"This 'friend' wouldn't be named Russ, would he?"

"No. This is a buddy. We've been working on an MMO game hack-"

"NRO… MMO… I don't speak acronymese."

"Sorry. A massively multiplayer online game."

"Sounds like bad English."

"It's a big deal these days. WoW-I mean, Warcraft-has eleven million players, Habbo's got eight, and people average between twenty and thirty hours a week at it."

Jack shook his head. He got game playing, but didn't get Russ. "And you want to hack it? Don't you ever learn?"

He laughed. "Hack's an umbrella term. Me and Munir are working on a way to make MMOs play faster. If it works out the way we hope it will, we'll patent it and be sitting pretty."

"And this Munir's got trouble? What kind?"

Russ shrugged. "Don't know. Won't tell me. I think it involves his wife and kid."

Jack remembered a voice mail that said, Jack, please save my family! He'd decided not to call back.

"And he can't go to the cops," Russ added. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

A kidnap, most likely. One of Jack's rules was to avoid kidnappings. They were the latest crime fad these days, usually over drugs. They attracted feds and Jack had less use for feds than he had for local cops.

"Yeah." He leaned forward. "Look, Russ, kidnapping is best left to the big boys. They've got assets and manpower and teams specially trained-"

"He's scared shitless to make that call. I told him I knew a guy who could look into it and keep it outside the system."

"Sorry, Russ. No way."

5

"Drexler, I have a task for you."

Ernst straightened in his chair as he recognized the voice: the One.

His office seemed to shrink around him. Contact with the One never failed to make him feel like a frightened child. He grabbed a pen and poised it over the legal pad before him.