend. You know I'd kill or die for one of my SEAL brothers but I really wouldn't feel comfortable getting involved in something like this.”
Will's assumption took Zane aback. It took him a second to recover before he laughed.
“No. No worries there. Missy and I are good. I swear.” He decided he'd better give Will more information before he started making more wrong assumptions. “Look, I'm going to be perfectly straight with you here. An old classmate of mine is worried about who his cousin's been talking to lately. He's concerned enough he came to me with it. The sticky part is, his family is pretty huge. If the media got a hold of the story—”
“They'd have a field day. Got it.” Will blew out a breath. “Without knowing details, I can tell you this, there are ways of finding out this person's identity and location but . . .”
Zane anticipated Will's answer. “The methods are illegal?”
“Some. Others are just in a gray area. And all of it requires a certain amount of tech skills.”
“So I'd need to be a hacker or hire one to do it, is what you're saying.”
“Most likely. Or you could give me the info and let me see what I can find.”
“I couldn't do that.” Zane shook his head.
“Dude, my clearance is higher than yours was. You can trust me.”
“Thanks for the reminder. And no, that's not it. I trust you, but I couldn't ask you to do this.”
“Why not? My girl is visiting her parents this weekend. Some bridal shower for a cousin or something.”
Zane snorted out a sound of commiseration. At least Will was being bombarded with wedding stuff too.
Will continued, “I'm stateside and bored and I've got no interest in hanging at the bar or the strip club with the guys. So you see, you'd be doing me a favor.”
“Well, when you put it that way.” Zane smiled. “All right. But again, and I know I can trust you but I have to reiterate, this family can't afford a scandal and they're not going to get one on my watch.”
“Understood. Although I have to say the curiosity is killing me. So who is it? Politician? Movie star? Tech giant?”
Zane rolled his eyes. “You're making me regret this already.”
“Aw, come on. For the entire first half of the year I divided my time between working in a room full of servers at Fort Meade and coding my new app. It'll be fun to get into something else for a change.”
Will had his own app? That figured. The guy's brain wasn't wired the way other people's were.
“By something else do you mean something shady?” Zane laughed.
“Me? Never.”
“Yeah, right. Okay, Let me give you what I know. Got a pen and paper?”
“Pen and paper? Dude. You living back in the nineties or what? I'll input it right into my computer. And yes, before you ask, it's secure. No worries. I'm home and my system is hardwired and on a dedicated server.”
Zane had no doubt. The man probably had better security on his home computer than most corporations had.
He pulled out the paper where he'd jotted down what he could find, careful not to let it rustle for fear of further mocking by the computer god.
So Zane liked things old school once in a while. So what?
“All right. Here we go . . .” Zane began relaying to Will what Brent had given him and what he'd discovered through his own investigation.
When he got to the name of the family in question, Will let out a long low whistle. “So I'm going to assume this is the Hearst family? As in William Randolph Hearst and Hearst Castle and all that jazz?”
“That's the one.”
“And shit. Patty Hearst was the kidnapped chick who went off robbing banks with her captors.”
“And now you see why my friend is concerned.”
“Yeah.” Will blew out a breath. “Okay, let me see what I can find. Hopefully it's just some asshole cat fishing and trying to get her to transfer money to him then he'd move on.”
“Hopefully? That's your best case scenario?”
“Well, no. Best case is he's Prince Charming, they fall madly in love, get married and have fat and happy Hearst babies. But since I'm not betting on that I'm just hoping it's not something worse than a cat fisher. I've spent too much time lately watching terror cells recruiting Americans on social media.”
Zane knew Will spoke the truth. That was how Jon had gone undercover in ISIS last year, by letting the online recruiter think they'd turned a disgruntled former SEAL to their side.
“Does your friend know if she's met or made plans to meet anyone in person or is it all online so far?”
“He's not certain but he doesn’t think they’ve met yet.”
“Hang on. I might be able to . . . Bingo. She's got a Snapchat.”
“Um, okay.” Shit, Zane really was out of his element here. He had no clue why Will was so excited.
“She's got her location turned off on Facebook, but I can track her with Snap Maps. And if her online friend has one too, it could lead us right to him.”
“Damn. Okay. Great. Thanks, Will. Seriously. I couldn't have done it without you.” And that was no lie. Zane was starting to really grasp how valuable Will was. GAPS's computer guy too. They should probably think about giving him a raise.
You could teach a man to shoot and fight, but this computer shit? Zane was convinced this might require a different kind of wiring and he wasn't sure he had it.
No, that was wrong. He was certain he didn't.
“Okay, let me concentrate. I'll call you back when I'm done. It might be a few hours.”
Zane snorted. “That long?” He made sure his sarcasm was clear in his tone.
“You do know that the last guy who teased me somehow ended up with some embarrassing photos mysteriously appearing on his Instagram account, right?”
“I tease with the utmost respect.” And besides, Zane didn't have an Instagram account so he didn't have to worry. “Talk to you later. And thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Later.” Will disconnected and all Zane had to do was wait.
Easier said than done.