Exit Strategy (Nadia Stafford 1)

"Such as?"

He lifted his brows.

"Come on. You set up a story, now carry it through. You've still got"--I glanced in his mug--"half a cup left. Tell me half a cup's worth of story and we'll call it a night."

And, to my surprise, he did.

* * *

HSK

He pecked at the keyboard with his index fingers. Slow but steady. His philosophy for all things, or so it had been...

What was the cliche? You can't teach an old dog new tricks? Of course you could, so long as you provided the twin keys to change--motivation and desire. He'd never be a sixty-word-a-minute typist, but his two-fingered method suited his purposes just fine.

Five years ago he didn't even know how to turn on a computer. But then someone showed him how useful a tool it could be and so, with motivation and desire, he'd taught himself how to use it. Now he couldn't imagine how he'd survived all those years in the business without it.

There were places down there, deep in the Web, that most Internet-savvy criminals scorned and mocked. Places inhabited by interlopers in the criminal world. Wannabes--that's the word they used these days. Computer geeks who set up shop in the underworld and tried desperately to be part of it.

He could picture them, caffeine-hyper beanpoles with bad skin and thick glasses, surrounded by pizza boxes and Coke cans, fingers flying across the keyboard, ferreting out every bit of underworld gossip and lore, endlessly searching for some tidbit that maybe, just maybe, would impress someone in the business, someone who'd seen dead bodies that weren't just video game carnage. They lived in that hope, so they worked ceaselessly, improving their network of contacts, their data banks of information.

Ego being what it is, no success is a success unless it can be admired and envied by others. Lacking the audience they desired, these moles of the underground found another forum for their braggadocio. They talked to one another.

Tonight, as he sat in the Internet cafe, nursing a coffee, he'd prowled through three such chat rooms, ostensibly to get a heads-up on the investigation, hear the leaks, the rumors, the speculation. Perhaps, if he was being honest with himself, he'd admit to the thrill that came each time he saw his alter ego appear on the screen, each time someone typed the words "Helter Skelter killer."

In one of the chat rooms they'd been debating some esoteric angle of the crimes, something about the randomness of good and evil. A doctoral dissertation in the making. He'd snorted, and glided from the chat room unnoticed. In the fourth one, though, he'd entered in the middle of a conversation that made his fingers freeze on the keys.

He read slowly, deciphering their cyber-shorthand as he went.

DRAGNSLAYR: ...getting together and going after this guy.

RIPPER: Going after HSK?

The three initials were what made him stop. His acronym. The Helter Skelter killer.

DRAGNSLAYR: Who the fuck else are we talking about?

REDRUM: You mean other assassins are going after this guy?

DRAGNSLAYR: Isn't that what I said? Fuck, maybe I should go find people who can read.

RIPPER: Who's your source?

REDRUM: Hey, guys, wouldn't that make a cool movie? Assassin versus assassin.

RIPPER: Been done.

REDRUM: When?

DRAGNSLAYR: Heard it from 22TANGO. Said those twins--Shadow and Sid--were going around to the brokers, asking questions, seeing if anyone hired this guy.

REDRUM: Shit. So why are they going after him?

DRAGNSLAYR: Who cares? It's a great fucking story.

REDRUM: Bet it's a job. HSK whacked the wrong guy. Now they're going to whack him. Man, that would make a great movie. You sure it's been done?

RIPPER: How about you go start writing it now?