Chapter 1

I awoke to a blare and fumbled for the lamp as the noise returned and drilled into my skull. My groping fingers found the switch. An explosion of light showed me to be fully clothed and slumped in a living room chair. Below the lampshade, my beaker cowered beside a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam. By the third ring, my brain homed in on the phone. I stumbled into the kitchen.

“Singleton,” I mumbled into the handset. The words scraped against dry flesh. A bright “3:02” from the kitchen clock hovered red against the wall. Three in the morning.

Terry’s whispered words came in a rush. “Brent, I got visitors. Don’t know what the hell’s going on. The phone line’s dead. I called the police from my cell phone. I’m going to hide it, so you can listen in...”

His doorbell chimed and persisted as his words continued, until his voice halted in mid sentence. The electronic hiss of his phone connection ceased.

I called back and gulped down a glass of water as I waited. The slow ringing was unbearable. Come on, come on. No answer. Not Terry, of all people, and not now, of all times.

Acid burned my gut. I slammed the phone down, swirled a mouthful of water against the sour dregs that coated my throat, and steadied myself against the counter.

Terry might be in trouble, but what could I do? I shuffled into the bathroom and emptied my bladder. My head spun in disorientation. I filled a paper cup with water, tossed it back, and felt my body go taut.

No. Hell no. I’m not dead yet. I spun out of the room, bashing my shoulder against the door frame, and increased my stride as I moved down the hall. Yanking on my leather jacket, I grabbed my helmet and bolted into the cool April night. Above, shades of trees swirled and coalesced as I rallied my brain against the bourbon. Chill moisture closed in around me. I slid the helmet on, mounted my Kawasaki, gunned the engine, and disturbed the peace in Shirlington, a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C.

Roads would take too long. Instead, I dipped down a short hill, ignored a sign that read “No Motorized Vehicles,” and pulled onto the start of the Washington and Old Dominion bicycle trail.

The paved trail ran between my apartment and Terry’s house like a straight line between two points. I cranked the throttle and rocketed along at a pace legal only by air.

My head began to clear. Never before had I heard fear distort Terry’s words. What was going on? Despite my pace, the exertion didn’t warm my body. Cold sweat drenched my shirt and dripped from beneath my helmet.

The headlight burrowed a tunnel through the darkness, down a narrow corridor framed by looming black trees. One slip meant death against those trunks. Quick reflexes saved me from an intimate encounter with an SUV at a road crossing in Falls Church.

My mind raced ahead. Burglary, coercion, or worse? What could I do that the police couldn’t? I had no clue and no weapon, but I had to do something.

Past the town of Vienna, I hugged the bike and flew down the arrow-straight trail to near the 14.5 mile marker, the actual distance I’d traveled. No way to conceal my approach if I crossed over to the road, but Terry’s visitors wouldn’t be watching the woods. I braked to a stop and glanced at the sharp drop-off by the edge of the trail. My Kawasaki went both ways, street-ready and off-road. The bike could handle it.

I turned right, off the trail, plunged down a steep embankment, and threaded along a narrow dirt path, ducking under pine branches, the air saturated with the smell of moist dirt and decayed leaves. Near the house, I left the bike and snaked through trees and brush.

Ahead, car doors slammed and engines rumbled to life, loud against the still night. Pale moonlight guided my way as I crossed the backyard and tore around the corner of the house in time to see two dark cars pull away, the second a BMW.

I pounded on the front door and turned the knob. Nothing. I grabbed the hidden key from behind a brick, released the dead bolt, and burst in. A silent cry rose in my mind as my head twisted toward the kitchen.

Terry lay on his side in a sea of blood, his torso sliced open. Hideous coils of intestines spilled to the floor.

God, no. I rushed beside him, dropped to my knees in the blood, and spoke his name.

His eyes opened, glazed.

“Terry, what happened?”

His lips parted and struggled to shape a word. A small bubble of saliva formed at his open mouth. “Sorry” eased out with barely a sound, breaking the bubble and taking with it his final breath.

“Terry.”

No pulse beat in his wrist, nor would any ever again. An oppressive numbness froze me in place. Blood sopped through my jeans and against my knees.

