Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,104

If there’s even anything here.”

Way Shane put it was this:

Petry played for her a recording, but it wasn’t played on a handheld digital recorder. It was an MP3 player. Which means that conversation between Orly and Bill Coyne was contained within a digital file—like, duh, an MP3.

Good bet that Orly does his business—er, more to the point, his really nasty business—out of the gun club since doing it at his house or his company would put him at risk. That, then, must be where the recordings come from.

And that might be where the recordings live. Recorded there. And stored there.

Easy-peasy, George-and-Weezy.

“So you’re gonna hack a computer in there,” she says.

“Huh?” Shane looks up. “Oh. No. Just the network.” His computer boops. “There. Wireless network. And…” He taps on the keyboard. “Like I figured, not very well protected. No WPA or WEP, just a straight username and password. I looked at the gun club’s website and it’s pretty much a big old piece of crap—like, Geocities-era terrible,” he says, continuing with words that Atlanta only barely comprehends. “I figured they didn’t exactly have a robust network and I was right. Still. We need to figure out the password. Maybe they use the default…” More typing. “Admin, no. Administrator, no. 1234, no, password, no, comcast, no. Damnit.”

“What’s the problem?”

He gives her a durrr look. “I don’t know the password.”

They start going through possible passwords. Mitchell, since it’s his son. TNC Biologics, since it’s his company. Gun club. Gunclub. Wife’s name takes a bit of Googling: Mary. No, not that, either. Shane frowns. “I wish he had a Facebook profile. Could find out his birthday, maybe.”

“I don’t think Orly’s the type to be on Facebook.” She almost laughs. “Is there a racist white asshole version of Facebook? Hitlerbook or something?”

That’s when it hits her.

She says, “Wait. These racist pricks are pretty much shoved up Hitler’s ass every hour of every day. They’re Nazi fetishists, it’s got to be tied to that.” And so they start firing off Nazi-themed stuff—everything from Hitler to Himmler, Adolf to Eva, Panzer to Jew-Biter. Wehrmacht. Warshed. Blitzkrieg. The names of concentration camps. The names of high-ranking officers. Shane’s pretty good with this stuff, because he studies and knows his history—but then Atlanta snaps her fingers.

“It’s not old Nazi stuff. It’s new Nazi stuff. I saw a license plate at Bill Coyne’s and in the gun club on the wall behind Orly’s desk. 14WORDS, it said. It’s a Neo-Nazi thing, counting the words in one of their mottos—something about securing the world and future for white children. Try that. All one word.”

Shane’s eyes light up brighter than his netbook monitor. “Bingo was his name-o.”

Atlanta starts biting another nail—this time, her thumb. Guy looks impatient. “So what now? You like, take over their computers and shit? Hack the files?”

“I’m not really a hacker,” Shane mumbles, staring into the screen like a sorcerer peering into his cauldron. “And I’m not gonna be able to hack the computer—if I were better than this I could maybe put out a packet sniffer and see what comes and goes, but we don’t have time for that anyway. I don’t need to hack the computer, though. I just need access to the printer. And…” Tap, tap, click, click. “I do. Via the IP address. Adding it now.”

“You said you needed a message from me. You got it ready?”

He nods. “All ready. Is it go time?”

“It’s go time.”

He stabs a key.

“Your message is printing, milady.”

* * *

The wait is the worst part.

Will someone come? Tonight? Tomorrow? No way to know. Nobody was at the gun club and so the message on the printer should go undiscovered until morning.

Just the same, they’ve no way to know when the axe will fall.

Or if it will. She starts to worry—maybe he won’t take the bait. Maybe he’s too smart a monster to go for the low-hanging fruit.

So, they wait. Or, she and Shane do, at least. Guy leaves her with some Adderall and heads back home. He wants to stay, he says, he really does, but he’s already had enough trouble, and these are cops and…

Atlanta tells him it’s okay. She needs his car gone from the driveway anyhow.

When he’s gone, she takes the Adderall.

Doesn’t kick in right away but when it does everything seems crystal and bright—she finds a sense of hyper-alertness, easy and electric. All the world under a magnifying glass. Her mind wiped free of fatigue. She tells Shane to sleep and he lays down on