Darknet Read online

  None of the ways she’d failed all the way through school made a hill of beans worth of difference.

  What all those C’s did teach her, though, was how to be organized. If she couldn’t always remember every little detail, she knew precisely how to keep lists of things. She always kept a spiral notebook handy and had a page for every day of the year. On each page she kept everything she needed to know: to-do lists, phone calls to make, grocery items to buy, appointments for herself, Tony, and Avril, and everything else she needed to remember for the day.

  Her organization skills were second nature and she never thought about it. It was her primary weapon in life, and it helped her with everything, every single day.

  Meanwhile, sister Wendy was an accountant who hated her job, and who spent much of her free time complaining.

  Brother Randy was some kind of scientist who specialized in dinosaur bones. Cindy last heard from him about a year ago. He’d been on an archeological dig in Montana. She’d never heard him mention having any friends, but he could multiply two three-digit numbers in his head and recite the value of pi to 100 decimal places.

  Today, written in her spiral notebook was the cryptic note: 4 w M, old place.

  The note had to be somewhat cryptic. Tony sometimes picked up her book and glanced through it. She hated the invasion of her privacy, but she couldn’t bring herself to hide the book from him either, because she never had anything to hide. On the occasions when he did read whatever notes she’d scribbled for herself, he’d frown and shake his head as if she was doing something dirty and disgusting. She hated how he could demean her without saying a single word.

  To Cindy, the note meant: Meeting Maria at 4:00 at the place we used to hang out.

  The Puget Spaghetti House was one of their favorite places to meet. It was a touristy-type pasta restaurant that had wonderful spaghetti with meatballs and about a hundred other dishes. Cindy and Maria Delgado would meet there about once a year and enjoy their time together.

  Cindy was, as always, five minutes early. And as always, Maria walked in about fifteen minutes later, apologizing for being late. Cindy laughed and waved it off. She was already enjoying her second glass of wine, and sitting there relaxing all alone had actually been a nice treat for her.

  “You know it was less than two weeks ago that we had dinner last time,” said Maria. “How the hell did you manage that?”

  Cindy shrugged. “Can’t I enjoy some time with my best friend?”

  Maria smiled. She was perfectly dressed in a white cotton dress with a matching white headband. She looked like she was a mannequin in a department store showing off the best of the new summer line of clothes. Her long black hair twisted down over her left shoulder and she looked beautiful.

  Once again, Cindy wondered why Maria wasn’t married or even in a serious relationship, but she knew that just wasn’t her style. She liked her freedom, and that thought pulled a sad veil down Cindy’s face. Freedom.

  “What is it?”

  Cindy shook her head and sipped her wine. She pointed at the waiter and then at Maria. He came over and took Maria’s order.

  Neither said anything for a couple of minutes. Cindy realized her friend was waiting for her to spill the beans.

  “Okay, so I don’t know where Tony is tonight, and to be honest, I don’t care. I just took the chance to come see you. I’ve been—I don’t know—checking something out. Investigating. Researching. I don’t even know what to call it.”

  The waiter brought Maria a glass of wine and a bottle that he set on the table between them.

  “We didn’t order that,” said Maria.

  “On the house.” He smiled at Cindy. “After all these visits from you ladies, somebody finally recognized that we have a celebrity here.”

  “Oh shit,” whispered Cindy. “Please don’t tell anybody.”

  “Of course not. We’re just glad to have you join us.” He nodded and left.

  “We have to find a new place to meet,” said Cindy.

  “Don’t worry about that. What were you talking about?”

  Cindy wanted to tell her but she didn’t know how to start. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Maybe it’d be easier if she didn’t look at Maria directly.

  “You know things haven’t been good for a long time with us.”

  “Yes. I know you haven’t been happy for years.”

  “Not ever.”

  “Ever?”

  “Not since we got married. He—”

  Her voice cracked and she fought back tears. She blinked her eyes; tears leaked out. She was shaking and just wanted to leave, but she couldn’t.

  “It’s okay. It’s just me. You can tell me anything.”

  “He—he hits me.”

  “Oh, God, Cindy . . . Really?”

  Cindy glanced at her friend but then couldn’t stand to look at her and she lowered her head. She felt so ashamed and knew she was turning red. She just wanted to slink to the floor and hide under the table.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t.”

  Maria walked around the table and turned Cindy to face her, so that she could give her a hug.

  “You know you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Not according to him.”

  “I know you, babe. You could never do anything. Even if you did, there’s never any excuse for that.”

  Maria pulled Cindy to her and held her. Cindy was crying in silence, and they stayed that way for a moment. Cindy hated showing how weak she felt, but she couldn’t do anything else. She felt relief at finally telling somebody but also felt helpless at the same time.

  She finally took a gulp of air and broke from her friend.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered. She used her napkin to wipe the tears from her eyes.

  Maria rubbed Cindy’s arm and then moved back to her own seat.

