“And when you have him, you believe you’ll get him to turn on Alexander?”
“I will turn him, and they both go away.”
“Well then, it promises to be an interesting evening.”
“I need to clear it with Whitney, brief the men.”
“And you can put any fine points on it, adjust as need be, consider more angles while Trina’s dealing with your hair and makeup tomorrow evening.”
“What? What? Why?”
“Lieutenant, for someone so clever, you really should have known that was coming.”
“I know how to put the face gunk on.”
“You’ll have Mavis and Peabody for moral support. Not my doing,” he added, holding up his hands. “And really, darling, if you can so courageously face down a killer, you should be able to tough out an at-home salon treatment with friends.”
“Just another ambush,” she muttered. “What kind of friends ambush you?”
“Your kind. And think how much more irresistible you’ll be to your quarry when you’ve been glamorized.”
She opened her mouth, shut it. Hummed. “That doesn’t make up for it, but it’s a point.”
She glanced toward the door when she heard the sound of footsteps. “Prancing. McNab,” she said moments before he bounced to her doorway.
“Lieutenant. I think I’ve got your hacker.”
She forgot the misery of hair and face by Trina. “Who is he? Where is he?”
“His name’s Milo Easton aka Mole. Milo the Mole, he’s pretty famous in hacking circles. Have you heard of him?” McNab asked Roarke.
“As a matter of fact, yes. Young, isn’t he, not twenty-five, and responsible for hacking into the NSA mainframe—still a teenager then. Draining the bank account of an Internet magnate he considered a rival, manipulating the odds boards before the Kentucky Derby.”
“That’s Milo,” McNab confirmed. “He’s only been caught once, and that was early on. He was only about fourteen, so they went easy on him. Big mistake as he stopped doing it for fun, and started doing it for profit. He burrows,” he told Eve. “Himself—which is why he’s hard to pin—and his work. He lost a lot of his shine in the community when it got out he’d tapped into retirement accounts. Going after big money from big companies or people, that’s one thing. Sucking from regular joes? No frost on that. It’s his fingerprint on the first vic’s unit, and on the safe at the accounting firm. I’m sure of it.”
“Where do we find him?”
“He burrows,” McNab repeated. “You pop an ID on the guy, and you get one stream of data. Pop it again, you get another. All of them bogus. I’ll work on it, but I can’t pin his location yet.”
“I think I can help with that.” Roarke smiled at Eve. “It’s, again, knowing people who know people. Then there’s the money stream.” Roarke nodded toward the disc on Eve’s desk. “He’s been paid. However he might funnel the money, however he might route it, that route has a beginning and an end.”
Now he smiled at McNab. “Won’t it be fun to find it?”
“Find Milo the Mole?” Sheer delight blasted over McNab’s pretty face. “Fun doesn’t begin. If we do that I’m King of the Hackers. Emperor of EDD.”
“Let’s go and get you that crown.” Roarke rose, stepped over to kiss Eve’s head. “I’ll be playing with my friends.”
And she’d better play with hers, so to speak. She contacted Whitney’s office to ask for a meeting.
By the time she arrived she had a basic outline of her operation. She’d refine it, she thought as she stepped inside the commander’s office. Nail down any loose ends, refine the layout.
“Lieutenant.”
“Sir. I wanted to update you. Detective Yancy is working with the witness who sold the UNSUB the hammer used to murder Jake Ingersol. EDD, with McNab heading, has identified the man we believe served as the hacker on Dickenson’s office unit, building security, and the hospital communications.”
“Who?”
“He goes by Milo the Mole. Apparently if you’re a geek, that name means something. They’re working now to find his hole. We’ll run Yancy’s sketch for face recognition. If we can locate and bring in either or both of these individuals, we’ll push them to roll on Alexander.”