When the men arrived at his home to kill him, Trevelle Williams was five miles away at an all-night diner in South Beach, eating scrambled eggs and toast and listening to the waitress bitch about tips. Her name tag said Mariana. Sitting in his usual corner booth, he smiled politely and checked his watch, hoping that Mariana would take the hint. But she was oblivious to his craving for peace and quiet. It was 4:32 a.m.
He swallowed the last bite of toast, gulped hot black coffee, then took out his MacBook and waited for it to connect to the internet. A virtual private network server in Iceland allowed him to send and receive messages anonymously, surf the net confidentially.
His gaze wandered around the old Pullman car diner. Two clubbers still high, sitting at the counter, sipping beers, and eating pecan pie with cream. A shifty-eyed white kid nursing an espresso. And two middle-aged guys deep in conversation about a girl they had both met at the Clevelander.
“The tourists are the worst. Especially from Europe. Ugh,” the waitress said.
Trevelle nodded and checked his watch again. She’d been talking nonstop for seven minutes.
She had her hands on her hips and was shaking her head. “One time, a big group of guys from Holland ordered about two hundred dollars’ worth of food and beer and stuff. You know how much they left me?”
Trevelle shrugged.
“Two fucking dollars! I thought, what? Are you guys for real?”
“That’s not right.”
“Damn straight it’s not right. I sure as hell won’t be serving them if they come in again.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Anyway, enough about me. How’s my favorite insomniac?”
Trevelle shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with any attention directed at his personal life. “I’m fine, thank you. And I’m not an insomniac. I just keep irregular hours.”
The waitress refilled his coffee and picked up his empty plate. “We’ve got a big menu. Lot of great food. You ever thought of trying something else?”
“Not really.”
“Get out of your comfort zone, so to speak.”
“I’m happy in my comfort zone.”
She gave a rueful smile. “You never change. Change is good.”
“I like what I like, what can I say?”
“My kind of guy.” The waitress winked at him, then walked away and picked up some dirty plates from an adjacent table.
Trevelle took a deep breath and looked at his computer. He’d logged on to a high-level cybersecurity chat room he occasionally contributed to, where the discussions ranged from network protection and security to software, programming, and state surveillance.
An encrypted private message popped up under the screen name CrackerHack.
It was the online handle of his friend David, who lived a hermit-like existence in New York. The guy was even more hardcore than he was.
The message said: Wondering if you’ve had any luck analyzing that file I sent you last week—the one from my hacktivist friend in Germany. Dude said the American company they lifted it from has ties to the Pentagon and the CIA. Told him I’d get back to him if it contained anything juicy.
Trevelle thought the message was strange. He hadn’t received any file. He quickly messaged back, saying to send it again but this time to his new email hosted in Switzerland.
When you did the sort of work he did, you couldn’t be too careful.
He finished his second coffee of the day.
The waitress was instantly tableside, refilling his mug. “Anything else, just holler.”
Trevelle looked up and smiled. “Appreciate that.” He watched her head to the other side of the diner to take another order.
He glanced out the window to where the edges of the sky were just beginning to lighten. He liked to spend a few hours down on the beach at the start of each day. Backpack on, laptop and cables and cell phone inside, walking on Ocean Drive, past the neon-lit signs on the art deco bars and hotels and apartments. He sometimes spent an hour or two at the News Cafe, watching the sunrise. The vibes were nice, mostly.
It made a sharp contrast to where he lived and worked.
Trevelle’s operation was based in an abandoned warehouse he had bought and converted into a high-tech fortress in the Overtown area of Miami. Low rent, high crime. He had views of a run-down liquor store, a crack house, and I-95. The rumble of freeway traffic a constant companion despite the thick walls and bulletproof, triple-glazed windows. But no one bothered him there. That was the main attraction. Still, South Beach was where he felt truly at home.
The vibes were chill, if you knew where to look. European house music pulsating into the night air. He usually popped into the Deuce when it opened at eight. Maybe a Heineken with a passing barfly from out of town. A game of pool with whoever was in at that ungodly hour.
The ping from his MacBook indicated he had a message. Trevelle assumed it was the file his hacker friend had resent. And it was. But before he could open it, a second notification pinged. This one contained a video automatically generated by his home surveillance system.
The thermal sensor detectors had been activated.
He clicked to open the file, slipping on his wireless headphones. Real-time, high-definition footage began to roll.
Trevelle felt sick. Three men in ski masks and surgical gloves, carrying flashlights, were inside his home. Their voices were low, speaking in a language he didn’t understand. They fanned out, packing up all his laptops and devices, photographing the inside of the huge warehouse he called home. How the hell had they even gotten in? He had designed the warehouse to be impregnable. Perimeter intruder detection, CCTV, security lighting, and thermal sensors both inside and outside.
He stared, transfixed, as one of the men disappeared. He returned a few moments later with a guy in a Tom Petty T-shirt and boxer shorts, who was adjusting his glasses and squinting against the light.
Trevelle had been so caught off guard by the breach that he’d forgotten that Fernandez, a genius hacker and one of his closest friends since MIT, was spending the night. Fernandez was in town to meet some financial guys who he hoped would fund his technology start-up in one of the poorest areas of Miami. Was it possible the intruders were there for him?
Through the headphones, Trevelle heard Fernandez sobbing.
The masked man pressed a gun to Fernandez’s head. Then he blew his brains out. Despite the silencer visible on the end of the gun, Trevelle was certain he heard the sound echoing off the stone walls of the warehouse and that it would haunt him forever.
One
It was early in the evening, and Jon Reznick was shooting pool at a dive bar in Rockland, Maine. The woman across the table from him wore a tight-fitting Ramones T-shirt and was chewing gum. Reznick had been close to Gemma Frazier’s brother, Mikey, back in their school days. And he’d always had a soft spot for Mikey’s slightly wayward younger sister.
Gemma lined up a shot but missed the eight ball in a corner pocket. “Shoot!”
“Bad luck.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, leaning on her pool cue. “It’s the story of my life.”
Reznick gulped the rest of his draft beer and shook his head, smarter than to wade into those waters.
Gemma flicked some hair out of her eyes and smiled. “Well, Mikey told me that you disappeared off the face of the planet after high school and were overseas for a while. Says you still won’t talk about it. Says you’re a goddamn fucking enigma wrapped up in a mystery or something.”