“No.”
“Then where was he taking you?”
“To my place so I could get my car.”
Her eyes narrow on me, and I feel like a helpless rabbit caught in the talons of a hawk. “Are you sure you didn’t mention what was happening to Miss Knox during the drive?”
“I might have,” I say again. “I can’t recall exactly what we talked about.”
“It’s a fourteen-minute drive, Miss Walker, at minimum. You must have discussed the emergency that required you to leave his place so hastily.”
“Objection!” Mr. Goldberg shouts. “Leading question.”
“She’s answered you twice, Ms. Collins,” the judge says. “This is a preliminary hearing, not a trial. Move on.”
Ms. Collins doesn’t seem fazed. If anything, something smug veils her face. “No further questions, Your Honor.”
“Your witness, Mr. Goldberg,” the judge says.
The lawyer exchanges a few hushed words with Lex, stands, and decides, “We do not wish to cross-examine Miss Walker, Your Honor.”
I’m still feeling shell-shocked as I return to the others among the public, struggling to understand what just happened. Someone else walks up to the stand, and I force myself to listen.
“Mr. Grant, can you tell us a little about your job?” Ms. Collins asks.
“I’ve been head of the cybercrime department at the Portland PD for the past three years. Before that, I worked in Washington with the cybercrime division of the Department of Homeland Security.”
“You worked on the Nammota case there, is that right?”
“Yes. I was part of the task force assembled to track him down nine years ago. Ten of us worked nearly five years trying to catch him, but when the hits stopped, the trail went cold, and the task force was dismantled.”
“Five years on one hacker is a long time. One might say you’re a Nammota expert.”
“I know more about him than the average cybercrime agent, yes. I became familiar with Nammota’s patterns, coding style, techniques…”
Shit… Of course they have such an expert here to testify. And they probably have more in stock—either for today or the trial. I haven’t delved that well into Lex’s secret computer, but I saw how similar his coding style at Kelex is to his hacking code. He has his rigid ways, and they are similar in his legal and illegal scripts.
“Can you tell us what happened with Mr. Stephano Bianchi?” Ms. Collins asks.
Again, the mention of Kate’s ex makes a ball of anxiety swell in my throat. What the fuck is this about?
“On September 29th, Portland Cyber received an anonymous tip via email. It led to a secure folder containing proof of Mr. Bianchi’s unlawful distribution of intimate images of several subjects without their consent, as well as his attempts at blackmailing several of the victims. It was more than enough to arrest him.”
I frown, confused. Oliver did that, not Lex. Lex doesn’t even know what went on that day, as it remained between Kate, Oli, and me.
“Is that your usual routine?” the prosecutor asks the expert.
“Investigating these crimes is, yes. Receiving a perfectly packaged evidence folder, no. That was unusual, so I looked into it. What really got my attention was the way the files were named.”
“Meaning?”
“The all caps, the exact date format, the sequence… It matched a distinctive pattern I’d only seen before in the Nammota case. It was uncanny.”
“What did you do?”
“On a hunch, I dug deeper. The website hosting the folder used code that was also alarmingly familiar. When I tried to trace the server, the IP bounced across multiple countries, exactly the way Nammota masked his tracks when I worked on him in Washington.”
“So, you believed Nammota sent you those files?”
