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  When she exercised, her mind wasn’t tied to anything particular. She wasn’t working, cleaning, shopping, bill paying, or any of the other dozens of tasks that crowded her days. She could remember the past or ponder the future. She reminisced about life with Tim or planned trips back to the Midwest to visit her family—which always required carefully thought-out diplomacy because her sisters were very competitive and both wanted to monopolize her time. Last summer, she had been daydreaming about going back to school for a master’s degree—probably in social work or counseling. She had started to move from daydreaming to concrete planning by October. The raise she had just gotten might have been enough for her to afford to start taking classes in the evening.

  Then Brandon called while she was comparing salmon fillets at Safeway. Everything else went on hold after that. Her only child—really her only close family—was in jeopardy. All she could think about now was how to help him.

  She felt like an oyster. Specifically, she felt like the oyster in a parable told by the speaker at her church’s women’s retreat a few years ago. The speaker had said that we should all treat our cares and worries the way an oyster treats a grain of sand. We should cover them with layers of prayer. Not just once or twice, but hundreds—even thousands—of times. If we keep at it long enough, that painful object in our soul will eventually turn into a beautiful pearl. And the larger and more jagged the object, the bigger and more beautiful the pearl it would ultimately become.

  The speaker’s words hadn’t meant much to Jessica at the time—Tim was still alive, and her biggest worry about Brandon was that he would have difficulty adjusting to college life. But the parable stuck with her. And now she clung to it. She had an obsidian boulder in her soul that was covered with knife-sharp edges and needle points. It would make a world-class pearl one day—if it didn’t tear her apart first.

  She had thought Pastor Craig might be able to get through to Brandon. They had been close when Brandon was in high school, and he had always seemed to look up to him. Jessica had thought—hoped, really—that Brandon would open up to Pastor Craig, at least a little. But Brandon wouldn’t even talk to him.

  Pastor Craig had done his best to comfort and encourage her. He said Brandon was a strong young man who was sure to come through this. He also promised to pray for Brandon.

  Well, she had been praying for Brandon at least half a dozen times per day since his arrest. She had prayed for him practically nonstop through entire sleepless nights. But he was still stuck in jail, and things seemed to be getting worse.

  When Brandon had first been arrested, she had been terrified of what other prisoners might do to him. It never occurred to her that his worst enemies might come from within himself.

  She had worried that Brandon might come out of jail abused and broken, but she should have known better. Pastor Craig was right: Brandon was strong. But sometimes strength could be as dangerous as weakness.

  Tim had been strong too. Good men admired him and not-so-good men avoided him. He’d had a temper that he kept on a short leash, and sometimes joked that he was “not very conflict-averse.” By the time Jessica knew him, he had managed to tame these traits and make them work for him—most of the time. She almost never heard him raise his voice, but he had been perfectly willing to say something diplomatic but firm to people he thought were acting inappropriately—whether it was a subcontractor doing shoddy work on a construction site or a parent being too hard on a coach at a soccer game. His behavior had been occasionally embarrassing, but she knew that the characteristics that sometimes made her wince were the same ones that made him a successful businessman and leader. And she had never once seen him do or say something that was likely to escalate into physical violence.

  But she knew that when he was younger, things had been different. Nate had told a couple of stories about having to pull Tim out of fights where he was outnumbered but still holding his own. And Tim had once confessed to spending a night in jail after knocking out a man who turned out to be an off-duty cop, during a chaotic barroom brawl. The cop had magnanimously told the DA and the judge that he thought Tim should be put on probation, since this was his first offense and he thought Tim had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tim credited the incident with helping him turn himself around—for starters, he made a point of staying out of the wrong places after that, and he taught himself never to throw the first punch.

  What would have happened if the cop had opted for revenge rather than mercy? What if Tim had gone to prison for assault? Would the natural strength in him have turned into something uglier and darker? Was that what was happening to Brandon?

  The heart-rate monitor on her wrist chimed, alerting her to the fact that her pulse had climbed too high. She slowed her pace, but she knew the elliptical machine was not to blame.

  CHAPTER 49

  May

  Cole frowned. “The pieces aren’t fitting together, Billy.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” Billy said.

  “Not at all. We’ve been surveilling Ames’s mother and Daniels for five months, and there have been no contacts with China, no funds flowing into their bank accounts from mysterious sources, no nothing.”

  Billy nodded slowly. “Maybe they know we’re watching them.”

  “If they know, watching isn’t going to do much good, is it?” Cole shook his head. “And another thing—wouldn’t Lan Long want a quick, quiet plea deal? Sure, they’d rather Ames was never caught. But once he was, I’m guessing they wouldn’t want things to drag out—and they certainly wouldn’t want a public trial. They’d want Ames to confess to killing Linc in a fight that went bad or something. He does his ten years or whatever, and a fat check shows up in his mother’s account while he’s in jail.” He paused and looked at Billy. “Or am I missing something?”

  “Maybe we’re both missing something.”

