got it out of me.”
“I’m good, babe,” I assured her.
She patted my cheek and smiled. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay, now that we’ve got that outta the way,” Alamo said, taking Jasmine’s hand, “you and I need to have a conversation about stayin’ where I put you when there’s a psychopath on the loose.”
“Mouse followed me here,” she said.
“Mouse is not me.”
They continued to argue as Alamo led Jasmine out of the room, and I took the reprieve to grab coffee, then headed back to the office I shared with Mouse and fired up my laptop.
My cell phone buzzed, and I saw it was Booker calling, so I answered. “Hey, brother.”
Booker was the VP of the Dogs of Fire in Portland, and he and I worked closely together mostly because we could both hack pretty much anything, anywhere. My strengths were in exploiting weak spots at the code level, but Booker was better with hardware and the psychology of engineers which made us a good team.
“Your search provide anything interesting on the Beast?” I asked.
“No, which is what I find so interesting,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Let me ask you a question. If I asked you to dig up information, basic stuff, on Sugar Bear. How much data do you think you could produce within three hours?”
“Enough to base a TV movie of his life on,” I replied.
“Exactly,” he replied. “And you seem to think the Beast is some sort of a heavy hitter, right?”
“I can’t imagine some small-time punk flexing like this.”
“How long have you been looking into the Beast?
“About a month. Plus, I’ve got Jette working on it.”
“And what have you found?”
I frowned. “Nothing. That’s why I called you.”
“Don’t you find that a little strange? Three pros like us tracking this prick and we can’t even find his real name?”
“So, the Beast is good at hiding, so what?”
“Beast nothing. This guy’s a ghost. I have access to every criminal database imaginable and haven’t found jack shit. There are plenty of low-level hoodlums that call themselves the Beast, but no one with any juice. No one that seems to have crossed paths with our club or any other for that matter.”
“So, the Beast either has no criminal record, or is brand new to the scene,” I said.
“Or has a hacker on his payroll who’s as good as we are. Someone who’s successfully scrubbed the Beast’s digital footprint from existence. And, if that’s the case, we’re screwed.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. My mental gears starting to grind.
“What are you thinkin’?” Booker asked.
“When you said scrubbed clean, that got me thinking.”
“About what?”
“You ever scrub a sink?” I asked.
“Not if I can avoid it,” Booker replied with a chuckle.
“When you scrub a sink, you get rid of the dirt with some sort of cleanser, right?”
“Sure.”
“So, once it’s scrubbed, the dirt gets washed down the drain never to be seen again. But what about the cleanser? What about that invisible layer of film left behind by the soap?”
“I see where you’re going with this.” I could hear Booker smiling on the other end of the phone. “Pretty fuckin’ smart kid.”
I hung up and immediately got to work writing a tracer program. Rather than search for data this time, I was looking for digital soap scum. If I could find leftover traces of whatever software was employed to erase the Beast from the web, maybe I’d be able to paint a picture using the negative space. After a few hours of programing, I called my sister.
“Hey, dork wad,” Jette answered.
“I just put an executable in your draft folder with a list from Booker. I need you to coordinate with him and run that program on the servers on that list. He’ll make sure you have access.”
We communicated through a joint email account where we’d write drafts to one another, but never send them. Logging in at least once a day to check to see if there was anything.
“What is this?” she asked, laughing. “Scrubbing Bubbles dot e-x-e?”
“I don’t have time to explain. Booker will fill you in. Can you do this for me?”
“You know I’d do anything for you, but this kind of activity could draw attention to me.”
“You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Do what you can, but be safe.”
“I always am.”
“If that was the case, you wouldn’t be hiding from the FBI in the first place.”
“Wow, you’re being an asshole while you’re asking for a favor?”
“You know I love you, sis.”
“Yeah, yeah. Check back in a few days,” she said,