“What about Bryan Forester?” Ali asked.

“What about him?” B. said with a shrug. “I’m sorry to hear his wife is dead. That’s too bad, especially if they had kids. But just because I wouldn’t walk across the street to say hello to Bryan Forester doesn’t mean I wish him ill.”

Ali hadn’t anticipated that Bryan Forester and B. Simpson would have such a complicated history, but that was what happened in small towns. Inevitably, everyone knew everyone else, for good or ill. Ali would have liked to tell B. about Bryan Forester’s difficulties so she could enlist his help and advice on the two thumb drives. Realizing she had inadvertently poked a stick at a hornet’s nest, though, she quickly backed away from that idea. She’d have to deal with the thumb drives on her own.

“Unlike you,” she said, “I didn’t know Bryan Forester in high school. From what you said, it sounds like he was a complete jerk back then. But he’s not a jerk now-at least he doesn’t seem like one to me. And he doesn’t seem like a possible killer, either. As for Morgan? Maybe she never grew up. Apparently, she liked living on the wild side, otherwise she wouldn’t have been messing around in places like Singleatheart. But that’s why I went there, to try to find out more about it and see if her being involved in the website might have had something to do with her death.”

That comment seemed to get B. back to the problem at hand. “So you went to the site and logged on,” he said.

Ali nodded. “And paid money-a hundred bucks-to do it.”

“You paid with a credit card?”

Ali nodded again.

“That makes sense.” B nodded thoughtfully. “My guess is that someone who works at Singleatheart is capturing the information that comes in to the website and planting the Trojan horse on the computers of people who sign up. That gives him an unending source of information that he can subsequently use in identity theft scams. He may lift money out of an account here or there, or he may use pieces of real names to create what’s called a synthetic identity.”

“Synthetic identity?” Ali repeated. “How does that work?”

“The bad guy applies for a credit card under a fictitious name, or else he uses the real name and social security number along with a fake address. That generates a file name and address, as far as the various credit-reporting companies are concerned. Once enough action happens on that name, the guy ends up having a real credit report, which makes him real as far as financial transactions are concerned. It makes him good to go, even though he doesn’t exist. The synthetic identity can then be used to empty people’s bank accounts or run up thousands of dollars in fraudulent credit-card charges.”

Ali was stunned. “That’s all it takes?”

“That’s all,” B. said. “People like that are generally cowards. They don’t have guts enough to pick up a gun and go out robbing people face-to-face or holding up banks in person. They’d rather do their stealing second-and thirdhand, hiding behind various virtual camouflages. This is your basic white-collar crime. No blood or guts. That’s why the cops generally aren’t interested.”

Finished with his cable connections, B. punched a series of commands into one of the keyboards. The computer screens came to life with pictures of files floating first in one direction and then another.

“Okay,” he explained. “What I’m doing here is making a mirror image of your hard drive on this computer so you’ll have access to all your files. If you don’t want our bad guy seeing everything you’re doing, that one will need to stay off the Internet at all times. We’ll leave his Trojan intact on your old computer. I’m loading what I call my stalking horse into your online banking folder and into your e-mail folder as well. Use that one selectively, enough that it looks like business as usual. That way, if he tries to access any of your recent e-mail activity or your banking or credit-card information with his computer, we’ll be able to infect him. What goes around comes around.”

“In other words, we’re turning my computer into a mousetrap, and I’m the bait.”

“Exactly,” B. said.

“But won’t these extra programs slow down my computer-and his, too?” Ali asked. “Won’t he notice?”

“Have you noticed any difference?” B. asked.

“Not so far.”

“Right. With any luck, he may not notice right away, either. I’m hoping we’ll be able to hack in to his system long enough to get a fix on some of his other connections. Even if he wises up and deletes our program, I’ll have enough details that I’ll be able to track back to him through some of the other people he’s targeted. He’s most likely hiding behind multiple servers and layers of identities that are strung out all over the globe. This isn’t going to happen all at once. It’s going to take time to find him. Unfortunately, finding him will be just the beginning.”

Ali nodded. “Until we find compelling evidence of some illegal activity, there’s no sense in turning him over to the cops. Which means we have to wait until he rips me off before we can do anything about it.”

“Not entirely,” B. returned after a moment.

“What do you mean?”

“There are really two ways of doing this. The one you’ve just mentioned-using your computer as bait and waiting for him to do something illegal-is the long way around. First we have to catch him; then we have to bring the cops in on it in hopes that eventually, the justice system will dish out some kind of punishment.”

“But we both know that with all the jurisdictional considerations, that’s not likely to happen,” Ali said. “And even if he is convicted, punishment will be minimal. So what’s the other way, a shortcut of some kind?”

“You could call it that,” B. said. “It comes under the heading of an eye for an eye, and it bypasses the justice system completely.”

“You’re talking about some kind of vigilante action?”

B. nodded. “These bad-boy geeks think they’re so smart that no one will ever wise up to them, so instead of hitting him with my Trojan, I’ll nail him with my other secret weapon. Did you ever watch Voyager or Enterprise or any of those Trekkie series on TV?”

“I suppose so,” Ali answered. “Why?”

“Do you remember tractor beams, the things the bad guys used to grab something and drag it back to their mother ship?”

“I guess.”

“My pet worm works the same way. I deploy it by putting it on your computer, the one he’s targeted. It sits there until he tries logging on to your system. That carries it into his system, where it’s programmed to do two things-retrieve all his files and shoot them back to us while it’s trashing them on his end.”

“We end up with his files?” Ali asked. “Is that legal?”

“Would whatever we retrieved from there be admissible in a court of law?” B. asked. “Probably not. That’s what I meant when I said we’d be bypassing the justice system. But I guarantee you, this is some jerk who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, and when we outwit him, he’s going to be annoyed as hell. It’ll drive him up a wall.”

“Driving him up a wall sounds about right,” Ali said. “What’s the turnaround time?”

“Once I install the worm program on your computer, all it takes is for him to try opening one of your infected files. As soon as he does, it’s kerblammo, and his computer system is toast. So it’s up to you. I’m happy to do it either way-fast or slow, through legal channels or not. And until we know we’ve nailed him-I’ll know as soon as the worm is deployed-then you should probably operate on an outside computer.”

Remembering her father’s gunslinger comment, Ali was glad to have B. and High Noon Enterprises on her side. It didn’t take long for her to make up her mind. “I’m all for instant gratification,” she told him.

B. grinned at her. “So am I,” he said.

Once the file transfers were completed, B. began disconnecting his cables and stowing his gear.