“That’s the currency of the darknet. For all practical purposes, it’s untraceable. That’s why these killers are paid in bitcoins. Transactions on the darknet for everything from drugs to hiring a hit on someone are done with bitcoins. There are sites where you can exchange them for cash. The exchange rate fluctuates similar to any other currency.”
“If this guy who was chained up in the basement then killed John and took photos of it on his phone,” Kate asked, thinking out loud, “then how come he couldn’t call for help in the first place? AJ said he was chained up there for about three weeks.”
“You said that you thought your brother recognized this guy as the ‘devil,’ surprised him somehow, knocked him out, and chained him up. John undoubtedly took the guy’s phone. Once he escaped and killed John, he probably found his phone, then took the photos and uploaded them to prove he had completed the murder so he could collect the reward.”
“I guess,” Kate said with a sigh. “Can one of these predators tell by the photo of the eyeball that John has the ability to recognize them? Can you tell?”
“No. That can only be done with a photograph on photo paper printed from a negative.”
She gestured angrily at the screen. “Then why take a photo like that?”
Jack took a moment before answering. “I think the guy was being funny.”
“Funny? That’s funny?”
He put a hand on the small of her back to remind her to calm down.
“The photo of the eye he cut out was most likely an outburst of his anger at John, but it was also a kind of statement, saying that he could see John’s special vision and he had defeated it.”
“I still don’t see how—”
“Kate, these are sick people. They’re predators. You can’t think of them through the lens of your sensibilities. They aren’t like you and me. They get off on this kind of stuff.
“Some of them torture their victims for days. They upload videos of the torture scenes over a period of time before they eventually kill the person. They want their audience here to see it as it’s taking place.”
Kate was stunned. “They post videos of torture? You’ve seen them?”
He didn’t look at her. “This photo of John is enough for you to understand what’s going on here and what these people are like.”
Kate was sure that he was right. She had to look away from the still photo of John lying in a pool of his blood. She couldn’t imagine how horrific a video would be. She couldn’t imagine being tortured, helpless, and having it videoed so others could watch.
“Are any of the other victims like John? People with the ability like I have to recognize killers?”
Jack’s brow twitched at the question. “All of them are. This is a site devoted to eliminating people with your ability.”
Kate lifted her hands and let them drop. “But how do they find out about people like John, like my uncle?”
Like her.
“Sometimes one of them will spot a person with that kind of vision and stalk them. Rather than kill them right away, they keep track of them while they research the family to find others with the same unique vision.
“It’s likely they somehow found out that your uncle had that ability, did research on his family, and added John to their list of targets. As they find out about people with your ability they share that information here.”
“What if the relatives they research don’t actually have the ability?”
Jack looked back over his shoulder at her. “They’re killers, Kate. Everyone they kill, ability or not, is an innocent. A lot of killers seek out a specific type of victim. Hair color, physical build, age, that kind of thing. But your vision, your ability, is a universal target for their hatred. If a relative they kill doesn’t actually have the ability, they don’t care. Their view is better safe than sorry.
“Without knowing it, they are culling the human race of what in their view is an unwanted trait—like wolves hunting sheepdogs. Over time that changes the balance of human nature.”
He went back to the first page that listed names. “Most of these people are dead. See there, after their name? The ones like John with a check mark have been killed and the bounty paid.”
Kate felt sick. “Did you know any of those people with their names checked off?”
Jack deliberately didn’t look at her as he leaned in on his arms, staring at the screen. “Yes.”
“Were those people you tried to help?”
He stared at the screen for a moment longer. “Yes, I tried.”
He tipped the screen down as a heavyset woman in a flower-print dress walked by, looking over each of the laptops on display, seeming a little miffed that they were hogging one of them. She leaned in deliberately to look at the price of the computer they were using. When Jack and Kate remained where they were, she moved on. Once she was past, Jack lifted the screen again.
He pointed. “This is what I came to see. I had been hoping it wouldn’t be here.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
Kate saw a list with the heading “Active Scavenger Hunts.”
She scanned the list of eight or ten names and blinked in recognition. “That’s my name.”
“Remember what I told you,” Jack cautioned. She realized she had been a little louder than he would have liked.
Kate glanced around. “Sorry.”
Jack watched her a moment to make sure she was going to remain calm before he turned back to the screen.
“It’s been a while since I visited the site. I wanted to know if they had found out about you. Unfortunately, it looks like they have and they’ve added your name to the list. Most likely because you’re related to Everett and John.”
“Great,” Kate said under her breath.
He clicked on her name and another page opened.
Kate was stunned to see that the photos that had been on John’s refrigerator were all posted there. She pulled out the photos in her pocket, the photos she had taken from the pocket of the man she had fought, the man Jack had killed.
