Killer Move

I stared steadily at him. I very much wanted a cigarette. He coughed and sat up straight.

“Okay,” he said. “Someone with skills could have dropped below GUI level and triggered it from underlying OS. I couldn’t find any sign of that, though, which brings me to Issue Two. You’ll recall I said there were two issues, right?”

“You did. How are you still alive, by the way?”

“This Amazon delivery you mentioned. Could be the two are unrelated, but . . . Occam’s razor, right?”

“What are you talking about now?”

“Medieval logician guy. He said if you’ve got two competing explanations for an event or situation, always choose the simplest, at least as your starting point. Point is, you have this weird e-mail, plus this morning you receive a book you say you never ordered.”

“I didn’t,” I said tersely.

“Your login for the Amazon account is your e-mail address, I assume? Like half the frickin’ world?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“But there’s a password, too, right?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

He nodded. “Right. Anyone can find your e-mail address. You probably bandy it about more than your actual name. But your password? That’s not for sharing. So this is where it starts to look concerted. Where do you keep a record of this password?”

“Nowhere. I just remember it.”

“Tell me it’s not something like your name or your wife’s name or date of birth.”

“It’s not. There’s no way anyone could guess it.”

“Excellent. So . . . how does someone get hold of it? Simplest way is a keystroke recorder. A piece of code that sits on a computer, makes a record of every single thing that’s typed on its keyboard, saves it to disk, or covertly e-mails it to someone out there in the void.”

“Is there one of those on my computer?”

“No. What tech do you have at home?”

“Two laptops. One for me, one for my wife.”

“You use public wifi much?”

“No. The machine stays at the house.”

“You have wireless there?”

“Yes.”

“How close is the nearest house?”

“About thirty yards.”

“Perfectly feasible for them to be piggybacking. Or else someone could be war-driving past your house.”

“Which means?”

“Cruising around with a laptop in a car, scoping out wifi networks, taking data snapshots.”

“Are you kidding me? We live in a gated community. You can’t even get in unless you’re a resident or a certified guest.”

“Doesn’t rule it out. So you got three options.” He counted off on his long, slender fingers. “Human engineering—like glancing over your shoulder at work, or in a cafe, when you’re using the Web. Two, a keystroke recorder. Three, someone scanning your home wifi.”

“I don’t like the sound of any of those.”

“Don’t blame you,” he said, wiping his hands on a napkin. “Whatever way you cut it, someone’s on your case.”

“So what do I do?”

He stood up. “Check your laptop—see if there’s anything that you don’t recognize. If you want, bring it in tomorrow and I’ll check it out. Meanwhile, change every password you have.”

“I will,” I said. “And thanks . . .”

“Kevin. No problem. I’ll drop you an e-mail later with hints on how to look for black hat wifi, okay? I gotta go now, though. There’s a Chronicles of Dunsany’s Kingdom fragfest waiting for me in Bradenton.”

“I have no idea what that means, but good luck with it. Kevin.”

He sloped off, leaving me with a bowl half-full of melted yogurt and a head completely full of questions.

I was confident “human engineering” was not the answer. I’m not a freak, but I do have a clearly defined personal space. I’d have been aware if someone had been invading it sufficiently to visually eavesdrop on what I was doing on my phone. That left two options. Home laptop, home wifi. Both featured the word home, which I did not like. Being fucked with out in the world is one thing. Someone doing it where you live is another matter.

As I stood up, I heard someone speaking.

“Hey hey,” the voice said.

I turned to see the goth/emo girl I’d met a couple days before, walking along the sidewalk toward the shop.

“Glad to see you slipping into Mascarpone Madness again, Mr. Moore,” she said. “Hope you didn’t give Craig as big a tip, though. I’m sure he won’t have served it with anywhere near as much panache.”

“He did not,” I said, forced into a smile. “I thought you worked afternoons . . .” I racked my brain, and then added “Cassandra,” just in time for it not to sound like too much of an afterthought.

“I like to mix it up,” she said, appearing pleased I’d recalled her name. We like being singled out, most of the time. “You never know who’s watching, right?”

I didn’t say anything, and her face turned serious. “Sorry—did I just touch a nerve?”

“It’s fine. Really.”

“Okay. Just, you look as if you bit into a lemon. And not in a good way.”

“Long day,” I said, and walked away to my car.

I drove home slowly, taking the time to run a detailed damage appraisal in my head.

The Amazon incident was done and dusted, and might even pay out, if Steph rolled with her response to my SMS of the morning. The e-mail didn’t seem to have materially offended anyone, had even hit the right note with Tony Thompson. It could be that this intrusion into my life might actually lead to improvements.

Conclusion: minimal negative impact sustained.

That didn’t mean it was okay.

By the time I pulled into the driveway, I had my ducks in a row. Step one, check for weirdness on my laptop. If I found some, throw it off. If I drew a blank, then I had to look into someone stealing stuff out of the air. I’d got the sense from Kevin the Geek that this was going to be a lot harder, but hoped the promised document would point me in the right direction. Either way, I could reset the minimal number of passwords in my life, keep a low online profile for a few days, and see if that killed the problem.

I parked and got out, full of purpose. As I was locking the car I heard the house door opening, and looked round to see Steph storming down the path.

“You okay?” I asked.

She slapped me hard across the face.

CHAPTER TEN

I don’t know if you’ve ever been slapped by your wife, but it’s not a great experience. It hurts, for a start, especially when delivered by a woman who plays her tennis old school, with a fiercely single- handed grip.

“You loser,” she said. It wasn’t a shout. It was throttled way down, rasping deep in her throat.

“Steph,” I stammered. “What the hell?”

“Inside. Now.”

She turned on her heel and marched back up the path. I followed quickly, casting a glance down the drive to see if any of the neighbors happened to be in view. I couldn’t see any, though that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone in one of the three houses visible from our yard, standing beyond a window that had just turned into a