But she felt for Lauren Fox. Felt deeply. Living with what she knew could happen at any minute was one of the worst nightmares imaginable, and Karin admired the New Yorker. Her attention was then taken again by the image bobbing around her computer screen.
An ultra-confidential invite to meet FrameHub face to face and talk about becoming a Fellow.
The language of it told her what to expect. Calling it ultra-confidential envisioned an organization of young know-it-alls that bristled with self-importance; that knew very well how clever they were. She assumed a ‘Fellow’ was a sworn-in club member, another arrogant term. She’d worked with male geeks before. Back then she had tolerated the looks and the sniggering. Now, she’d maim them for it.
Still…
It came at entirely the wrong time, but joining an organization like FrameHub was a lifelong dream come true. There, she could make a difference. There, she could fight in the way she really knew how. But what about her bloody plans?
So long in the making, perfect in the execution. This was the endgame.
This group were behind the deadly ransom demand of Egypt, Greece and Turkey. It didn’t make perfect sense, but she assumed there was another motive behind it. Perhaps they were involved in the seven seals hunt for the ancient doomsday weapon. That made a kind of sense — geeks would think it cool and want to own it, they would see it like some kind of game. To them, knowledge was power and the ancient seals and the machine without doubt offered some kind of all-powerful knowledge.
She thought again about all the threads, slowly coming together. Drake and SPEAR. Egypt. FrameHub and their ransom. The splinter cell. Tempest, all the weapons of the Gods. Lauren Fox now in DC. Luther.
Her world was no longer her own, and was moving on at a frightening pace.
“Wait for me,” she said. “Make ready to go. I have a final call to make.”
She rose, grabbed a bottle of water and walked across the kitchen and out the back door. A rather nice desert breeze caressed her face, telling her what she was about to miss.
“Shit.”
She tugged out her cellphone and dialed a number.
“Yes?” Robotic, the voice answered on the fifth ring.
“This is Karin Blake. I just received an invite from you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
“This is Karin Blake?” the robotic voice answered. “Are you sure?”
“Last time I checked,” she said, squinting at the desert and dirt road ahead.
“Voice recognition is good, but why are you calling on this cellphone?”
Karin saw their confusion. “Ah, you can see my location, right? A silly mistake that Karin Blake would never make. Don’t worry, I’m leaving as soon as we end the call.”
“And the cell?”
Karin breathed deeply. “I’ll feed it to the first coyote I meet.”
“Good.” No sense of humor then. “Your Web footprint was hard to track but nothing eludes us for long. Do you know who we are?”
Karin was tempted to say: “The psychos holding three countries and millions of innocent people to ransom?”, but curbed her ire. The potential here was too appealing to waste on sarcasm.
“FrameHub? Yes, I do. The whole world knows of you.” She smiled, knowing the right words to plump their egos.
“Yeah they do.” The excited robotic voice sounded ridiculous. “We’re the hottest property on the planet right now…”
Karin cringed a little.
“But hey, what better time to reach out to a bi… um, girl like you? Seriously, we are the masters of this universe. Digitally, together, there’s nothing we can’t do. Nothing we can’t own. Nobody we can’t own. We’re friggin gods.”
“You just proved that with the demonstration.” Karin fought to keep her voice amicable.
“Yeah we did! Wasn’t that fuckin’ mega? How that missile exploded over the tops of all those houses, showering down like fireworks? I bet the people on the ground were crapping themselves, am I right?”
Karin closed her eyes, breathing deeply. FrameHub were looking less and less appealing — in particular as this guy had been chosen to be their spokesperson — but this kind of offer rarely came around in a lifetime.
“I’m listening.”
“We want you to join us.”
“I realize that. Why me?”
“Are you kidding? I have pictures. Also, you’re more intelligent than the average lumbering mammal out there. Phonetic memory. Keyboard wizard. First class coder. I have to say — you would further our cause.”
“Be clear here. What is your cause?”
“We can talk more of that when we meet but, on a basic level, we’re playing a game. FrameHub versus the world. Ain’t it cool?”
“And you think I can help?”
“We know you have secrets, Karin. We know you went after the stash left by that corkscrew, Webb. It was on our radar too, but — and admittedly this is one of our problems — we didn’t have enough people to spare. We were all involved in configuring the ransom game.”
“You want me for my secrets?”
“Some of them. The most wicked. I mean, I may not be a social butterfly, but I do know that’s how the world works, right?”
“For some,” Karin admitted. “There are some that just like to get along.”
“Really? What are they called?”
“Humans. Look… I’m interested. I have schemes and designs of my own but, I am interested. Where do we go from here?”
“We meet,” the voice said. “We talk. We audition you.”
Karin didn’t like the sound of that. “Audition?”
“Yeah, check out your talent. What do you excel at? Are you a hacktivist or a ‘denial of service’ girl? How are your back-door capabilities? Do you like a Black Hat or White, or both? Can you form a botnet? Do you enjoy some keystroking, how big a Trojan would you prefer, and what’s your favorite payload?”
Karin shook her head to the vast desert, knowing he was getting off on the terminology but not quite hating him for it. “I get it, I get it. Nice speech, but it did sound rehearsed. You already know my talent or you wouldn’t have contacted me. Where do we meet?”
“Where you headed?”
She hesitated, then decided honesty might help in this case. “Surprisingly… Egypt.”
“Land of blood and sand. That’s good. We’re not far. I’ll call you when you get in.”
“No, sorry. We’re going in undercover. I’ll have to contact you.”
A robotic snort. “Don’t be ridiculous. Expect my call.”
He cut the call, leaving Karin to wonder about modern freedoms for just a moment before the screen door slammed and Dino padded out to meet her, a look of concern on his face.
“You good, Blake?”
“C’mere, Dino.” She waited for him to approach and then grabbed him in a headlock, forcing him down and kissing the top of his head. “What a bunch of dorks we are, hey? We were soldiers. There’s so much bad out there… in the world… and here we are, months into plotting some kind of twisted revenge.”
Dino struggled out of her grip, red-faced. “What the fuck, Blake? Since when did we kiss?”
“We should probably do it more. Maybe we’d be better people.”
“Crap, are you coming on to me?”
“For fuck’s sake.” Karin kicked at the dirt. “Do I look that desperate? And, you know…” She laughed, a twinkle in her eye. “You’d only wanna win anyway.”
He grinned and turned away. “I am better than you.”
“You ready to prove it?”
He looked wary. “In what way?”