Page 53 of Cyn
She was going to need a shower before dinner. While she may not have gotten any useful information from the four sites they’d visited, they’d sure as shit run across some interesting people—interesting in the way Charles Manson or Timothy McVeigh were interesting.
She nodded. “I think Dan left some sort of lobster pasta, but more importantly, I think he picked out a couple of bottles of wine to go with it. I’m pretty sure he meant to give us some options, but after this afternoon, my option might be to go through all of them.”
Joe leaned over and kissed her temple. “As soon as we’re done, I’ll go downstairs and open a bottle. You good to drink tonight, though?” He brushed his hand gently down her injured arm.
She made a face. “It doesn’t feel great, but I’ve not taken any medication today, so a glass of wine or six is in my future.”
“All right, then, let’s hop to, Steele.” He nodded toward the next site on the list.
As she’d done with the prior sites, she logged on using the credentials Lucy had provided, then started navigating around, familiarizing herself with it. Like the other sites, this one had generic headings for a variety of topics. They’d learned quickly that she needed to travel deep down into the conversations to find the kinds of comments they were looking for, and the deeper she got, the more unguarded the conversations became. The problem was, each time she logged into a new site, it was like a fishing expedition. None of the ongoing chats aligned with what had been on the site the last timeJimKrackerhad logged in, so she was essentially starting from scratch.
“Go there,” Joe said, pointing to one of the chat topics,The Myth of Paul Revere. “It’s the only one we’ve seen with an obvious tie to Boston.” It was also by invitation only, which might make it difficult to join, but also meant it had promise, even if just a tiny bit.
Clicking into the chat, she typed in the username and passcodeJimKrackerhad used for these closed-door chats. She’d only tried it on three other conversations, and it had worked on two, but not on the third.
Cyn startled when Joe’s hand came to rest on the back of her neck, and she realized how tense she was. It wasn’t just the few seconds they had to wait to see if the credentials were still active that was getting to her, but the whole scenario. She’d been in life and death situations before, and she’d even been involved in stopping a terrorist attack before. But she’d never had the burden of more or less running the show herself. And with little to no hard evidence, and the FBI focused on New York, that’s exactly where the burden—the responsibility—lay, with herself.
“You know how this goes,” Joe said softly. “You dig and dig and feel like you’re getting nowhere until suddenly you’re somewhere.”
“Yes, but are we going to besomewherein time?” she countered, voicing her worst fear.
“The only thing we can do is our best.”
But sometimes doing her best wasn’t good enough. And if it wasn’t good enough, people would die. Probably a lot of people.
“You’re not alone, Cyn,” he continued. “I know it might feel that way since Meleak singled you out, but you have me, Devil, Nora, and Six. That’s a hell of a team. That’s more brainpower than maybe the entire FBI anti-terrorism department.”
At that hyperbole, she looked at him and laughed, which was, no doubt, his intention. “You went a bit far there at the end, didn’t you?”
He grinned, leaned in, and kissed her. “Maybe, but maybe not. Let’s stop these kids and their pathetic visions of grandeur, and then we can discuss whether the five of us are smarter than the FBI.”
“Only if Beni joins that conversation because I have a feeling that she could kick your ass.”
“Ow, woman, you wound me,” Joe said, giving his chest a dramatic rub. Then he shrugged. “You’re right, though. In fact, shehaskicked my ass in the past. She’s a sneaky little thing. Fights dirty, too.”
“The only way to fight,” Cyn replied as her computer dinged, letting her know—hallelujah—they were in.
She scrolled through several of the messages, most of which looked like standard rantings of a deluded population. She wasn’t in the group more than five minutes when a private chat box popped up and one of the names she and Six had seen appeared.
“Kracker, where you been?”LiveCrowasked.
Cyn gave a little yip of excitement even though she knew she shouldn’t be so thrilled to be speaking to a complete douche bag.
“Jail,” she typed, not wanting to give too much personal information away. “Got out yesterday, been online, checking things out. It’s quiet.”
“Yeah, a lot changes in two years, dude. What they get you for?”
“Parole violation,” she typed, then went on to askLiveCrowabout the other name she and Six had identified as worth looking into as well as a few ofJimKracker’sacquaintances that Lucy had provided in the dossier. Turned out that four of the eight were in jail, one had left the groups, and the other three were still around.
“Not that I’m not for anonymity and all that shit,” Cyn typed, “especially these days when the fucking government is watching everything, but I wouldn’t have minded knowing if a comrade was in the same resort as me. Oh well, maybe next time, right?”
“Ha, yeah, maybe next time,”LiveCrowanswered. “Did you hear anything while inside?”
Cyn didn’t need to ask for clarification on that question. Thankfully, Lucy had provided her some fodder in addition to the lure she intended to drop herself.
“Random shit, you know how it goes. A bunch of guys talking a bunch of shit, who the hell knows what’s real and what’s a load of shit.”
“That’s a lot of shit.”
