There are degrees of being an asshole that I could live with. Being responsible for the torture and murder of someone just because I happened to be in their vicinity was not one of them. Hell no. There had to be something I could do. Yet, another voice in my head—a very rational one—pointed out that I didn’t control the actions of these maniacs. Besides, what could I even do? I could barely ensure my personal safety, let alone help a girl I didn’t know. Besides, was that really even a premonition? Maybe it was just a dream triggered by my fears.

  This rational voice was the voice of fear. It was the voice of terror masquerading as pragmatism and cold rationality. I knew it well, and I hated it. It was the voice that told me to hide in my closet while the fat man with the hairy back punched my naked mother in the face. It was the voice that told me to ignore it when Marcus stiffed me after I sent him the location of a Home Depot truck that had broken down with a massive haul of power tools inside. Screw that voice. I was going to find a way to get Luanda out of this and make Nick and this Jacob creep regret ever tracking me down.

  Of course, there is a huge gap between wanting and doing. I tried to think back and review what I knew. The biggest thing was the timing. I remembered when I had the premonition of Dave and Nick taking me to the tattoo parlor. Nick had tried to scare me with horrible tales of Jacob and what he would do when he returned the next day. If the Jacob in the police car were the same person, the transfer wouldn’t happen until tomorrow, likely around midday at the earliest.

  The next thing I knew about was the tattoo parlour. I could easily locate it. I knew that part of town well, and it was distinctive. I’d find it on Street View in 5 minutes. That said, they had called it Site Charlie or Site Bravo or something. I couldn’t remember for sure, but the fact that it wasn’t Site Alpha or just “The Site” made me think there were multiple locations they could use.

  It was just after three in the afternoon. I checked into the hotel right after one, meaning I had been asleep for a few hours. Deciding to check in with BlueWhisper, I opened my ptop and connected to the internet using one of my VPNs. Before unching any applications, I noticed that my network meter was spiking like there was traffic. I looked to see the source, and realized what an utter moron I was.

  The script I used to steal money from Bertrand, Levin, and Hoyle was in background mode and never disconnected. Whenever my network activated and the VPN was established, it would reconnect and track the transactions. The transactions had never ended. They had done something to keep it alive so they could backtrace me.

  I opened one of my aliased back accounts and saw what they had done. They stretched the identical totals over a longer time by making them one-tenth as rge. My accounts were getting a slow trickle of tiny deposits. They intentionally let me take the money, using my greed to buy time to track me down. I quickly closed the script and disconnected from the network. Extrapoting based on that one account, the total wasn’t more than fifty or sixty thousand dolrs. Probably not a lot to pay to track me down again. I was in deep trouble. I connected through a VPN, but that hadn’t stopped them from tracking me down before. I had been in the hotel for two hours. Hopefully, they hadn’t found me yet.

  After packing my bags, I put a do-not-disturb sign on the door and headed downstairs. If they had someone in the lobby, it wouldn’t matter what I did. If not, I wanted to be elsewhere before they showed up.

  My eyes scanned the lobby, hoping no one around me was a trained assassin. I half expected to slip into another precognitive state at any moment. I decided to walk straight out the door. The area had plenty of hotels, so I headed to a slightly nicer-looking one about a block away and checked in there. Once I reached my room, I connected to the internet using a different VPN and accessed BlueWhisper.

  Me: Any updates on Luanda?

  BlueWhisper: Yeah, mate. She’s still stuck in interrogation. The CMS says she repeatedly asked for a wyer. Smart cookie. They're trying to drag out the booking to shunt it all until tomorrow. Pretty typical; they’re hoping she gets tired of the interrogation room and decides to talk.

  BlueWhisper: They're gonna push the gun charges, dead set. Looks like they've got it written up as RCW 9.41.050(1)(a) - Carrying Pistol Without License. That's a misdemeanor, so it sounds like she's actually licensed for the shooter itself. They also have her name fgged as a probable alias and unverified.

  BlueWhisper: I’m not that great apart from the police stuff, but I paid a bloke I know to get some background. The fellow she shot is David Vance. Ex-Marine. E5. Couldn't suss out his MOS. He's with an outfit called Meridian Risk Mitigation. Looks like your standard security mob. Cyber stuff, personal protection, they even do K&R work. It's a private mob, so no 10k filings, obviously. I’ll send you the full docs. Give us a yell if you want me to have him dig deep on anyone specific. He’s rock solid and not costing too much, but you're running out of what you gave me.

  BlueWhisper: Nothing new on the vehicle or those two blokes in BOLOs either.

  Me: That’s great info. I’ll send you another 6 ETH, and you can let me know when I use it up. I want a bunch of stuff today. I may need you to do some overwatch for me tomorrow, too. Start by getting me photos of anyone in SPD that might go by Nick. So that could be the first or middle name. Nick, Nichos, Nikoli, Yannick, or any other name or spelling. Keep track of any movements they make with Luanda and ping me with them right away. I have reason to believe they will transfer her tomorrow, and I want to know when that is going down.

  Me: If your guy has time find out what you can on that Dave guy, the outfit he works with, and anything about a w firm called Bertrand, Levin and Hoyle. Anything connecting them would be great.

