Down to the Liar(16)

“I think ‘naked’ is sweet enough.” I paste in the link Tog sent me and send the message. “Now we just have to wait for the mark to click the link.”

“What does the page say when the attacker clicks it?” Bryn asks.

“It just throws up an error message,” Murphy says.

“You don’t think that seems suspicious?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “As soon as someone clicks the link, we’ll have their IP address.”

“And then what?”

“Then I look up who it belongs to and make them rue the day they ever heard of the Internet. The details depend on who it turns out to be.”

“Why are we not telling Skyla about this?”

“She doesn’t want to know who it is. Besides, she might accidentally let the plan slip to the wrong person.”

I type a quick, insulting acknowledgment to Tog. It’s our thing now—I take out all my pent-up, grief-fueled rage on him, and he reads the thank-you between the lines.

“How long will it take the attacker to click the link?”

“Hard to tell. It seems like the mark is posting every other day or so. It could be sooner than that, though, if they’re set up to receive notification emails.”

“Well, I hope it’s worth the six thousand dollars you’re going to bill her.”

“Me too.”

Bryn takes off to pick Skyla up at her boyfriend’s place, leaving me and Murphy to sit and twiddle our thumbs.

“How’d your come-to-Jesus with Dani go?” Murphy asks from his desk a few minutes later.

I really don’t want to answer that question. I’m still nursing a sore spot over the argument.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he says.

I hide behind my laptop, answering emails, scheduling intakes, finishing up a homework assignment for government class.

“Murphy?” I say finally.

“Yeah?”

I stop typing, but I don’t look at him.

“I’m glad you’re—you know—here.”

He doesn’t answer, but the room is comfier than it has been in a while. He’s not Sam, so I can’t be sure he heard the apology I didn’t quite say. But I feel a teeny tiny bit better. Now if only I could work stuff out with Dani. And Sam. I roll my eyes at myself. Might as well wish for the reappearances of Ralph and my mom while I’m at it.

I get an email from Tog. I assume it’s an invoice for his services, but when I open the message, I wave Murphy over.

“We’ve got a hit. The mark already tried the link.”

While Murphy’s crossing the distance to my desk, I highlight and copy the IP address Tog just sent me.

“Ready for the moment of truth?” I say.

“Always.”

I paste the IP address into the search field on Whois.net and click the Search button. In seconds, the search engine returns a bunch of gobbledygook data that makes no sense to me. But in the middle of all the random netname, admin-C, source, and mnt-ref information is the pot of gold I’ve been waiting for. The mark’s home address.

“Field trip?” I say.

After a quick jaunt in Murphy’s van to residential Lincoln Park, we pull up to a Georgian three-story with immaculate lawns and a hedge separating it from the bourgeois sidewalk. Pretty much what I expected.

Murphy meets me on my side of the van. “What are you going to say? ‘Who lives here and what do you have against Skyla Woodbridge?’?”

“Yep. You coming?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for all the panels at Comic-Con.”

We walk up and ring the bell. A maid answers.

“May I speak with the head of the household?” I say, smiling pleasantly.

“Mr. Olson isn’t home right now. He’s at his son’s baseball game. May I give him a message?”

“I’m sorry. Did you say ‘Olson’?”

The maid’s eyes narrow. She’s trying to figure out if she’s done something wrong.

“As in Garrett Olson?” I continue.

Murphy looks as shocked as I feel.

Skyla’s victimizer is her boyfriend.





The Shutout


We’re winning. I think. It’s hard to tell in baseball. There are runs and outs and strikes and fouls and everything is statisticized to within an inch of its life. I don’t really do numbers. They’re not as predictable as people.