Inside Nathan’s crowded office, Twitch was typing away on the keyboard. Emily was sitting next to her, fascinated by whatever Twitch was working on. Harris and Nathan had their heads together, and Chat and Ren were playing chess. Jack Webster was watching the match intently. Tox was about to bite into a gyro when a distinctive knock had him turning toward the door. Tox checked the peephole, did a double-take, and pulled the door open with a flourish.
“Well, look what the mutherfucking cat dragged in. Thought you were in Manila.”
The two men embraced in a fierce hug.
Finn McIntyre was nearly as tall as Tox and built like a linebacker. With his sparkling navy blue eyes and Hollywood looks, he could have graced the Big Screen if it hadn’t been for the burns and jagged scars marring the right side of his face. Finn could have retreated after his disfigurement, but instead, he did the opposite. He got in people’s faces, dared them to comment, spoiled for a fight.
“Finished early. I was in Philly visiting my mom. Harris thought you guys could use a hand.”
The others gathered around to greet him.
“Thanks, Finn. Appreciate the help.” Harris clapped him on the back as the other two men broke apart.
“Hey, any excuse to get a John’s Pizza.” Half of Finn’s face lit with a smile.
“Twitch, you know Finn.”
“We’ve met.” Twitch gave the icy reply without stopping her work.
“Hello to you too, Charlotte.”
Emily noticed Twitch visibly stiffen at what Emily assumed was the use of her real name, but was prevented from analyzing the exchange further when Tox tugged her over.
“This is Emily Webster.”
“Hey, great to meet you, Emily. Finn.”
“What the frigging frack is going on with this bait shop?”
That got everyone’s attention back on task.
“Bait shop?” Nathan looked over her shoulder.
“Earlier, I was pulling some threads on some dark web communication about the biotoxin and the IP address of this bait shop in South Carolina kept popping up. It’s not the sender or the recipient, but somehow, this bait shop is intercepting messages.”
“Who are these guys?” Tox scratched his stubbled jaw.
Twitch continued her rant. “That’s what I’d like to know.”
Finn offered his expertise. “Could be digital communication with a lo-fi component. Say you’re doing some sketchy business, drug smuggling or trafficking. Most of the Alphabet agencies are onto you. ATF and CIA and Homeland know who and what these guys are, just not where they are. Anything you send electronically will be tracked down; it’s humans that are hard to locate. There are two tricks around that. The first is to create a common email account with multiple users who communicate by writing emails and saving them as drafts without sending them at all. Other people log into the same account, check the draft folder and... bingo. Alphabet agencies are onto that trick, though, flagging suspicious accounts. The other way is to send an email with a coded message. Say it looks like a grocery list. The email goes to a coffee house in Delhi or a bakery in Istanbul or, in this case, a bait shop in South Carolina. A guy there takes the message and hoofs it to the next town to restart the digital chain on a new computer, or even makes a burner call to keep the message moving.”
“Eliminating a digital trail,” Tox nodded along.
“Worse. Leaving a digital trail that goes nowhere.”
Twitch shook her head. “It’s not that. At least I don’t think so anymore. I think there’s a signal piggybacking on the original transmission. The tracker signal, the routing, communications sources all trace back to this rinky-dink website, but then the electronic signal bifurcates.”
“Dude. English,” Tox huffed.
“I don’t think the bait shop is the intended recipient of these emails. I think someone planted a tracking program at the source, and whoever is monitoring the bait shop is listening in... or reading in, in this case.”
“Somebody’s sending you on a wild goose chase, Charlotte.”
“Stop calling me that, and no, they aren’t messing with me. I’m past all the messing-with-me stuff. The original transmission bounces around the world. I’ve been to Bangladesh, Berlin, Belfast, and Beijing. The secondary signal is embedded.”
“Quite the alliterative wild goose chase,” Assam chuckled.
“We have that capability.” Finn looked nonplussed. Twitch met his gaze then. Finn shrugged. “It’s a pretty simple malware program. If you can attach it to the source device—that’s the tricky part—the program attaches to the transmissions, then when the transmission is sent, the malware sends it to another destination, like an automatic, undetectable BCC.”