White-Hot Hack (Kate and Ian #2)(48)
“I’m going to walk down to the gate.”
“I’m still a few minutes out.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
He hadn’t realized it was so foggy, and when the gate swung open, he stayed in the shadows, watching as the car following close behind her continued on. It was a sedan, but it was too dark for him to determine the make or get a good look at the license plate. After Kate drove through, she stopped the car and he got in, hitting the button on her remote to close the gate.
He leaned over and kissed her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m better now that I’m home. I’m probably just being paranoid. It’s dark and foggy and I let my mind play tricks on me.” She drove up the driveway and parked the car in the garage.
“From now on, if you want to go out at night, I’ll drive you.” The dark tint on the Navigator’s windows would make it difficult to see who was in the car.
“It’s probably nothing,” she said.
“Just as a precaution.”
That night, when Kate was asleep in his arms, his mind conjured up various scenarios, none of them good. He’d always worried that someday whoever had doxed him would come looking for them, and no matter how well they hid, if someone wanted to find them badly enough, eventually they would succeed.
He tightened his hold on her, listening to the gentle sound of her breathing. But for him sleep did not come for a very long time.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Charlie was the first member to arrive at the next task force meeting. Ian was the second.
“Hey,” Ian said as they powered up their laptops. “Find anything interesting?”
“Found a chat transcript I want everyone to take a look at. You’re going to find it especially noteworthy.”
As point man on the task force, Charlie had immersed himself in his undercover role and was now spending ten to twelve hours a day monitoring the hacktivists’ activity as they conversed online in an area of the Internet not indexed by search engines. Everyone—including Charlie—used software called the Onion Router, or Tor, to conceal their identity and hide their location from anyone who might be listening in or analyzing the traffic.
The remaining members of the task force filed into the room and took their seats.
“Okay, Charlie. Let’s see it,” Phillip said.
Charlie typed a command on his laptop, and the screenshots of several chat transcripts appeared on the screen on the wall. An Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, was a way to facilitate the exchange of messages in text form by more than two people at a time using a specific channel. Hackers utilized the channels to communicate anonymously on a wide scale, believing they were a reasonably safe place to conduct their conversations. Each chat log began with the time the message was written and the screen name of the participant.
Ian scanned the block of text, ignoring the posturing and profanity and focusing his attention on certain words and phrases.
01:12 <thehuntsman > they think u have no power 01:12 <nicklas > feds dark they have no power 01:12 <thehuntsman > silence is not power darkness is power 01:13 <Fox7825> power from spying feds
01:13<thehuntsman > priv8 no invites
01:13 <Fox7825> lulz in darkness
It appeared that prison had done very little to silence Joshua Morrison, and those he’d left behind were more than willing to take up the cause and act as his mouthpiece. Hacktivists functioned primarily as a loose collective, but one of their strengths was their ability to unite to promote a shared agenda, and they were quite capable of appointing new leaders who would ensure it was carried out.
Several lines in particular caught Ian’s eye, and he realized immediately what Charlie had meant when he’d said they would interest him. Magician was the screen name he’d gone by during the time he’d been collecting the evidence that would send Joshua Morrison to prison.
01:33 <X2frr9> magician dead2me
01:33 <jojoju> magician dead not enough.
01:33 <nightrider> magician dead in crash
01:33 <boizz79> magician die
01:34 <boizz79> magician die snake
01:34 <nightrider> magician dead for realz
01:34 <X2frr9> magician idgaf burn burn burn 01:34 <nightrider> magician dead for realz dead crash river 01:35 <jojoju> magician burn burn rat fink h8t snitch burn in hell
“Greedy bastards,” Ian said. “I’m dead and they’re still not happy.”
“At least they actually believe you’re dead. You should celebrate. That’s one less group of people who’d like to kill you.”
“Your glass is always half full, isn’t it Charlie?” Tom said.
“If you mean half full of whiskey, then yes.”
The news was a cause for celebration. In all his years of undercover work, what he’d done to put Joshua behind bars worried him the most. Not because he felt he’d acted inappropriately or outside the law, but because hacktivists were well known for their staunch refusal to ever forgive or forget. They were largely nonviolent, but that didn’t eliminate the possibility that one of them felt strongly enough about what had happened to become an outlier.
“Dark and darkness. What’s that supposed to mean?” Pete said. The two words appeared over thirty times throughout the transcripts, and despite the garbled, disjointed nature of the conversations, it was hard to miss the battle cry of revenge that permeated their exchanges.