“What do we know?” she asked him.

As usual, his answer was long.

“Not much. A weaponized government satellite was hacked from Fort McPherson and used to make some sort of giant J on Stone Mountain. The Confederate memorial on the mountain was damaged in the process. Even the horses got scorched. There’s a torched van in South Atlanta near the fort. Real South Atlanta, near East Point, not fucking Henry County, by the way. Some phones and a laptop were found, but they won’t be telling us much, if you know what I mean. They were toasty! There’s no footage of the culprits. McPherson’s whole cybersecurity network was pretty much defanged because of the movie studio work being done there, so it was easily jammed. Apparently, no one learned anything from the Sony hack. There are some car parts near where the culprits broke the fort’s barricade for their entrance, but there’s more cars in this city than people, so that’s probably a dead end. Local cell towers don’t paint much of a picture either. When cell towers started going up around there, the military had them equipped with scrambling devices so no communications could be intercepted. So that’s basically the best place in the city to commit a crime. Other than like, I don’t know, Old National? I’ll check the stats later. I’d personally argue that Buckhead is the best place. It has the city’s highest concentration of single white women. No one believes me because I’m a black man and, clearly, I have a personal interest in passing the torch, but I swear on my life that single white women are this country’s next criminal class. Their crimes may look personal and passionate on Lifetime, but out here in the real world, white girls be scheming. You saw Spring Breakers, right? I didn’t, but I think I know what it was about, you know? I heard Gucci did well…”

He continued. “The airport is still open, surprisingly. But people aren’t flying, no surprise. Giant death beams from the sky are a lot harder to ignore than high prices and a big ass terminal. We’re not technically under a state of emergency, but even Waffle Houses are closed, so do technicalities even really apply? Um, that’s about it. Oh, and this is our case. Like you and me. NSA thought about picking up, then the Pentagon, then Quantico, but it looks pretty clusterfucked, so it got rolled down to us. They’ve been trying to close this office for a while anyway. About damn time. We’ve got a press conference at nine. I’m glad you wore heels. You don’t see a lot of tall black women on TV these days. That’s it!”

“Okay,” Tilly replied, gesturing toward the doorway. Rick Herrington was only tolerable in small doses. Rick sauntered out, leaving Tilly in silence. It was only 6:46. Goddamn, he talked fast. Tilly reached across her desk and grabbed her name plaque, fixating on the engraved words: “Tilly Erickson, Senior Agent, Cybercrimes Division.” She’d finally gotten a case worth her rank, but it had all this damn baggage.