Chapter 02
Fuck, fuck, fuck …
Although I love hugging Lex and I adore his forehead kisses, I would have rather used those ten minutes to talk with his lawyers and prepare for this shit. But I changed his mind about the plea deal, so it wasn’t all for nothing.
My stomach is in knots as I sit behind the stand, the guy with the Bible walking away to return to his corner.
“Miss Walker,” Ms. Collins starts, approaching me. “You work for Mr. Coleman, correct?”
“Yes.”
“When did you start?”
“The 22nd of July.”
“And when did your relationship with him become romantic?”
I glance at Lex, unsure what to do or say. At Kelex, HR has a full account of our relationship on file, so it’s probably better not to tell an easily debunked lie. “In September.”
“Can you be more precise, please?”
My throat is tight as I say, “We started seeing each other on the 2nd, but I wouldn’t say we were anything serious until later that month, around the twentieth.”
“So, you and Mr. Coleman were in a romantic relationship on the 28th of September. Is that correct?”
With a frown, I try to recall the timeline. We were, yes. It all ended a couple of days later, following the Oliver incident. “Yes,” I confirm with a nod, unsure of what she’s getting at.
Ms. Collins pauses only a moment before continuing. “Miss Walker, are you familiar with a man named Stefano Bianchi?”
Okay, now I’m confused as hell. Kate’s asshole ex? How is this relevant? How could he be connected to this? “I am,” I warily say.
“Can you tell the court how you know him?”
“He dated my best friend for a few months. Then they broke up.”
“By ‘best friend,’ you mean Katherine Knox, right?”
This is freaky. How the fuck does she know all that?
“Objection! Relevance?” Mr. Goldberg demands.
“The relevance will become clear in a moment, Your Honor.”
I look up at the judge, who dismisses Lex’s lawyer with a vague, “Overruled.”
Ms. Collins returns to me with assurance, resting her forearm on the stand. “Is Katherine Knox the friend you’re referring to?”
“Yes.”
“Was her breakup with Mr. Bianchi amicable?”
“No.”
“Did he threaten her afterward?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He recorded an intimate moment without her consent and threatened to post it online.”
Collins takes a step closer. “And when you heard about that, did you share it with Mr. Coleman?”
Lost, I seek the one person I hope can make this make sense. But Lex’s apathetic look doesn’t help. On the contrary. Something tugs at my insides, a dreadful sense of awareness my brain hasn’t caught up with yet. This isn’t good.
“I can’t recall,” I lie.
“But you were with him when she told you about it, weren’t you?”
I was. But confirming it doesn’t feel right. It feels like a trap. So I don’t answer, forcing myself to look confused and uncertain instead.
“We know from Mr. Bianchi’s deposition that he made the threat on the twenty-eighth.
Miss Knox’s call records show you were the first person she called afterward.
The government also obtained building security logs from the defendant’s residence that day.
They show you were there when she called, and that you and Mr. Coleman left in his car about fifteen minutes later.
Are you saying you didn’t tell him about the threat? ”
Jesus, fuck. It’s like a noose is tightening around my neck with every word she utters. She did her job thoroughly. Although I’m still unsure why this is her line of questioning, it can’t be good for Lex’s case.
“I might have. I don’t remember how it unfolded,” I lie again. “I was angry and not thinking rationally.”
“Did you head down to visit Miss Knox in Portland that very day?”
“I did.”
“Did the defendant drive you there?”
“No.”
“Then where was he taking you?”
“To my place so I could get my car.”
Her eyes narrow on me, and I feel like a helpless rabbit caught in the talons of a hawk. “Are you sure you didn’t mention what was happening to Miss Knox during the drive?”
“I might have,” I say again. “I can’t recall exactly what we talked about.”
“It’s a fourteen-minute drive, Miss Walker, at minimum. You must have discussed the emergency that required you to leave his place so hastily.”
“Objection!” Mr. Goldberg shouts. “Leading question.”
“She’s answered you twice, Ms. Collins,” the judge says. “This is a preliminary hearing, not a trial. Move on.”
Ms. Collins doesn’t seem fazed. If anything, something smug veils her face. “No further questions, Your Honor.”
“Your witness, Mr. Goldberg,” the judge says.
The lawyer exchanges a few hushed words with Lex, stands, and decides, “We do not wish to cross-examine Miss Walker, Your Honor.”