  “You can’t stay with him,” she said.

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Sure it is. Just leave.”

  Cindy looked around to be sure nobody was watching or listening to them. Nobody was.

  “He said he’d kill us.” She looked straight ahead, lost in thought. “I believe him.”

  Maria just stared at her, as if Cindy had been speaking in Swahili. Cindy understood the confusion, because Maria saw Tony the same way everybody else did. He was the smiling, happy-go-lucky guy who was the life of the party. Everybody loved Tony and knew he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Certainly not his little daughter.

  Cindy continued, “I know it sounds impossible, but believe me, I’m telling you the truth.”

  She told Maria about all the times Tony had beaten her, how he made sure to never leave marks, and how he almost never broke any bones. She talked for ten minutes without stopping, and by the end, Maria was fuming and believed everything.

  “Fucking asshole.”

  Cindy nodded. “I have a plan.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I found somebody who is going to fake my death. Mine and Avril’s.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah. I have to get out. He’s going to make it look like we were killed in a fire on a boat.”

  “But there’ll be bodies.”

  “They’ll be about our size but there won’t be enough left to identify.”

  “Whose bodies will they be?”

  Cindy had avoided thinking about that and she shook her head. “Maybe stolen from a morgue?”

  “Where the hell did you find somebody who can arrange this?”

  “On DarkNet. It’s the part of the Internet that nobody knows about. You can find—”

  Images passed through her mind of the child pornography, organ harvesting, murder, and so many other terrible things that she’d seen.

  “You can find anything there. Trust me on that.”

  “This sounds like a scam.”

  “No. It’s real.”

  “Oh, babe, you’re in way over your head.”

  “No. He’s
going to help me.”

  “By ruining your fucking life? You’ll be in hiding and never be able to come back.”

  “Maybe when Avril is grown up. We’ll have new names.”

  “I’ll never see you again.”

  Cindy was silent and drained her glass of wine.

  “It’ll never work. You know that.” Maria’s voice was calm and reassuring. “You can’t hide. You need your freedom. What kind of life is he giving you? What about Avril? Can you really sentence her to a life in the shadows?”

  There was that word again. Freedom.

  Maria locked eyes with her and they just looked at each other as if they were making a silent promise.

  “This guy is a killer, right?”

  Cindy nodded.

  “He’ll kill people to get bodies that would pretend to be you. I know you, and you would never really let him do that to innocent people.”

  Cindy’s eyes watered again. She felt her body drain of energy and just wanted to crawl under a rock.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “You know what you have to do.”

  Do I?

  “Do it for Avril. Don’t make her hostage to that bastard. She doesn’t deserve to have to hide the rest of her life. Neither do you.”

  Cindy wanted to agree, but she couldn’t say the words out loud. She looked around again, satisfied nobody was paying them any attention.

  “I know. But—”

  “Have him killed. You know that’s the solution. This guy can help you, but not the way you said. He needs to kill Tony and set you free.”

  Once again tears filled Cindy’s eyes. This time, the tears were from relief.

  “I think I just needed you to tell me,” she said. “I wanted to but I couldn’t. I’m so scared. I’m scared of Tony, scared of this guy, scared of getting caught, scared of what might happen to Avril, just scared of everything.”

  She rested her face on her hands and closed her eyes.

  “I just don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

  Chapter 8

  July 13

  He sat in the back of an old barn. From the outside, it looked like it should have been demolished years ago, and there’s a chance the owner of the property would have agreed, but it wasn’t just the barn that was run-down. The entire 100 acre farm hadn’t been used for more than ten years. The fields that once grew soy beans were now just overgrown masses of weeds and wild grass.

  The main farm house had partially burned down and had never been repaired. Today, anybody who walked nearby could still smell the rotten timbers that lay in a big scrap heap. The frame and part of the house still stood but it wasn’t safe, nor livable.

  The farmer who owned the property was an old man who watched his life burning away all those years ago. Silent tears fell down his cheeks. Since he lived many miles from the closest fire station, he didn’t bother calling it in. His home was engulfed far faster than the time it would have taken anybody to respond to the emergency call. Instead, he’d watched from his car, safely parked on the county road that he had used for the past 60 years of his life.

  The farmer had inherited the land from his father, but now there were no further heirs. His wife died in childbirth, and their daughter died with her, all those lost decades ago. The fire burned his memories along with his home, and even though he would never rebuild, he also couldn’t allow the land to be sold. As long as he owned the property, he could still feel a bit of himself and Ellie as they were when they were young and full of life.

  These days, the farmer lived in a retirement home in Seattle and hadn’t been back to reminisce with his property in more than five years, but he lived the end of his slow life with the knowledge that he could go back if he ever wanted.

  It was the perfect operating base for the man who called himself the Manipulator.