I stood, stepped back, slipped on the blood-slicked floor, and grasped the counter for balance. My knuckles whitened in fury that only increased when I called the police and reached the same dispatcher who claimed to have taken Terry’s request for help, the request that had gone unanswered. Now that we had a suspected homicide, a patrol car would be on the scene in five minutes.

I stepped to Terry, squatted low before his face, and closed his eyes. His thin lips, so quick to tighten in that mocking smirk, drooped in a contorted grimace.

The police would soon arrive. I regained my wits and focused on a scene clearly arranged by the murderers to set the police on a false trail.

But what of our trail? On unsteady legs, I headed for Terry’s computer room, to reduce further what the police might learn.

Chapter 2

The police would go rummaging for clues in Terry’s computer files. A phosphorescent blue glow spilled from the den that was Terry’s computer room. I passed down the hall, entered the den, and crossed to the wall of computers. A single command on each would unleash a scrub routine to put the hard drives beyond the reach of police forensic tools.

Damn. The consoles stood open, their hard drives gone, along with all of Terry’s disks and whatever they might have to tell about us. Someone else wanted to know more about Terry’s computer activities, or didn’t want the police to know.

What had Terry left on those drives and disks? Security had never been his long suit. Were the rest of us at risk? Did the murderers know about me?

I returned to the kitchen. On the cork bulletin board near the phone, a yellow stick pin held up a slip with my phone and pager numbers, along with my name: Brent Singleton. They knew about me. What else did they know?

A run through upstairs bedrooms revealed no trace of the computer media or of Terry’s laptop computer, as much an appendage of his body as his hunter-orange baseball cap with its “Your Ad Here” logo. Returning downstairs, I looked again at the man in whom I’d invested ten years of my life shaping the raw talent that counterbalanced his volatile character. We’d become like brothers.

He wore only undershorts and a purple cotton robe, pulled open to reveal a horrific wound that ran from the left side of his abdomen across and up toward the right. He’d been disemboweled, hara-kiri-style, with the samurai sword from his dining room wall. A foul odor from his torso surged into my lungs and pushed me back. I strangled a gasp.

A shudder ran through me. I borrowed a flashlight and strode outside. Brisk April breezes swept past, harvesting from the trees a crop of leftover dried leaves that fell in a fluttering storm. I drank deep from the cleansing air and turned to the sky. Skeletal branches reached their hands toward the moon. A thin layer of clouds swept in from the East and moved swiftly across the sky in a gossamer sheet, like a shroud being pulled over the scene.

Flashing red and blue lights approached in silence as I drove my bike from the damp woods. The police had arrived in the form of a blue and white patrol car, its headlights flashing in an alternating pattern, first one side, then the other.

The vehicle pulled to a halt, gleaming, as if waxed and buffed to the refractive index of a mirror. A youngster in pristine uniform stepped from the Ford and realigned the brim of his hat. “You the one who called?”

He checked my ID, grunted at my one-sentence summary of events, told me to stay put, and entered the house.

A second vehicle arrived soon after and deposited on the curb a tall man with styled black hair and an air of preening decorum. He wore an elegant blue suit that in a few hours probably would distinguish him at church. Gold cuff-links complemented his manicured nails. His angular forehead narrowed toward the front and, with his sharp nose, gave his face the look of an axe. He introduced himself as Detective King from the homicide section of the Fairfax County Criminal Investigations Bureau.

The patrol officer emerged from the house and gave the detective a private summary, after which King went in to inspect the scene. An hour passed before the detective finally saw fit to speak with me. Detective King found me slouched in one of the weathered gray Adirondack chairs that stood watch on Terry’s front lawn. King stood on the sidewalk, extended a pointed arm toward me, and dropped it ninety degrees to aim at his feet. “Over here, please.”

My body tensed like a coiled spring. Was this a demonstration of his power or was he reluctant to cross the dew-covered lawn and risk water damage to his shoes? We met on the street. He kept his distance from the wreckage of my stained clothes.

“The officer will conduct a full interrogation when time allows,” he said in a haughty tone. “Meanwhile, there are a few details I’d prefer to verify personally.”

Personally. He pronounced the word with a flourish.