  “I’m pretty sure we are,” Cole agreed. “For example, I’m completely missing why Lan Long would want Nate Daniels and his friends to be running around asking questions and rattling cages. And they sure wouldn’t want him working with Jade Li. She’s many things, but she’s most definitely not a friend of the Blue Dragon.”

  Billy arched his eyebrows. “So it’s just a random coincidence that Ames killed Linc just days before he was going to deliver Lan Long to us?”

  “That seems unlikely,” Cole admitted. “But so does every other scenario I can think of. And we’re not getting any closer to taking down Lan Long while we wait and watch Ames, Daniels, and company.”

  “Maybe we should stop waiting,” Billy said. “Maybe we should just take down the piece we can get our hands on right now. We know who they are and where they are.”

  “Their US operation?” Cole shook his head. “It’ll grow right back in a couple of months, maybe less. All Lan Long has here are a couple of safe houses and a bunch of buyers. If all of that disappeared tomorrow, they’d be fine. They could rent a couple of new houses in a week. And they always have more buyers than girls, so I’m sure they could sell their shipments. Except we wouldn’t know who they’re selling to or where the girls are going, which is why we have to wait until we can get their ship, crew, and customs contacts.”

  “But you just said that just watching Team Ames wasn’t getting us any closer to being able to do that,” Billy objected.

  “That’s true,” Cole said. “It’s time for us to take action.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Nate’s cell phone woke him. It buzzed insistently on his bedside table, pulling him from a fitful sleep. He picked it up and squinted at the glowing screen. It was Sofia Acuña.

  He answered the call. “This is Nate,” he croaked.

  “Ernesto is dead,” Sofia said, her voice shaky.

  “What?” he asked blearily. “Who’s Ernesto?”

  “Ernesto Gutierrez, my investigator,” she said, heat in her voice.

  “Oh.” He had read several of the man’s reports, but never focused on his name. He felt vag
uely guilty about that now. “I’m very sorry. This . . . this was unexpected, right?”

  “Totally. He was on his way to meet with a witness. They were supposed to meet on a Muni platform. He fell off the platform just as a train was coming in.”

  “That’s terrible,” Nate said, waking up more. “Do they know how it happened?”

  “The police are investigating,” she said. “The bars had just closed and the platform was crowded. There were a lot of people there, but it was noisy and people were probably looking at the train, which was coming toward the end of the platform that was away from Ernesto. Plus, most of them had been drinking. So far, the police haven’t found anyone who saw what happened. They didn’t notice Ernesto until he was falling off the platform. I guess it’s possible that a drunk bumped into him or something.”

  “It’s possible,” he echoed. “But . . . Well, is it also possible that this wasn’t an accident? That the witness meeting was a trap?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” She took a long breath. “I’ve never had anything like this happen before. I’m still in shock.”

  “So am I.” Nate sat up and looked into the darkness. “Did Ernesto have family?”

  “He was divorced. I think he might have had one or two older kids.”

  Nate stood and stared out the window, barely noticing the spectacular glowing cityscape laid out below. “The witness meeting he was going to, was it related to our case?”

  “Yeah, it was. Ernesto had been talking to some guys who worked at the strip club—busboys and janitors and that kind of thing. One of them said he knew some bad stuff about how the girls wound up at the club, but he couldn’t talk about it until he got off work. They were supposed to meet on the Muni platform and then go someplace else to talk.”

  “Were you there?”

  “No, I was back at my apartment, waiting up to hear how it went. He never called, so eventually I tried his cell. A cop answered. He asked me to come over and give a statement and identify the body.” The line was silent for a moment, and her voice was rough when she came back on. “I wish I’d said no.”

  “I’m sorry.” When he was in college, he had once seen a man who had been killed by a train. The image stuck with him. “If you’d like to take some time off over the next few days, I understand. I’m happy to cover for you on anything related to the Ames case.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” she said. “Just . . . we should all be more careful from now on.”

  “Absolutely. Let’s talk more tomorrow about steps we can take.”

  “Sounds good.” She paused. “Well, I’ll let you get back to bed. Sorry I woke you—this probably could have waited until morning.”

  “No, no. I’m glad you called.” He almost automatically added Have a good night, but caught himself.

  He lay back down in bed, but didn’t go back to sleep.

  CHAPTER 51

  Kevin looked at the clock again. It was 8:43. Seventeen minutes until he could call Nate. His counselor, Steve, had been very clear that phone calls regarding business matters should take place during “business hours,” which meant between nine o’clock in the morning and five o’clock in the afternoon. This made no sense to Kevin—if people were awake and not busy, why couldn’t he call them and talk about whatever he wanted? But it was a rule, and Kevin had learned that life went more smoothly when he followed Steve’s rules.

  He looked at the clock again: 8:44. He decided to pace and count his steps. That would occupy his mind and bring him closer to the next achievement badge on his Fitbit. He walked in a quadrilateral in his room and tried to figure out whether it was a tangential quadrilateral. He thought it was, but the math was complicated and his legs were imprecise instruments. He tried walking toe to heel to get more accurate measurements. Then he did it again and the number of foot-lengths matched. Satisfied, he stood perfectly still and ran the equations in his head. Yes! It was a tangential quadrilateral!