  BlueWhisper: There are nearly a thousand blokes in SPD, so there are bound to be a few Nicks knocking about. I’ll send that to you in about 10 minutes. I’ll have a good crack at the rest and keep an eye on Luanda. If you need me to do overwatch for something kicking off, give me at least an hour's heads-up. If I can’t, I know a guy in Seattle who is rock solid, and I can loop him.

  I transferred another 6 Ethereum to his wallet, which almost drained mine. I decided to see what ndmines I might set off if I started withdrawing money from one of the 30 accounts I had used for the theft. Fortunately, Bertrand's payment system used RTP, so the money should already be avaible. The exchange I used to buy my cryptocurrencies operated out of the Cayman Isnds but also provided US accounts for direct deposits. It was designed to be anonymous and broke many US ws to keep it that way. It also supported fast transfers.

  I remotely logged in to the machine I use for my banking. I drained one of the accounts to buy Etherium and watched to see if it made it to my exchange or if there was some kind of hold on the bank account. It took about 30 minutes, but it worked. Since that worked, I pulled the rest out the same way. The two hacks combined netted just under a hundred and forty thousand, so, after the transfer, my wallet wasn’t feeling too light.

  By the time all the transfers finished, BlueWhisper had sent me photos of eleven people from SPD who could have the nickname “Nick,” but none matched my guy. Then he sent me three more pictures; these were people from Meridian Risk Mitigation. There he was, linebacker Nick: Nichos Renner. Having a real identity to peg to that asshole felt like the first real win in a long time. I asked BlueWhisper to find out all he could about Renner and also to see if he could connect anyone named Jacob to Renner and David Vance.

  I checked the clock, and it was almost 5:30. Time passed quickly, and while I had learned a lot, I still had no idea how to help Luanda. I was one man and not a fighter. I had only ever fired a gun once and didn’t even own one. The police weren’t an option. Based on the dream, Jacob was a cop.

  I knew a dozen or more people I could turn to in the hacker world, people like BlueWhisper, but in the real world, I really only had one person I trusted even a little bit: Daniel Park. Daniel Park was a middleman. He knew most of the major pyers in drugs, theft, human trafficking, and pretty much any other illegal activity in the central Seattle area and possibly beyond.

  Before I met Daniel, I had done a couple of deals helping different groups, mainly providing information about potential targets. On a couple of occasions, I had gotten ripped off. It turns out a hacker isn’t someone your typical gang member worries about ripping off. Daniel operated at the intersection of the real world and the virtual one. He could obtain anything for anyone, and he was utterly unscrupulous. Whenever I needed something in the real world or had information to sell, Park always came through for me. I had never met him in person, and he only knew me by my handle, Sabot.

  Me: Hey Park, I need your help with a couple of things on short notice. You around?

  The answer came back 4 minutes ter.

  Daniel: Long time, Sabot. You know I’m your man any time.

  Me: The first thing I need is a good quality semi-automatic with an extra magazine, a holster, and a set of body armor that is good enough to stop a pistol round.

  Daniel: Spicy. I didn’t know you were that kind of pyer. I can do that.

  Me: The next thing is a bit harder. I need 3 or 4 bodyguards all day tomorrow. Serious guys willing to draw down if need be.

  Daniel: That’s gonna be a lot harder. It depends on the location, and it depends on the action. No one is signing up for a suicide mission. And unless you are way better off than I think, you don’t have the money to get a bunch of hard cases to cross into some territories.

  Me: Sure, for the location, it’s gonna be Lower Queen Anne. There is some chance it might not, but 90% that’s where any action will happen. What I need them for is trickier to expin. A couple of mercs grabbed a girl I know, and I need to intimidate them into giving her back.

  Daniel: The location is good. I know guys on the Mercer Crew. Still, fights over goods like that go bad a lot, so I can’t make promises. The nine and the vest will be 5000. For the guys, it’s hard to say. You’ll need to front them half as cash up front. I can carry the back half. It’ll probably run you 50 rge but I can’t say until I talk to them.

  Me: I can work that, but it will use most of my ready cash.

  Daniel: I’ll try to get 4, but it may just be 3 or even 2. Like I said, no promises.

  Me: Let me know about the guys. How do you want the 5k for the gun vest and holster?

  Daniel: ETH is fine. You have my info on that. Also, be careful with the vest. Cops see you in a vest, legal or not, they will pull your ass over.

  Me: Thanks for the heads up.

  We set up a time for me to pick up the gun, and I caught a shuttle over to the airport and rented a Bck SUV for two weeks. Then I drove to a 7-Eleven, where he told me to pick up my stuff. There was an Asian boy no older than 12 or 13, wearing a backpack, standing near the ice machine. I pulled up to him, rolled down the window, and said, “Daniel Park told me to come here to pick up my stuff.” He nodded, took the backpack off, dropped it in the window, and left. People probably think these things are cloak and dagger, but buying an illegal gun in most cities isn’t that much different than buying a burrito. Hell, sometimes it’s exactly the same.

  Later that night, Park got back to me to let me know he had three guys who could do the job, each taking 10 grand up front, with Daniel holding another 15 each on the back end. I couldn’t help but think Daniel was ripping me off, but it wasn’t like I had many options. My pn may have been stupid, but it seemed to be coming together anyway.