Page 142 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection
“I’m outnow.”
Lindy chuckles. Given how evil overlord he’s gone on me, it should be a high-pitched cackle, but it’s not. It’s just a chuckle: a warm exhalation from a guy I thought I knew but was so, so fucking wrong about.
“Don’t be like that. You’ve been sticking your middle finger up at the man for years. This is it. The ultimate hack. Show everyone the truth. There is no safety. There is no security. Not in this world. Not on this planet.Nothing is safe.”
I shake my head at the glitter in his eyes. I know nothing is safe. I know security is an illusion. But it’s an important illusion. It’s an illusion that lets several billion people sleep at night. It’s an illusion I’ve never aspired to shatter. I’ve bolstered it with shit like the security forum tips. I’ve made every hack as clean and quiet as possible. I’ve never been in this to make noise. I’ve just been trying to keep the few people I care about safe. To do what Uncle Max told me to do.
That’s all I can do.
“One last hack,” I say.
De Leon twitches but stays focused on Lindy.
“Two clean targets. You take one. I’ll take the other. We do them together.”
Lindy grins. “So we’re equally implicated? I burn you; you burn me?”
“Too fucking right. We do it my way. No way to trace it. I’ll provide the proxies. You provide the meatspace. Fifty-fifty.”
“I’m good with that. I have a place. It’s out of the way, but hell, you have a plane, right?”
He aims a cold glance at De Leon, who shrugs.
“Give me the coordinates and I’ll find the nearest airfield,” De Leon says.
Lindy holds out his hand, waggling his fingers. “Gimme your phone.”
“Do not,” I hiss. “Give that man your phone.”
“Aww, Max, where’s the trust?”
“You burned it six months ago when you let those kids die,” I say, staring into the eyes of a man I thought I knew. “Why me? Was this all a set up? You moving to New York? Teaching my class?”
He shakes his head. “Not all of it. I’ve been watching you for a while. I’ve been watching everyone Navy Intelligence taught to break my program, but you’re the only one who came out and kept hacking. Other guys got desk jobs and started families. You’re the only one still swinging his dick all over the net. The only one willing to take the risks I needed to bring Orelo to its knees. When you enrolled at NYU, I saw a way in. I called a friend of a friend and poof, a part-time professorship. Everything was easy after that.”
“I thought I was hiding from Ness, but you knew where I was all along. Fuck, I even gave you a free pass at my system.”
Lindy’s grin has too many teeth in it. “Thing of beauty, your system. Poking around at your firewalls was what convinced me to try a meatspace grab. I was never going to break your security. Fuck’s sake, Maxie, how often do you change your passwords?”
“Every. Fucking. Day,” I grit. “And don’t call me Maxie. We are not friends.”
He clutches at his heart dramatically. “You wound me. We are friends. Other than those assholes from the Navy that you hang with, I’m your oldest fucking friend. And I’m the only one who speaks your language, Max. Get past your bullshit morals, and embrace the truth. We’re the same, you and me. Two sides of the same coin.”
I shake my head at him. I’m not going to argue with him anymore. “Text me those coordinates. We need to go. I have things to set up.”
“How do I know you won’t run off to that plane and disappear like you did to England? That made me really mad. Bad dog, no bone. You’ve got no idea how expensive it was to track a private plane and hire a crew in a completely different country. And they couldn’t even get the job done. Your little British holiday cost me a hundred thou, Maxie. I’m not eager for a repeat.”
Giving him De Leon as collateral is so fucking tempting.
“I’m not going anywhere because I have a fucking life. I’m meeting my girl’s family Thursday night. I’m going to my best friend’s engagement party over the weekend. I’m not running because I’m not giving any of that up. But I bet you know that already.”
Lindy shrugs. “I know about grandma’sgala. What makes a party a fucking gala anyway?” When I don’t answer, he continues, “Drone caught you and your girl talking about it. Lip-reading tech’s expensive, but it’s getting fucking good. I thought about wangling an invite, but the only thing more boring than hanging with undergrads is hanging with a bunch of people who model diseases.” He gives an exaggerated yawn. “Snooze fest.”
“Boring or not, I’m going,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t miss it. So, you can be confident I’m not running. Be ready Friday at ten A.M. You have me for twenty-four hours. Saturday morning, I’m getting on a train.”
Lindy rubs his chin. “Might not be long enough. That safe meatspace? It’s the ass end of nowhere.”
“Tough. Make it work.”
