OrIcould say the entire scam was my idea, executed without her knowledge or approval. I was only sixteen. The most they could do was send me to juvie for two years—even with all those aggravating factors.
Shannon tried to talk me out of it for at least five minutes. By letting me win, she got to keep her property. Nutmeg stayed out of the system. I’d be free on my eighteenth birthday.
I just didn’t count on Shannon ODing three months into my sentence. Or my fifteen-year-old sister taking to the streets instead of moving into foster care.
The day I was released, Mr. and Mrs. A waited outside the facility. I lived with them for almost a year. Got my GED. Started classes at community college. Looked for Megan, day and night, until I finally found her counting cards and turning tricks at the MGM casino across the river in Maryland.
Megan… She could be sending the blackmail notices. She’s never heard about a con she won’t try running once.
She knows every detail of my sordid juvie past. But Megan can’t write a single line of code. She’d need help to spoof my address, to make it seem like the messages came from me. And there’s no way she—or any down and out hacker she just might happen to know—has the skill to access my client list.
Even if I’m wrong about that, my very clever sister wouldn’t risk upsetting the gravy train. She doesn’t come around often, but she needs to know I’ll be here when she does—me and my bank accounts.
Who else knows I got married?
I told Nilsson and Anna I’d be returning with my wife. But if they were going to betray me, they could have done it years ago.
Kate knew. She’s the only recent risk I’ve taken. She and her Red Cap Raiders, who have sworn to take down Lone Wolf.
But blackmail doesn’t seem like Kate’s style. Issuing a press release maybe. Hosting a party to reveal all her dirt. But the woman who scrawledFuck Youacross her chest for her own wedding ceremony isn’t a likely candidate for stealth.
Plus, I confronted her at her grandmother’s nursing home. I looked her in the eye. She’s not a good enough liar to fool me.
Annoyed that I don’t have an answer, I open the floodgates on my devices. It will take the rest of the day to triage calls, emails, and texts, speaking with my clients in order of their importance.
Before I can make my first pass at sorting the mess, my phone rings. It’s Barry Lynch.
He’s not my largest client, not by a long shot. And his issues aren’t the most urgent—he hasn’t been named in the press. But he is my fucking father-in-law.
“Wolf,” I snap into my phone, one ring before it goes to voicemail. I don’t want him getting used to my answering too quickly.
I expect him to apologize for Kate’s Fuck You display. I expect him to say we were missed at the reception. I expect him to ask if he’s interrupting my honeymoon, if I’ve taken his daughter somewhere exotic. But he says, “I need you to clear a crypto deal.”
Well, I suppose twenty million dollars still buyssomething, even in the current economy.
“Tell me what you know,” I say, reaching for my keyboard.
I listen with half an ear as Lynch reports meaningless background crap—a wedding guest he’s known for years, deals they’ve shared in the past, a new lead mentioned last night, an outfit called NightSaber. “And I heard back from NightSaber this morning.” Lynch finally gets to the heart of the matter.
“I’m logging in,” I say, which is a lie, because I opened my back door into his system sometime around his telling me how his mobster buddy likes his steaks. The email is sitting at the top of Lynch’s inbox—from someone named Cornelius Cantrell at NightSaber.pw.
PW. Palau. That’s a country in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, famous for its rock islands, a shark sanctuary, and being one of the top three sources of internet scams.
Scams work because people want something for nothing—valuable real estate at killer rates, a Rolex watch for the cost of a Timex, a share of lottery winnings without the risk of a losing ticket.
Lynch is still babbling in my ear. As with the StarCoin deal he brought me a couple of weeks ago, he has an opportunity to buy into a new cryptocurrency at the ground level. This one requires a significant investment—one million up front—but it’ll turn a profit in less than a year. All he has to do is find three other investors.
That’s a classic pyramid scheme, and Lynchmaycome out ahead, at least in the beginning. But the more of this currency he buys, the more new customers he’ll have to deliver. And themarket for idiots—at least for idiots willing to invest in an unproven crypto scheme—is limited.
A year down the road, or two years, or more, Lynch’ll be left holding the bag. The guys running the con will have made off with his entire investment, along with capital from the friends he drags in.
And if Lynch’s friends turn out to be unforgiving? The type of guys who settle their debts with bullets? Well, that’s not the scammers’ problem.
“I ran a search on this Cantrell yoke,” Lynch tells me. “Found his website. Testimonials and all.”
I could put up a website like that in my sleep. Hell, half the kids in the local elementary school have created one for their coding class. So could most of the players in Winter Reckoning.
In fact, it’s worth running a check to see if Cornelius Cantrell is in the game. A quick search shows he isn’t an active player. He’s not a former player either.