  He’d moved his equipment into the barn a week earlier. He brought everything he needed with four trips in a rented van: two state-of-the-art desktop computers; a laptop; a printer; a portable (but powerful) generator; a bar fridge loaded with beer and bottles of water and a bit of food; two office chairs; and a few odds and ends he thought he might need.

  He didn’t expect to spend a lot of time in the barn; this was his planning center, and most of the actual work would be done in the vicinity of his target. This was his planning center, but the actual work would be mostly done in the vicinity of his target.

  The Manipulator stared at the monitor of his primary computer. He was logged into his Assassins, Inc., site, waiting for his client to show up. She was late.

  “Come on, you dumb bitch. You think I enjoy just sitting waiting for you to show?”

  He uncapped a beer and took a sip while he was waiting and he set some background music playing, a set of 90s music that he’d grabbed off the web.

  “Hello? Are you there?” The chat window popped up to show him her words.

  He smiled, almost able to hear the desperation in her voice. Good.

  He didn’t answer right away. One song merged into another through his speakers and he drifted away to his youth as a song by Madonna bled into another by Train.

  After enough time passed, he typed, “Hi again. I’m glad you made it. Sorry I kept you waiting. I was talking to another client.”

  “You have a lot of clients?”

  “It varies. Summertime is particularly busy.”

  There was a long pause. “I might want to change our arrangement.”

  The Manipulator stared at the message. He didn’t like surprises.

  “What kind of change?”

  “If you faked me and my daughter’s deaths, you’d have to kill some other people, right? To get the bodies?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “That’s understandable. People feel different levels of guilt. You’d have your freedom, though.”

  “But, would I?”

  The Manipulator drank some more of his beer. What the fuck are you doing, lady? He felt anger rush through him, wanting to reach through the Internet and tell her how stupid she was being.

  “What would you like to do differently? Are you saying you want to call everything off?”

  Now it was her turn to hesitate.

  “No. I just want one person killed, the man who’s causing all the trouble. My husband.”

  The Manipulator laughed out loud. Hell, he didn’t care who got whacked.

  “That’s no problem,” he typed.

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Still $20,000?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re sure? Once we have a firm agreement, there’s no backing out.”

  “I’m sure. I’ve thought a lot about it.”

  I bet you have.

  Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a bull frog calling. There were other nighttime sounds, but the sound that rang in his ears was the sound of money.

  He raised his beer in a mock salute.

  “I need to see you,” he typed.

  “No. I can’t meet you. This is hard enough.”

  “I want to be sure you’re not a cop. Activate the camera on your computer.”

  There was a long pause. The Manipulator pressed an icon on his desktop and launched a program he’d found on DarkNet. As soon as the woman switched her web cam on, the program took control of it, immediately scanning the video into a hundred still frames, each a slightly different angle as she shifted slightly in her chair.

  He looked at her long blonde hair and the frown lines that covered her face. Part of him knew she was a beautiful woman, but right now all he cared about was getting enough still photos. The program he was running automatically cropped the pictures to ensure she was completely centered in each.

  Before she was even sure the camera was working, he had everything he needed.

  Her image lowered her head as she typed, “Can you see me?”

 
; “Yes. It’s okay. I can tell by your face that you’re not a cop. No cop can act that well.”

  When he hit enter, her image didn’t react for a little over a second. Then she smiled.

  When they were just typing to each other, the delay wasn’t noticeable, and the client would still not notice it, since she couldn’t see him. It took time for people to type a sentence or two and an extra tick of the clock went by without a thought. Seeing the person react, though, was like talking on a long distance call over a satellite. The delay was irritating and obvious.

  The Manipulator had found all the secrets of his operation on DarkNet, of course. He had become a master of secrecy, not even trusting the multiple encryptions that were built into the Tor software. He didn’t want any government body even to be aware of the possibility of him working out of the abandoned barn, even if there was no way to know exactly what he was up to.

  He didn’t trust any American Internet Service Provider to keep quiet. Fortunately, DarkNet pointed him to a Chinese ISP that was way ahead of any American counterpart. He was connected via satellite to the ‘Net at 1.2 gigabytes per second, way faster than any local telco could offer. The satellite was in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth, along with a half dozen companion satellites. The Dynasty Internet Service Company buried their customers’ secrets in a dozen server farms scattered across China, and there was no way to subpoena any of their records.

  DarkNet had taught the Manipulator to be paranoid, but it gave him the safety he needed.

  His client was still smiling. “Can I see you?”

  “Not a chance. That’s the last thing you ever want to have happen.”

  “Okay. I think I understand.”

  “I hope so.”

  “So, what do you need to know?”

  “Nothing.”

  After the normal delay, she frowned. “How can you do your job without more information?”

  “I have everything I need. Trust me on that. Just go about your normal business, and come back to me on Friday. Until then, hunt down a broker who will convert your cash into bitcoins.”

  It was Wednesday, and he watched as she checked the date on her watch and thought about it.