Broken Crescent Read Free

it. Nate knew for a fact that there was no physical evidence connecting him to Azrael.
    That line of thought did as much good for his peace of mind as it had when he opened the last five messages. In other words, no good at all.
    There were other possibilities.
    Blackmail for one. Nate had precious little in the way of assets, but he still had a wealth of information buried in his head, things Azrael knew that Nate Black shouldn’t. . . .
    But there was another, more frightening, possibility.
    What if these were legitimate warnings from a fellow hacker?
    The nightmare scenario had the FBI, Secret Service, CIA or someone, arresting some schmuck from six years ago who hadn’t learned Azrael’s lesson and had gone on with the “black hat” hacking past the time where his luck ran out. A schmuck who had known Azrael back in the day. A schmuck who’d known enough to connect Azrael to Nate.
    It would take time; the schmuck and the Feds negotiating their deals; the Feds checking the schmuck’s background details to assure themselves that if they pleaded this fish it would hook them a bigger one.
    Nate stood up and shakily put his PDA in his pocket. “I’m freaking myself out.” He looked up at the clock on the wall of the lounge and saw it was ten after one. “And late for class.”
    Nate shouldered his backpack, left the lounge, and started walking down the corridor toward his networking class.
    It wasn’t fair. He’d been a “white hat” for six years. He shouldn’t have to spend every waking moment worrying about ancient history.
    The halls felt eerily empty to him. The squeak of his boots on linoleum was too loud and echoey. His breath tasted of copper, and he felt his pulse in his neck.
    He was thin and wiry, high-strung at the best of times. More than one past girlfriend had compared his body—not his face, thank God—to Iggy Pop. Right now his body was tense and trembling, as if someone had taken pure caffeine and had injected it directly into his hypothalamus.
    When he passed a classroom, he had the urge to thrust the door open and yell at them, “Yes, I was Azrael, damn it! I did things that would make you never trust your social security number again!”
    It was almost a relief when he turned the corner and saw a guy in a cheap suit standing outside the door to his classroom. He didn’t even slow his steps at first. All he could think of was how mundane the guy looked. Just a rumpled brown suit. Not even a pair of shades, or an earphone . . .
    The guy turned to look at Nate, and for a moment Nate thought that he might be wrong. This guy could be here for something completely different. He might not be a Fed, or even a cop.
    A blare of incomprehensible static echoed through the hallway and the guy raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth, taking a step toward Nate.
    That was more than enough to get Nate to turn tail and run away as fast as he could.
    All the adrenaline that had accumulated since @’s last warning let loose in a single spastic jerk. He spun around so fast that his boots nearly slid out from under him. He slammed into the corner and started running back the way he had come.
    He tried to tell himself that this was insane. The guy couldn’t be a cop waiting there for him. Not now .
    But Nate was close enough to hear the words the guy was shouting into the walkie-talkie, “—pursuit of Caucasian suspect, six feet, one sixty, brown hair, brown leather jacket, black denim jeans, red T-shirt—”
    Where the hell was he running? It was over now. Even if he got away. They would have his apartment. He couldn’t use an ATM or a credit card without letting them know where he was. He couldn’t go home to his parents. He should give up now, take what was coming. It would be what? Ten years a prisoner against a life as a fugitive. . . .
    And what would his life be like after that?
    He kept running.
    Nate slammed his way into a stairway and looked behind him. Brown suit was right on his heels, less than