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him so he could see her at all times. He found a small sunroom that had been converted into an office and told Alice to lie down on her stomach. He removed a rope from his jacket. It was part of the show, Rick told himself again as he tied her hands to her feet, making it impossible for her to get up.

“Stay there.” Rick noted the irony only after he’d already moved the three feet from Alice to the computer. The first trick would be getting past the login screen. That would be far simpler than most people imagined. Rick inserted a USB stick with software downloaded from the Internet, then restarted the computer, forcing it to launch from the stick instead of the hard drive. The software that loaded let him reset the password to nothing and, with one more restart, he was in.

While Rick waited for the machine to finish booting up, he heard Alice crying. He could tell she was trying to do it silently, but still she whimpered and sniffled, her chest shuddering, her breathing uneven. He imagined how he would feel if Alice was his daughter and cursed Liam again for putting him in this situation.

Finally, the computer was ready to go. Time to get to work.

Liam Parker

Four TSA agents escorted Liam into a small room. He thought about running, but he was surrounded. “I’m sure it’s a mistake,” he said, hoping that was right. Had Rick given him a forged ticket as well as a forged ID? “The barcode probably got messed up carrying the ticket around in my pocket like I was.”

“Probably,” said the large TSA agent leading the way. He spoke without looking back and walked with his thumbs clipped under his belt.

Unlike the public parts of the airport, which had a sleek, modern feel, this room was made of linoleum flooring and painted cinderblock. The only windows ran along the side facing the terminal. There were a few plastic chairs for people to sit in and a security camera mounted to the ceiling.

Liam was directed to a chair that faced away from the window. “Stay right here,” the agent instructed. “We’ll get this straightened out in no time.”

Liam sat, leaned forward. The longer he waited, the more his panic grew. He’d been hoping they’d take him directly to the Delta counter to get the matter resolved. At least there he’d be able to see what was happening.

The room brought back memories of his cell. He should have tried to make a break for it. He’d probably have gotten arrested, but he was going to get arrested anyway, wasn’t he? They were going to find out the ticket was fake, the ID was fake, and that would be that.

Don’t panic. You don’t know how this is going to play out. Maybe the ticket really was damaged. Just wait and see what happens. Besides, what choice do you have?

Damaged. Yeah, right.

Liam looked at the camera, then the door. While there was probably somebody watching him, there were no TSA agents within sight. Was he sitting here like a sucker when all he had to do to escape was walk out of the room?

He got up, made his way over to the door as casually as he could, and tried the knob. The door wouldn’t budge. So much for that.

Richard Hawthorne

Liam kept a two-drawer filing cabinet behind his desk. Rick leafed through it. The documents were well organized, making the search a breeze. He found statements from Bank West and Fidelity, which appeared to reference personal accounts. He turned to the computer, cracked open and awaiting his command. He scoured digital folders, checked Liam’s browsing history, and compiled a list of seven financial institutions that he believed held the entirety of Liam’s wealth.

Now it was simply a matter of logging into them and setting up a series of wire transfers. This, more than anything, was why he had to get into Liam’s condo. With the two-factor authentication most financial institutions had these days, it was nearly impossible to log in without being on an authorized computer.

Rick brought up the Bank West website, hoping Liam had saved his login information into the browser so that it would autofill the required fields. He had saved the username, which was partially obscured by a series of dots. But when he clicked to the next screen, the field for the password was blank.

All the while, Alice continued to whimper. She couldn’t see what Rick was doing and didn’t ask.

Rick went back to the digital folders in search of a file containing Liam’s logins, but came up short. Fortunately, people were predictable, and despite all the warnings out there not to use the same password on multiple accounts, many did. All Rick needed was one good login from anywhere and odds were Liam’s digital world would open for him.

Bank West was the only financial institution he knew Liam used before arriving at the condo, and he had tried to get that login through phishing emails—“You have an important notice from Bank West. Click here to read it.”—but Liam hadn’t taken the bait.

Rick plugged in a second USB stick. Before Chris Bell had shown up at his apartment, he had installed a brute force program on it and loaded it with all the information he’d collected on Liam. He fired the program up and put it to work. It began attacking Facebook and Twitter, using Liam’s email address and a sort of educated guessing system to generate passwords.

“It’ll just be a little longer,” he told Alice.

When the program returned a valid Facebook password, he tried it on the Bank West website. It didn’t work. Then he tried it on Gmail, and it did. He requested a new password from Bank West, clicked the link they sent to Gmail, and logged in.

Liam had three accounts at that bank. Transferring the money out of them was a piece of cake.

Next.

He opened the Greenwire Trust website. From the look of