Logging on to the Internet, Evan accessed an untraceable account at Hashkiller and set its 131-billion-password dictionary to work. Within minutes he was on the luxury condo building’s network. He found the security camera system next, matching the name to the decals on the building’s main fence. Hashkiller made short work of that, and then a hundred-plus internal and external camera feeds appeared.

He picked the lenses along the route he was planning to take and then opened up the camera-control links. First he slewed the pan-tilt zoom lens above the front gate to face the sun. The image turned a uniform white. The neighboring ones he aimed directly at streetlights to the same effect.

The cameras in the interior east stairwell didn’t have the same operability, so he turned off their auto-irising and then directed them to stop down. The pictures went black.

In case René had hacked into the security cameras on his own floor, a likely precaution, Evan took a single frame of valid video from each one, duplicated it 50 million times, and injected the gapless IP feed back into the video storage server. This created a spoof of each camera’s normal scene, showing forever-empty corridors. Snapping the laptop shut, he stood, stretched out his shoulder, and headed for the door.

It was time.

71. Vaporized

71

Vaporized

Candy cracked her window to get a little fresh air and leaned away, not wanting to get sucked into the black hole of Jaggers’s charisma void. He sat motionless in the passenger seat, his hands on the GPS unit as if about to embark on a game of Super Mario.

She monitored the residents and visitors entering the condo building’s front gate.

Old woman with a purse dog. Hipster with sleeve tattoos and a slouch beanie cap. Ladies who lunched in pink pantsuits and glittering pearls.

“Halya Bardakçi,” she murmured.

Though she stared straight ahead, she sensed Orphan M’s head dart over. “What?”

“That was her name. The girl you killed in the alley outside Sevastopol.”

He picked up the laptop and reviewed footage. “How do you know?”

Candy kept her eyes on the luxury complex.

Elderly couple. Teenage girl with bad eye shadow. A diplomat’s wife who resembled a drag queen.

“I read the news story,” Candy said. “She was just a down-on-her-luck kid.”

Bushy-mustached businessman. Swarthy janitor. Strapping college girl.

“Why does that matter?” Jaggers asked.

“Because, you dickless fuck,” Candy said, “she could’ve been us.”

Jaggers jolted in his seat, and for an instant she thought he might strike her. But his eyes remained glued to the laptop. He’d screen-captured the image of the hipster who’d entered the building earlier and zoomed in on the face, barely visible beneath the beanie cap.

“Fuck,” Candy said.

“Make sure that he’s inside René’s condo,” Jaggers said. “And ascertain which room. I’ll ready the coordinates. The last thing we need is him getting away singed.”