He continued. “You made the initial report?”

“Terry called the police for help,” I said in words freighted with a lifetime of grievances. “Apparently your people had more important things to do.”

He strained to see my face. “Listen, how do I know you’re not the intruder he reported?”

“He called me. Check the phone records.”

“Phone records don’t tell who called. You could have dialed your home number from here.”

I said nothing.

King pursed his lips, grimaced, and addressed the black woods. “Where are the drives and disks?”

“No idea.”

“You trailed blood all over the house. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to disturb the scene of a crime?”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell the police to come when people call for help?”

A stiff gust blew across the lawn. Every hair on King’s head remained fixed in place. He lowered his voice. “We both know what this is about, don’t we? He had something you wanted. You killed him and destroyed his computer records. Then you staged the scene to make it look like suicide. Everything fits.”

I gazed at him in astonishment and shook my head.

“Listen,” he snapped, “if you’re not behind this, tell us who is.”

I glared and started to turn. “We’re done here.”

King grabbed my arm. “Not until I say so, we’re not.” He raised his chin and watched me from the bottom of his eyes. “Listen, there may not be enough evidence to convict you of a capital offense, but I’m a police investigator. My job is to arrest suspects.” His index finger reached out and thumped me in the chest. “You are a suspect. Maybe you need to be taught some respect.”

I clenched my right hand, with its missing finger, memento of an interrogation beyond the imagination of this man wearing French cuffs. “Police incompetence just cost my friend his life.” I moved to stand within his personal space. “If you want my respect, earn it. Do your damned job.” I gave him a return chest thump and spun to return to the chair on the lawn.

My peripheral vision caught his eyes bloating. “We’ll be... we’ll be occupied here a few more hours,” he said to my receding back. “The officer will take your official statement when he has time.” He strutted away with cinematic authority.

Cripes. So I almost turned a routine interview into a trip to jail. Not clever. But I didn’t feel clever and I don’t deal well with overbearing officials, even in the best of times. Gloom settled into me like a bleak mist. I had to move.

I mounted my bike, powered out across Terry’s lawn, and blasted down the road, past another arriving police vehicle that crept down the cul de sac. Cool air beat against my face. I rode for miles, needing the release.

Some time later I returned. Police vehicles littered the street. I pulled next to Terry’s Dodge Ram pickup. Its Lund Moonvisor made it look like a truck wearing an accountant’s green eyeshades. Pristine aluminum railing hovered over the neon-red truck bed. Even in Terry’s hometown of Houston, where a truck said a lot about its owner, this truck was garrulous.

The patrol officer approached. “The detective’s torqued. He knows you disappeared.”

“Disobeyed, you mean.”

The officer’s gaze met mine on a level plane. He had to be six feet, same as me, although he had me by fifty pounds. We retreated to the Ford cruiser, him in the driver’s seat. The gray-blue interior smelled of oil, as if from a recently cleaned weapon. We slogged through the interview. He sought all I knew; I gave him what he needed to know, before we parted on cool terms. He reentered the house.

I stepped down the road, past the line of police vehicles. My insides ached beyond any assault Jim Beam had ever made. Above, dark clouds drifted through a pale sky to the east, heralding the approach of the sun.

The crunch of tires on leaves caught my attention. A Mercedes roadster pulled onto the berm. Female eyes reflected in the rearview mirror. She gave me a quick glance and stepped out.

Oh my God. I recognized her from press coverage. FBI. She patrolled the Internet like Elliot Ness in cyberspace. For her, the net really was a web, littered with adversaries she’d trapped and entombed in her cocoons. Special Agent Paige Langford, as dangerous as she was attractive. Internet denizens had given her the inevitable name of Spider Woman.

Langford paused and scanned the scene, as though she recorded every bit in its place and stored it for analysis. Her gaze fixed on mine, departed, and returned for further study. Damn. Either she recognized me, or... Or what? The beam of her scanner slowed in passing over my blood-soaked jeans and moved on, another object catalogued.

She nodded solemnly as she passed me, her dark eyes shadowed by lines of stress or exhaustion. Her gaze tarried again on my jeans. Once she’d passed, my gaze tarried on hers.