I’m still feeling shell-shocked as I return to the others among the public, struggling to understand what just happened. Someone else walks up to the stand, and I force myself to listen.
“Mr. Grant, can you tell us a little about your job?” Ms. Collins asks.
“I’ve been head of the cybercrime department at the Portland PD for the past three years. Before that, I worked in Washington with the cybercrime division of the Department of Homeland Security.”
“You worked on the Nammota case there, is that right?”
“Yes. I was part of the task force assembled to track him down nine years ago. Ten of us worked nearly five years trying to catch him, but when the hits stopped, the trail went cold, and the task force was dismantled.”
“Five years on one hacker is a long time. One might say you’re a Nammota expert.”
“I know more about him than the average cybercrime agent, yes. I became familiar with Nammota’s patterns, coding style, techniques …”
Shit … Of course they have such an expert here to testify.
And they probably have more in stock—either for today or the trial.
I haven’t delved that well into Lex’s secret computer, but I saw how similar his coding style at Kelex is to his hacking code.
He has his rigid ways, and they are similar in his legal and illegal scripts.
“Can you tell us what happened with Mr. Stephano Bianchi?” Ms. Collins asks.
Again, the mention of Kate’s ex makes a ball of anxiety swell in my throat. What the fuck is this about?
“On September 29th, Portland Cyber received an anonymous tip via email. It led to a secure folder containing proof of Mr. Bianchi’s unlawful distribution of intimate images of several subjects without their consent, as well as his attempts at blackmailing several of the victims. It was more than enough to arrest him. ”
I frown, confused. Oliver did that, not Lex. Lex doesn’t even know what went on that day, as it remained between Kate, Oli, and me.
“Is that your usual routine?” the prosecutor asks the expert.
“Investigating these crimes is, yes. Receiving a perfectly packaged evidence folder, no. That was unusual, so I looked into it. What really got my attention was the way the files were named.”
“Meaning?”
“The all caps, the exact date format, the sequence … It matched a distinctive pattern I’d only seen before in the Nammota case. It was uncanny.”
“What did you do?”
“On a hunch, I dug deeper. The website hosting the folder used code that was also alarmingly familiar. When I tried to trace the server, the IP bounced across multiple countries, exactly the way Nammota masked his tracks when I worked on him in Washington.”
“So, you believed Nammota sent you those files?”
“It looked that way. But it was the first time it seemed personal, something tied to his private life. That meant we had an opportunity like never before to narrow down who he might be. I forwarded everything to my old boss at Homeland, and they opened a quiet inquiry. We questioned Mr. Bianchi, hoping to learn who might be behind the leak. And we seized his electronic devices to investigate the matter further.”
“What did you find?”
“Mr. Bianchi’s computer was hacked twice, by two separate entities.
The first one is who we believe was Nammota, and the second one is another hacker who crippled the device with viruses, causing it to crash entirely.
Thankfully, he wasn’t as skilled as the first hacker, and we recovered most of the computer’s content, allowing us to find substantial evidence against the first hacker. ”
My eyes travel to the back of Lex’s head. What has he done? Why didn’t he tell me he went through Stefano’s computer? That he’s the one who got him arrested, not Oli?
My hands tremble on my lap as fear spreads through my mind.
After all, the proof they have against Lex might not be all conjecture.
They very well might have some serious evidence.
Shelly grabs my hand and squeezes it to contain the trembling.
I can’t look away from Lex, but I feel her gaze on my profile, and the compassion in it.
I want you to know it isn’t your fault, Andrea.
That asshole … He knew. He knew all along what had gotten him arrested.
“Did you get anywhere?” Ms. Collins then asks.
“Bianchi claimed Miss Knox and Miss Walker were responsible. When we learned about Miss Walker, we investigated her. We found no relevant evidence against her and judged her to be too young to have been Nammota. We then looked into her father, who also knows his way around coding, but found nothing. Because of the scale of the investigation and the stakes, we were granted the right to tap into Miss Walker and Miss Knox’s phones.
From there, we learned the former was in a romantic relationship with her boss, Mr. Coleman. ”
“So, you looked into him?”
“We did. We reviewed his employment history, publicly available projects, and forensic samples of his past code from professional repositories. His coding style, structure, and certain signature quirks fit the behavioral profile better than any suspect we’d ever had.
That, coupled with his romantic involvement with Miss Walker, led us to believe he was the person who hacked into Bianchi’s computer and phone. ”
“Anything else?”