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. This wasn’t my fault. Besides, what could I even do? I could barely ensure my own safety, let alone help a girl I didn’t even 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 was punching my naked mother in the face. It was the voice that told me to ignore it when Dante decided not to pay 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 asshole 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 to get information out of me. Nick had tried to scare me with a boogeyman tale of this “Jacob” person who was going to arrive the next day. If the Jacob in the police car was the same person, that would mean my premonition wouldn’t come true until tomorrow at the earliest, likely around midday or later.

  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 possibly use.

  I glanced up at the clock; it was just after three in the afternoon. I checked into the hotel right after one, which meant I had been asleep for a couple of hours. Deciding to check in with BlueWhisper, I opened my laptop and connected to the internet using one of my VPNs. Before launching any applications, I noticed that my network meter was already spiking like there was traffic. I looked to see the source, and realized what an utter moron I was.

  I had left the script I used to steal money from Bertrand, Levin, and Hoyle running in daemon mode. Whenever my network activated and the VPN was established, it would reconnect and start attempting to syphon cash again.

  I opened the log and noticed that it was actively transferring money. They continued processing transactions, allowing me to siphon off funds. It seemed like they were intentionally letting me take the money, using my greed as a way to buy time to track me down. I quickly closed the script and disconnected from the network. The daemon had pulled in nearly four hundred thousand dollars. If they didn’t care about that kind of money, I was in deep trouble. I may have been 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.

  I packed my bags, 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.

  I felt tense as I scanned the lobby, hoping that 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. There were plenty of hotels in the area, 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. They're pulling that fucked up stunt of making her sit there for ages for no reason. Got an internal note from one of the detectives to his boss. The only thing she keeps saying is ‘lawyer.’ Smart cookie. 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're trying to drag out booking to shunt it all to tomorrow. Bloody assholes are giving her grief for asking for a lawyer.

  BlueWhisper: The bloke 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 dig deep on anyone specific. My specialty's the cops, so I can't promise much outside that.

  BlueWhisper: Nothing solid on the vehicle, and bugger all on those two blokes with the BOLOs either.

  Me: That’s great info. I’ll send you another 10 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, Nicholas, 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 are going to transfer her tomorrow, and I want to know when that is going down.

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

  BlueWhisper: Near a thousand blokes in SPD, so 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 in with what I have.

  I transferred another 10 Ethereum to his wallet, which completely drained mine. So, I decided to see what landmines 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 available. The exchange I used to buy my cryptocurrencies operated out of the Cayman Islands, but it also provided US accounts for direct deposits. It was designed to be super anonymous and broke lots of US laws 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 went ahead and pulled the rest out the same way. With 400 thousand in my exchange, my wallet was feeling fat.

  By the time all the transfers were completed, BlueWhisper had sent me photos of eleven people from SPD who could potentially have the nickname Nick, but none of them matched my guy. Then he sent me three more pictures; these were people from Meridian Risk Mitigation. There he was, linebacker Nick: Nicholas 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 was passing quickly, and while I had learned a lot, I still had no idea what I could even do 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 really an option. It seemed likely that someone in SPD was either corrupt and willing to help these people or was outright involved.

  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 players 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 out different groups, providing information about potential targets mostly. 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 completely unscrupulous. Whenever I needed something in the real world or had information to sell, he 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 almost immediately.

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

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

  Daniel: Spicy. I didn’t know you were that kind of player. 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 the place any action will happen. What I need them for is tougher to explain. A couple of mercs grabbed a girl I know and I want 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 large but I can’t say until I talk to them.

  Me: I can probably 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 Black 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 more than 12 or 13 years old wearing a backpack standing outside. 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 really 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 that could do the job who would take 10 grand each 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 a ton of options. My plan may have been stupid, but it seemed to be coming together.