Langford crossed the lawn and spoke to one of the cops, her head not rising above his shoulder. Her form-fitting trousers gave her the lithe, toned look of a gymnast, except for the contours beneath her bulky sweater. Soon Detective King joined her for a huddle. After a few minutes, King and Langford walked my way, Langford’s arms crossed over her chest. Her sweater bore the faded blue and green hues of a tapestry.

“If we marshal our forces—“ Langford started.

“I appreciate the Bureau’s interest,” the detective interrupted, “but this one’s on our turf. Everything’s under control.” He chose his words carefully. “As they say, let’s not make a federal case out of it. We’ll keep you informed.” A smile glistened around his camera-ready teeth.

He caught sight of me, standing within hearing range, and his sincere tone vanished. “Where the hell have you been?”

Langford stared above my head.

I reached to explore and felt my hair in disarray.

“He probably just took a spin around the block,” she said.

King stared vacantly.

“I’m so sorry about your friend,” she said in a tone that convinced me she meant it. She shook her head in sympathy and refocused in my direction. Spider Woman sized me up. “You, I presume, are Brent Singleton?”

Chapter 3

At Spider Woman’s mention of my name, Detective King’s face snapped toward her and then me. “You’re free to leave,” he said as if he begrudged the gift. “But we’ll be calling on you again. You will make yourself available.” He punctuated the command with a leveled index finger, a subliminal weapon.

“Pleasure.”

The detective spun brusquely and stepped over the yellow tape.

Spider Woman turned to me with a consoling smile. Dark brown hair framed her well-proportioned features. “It seems neither of us are needed.” She extended her hand. “Paige Langford, FBI.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said to the woman who, along with her organization, stood at the top of my least-wanted list. We shook hands. Hers felt surprisingly small.

“You are Brent Singleton?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Look, can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“Thanks, I could use one,” I said in all honesty, if it meant learning the reason behind her presence and what she knew about me.

I cranked up my bike and led her black roadster to the closest coffee shop, in Reston’s South Lakes Village Center. The shop had just opened, seven o’clock Sunday morning. Langford bought coffee from the counter in back while I retreated to the men’s room. I leaned to scrape some of the blood and crud from my clothes and instead dropped to my knees, hugged the toilet, and vomited in convulsive heaves.

My stomach contained only air when I finally stood and confronted in the mirror a face with the texture of wet clay. I washed, gargled water to clean my mouth, hand-combed my hair, and joined Langford in a well-lacquered booth of yellow oak.

An interval of awkward silence greeted my tardy return. She glanced at my face and away. On the table in front of her, a small note pad lay partially covered by her right hand.

I swilled coffee around in my mouth. French roast careened through my central nervous system, turning on lights in every room.

“How are you doing?” Langford finally asked with sympathy, breaking the tension.

“Fine.” Right. Entering into one of the most dangerous interviews of my life hung over from grief, bourbon, and lack of sleep. I’d be fine if I could dodge her probes.

She didn’t appear convinced. “What unusual hair.” Her gaze angled above mine. “It matches your complexion.”

I shrugged. Her attempt to put me at ease had the opposite affect.

She studied my features and gave me a quizzical stare, as if trying to fit me into a pigeonhole.

Fat chance, even for Spider Woman. I had the high cheekbones of my Cherokee grandmother and the light brown hair of the British architect she married to produce my mother. My caramel skin came from the Iraqi professor who with her pregnancy seduced into marriage my other grandfather, a Virginia engineer, from whom I inherited the green eyes. All four lines flowed pure until they intersected to produce my parents and their mongrel son. I came from four cultures and belonged to none...an outsider, an aptly named singleton.

“So,” Langford continued, pushing up the sleeves of her sweater, “can you give me the executive summary?” She crossed her hands on the green-topped table, revealing a huge diamond engagement ring.

Spider Woman had become unavailable. The ring had a hypnotic effect.

“Executive summary?” she reminded me.

“Sure, but please tell me first why the FBI cares."

She shook back her elegant hair, which rippled in unbusinesslike waves. “I’m with the Washington Field Office computer crime squad. We’ve been looking into improper usage of computing resources at the company where Terry Howell worked.”

