1
Bones
“Bones, you got a sec?”
King comes stalking into my room, looking braced for battle, and the hairs on my arms rise to attention.
“Somethin’ wrong, Prez?”
“The governor just received an email. A warning that if he doesn’t back out of the race, he’s going to find himself strung up in a tree.”The fuck? How the hell does Pritchard have any enemies? He’s a good man.“He’s guessing it’s one of his political opponents trying to scare him out of the race, but we can’t be certain. Would you be able to track down the sender, so we know who we’re dealing with?”
I can track down anyone and anything. “Yes. Just need access to the email.”
“I’ll forward it to you now.” He takes out his phone, and I pull up my inbox, waiting for it to appear. As soon as I click on it, mysystem flags it as malware. There’s a virus attached to the email. A wicked one at that.
“This one’s a loaded gun,” I grit. My fingers flying over the keys, working to see what I’m dealing with. As soon as I open my program, alarm bells go off.
“It’s spyware. Whoever sent it is looking to gain access to his computer. You need to tell him to shut his computer down and lock down his Wi-Fi. By this point they may have gained access to everything.”
“Motherfucker.” He nods, gritting his teeth as he dials Pritchard up. He’s pacing my floor waiting for the man to answer. His nervous footsteps making me work faster. “You need to shut your computer down,” he barks out as my fingers fly over the keys. “The email was encrypted with spyware. Got one of my brothers looking at it now…. Yeah… No… We’ll get to the bottom of it. Just pull the plug and shut the fucking thing down. Turn your Wi-Fi off too. Just use your phone for now.”
“Wait.” I look up. “Ask him if he opened the email on his phone too.”
“Did you open it on your phone or any other device? Okay, good. Make sure you don’t. Go shut down all your shit now, and I’ll call you back the second we know more.”
King hangs up, looking to me for answers, but I don’t have them yet. Soon though. I’ve seen this coding before. A couple of hackers on the dark web are the ones who created this program. It costs a pretty penny to purchase, which means the person who sent the email is someone of wealth. What I want to know is what information the sender was looking for. I’ll need to trace the email to get the IP address, then I can do some digging. One thing I can say is that this doesn’t just feel like a scare tactic to get the governor off the ballot. They’re after something else.
“Any clue as to what we’re dealing with here?” King steps behind me, looking over my shoulder. It’s nothing but gibberishon my screen to a layman’s eyes, but to me, it’s my primary language. All the little letters and numbers strung together, guiding me through the maze, leading me to the gateway I’m looking for.
“At first glance, I think we’re dealing with a pro. The spyware was bought off the dark web.” And not too many people even know how to access it. “I know the creators.” They’re almost as good as me, but not quite. “I’m tracing the origin of the sender now. Once I get into the server, I can see what they’ve captured.” Judging by the timestamp on the email, it’s been fifty-eight minutes since Pritchard opened it.
“Do you need to wipe my phone of that shit since I opened the email?”
I shake my head. “Nah. You’re good. All of our devices are bulletproof.” Even the most brutal trojan horse wouldn’t be able to penetrate the firewalls I have in place.
“This shit smells funny to me.” He shakes his head. “I need to go have a word with Ripper and let him know what’s going on. Come find me as soon as you get something. I don’t want Pritchard left exposed.”
This shouldn’t take me long. Not when I know exactly what I’m looking for. All I have to do is think like the creators and I can find the key through the door. I hear my door click shut in the background as I weave through the matrix of the web, winding down one path of code and then another. Finally, I get to the origination point. And… I don’t like what I find. Not one fucking bit.
I’m out of my seat and storming down to King’s office. Barging right in.
“You’re not going to like it, Prez.”
He and Ripper both turn in my direction.
“What’d you get?” King sits to attention; Ripper cracks his knuckles.
“Vicious and his crew are behind this.”
“Motherfuckers.”
Yes, they are. The Venomous Vipers are bad fucking news. Ever since they moved to this state, they think they can call the shots. They didn’t realize who already held the power here, and they don’t fucking like it. Now, it looks like they’re targeting the governor. Most likely because he’s in our favor and they want to put their own man in the power seat. It’s never gonna fucking happen. They have no idea who they’re messing with.
“So, what’d they get?” King asks.
“They pulled Pritchard’s inbox. Most likely looking for blackmail material. But I wiped everything they took from their hard drive, so they no longer have access to anything. Also made sure none of the documents had been saved or forwarded.” And while I was digging, I stole a few files that might come in handy. Ones that were passcode protected. After we deal with this shit, I’ll be taking a closer look to see what those fuckers are hiding.
“Vicious and his crew think they’re going to overthrow us on our own land, but they’re wrong.” King cracks his neck. “They’re going to get what’s owed.”
