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Letty rolled her window down and let one hand trail through the warming early morning air as Baxter and Cartwright rattled on...
Tom Boyadjian called Stepat seven o’clock in the morning with the additional bad news. His two operators had been jumped by the three unknowns, who now had everything that had been in the operators’ SUV, along with their wallets, the registration documents for the SUV, photos of both of them.
They were not, Lawrence and Martin had told him, agents of the FBI.
“Did your boys give up my name?” Step asked.
“No, because they don’t know your name,” Boyadjian said. “These guys, these girls, do think they’re up against Russians—they referred to Russians several times and they know that Barron and Wolfe were killed by your guys.”
“They gotta be the train hackers,” Step said. “Gotta be.”
“I lean in that direction, but how do they shoot somebody, go to the police station, talk with the FBI, and walk away? The only thing I can think of—and even this isn’t a great fit—is that they’re CIs, confidential informants, for the feds. Maybe... we’ve heard rumors that there are these two CIs named Bob and Sue, not their real names, of course, who’ve been working FBI stings on local hacker groups.”
“Can you get me anything on them?” Step asked. “I’d like to talk with them.”
“We can try. If the information is out there, we’ll get it off our computers, and it shouldn’t take too long,” Boyadjian said.
“Then do that,” Step said. “These people are really screwing with my business. The stuff they stole really makes it look like it’s hackers who are doing it.”
“Okay.”
“And I got another job for you. Easy and safe. No complications.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to watch my house...”
Colles had gone backto Washington, but Nowak was still at the SkyPort. She was awake, and they told her what had happened at the Holiday Inn, and Letty asked about Sovern.
“Ah, no. I just got off the phone with the Coast Guard,” Nowak said. “He seems to have eluded them for the time being.”
“I was thinking—what if he didn’t go out to sea? What if he went around the corner, parked his boat somewhere else, and caught a cab? He could be anywhere.”
“That had occurred to me, when I was told that the ocean is apparently empty,” Nowak said. “It’s also possible that he changed the name on the back of the boat and took down the windmill thing.”
“There’s bad stuff going on. The Russians may be going after the hackers. The hacks could use information fed to them by people they somewhat trust,” Letty said. “Like us. That could make them more likely to cooperate.”
“That makes sense. I’ll make some calls,” Nowak said. “How soon can you get here?”
“Not long,” Letty said. “We’re on the 405 headed your way. We’ve got some stuff to drop off with you.”
“All right. I’ve got a plane at ten o’clock. I’ve got to go back to Washington. The sooner you get here, the better.”
On the way to the SkyPort, Baxter spotted an open mini-mart, and asked Letty to pull in.
“Food?”
“No. Aluminum foil. And maybe a snack.”
They all went inside, found a box of aluminum foil, and bought soft drinks and chips. Back in the truck, Baxter took the two iPhones out of the truck’s safe and wrapped them in the aluminum foil, taking a half-dozen wraps on each, carefully sealing the ends.
“Done,” he said. “Nowak can take them back to the Fort and our guys can tear them down.”
“The FBI has had all kinds of trouble cracking iPhones,” Cartwright said.
“Yeah, they do,” Baxter agreed, smiling at her.
“You’re telling me that you guys...”