I blinked and countered the slip by tossing back a gulp of hot coffee that blistered my throat. I repeated what I told the police.

She asked questions and took notes as though cramming for an exam. Her voice had the throaty tone of a reed instrument. With her rich tan and diminutive stature, she conjured in my mind the image of a wood nymph.

I kept the mug between her and my right hand, not eager for her to notice or inquire about the absence of my smallest finger.

She reached out her hand and gave my forearm a soft touch. “Do the police really believe you’re a suspect?” she asked with a tone of incredulity.

“She had us dancing like cobras to her flute,” one of Spider Woman’s past victims had said. I cleared my throat. “I disturbed the scene and left to get some air. The police believe I didn’t show enough respect.”

“Most people with something to hide don’t go out of their way to attract suspicion,” she said, examining the ring on her left hand. Her mind seemed to take a detour. She turned an unfocused gaze toward me. “Unless of course they can’t help themselves.”

The woman had a knack for being on target. What misguided overconfidence let me agree to this meeting?

She paused and came back on a different path. “How did you know Terry?”

Such an innocent-seeming question, but I circled my wagons. “We shared a musical interest.”

“FineArtFromNoise.” She looked directly at me, her sensors on full scan, her high cheekbones prominent.

“Right.” A pang ran through my empty gut.

“That’s an intriguing name. What’s it about?”

“It’s a club of people who share international ethnic music, the stuff that doesn’t make the pop charts.”

While Langford studied my face, I perused hers. Early thirties, I guessed, a couple of years my junior. The fluorescent light brought out the chestnut hue of her dark brown hair. A slight tick twitched at the corner of her right eye.

An elderly foursome entered, in church attire. Their loud conversation suggested they had difficulty hearing. The oldsters ordered coffee at the counter and retired to a back booth.

Agent Langford smiled in reassurance and resumed her verbal mugging. “Were you involved in any of Terry’s work activities, his work with computers?”

“Not in five months.” I hopped from one question to the next as though crossing a stream on widely spaced rocks.

“What more can you tell me about his phone call?”

“Nothing, really. He was cut off.”

The tick at her right eye pulsed. I hoped she interpreted my discomfort as no more than that of most males under the scrutiny of such a face. I hoped even more that the interview had reached its end. She’d stepped around my delicate attempts to gain information. The longer we talked, the more I had to lose.

Her fingers tapped the table. Finally she nodded, as if coming to a decision.

“I have something that might interest you.” She withdrew a small tape recorder from her purse, set it on the table between us, and hit the play button. “Help me understand this.”

I listened stoically to the FBI wiretap recording of my phone conversation with Terry, the call that drew me to his house in the middle of the night.

Chapter 4

Special Agent Paige Langford turned her powers of observation on me as we ignored our coffee and listened to the FBI recording of my phone call with Terry. Long before, in biology class, I’d refused to dissect a mouse that looked much like an old pet. Here was to be a similar dissection of Terry’s last awful minutes, laid out on the table before us.

My sleep-deprived voice opened, “Singleton.”

“Brent, I got visitors. Don’t know what the hell’s going on.” Terry’s words were tense and hurried. The doorbell rang several times. “The phone line’s dead. I called the police from my cell phone. I’m going to hide it, so you can listen in. Record it if you can; might need the leverage.”

“What’s this about?”

“Alamo, I think.”

“What’s Alamo?” I asked.

“Got the initial contact from the Ministry of Information. A new group. Their music is penetrating, really hot.” Terry spoke in the language we used for open conversation. “Music” meant activity; “hot” meant dangerous.

“They’re going to take the U.S. by storm,” he continued in his Houstonian drawl. “I met the leader is—” The line went dead.

Paige Langford gave me a doe-eyed gaze that belied her Spider Woman ambush. “Alamo?”

“No idea.” A true statement.

The old foursome at the back of the coffee shop shared a loud laugh.

Paige Langford kept me in her cross-hairs. “What Ministry of Information was he talking about?”

I rotated the coffee cup in my hands. “Iranian, Terry’s favorite turf. Their web server has links to traditional music groups.”

