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wasn’t Hoover archetype about Smith was that he wasn’t wearing a dress.’
    Grace shook her head. ‘They’re desperate, Harley. They tried tracing this network and they can’t do it. Not legally, anyway. So they bring in us and a bunch of hackers so we can do what the law keeps the Feds from doing themselves. You can’t stick religiously to every letter of the law when lives are at stake, and maybe they’re starting to get that. Sometimes
    Harley nodded. ‘Exactly my point. Who ever said the Feds were human beings?’
    Grace shrugged. ‘We had a choice. An office of our own in D.C., or D.C. came to us.’
    ‘Yeah, well, I agreed to that before they told us they were sending a full-time spy.’
    ‘Liaison,’ Grace corrected him. ‘He’s here to help us.’
    Harley snorted. ‘That’s what they say to the mental patients when the guy comes in to give them electric-shock therapy. Christ, Grace, you’re talking about the same agency that set you up to bait a serial killer, and now all of a sudden you think they’ve got scruples?’
    ‘Harley.’ Grace took in a breath and exhaled noisily; one of those secret signals that told people who knew her they should pay attention. ‘There are creeps out there filming fake murders to get their fifteen minutes on the Web; but there are other creeps filming real murders for the same kind of celebrity. The FBI wants them all shut down, and the first warrant step is a software program that can tell the difference between something staged and something real. They’re doing the right thing, Harley, trying to nail the real killers fast, and scaring the creep idiots straight. And it’s simple for us. Software 101.’
    Harley snorted. ‘I’m glad you’re so optimistic. Even if we use one of our existing software platforms, we’re talking a week, minimum, just to get an idea if this is doable. It’s going to be a ton of extra work, and my point is, we’ve got
    Annie cocked a brow at him. ‘We’re already filthy, stinking rich. Half the computers in the world run at least one of our software apps or games.’
    ‘Besides, the security software is already in beta version,’ Grace reminded him. ