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“What’s done is done,” I say. “Next time I have a chance to get you important information?—”
“You’ll walk away unless it’s what we’ve asked you to do.”
Or not. I make zero promises when it comes to something like this. Most of the time, the work I do involves white-collar crime. Data, codes, account numbers, information I can’t decipher out of context, and I normally don’t try. I do my job, and I do itwell.
Get in. Get the information I’m asked to retrieve. Get out.
But once I realized what I’d discovered, it felt too big of an issue to ignore. I couldn’tknowhuman trafficking was happening and not work to expose it.
Still, I shouldn’t have gotten caught.
The fact that I did irks me just as much as German’s flat, compassionless tone.
I hate getting caught. And making mistakes. I may not be the obvious type-A perfectionist my older sister, Merritt, is (both she and my younger sister, Eloise, would laugh at the comparison), but Idespisescrewing up. Especially when it’s in front of an audience.
German breathes one of his trademark sighs into the phone. “And now I’m on my way down with a team.”
A shocked laugh bubbles out of me. “A team? Overreact much?”
“You better hope it’s an overreaction. Now, what we need for you to do is?—”
“Sit tight and not so much as log on to anything at all. Got it.”
“No,” German says. “We need you to get some physical distance from your current location.”
“You mean myhome? The place where Ilive?”
I glance around my fairly new apartment. It isn’t huge or fancy but I chose it for the location in Midtown Atlanta and the fact that it’s in a 1920s style bungalow, broken up intofour apartments. Mine is a thousand square feet of details you don’t find in new apartment complexes: scarred but gorgeous hardwood floors, high ceilings and thick crown molding, a wall of exposed brick. I glance at my desk with all my monitors and fun toys set up exactly how I like them.
“For now, yes,” German says. “We’ll reevaluate once we get to you.”
My gut twists, and I feel a cold prickle of dread as the seriousness of the situation hits me. They say teenagers have this innate sense of feeling invincible, which is why they do so many dumb things. I’m not sure I ever outgrew that. I feel especially invincible when I’m safely behind my computer screen. But that feeling is gone now.
“German, am I … in danger?”
“Hopefully this is all just precautionary,” he says.
“But you said I need to leave my physical location. Does that mean these men—the ones I uncovered—they know where I am? Who I am?”
He’s quiet for a long moment.Too long.
“Don’t lie to me, German.”
Another sigh. “Yes. Whatever you did left a digital footprint that we have reason to believe has been traced directly back to you.”
“Not just the United States government,” I say. “Me.”
It isn’t hard to imagine the nature of the men I uncovered. I’m willing to bet whoever they are, they’re scary. Powerful. Cruel.
I close my eyes, remembering the exact moment I clicked too far. I have a dozen different ways to keep myself safe online. But this one particular firewall—I could tell it was set up to keep people like me out. There was a workaround, an application vulnerability I could expose, but it meant disabling the proxy server I was using to stay invisible.
I should have known better, but something told me it might be worth the risk. When I turned over the information I uncovered, it felt like itwasworth it.
“Don’t freak yourself out over there,” German says dryly, offering me exactly zero comfort. “We’re already acting to take care of things. If you do what I ask, you’ll be fine.”
“Actingto take care of things? That feels like vague government speak.”
“It is vague government speak,” German says. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the details, but let’s just say we’re hoping to eradicate the threat before it has time to reach you specifically. We would very much like this to become a non-issue.”
