Eve sighed. Women everywhere had the same reaction to David. She might have, too, had they met under different circumstances. Instead David had been a man she’d learned to trust when her world had been a very dark and scary place.

“Leave him alone. I want my dinner.”

“Fine. So why did he just bring you two disposable cell phones?”

“He was going out for heavy cream for his sauce anyway. Mine had curdled.”

“Don’t be a smartass. I got you a lawyer. The least you can do is give me a hint.”

“I appreciate you sending Matt, and he did a great job, but I don’t want to put you in a bad position. The less you know, the better for you. Just go home. Please?”

“You’re not making me feel better and I’m not going home. At least let me help.”

“You didn’t cause this, Cal. You shouldn’t have to be involved.”

“You didn’t cause this either. You didn’t force these women to play your game.”

Eve thought of Christy Lewis, who’d never heard of role play games before she’d seen their ad for test subjects in the local paper. “Yeah, Cal, I kind of did.”

“Good God. Who taught you to shoulder the burden of every person you meet?”

“I know who,” David said dryly from the kitchen. “You can’t fight it, Callie. It was hardwired into her by one of the best.”

“Thank you,” Eve said, touched, and he smiled back, but his eyes were troubled.

“Callie’s right, Evie. None of this is your fault. Let the police do their jobs.”

“I am. Mostly.” She toggled her laptop screen to Ninth Circle. “He could be there, hunting his next victim. I can’t just stand by. I have to do something.”

David shook his head helplessly. “God, it’s like a Dana echo in here.”

“Thank you,” she said again and he scowled.

“That wasn’t a compliment,” he said. “So what are you doing that you shouldn’t be?”

“Reading blogs of ShadowCo people. You can learn a lot from employee blog rants.”

“What do you want to learn from ShadowCo’s angry employees?” Callie asked.

“I want a contact in the company. So I can hack in.”

Callie nodded. “That’s what I expected you to do. Can I watch?”

Eve laughed. “Sure. If I’m lucky this marketing guy who ranted about his boss, who works him like a slave, will still be in the office.”

“At this time of night?” David asked.

“If it’s anything like law firms,” Callie said, “people will work until midnight.”

“Besides, they’re in Seattle,” Eve added. “This blog is from a marketing genius who included his title and phone number at the end of his rant about the multi-million-dollar bonus given to ShadowCo’s CEO.”

“I don’t know why people are so stupid as to blog about their bosses,” Callie said. “Anyone in the world can see it once it posts. Idiots.”

“Well, this idiot’s name is Clayton Johnson.” Using the disposable cell, Eve dialed.

The phone rang six times. “Johnson,” he said, clipped and annoyed. Perfect.

“Mr. Johnson,” Eve said, “my name is Gillian Townsend. I’m with Attenborough IT Services. We’re contracted to support your company network systems.”

“So?” Johnson asked impatiently. “I don’t have time-”

Eve broke in before he could hang up. “We’re doing server maintenance and I can see you’re still logged in. In a few minutes, we’ll be shutting down your server.”

“No,” he said angrily. “I have a report to finish and I need-”

“It’s all right, sir. We’re shutting down your server and immediately starting up the backup. I can validate your account on my end so that you won’t have any down time.”

“Oh.” He sounded mollified. “Well, all right.”

“What’s your user name and password, please?” She looked up to find Callie staring at her like she’d grown two heads. David just looked resigned.

“JohnsonCL and sonicsrule, all one word,” Johnson said.

Eve smiled. “Thank you. You won’t see even a blip in your service. Be sure to change your password first thing in the morning, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“My pleasure. Have a good evening.” Eve hung up. “That’s how it’s done.”

Callie looked stunned. “You lied to that man.”

“Yes I did. And he gave a complete stranger his password and user name.”

“You lied to that man,” Callie repeated. “With the cell phone David bought you.”

“Why do you think she wanted an untraceable phone?” David asked. “But, Evie, that Johnson guy was just an innocent bystander. You could get him fired.”

“That’s why I told him to change his password. If he does, he’ll appear like he was security-conscious. Don’t worry. Once this is over, I’ll tell Ethan and he can pay a sales call to ShadowCo and show them the huge holes in their network security.”

David blinked. “This is what Ethan does for a living?”

“Sometimes. I used to hack for him part-time when I lived in Chicago. It’s a good way to get his consulting foot in the door. A company’s biggest vulnerability is often its people. Ethan shows them the security hole and offers to patch it up.”

“That’s…” David shook his head. “That’s dishonest.”

“It would be if he used their servers for personal gain. He doesn’t. He’s a white hat.”

Callie’s lips twitched. “A white hat?”

Eve nodded. “That’s what they’re called, I swear. As opposed to black hats who hack in with malicious intent. If a business tells Ethan they don’t want his services, he tells them where the hole was anyway. Most likely a high school kid’s already found it.”

“Don’t these companies get mad that you hacked?” Callie asked.

“Usually they want the hole patched before the big cheese finds out. In the end, everybody wins. How would you like it if your bank’s server had a security hole?”

“They wouldn’t,” David declared, then his features shifted uneasily. “Do they?”

“Remember when Ethan and Dana put the downpayment on the house for all their fosters? That downpayment was a retainer from your bank, buddy. Some hacker had already breached their system. They said they wished Ethan had breached it first.”

“It’s still dishonest,” he grumbled, but without heat. He brought her a plate of pasta and cream sauce, then perched on the arm of her chair. “So you’re in?”

“Not yet. Johnson was a little fish. As a marketing guy, his access rights are diddly. I need to elevate my privileges so that I can get into the client files. That’ll take time.”

“Why didn’t you start with somebody with better access?” David asked.

“Like an IT person? Because they probably would have called the cops on me.”

“Will you call anybody else?” Callie asked, fascinated.

“Not tonight. I’m going to run exploits until I find another, better hole.”

“English,” David murmured.

“Exploits are codes, scripts hackers use to find security holes. Hackers see network security as one big Rubik’s Cube. It’s there to be breached, a puzzle to be solved.”

“Like mountain climbers scale Everest because it’s there,” Callie said.

“Absolutely. They create code that basically knocks on the walls of network security until it finds a loose brick. Knock the loose brick through and you’re in.”

“It’s part of the game,” David said. “Hackers make holes, businesses patch them.”

Eve smiled at him. “Kind of like roofs. Some hackers look for loose bricks for nefarious reasons, like they want credit card info. But some do it just because it’s there. They share their code because it gives them status. Hopefully one of these scripts will find a ShadowCo hole. Then I can get into Martha and Christy’s files and check their movements, who they talked to, and importantly, how their avatars were altered.”

“And then you’ll hand it over to Detective Webster,” David said.

“I promise. It’ll take the cops days to get a warrant for ShadowCo files. I can access them in a day. Then they stop the killer and I don’t have any more deaths on my conscience.” She set the scripts to run, toggled back to Ninth Circle, and dug into her pasta. “And don’t tell me they’re not on my head. Because they are.”