Spyware

What he found in the files wasn’t anything incriminating. It was what he didn’t find that was interesting to him. Certain things seemed to be missing, or incomplete. He knew the system well, and knew what it tracked and didn’t track. Some of the tracks weren’t there when they should have been. To him, this was a clear sign of tampering.

He sat back with this information and cogitated. He tapped his lips with a finger for perhaps a minute. Then he leaned forward again and searched the listing of accounts. Soon enough, he found a group of unfamiliar ones. Super-users that he had never heard of before. Only one was currently logged in, someone who had a login name of: HUNTRESS. He chewed his tongue, fairly certain who that someone was.

“Very cagey, Agent Vasquez,” he said aloud. “My tax dollars aren’t wasted on you.”

There she was, he felt sure, not out cruising the streets for him, but rather lying in wait for him where he was most likely to show up. He envisioned a lioness, choosing a shady spot to stakeout the waterhole. He considered initiating a conversation, but held himself back. Just such antics always seemed to get people caught, people who were too impressed with their own cleverness.

He hoped, in fact, that he hadn’t already been spotted. His tracks were now as indelibly recorded upon the muddy electronic landscape as anyone’s. A few quick checks on Rita Hapgood’s account would instantly look suspicious. The commands he had been initiating simply didn’t belong in the realm of a student account, and certainly not one that had never been used and was supposedly dead anyway.

For a moment his heart rate shifted up into high gear. Had they detected him already? A droplet of sweat tickled his armpits. Just the fact that the huntress was there, waiting for him, gave him pause. He envisioned her sniffing him out on the net and ordering his IP traced.

He rubbed his chin. It had become stubbly. How long would he have before they sniffed him out? Difficult to say. He decided to get on with things and disconnect as quickly as possible. Typing fast, he set up a delayed, anonymous e-mail message and addressed it to HUNTRESS. In the message, he related his leads concerning Justin and the virus. Perhaps if he failed, they might be able to do something with his work. Then he logged off.

He stood there in his underwear, hands on his hips, frowning at his computer. Had they managed to trace him? Were they as on-the-ball as that?

The idea kept growing on him. He knew computer hardware very well, but it was hard to know what special gizmos the FBI had for such situations. Something that he had never read about in Wired Magazine. He decided he couldn’t take any chances. Moving around the room, he disconnected his equipment, dressed and gathered his few belongings together into the Walmart shopping bag that Brenda had left him with. Flipping off the lights on his way out, he left the room keys on the dresser behind him.

As he walked across the parking lot, he realized that eventually he would be caught, or Justin would be dead and then nothing mattered anymore. He had to act quickly on whatever leads he had. The time for action was now. Breathing hard, he climbed into the Honda and revved the engine. Within minutes he was back on I-80. He headed west, toward the University part of town.

… 66 Hours and Counting…

“The connection is gone,” Vasquez said with a sigh. “I’m not sure what the IP trace will give us.”

“What do you think? Was it him, Letti?” asked Johansen.

A frown flickered across Leticia Vasquez’s attractive face. Johansen was her partner, but she didn’t really approve of his using her first name, much less her nickname. It didn’t seem professional for Bureau agents. Especially since she had noted that he only did it when they were alone.

“I don’t know,” she responded. She moved the mouse, double-clicked on an icon to initiate a new utility, then typed a query into the system. They had been watching each arrival into the system for an hour, hoping that one of them would be Vance. There had been an annoyingly heavy level of traffic, six hundred and fifty-seven logins since they started, and she had feared that they couldn’t monitor them all. Even though the internet connection was slow, the University community could still connect with the system and interact with each other, and they did so with gusto. When one of the student accounts had jumped up its own access priorities so smoothly and dramatically, she had all but missed it in the hum of activity on the net. Girlfriends chatted with boyfriends, then with other girlfriends, comparing notes. Instructors entered, fired a flurry of e-mails, probably test results and responses to questions, then popped off almost before she could check them out. Initially, she had expected Vance to come in using another instructor’s account, possibly even Brenda Hasting’s account. The student account ruse had thrown her off until it was almost too late.