LITMIR.BIZ

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he added, thrusting up another—rather significant, at that—finger. “And the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit,” he concluded, adding a third finger to the mix. “Trust me. Cincinnati has a dark side you can’t begin to imagine.”

      She burst out laughing at that. “Dark side. Cincinnati. Right.”

      “Yeah, okay, maybe that’s pushing it,” he conceded, dropping both hands to his hips. “It’s still the place where we’re going to find Sorcerer. Mark my words.”

      “How do you figure?”

      “Like I said, he was in contact with several people when he was reeling in Avery Nesbitt. An inordinate number of them were located in the Cincinnati area. Also located in the Cincinnati area is a very small, very exclusive private college. Waverly College. Ever heard of it?”

      “Yeah, it’s like a small-scale MIT.”

      Joel nodded. “Except a degree from Waverly is more prestigious, and it’s a harder school to get into. What you end up with is a streamlined student body full of big brains that are light-years ahead of the intellectual norm, all of them tech majors, the vast majority in the field of computers. The place is thick with hackers. In fact, a few years ago, a small group of underclassmen was arrested, tried and convicted on charges of treason after hacking into top secret CIA files and selling them to terrorists to pay for their pornography and gaming habits.”

      “I remember that,” she said with a nod that nudged a stray lock of pale blond hair over one eye. She immediately shoved it back behind one ear, but not before Joel’s fingers curved instinctively in preparation to do that himself.

      Terrific, he thought. Barely an hour after meeting Lila, he was responding to her in a way that he really couldn’t afford to be responding. Wanting to touch her, however innocently. Hell, wanting to touch her in ways that weren’t innocent at all. Being mesmerized by the incredible blue eyes to the point of momentarily forgetting what he’d intended to say. Battling a very uncharacteristic—never mind completely politically incorrect—wave of arousal every time he looked up and saw her handcuffed to his bed. It had been months, maybe years, since he’d experienced such an immediate attraction to a woman. And Lila was the last woman he should be experiencing it for.

      She added, “So you think Sorcerer stopped by Waverly on the way home from work to pick up a dozen eggheads with his usual gallon of milk?”

      He nodded. “I think it’s extremely possible. And very likely.”

      She thought about that for a minute. “Makes sense. Especially when you consider his recent appearance in Cleveland. It’s only a few hours’ drive from Cincinnati.”

      “Also interesting, and significant,” Joel continued, “is the fact that there have been a rash of online scams and crimes committed in recent months that have been traced back to a user or users in this part of the country.” He pointed at the map again. “They started off as petty mischief, like worms and viruses and hoaxes, exactly the sort of thing college students enjoy most. But whoever’s been creating them and sending them out has covered his or her—or their—tracks well. We’ve only been able to pinpoint the city, not an actual address. Over the past several weeks, however, the crimes have escalated into some pretty major—and pretty ballsy—thefts and cons that are starting to rake in some significant money.”

      “You don’t know who’s perpetrating them?” Lila asked.

      He shook his head again. “Only that it’s someone in the Cincinnati area. Most likely someone at Waverly. But the activity shows signs of having started off with amateurs, becoming more sophisticated just recently.”

      “Like maybe someone or a handful of people who were once only in it for the fun are now also in it for the profit.”

      “Exactly like that.”

      “Like maybe someone suddenly joined up with this person or persons and injected them with a little more ambition and organization.”

      “Yep.”

      “Like maybe Sorcerer has indeed found his band of merry hackers.”

      “Which means he’s now stronger and smarter than he’s ever been before,” Joel concluded.

      He traced his finger on the map in a circular motion around an area near the Ohio River. “Dormitory housing is pretty sparse at Waverly, so a good number of the students live in the city proper. And there’s an area downtown around Vine Street that especially caters to students. Lots of student-type apartments, coffee shops, clubs, student-friendly retail establishments, that kind of thing. I think that’s probably the best place to start looking. There and on Waverly’s campus. If my calculations are correct—and it goes without saying that they are,” he added, since Lila was right about modesty being overrated when it wasn’t warranted, “you’ll find Sorcerer in one place or another. Along with his accomplices. It’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.”

      “And being uncharacteristically lucky,” she added.

      He smiled. “So all that good karma you’ve been scoring over the years will come in handy now.”

      She laughed at that, a deep, full-bodied, throaty laugh that made something inside Joel shimmy like mirage heat on a strip of desert highway. Only, instead of being way off in the distance like mirage heat usually was, it surrounded him and closed down hard. Once again he reminded himself that he was in no position to be feeling such things. Even under the best of circumstances, he did not need a sexual attraction to a woman whose emotions—at least the positive ones—ran about as deep as a fingerprint.

       Note to self, Faraday: You’re not into meaningless sex anymore. Remember?

      Well, evidently not…

      “Do you have a list of the people in the area Sorcerer contacted and may or may not have followed up on?” Lila asked.

      Joel shook off his wayward thoughts—again—and focused on the matter at hand. Which happened to be the woman he was trying not to think about. Damn. “We do,” he said. “It will be in a dossier with other information I have for you. But remember, there are almost certainly others we don’t know about.”

      “Do you know if Sorcerer established any contact with any of the people you did identify?”

      “You’ll receive a detailed account, but yes, we intercepted a number of e-mails between him and several students at Waverly. They were mostly exchanges of inconsequential information, though. Getting-to-know-you type stuff, the same thing he initially sent to Avery Nesbitt. Sorcerer assumed several different identities, each tailored to be most attractive to whomever he was in touch with. Most often, he was a young student at another university close enough to arrange for a physical meeting, should it come to that. With women, he invariably went the romantic route. With the men, he posed as another gamer and attempted to strike up a friendship through those avenues. Online gaming is huge at places like Waverly.”

      “And did any such physical meetings take place?” Lila asked.

      “A couple of times either Sorcerer or his mark would extend an invitation to meet up somewhere, but to the best of our knowledge, no such physical meetings ever took place.”

      “To the best of your knowledge,” she repeated. “That means it’s entirely possible that he has made physical contact. With any number of those people.”

      She was right, as much as Joel hated to admit it. Intelligence and surveillance could go only so far. And Sorcerer certainly knew how to keep himself from being tailed. He’d built a career on it. Not to mention, according to Sorcerer’s past habits—which, lately, Joel had been building his own career on—Sorcerer would delight in putting one over on OPUS by completing such a meeting just for the hell of it. He’d be careful, as he’d been in New York when he lured Avery Nesbitt into such a meeting, but he’d carry through. Unfortunately, Joel had an even bigger reason to agree with Lila.

      “It’s more than possible,”

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