They were the exact same photos. All of them had been uploaded to the Scavenger Hunt site.
Kate held up the stack, showing them to Jack, unable to find words.
He nodded in sympathy for her silent anger.
She glanced around, checking the people wandering the store, then pointed at the price for her life under her name.
Two hundred bitcoins.
“That’s nearly a hundred thousand dollars,” he said.
“Why so much more than for John?”
Jack clicked the back button so she wouldn’t have to look at the photos of herself meant to help killers identify her. “It’s a reflection of your ability. A reflection of how much they want you dead.” He gestured at the page with the names. “No one else is bringing that much of a bounty.”
“Some honor,” she said.
The prices ranged mostly from twenty to seventy-five bitcoins. The highest she saw was one hundred, for a man named Philip Morgan. There was a check mark after his name. Underneath, it said, “Scavenger Hunt ended.”
“Where do they get this reward money?” she asked.
Jack shrugged. “They aren’t simply killers. Most are into all kinds of crime—robbery, cybercrime, drug dealing. They see people like you as a professional liability. This is pocket change for them. In Israel the terrorists had all the money they wanted for rewards to kill those like you.”
Kate reached in and clicked on her name to take her back to the page with her photos. She scrolled down the page where there was information about her.
“That’s my Social Security number. And my address. That’s my cell phone number and my license plate number. There’s the address where I work, even the floor.”
She looked back at Jack. “Brian, one of the IT guys at work, said that he had gone to a lot of effort to keep information about me off the internet. He had been trying to protect me, the same as he did for other executives. He s
aid he wanted to make it difficult for anyone I’d fired who might want to retaliate to find out any of my personal information.”
“Personal information is a commodity on the darknet. There is no longer any such thing as data security. That’s an outdated concept. Hackers routinely break into every company, store, agency, even the IRS, and scoop up all the personal information. They steal information on hundreds of thousands of people at a time, every hour, every day, seven days a week.
“If you work for the government, have health insurance, have a bank account, a credit card, a driver’s license, have a mortgage, shop online, have email, are employed, visit social media, register a new appliance, own a car or home, then your personal information has already been stolen and your digital life is for sale somewhere on the darknet.
“Large criminal organizations have sophisticated data-mining departments that sort all that information, slice it and dice it, in any way their customers want. You can buy identities by the dozen or by the tens of thousands, complete with account numbers, passwords, and your mother’s maiden name.
“Everyone’s digital life is available for sale on the darknet. People have no idea how easy it is for bad guys to get access to this kind of personal data.
“Your information would have revealed that you do security audits and have a security clearance. That makes you a much higher-value target. It’s easy to kill someone like John. It’s a lot harder to kill someone who deals in security issues. Your security job is an indication that you have above-normal intelligence, which means you are likely to have a more highly developed ability. A higher ability is a larger danger to them, so that makes you a higher-value target.
“You said that a man was arrested near your office and he had your name on a piece of paper in his pocket?”
“That’s right.”
“He most likely got your name and where you work here, on this site. By how amateurish he was, he was probably a lurker on this site and didn’t really understand its broader purpose. He probably simply got the bright idea that he could make a lot of money and have some excitement doing it. He was undoubtedly coming to kill you.”
“And he killed Wilma instead …” Kate said.
“Like I said, an amateur. A super-predator who can recognize your ability by your eyes would have plotted to capture you so he could have done whatever he wanted with you.”
“Can you change it?” Kate asked, feeling a crushing sense of vulnerability. “Can you go in there and change this information to make it harder to find me?”
“No, unfortunately there’s no way for me to do that,” Jack said. “Wish I could, but I don’t have the site credentials to do that sort of thing.”
“So then they know everything about me. They can find me.”
“If you continue your standard patterns, I’m afraid so. That’s why it was so important for me to get to you first so I could help you.”
“Help me? Good god, Jack,” she said as she gestured angrily at the screen, “how the hell are you going to help me if some psychopath can find me this easily?”
“Kate,” he said, speaking softly to get her to do the same, “I can’t change the world. The only thing I can do is show you what’s really going on and then teach you what I can so that you can better protect yourself. Last night you proved that you have it in you to do what you must to live. You didn’t give in to being a victim. You fought for your life. Whether or not you choose to defend yourself in the bigger picture, or how you choose to do it, is up to you.”
He wiped a hand back across his eyes. “I can’t make this all go away, Kate. I wish I could, but I can’t. I’m only the messenger.”
“I’m sorry.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I know this isn’t your fault.”
He showed her a sad smile as he started to reach for the thumb drive.
“Wait,” she said, grabbing his wrist. “What’s this?”
She moved the cursor to a small box on the left side that said, “Book reviews. Earn extra money.”
“It’s not important,” Jack said, making a dismissive face. “Just more of their hostility.”