  He looked at the clock one more time: 9:03.

  He called Nate’s number and waited impatiently while the phone rang.

  Nate finally answered on the second ring. “Good morning, Kevin. How are you today?”

  “Did you see my email?” Kevin asked, forgetting in his excitement that the proper response was I’m fine, Nate. How are you?

  “I see several emails from you, starting with one that is quite long and titled Read this first. Is that the one?”

  “Yes. The rest are backup materials. They were too big, so I had to send them one at a time. What do you think?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Nate said. “I’ve been reading for the past hour, but there’s a lot here and some of it is a little hard to follow, at least for me. Do you have time for a few questions?”

  “Yes.” Kevin knew that Nate was intelligent, but he often needed to have things explained to him step by step. He lacked Kevin’s ability to simply gather information on a subject until he had enough to see the pattern that connected it all.

  “Thank you. First, there’s a lot here about ‘the OPM hack.’ Could you explain what that is and why it’s so important?”

  “It’s the key to the pattern. I sent you a paper on that. It’s in the fourth email.”

  “Yes, I saw that. It’s over a hundred pages single-spaced. I confess that I haven’t had time to read it. Could you give me a summary?”

  Kevin took a deep breath. “Okay. OPM is the Office of Personnel Management. They have databases holding personal information on everyone who works for the federal government or applied for a federal security clearance. That includes FBI agents and any contractors who work on FBI databases. These databases used to be very insecure. They still are, but not as bad.”

  Steve had warned Kevin that when he was explaining technical matters, he needed to stop frequently to make sure the person he was talking to understood what he was saying. After some discussion with Steve, Kevin had determined that frequently meant approximately every fifty words. His answer to Nate’s question was already fifty-four words long—fifty-five if he included okay. It was therefore time to stop and check Nate’s comprehension level. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, so far,” Nate assured him.

  “The OPM databases were hacked. All of them. The hack probably went on for years. OPM only discovered it because a vendor was doing a demo of its security software and found a hacker in the system by chance. The hackers never tried to use the hacked data to do identity theft or anything like that.” Fifty-six words. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Regular criminals would have tried to sell the data, so people think the hackers were state actors. Based on how the hack was done, the hackers were probably members of the Chinese military.” He paused. “That’s all. That’s the end of the summary.”

  “Thank you, Kevin,” Nate said. “That was very helpful. And if I understood your email, you think the Chinese leveraged information from the OPM hack to get into the FBI’s DNA database, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  The line was silent for a moment. Then Nate said, “Could you elaborate on how that happened?”

  “Yes. The hackers would use the data they hacked from OPM to do social engineering on FBI agents, technicians, and other people who have access to the DNA database.”

  “What is ‘social engineering’?” Nate asked.

  “Hackers will try to trick people into giving up their passwords. They call it social engineering. For example, if a hacker knows your wife’s name and your birthday, he could send you an e-card that looks like it’s from her. But when you click on the music file in the card, you’re also downloading malware that lets the hacker control your computer and record your passwords. When they do this through email, it is called spear phishing. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, thank you. Please go on.”

  “Birthdays and names of relatives would be in the OPM databases. So would lots of other information that could be used in social engineering. T
he most logical motive for the OPM hack is to gather raw material for social engineering. The hackers could then use the social engineering to get into systems that were more valuable to them. Do you understand?”

  “I think so,” Nate replied. “But that doesn’t explain why they would want to get into the FBI’s DNA database. Wouldn’t they be more interested in, say, lists of CIA agents in China?”

  “Yes, that is very likely,” Kevin said. “But it is probable that they would want to access the DNA database too. This took me a long time to see, but now I do.”

  “Please explain.”

  “The Chinese military might want to commit crimes in America,” Kevin said. “Like killing American politicians or generals or something like that. But they wouldn’t want to get caught. They would want to make it look like someone else committed the crime.” That was only forty words, but this was a key point, so Kevin asked, “Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Nate replied. “Murderers generally don’t want to be caught. And if they can blame someone else for their crime, they often do.”

  “Yes. Well, that’s why I think the Chinese broke into the DNA database. Once they were in, they could search for DNA profiles that resembled the profiles of their agents. Then the agent could commit a crime near where the person with the similar profile lived. Do you understand?”

  “No, actually, I don’t,” Nate said. “I thought the odds against a random match—even a partial match like we have here—were a billion to one or more. There aren’t a billion profiles in the FBI’s database, are there?”

  “The odds are correct, but you don’t understand the math. Do you want me to explain it?”

  “Will it take long?”

  Kevin did some quick calculations in his head about how many words it would take to summarize the basic principles. Then he converted that into minutes, assuming one word per second and allowing breaks every fifty words. “I estimate that it would take approximately three hours and nineteen minutes.”