“Ah, of course.” She stared at her note pad. “Music. It’s the middle of the night, he’s about to be killed, and he’s telling you about a new music group. Listen, maybe this investigative work has given me a hyperactive imagination. It sounded to me as though he was talking in code, giving you a report, asking for help. He said, ‘They’re going to take the U.S. by storm.’ Who? Terrorists? Penetrating what? Look, Brent, level with me. Terry’s death says something serious is going on. Tell me what this is about. Maybe I can help.”

Frontal assault. “I’m sorry. You heard our whole conversation.” The cup slipped in my hand and sloshed a wave of coffee on the table.

Muscles tightened around her eyes and mouth. She sipped her latté and tried another tack. “Terry thought he knew who the visitors were. He expected discussion.”

“He didn’t expect to be killed.” I sopped up the coffee spill with my napkin.

She leaned back and clasped her hands on the table. She’d return from a different angle, I knew, bumping against the walls, bump, bump, until she found a way through. She was known on the net as having the single-minded persistence of someone sworn to vengeance, as if each case was personal.

“You say you haven’t done computer work with Terry in five months. What did you do with him before that?”

“We exchanged music and technical ideas. I wouldn’t call it work.”

She said nothing for a full minute, until her head tilted to the left. “Brent Singleton, I believe everything you’ve told me is factually correct. But you’ve told me nothing. The reason you’re here is to learn why the FBI is here.”

An enigmatic smile curled around her lips. “Okay, I’ll tell you why.” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “Terry Howell used the company he worked for as a base of operations to do computer hacking. His company became suspicious when they discovered an attack leaving through their firewall. They spotted him by coincidence, using an experimental device built by a student intern. The company called us. It’s FBI turf, when U.S. citizens attack foreign systems.”

Her words and body language screamed of honest cooperation. My dry mouth warned of a trap, sweetly baited. With Terry dead, surely she could release details, but with her net empty, she needed another catch.

She continued. “Terry didn’t fit our profiles. He did no damage, stole nothing, and didn’t brag. He appeared to be tracking, almost investigating, but we don’t know who or why. What we know is that his techniques were highly advanced, remarkably so.” She waited for my response, her eyebrows raised.

“He had technical talent.”

Langford’s eyes challenged mine: hostile witness. “The less you say, the more I feel you know.”

“I’ve told you all I can. I’m sorry, but he’s dead. It’s a little late to file charges.”

“Your friend has been killed.” She stiffened in her chair, eyes flashing, and then lowered her voice and baited the hook. “Are you willing to let that stand?”

“Terry was my closest friend. You have to believe I want justice done.” I drained my coffee in a pronounced signal of closure.

“Justice needs community help, our help.” She leaned toward me across the table.

I fought to keep my body from responding in kind. “I doubt the police want any help from me.”

She sighed, drained her latté, and sidled out of the booth. I slid across the seat and stood.

“Look.” Her hand touched my shoulder with the lightness of a breeze. “I’m sorry I bombarded you with questions at a time like this. If you’d like to speak another time, please call.” She handed me her card.

She led the way outside and paused when we reached her car. “By the way, do you know anything about an organization called Lexor?”

Damn! “Sorry, can’t help you.”

Langford pulled out of the lot as I yanked on my helmet. The commute back to my apartment gave me time to contemplate Special Agent Paige Langford of the FBI, Spider Woman, a sprite with a mind as sharp as a scalpel.

She’d hit the press five years earlier, working a bank extortion case. An FBI senior had at first fingered hackers as the culprits, but a week later he switched gears and pinned the blame on two bank insiders. The senior basked in the glory of breaking such a sophisticated insider scheme.

UnderBlack, a prominent hacker, went public with the news that Paige Langford had broken the case during technical brainstorming with him. The press tracked down Langford and found a stunning technical wizard in her first investigative assignment. UnderBlack, a Hell’s Angel look-alike, came out of the hacker closet to give interviews: “Those small dicks are as bad at giving credit as they were at pinning blame.” The press couldn’t get enough of beauty and the beast.

For years I’d gone out of my way to avoid Spider Woman and had no doubt that the score from our first encounter stood at one-to-nothing, her favor. I had no desire to try for best two out of three.

Updated: 19-Oct-2005