Kate clicked on it anyway. It slowly opened a page that had a picture of Jack’s book. Beneath that was the back of the book, showing a photo of Jack standing with his arms folded, leaning a shoulder against a tree. In an unusual twist on the typical author photo, his face was in shadow just enough to be unrecognizable, except that Kate could recognize him by his body language.
Kate read the copy under the book. It explained that the Scavenger Hunt site was paying one bitcoin for each negative review of the book planted on sites like Amazon.
Reviews had to be posted on the Scavenger Hunt site first to prove they originated with a member of the site, and then that same review had to later appear in the reviews section of online book retailers. If it did, it would earn a bitcoin.
Kate clicked on the link to the reviews. When the page opened she scanned down the long list. With a sense of icy recognition, she saw that they were the reviews she had read the night she had met AJ. Under each review it said, “One bitcoin awarded.”
She scrolled down and at the end there was a section with directions on writing an effective negative review. It advised saying that you were a law enforcement professional, or a criminal profiler, or some kind of authority figure on the subject. It gave pointers on how to be dismissive of the book, giving key words to use. Kate recognized all the pointers as having been used in the reviews she read.
She felt sick to her stomach.
She felt her face turning red at the memory of how she had been swayed by those reviews. She prided herself on being a levelheaded investigator able to see through false narratives … and yet she had been duped. Worse, duped by calculating, corrupt people with an agenda.
“These people don’t like the public to know about them, so they try to discredit the book.” Jack gestured to the screen. “When they post these bad reviews, it encourages others to join in. The internet gives people a way to act out while remaining anonymous. It gives them keyboard courage, much the same way hiding behind white pointed hoods gives members of the Ku Klux Klan courage.
“Terrorists have embraced the internet because it’s a perfect environment to incubate hatred and slaughter. It’s all the same base mechanism at work.”
She looked back over her shoulder at him. “But this isn’t fair. Can’t you do something about it?”
“One of the things you need to learn in order to stay under the radar is never complain, never explain.”
“But this keeps you from making a living.”
“The Israelis, remember? I do this because it’s a calling. I have my own reasons for this book and for the new one I’m working on.”
“But if the book sold better,” Kate said, “you could find more people like me.”
He suddenly looked tired and a little defeated. “I’m only one person, Kate. As far as I know, there’s no one else with my ability, no one else like me who can recognize those like you. As it is, I have more people to help than I can handle. Most people I do reach don’t want to hear what I have to say. The book helps me reach others, like it did with AJ, and that led me to you. The simple truth is I can’t help everyone.
“This is all connected to something much larger. This is a speck of dust in the mountain ranges of history. The darknet is a part of that connection. I have to keep my focus on what small part I can play in it. In that context, the reviews are irrelevant to my purpose.
“Much like the industrial revolution changed mankind forever, the internet—and the darknet in particular—represents another paradigm shift in the delicate balance of mankind, but this time it is accelerating nesting events in a negative way.
“I can’t save the world any more than you can. You need to have the right mind-set—survival. This is but one nesting event among many in the great span of time, but one that is monumentally different.
“This time, it may be an extinction-level
event.”
Jack pulled the thumb drive out of the computer.
“I don’t understand all of the connections you talk about, or how I fit into them,” Kate said. “I don’t understand what you mean about nesting events.”
“Of course you don’t. I haven’t explained it to you yet.”
“Don’t you think it’s about time you did?”
He peered at her for a moment. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Okay, let’s get something to eat and I’ll explain it.”
Kate had the feeling that her view of the world was about to again shift under her feet.
CHAPTER
FORTY-TWO
Kate dropped her purse, her jacket, and a sack of disposable cell phones they had bought at the electronics store on the bed as Jack went into the sitting room and put the plastic bags with their dinner down on the coffee table in front of the couch.
They had stopped at a Chinese restaurant and gotten takeout. As hungry as they both were, they didn’t want to have a conversation while someone was sitting in the next booth. He thought it would be easier to talk if they were alone, so they decided to have a mini buffet in their motel room.
For the most part they had both been silent in the car on the way back to the motel. She wasn’t sure why Jack had been so quiet, but Kate hadn’t really wanted to talk. Her thoughts were in a whirlwind after everything he had shown her. She was still trying to digest it all. The whole concept of the darknet was a disturbing revelation in and of itself, to say nothing of the Scavenger Hunt site.
Seeing the photos of herself with a price on her life was chilling, but even more than that, it made her angry.
Kate checked herself in the bathroom mirror and, satisfied after ordering her hair a little, went back out into the sitting room.
Jack had been setting the containers out on the coffee table. When he turned back to her, Kate confronted him.
She took a deep breath. “I’d like to apologize.”
“For what?”
“I read those reviews of your book before.”
“You did?” He set down two bottles of water. “When?”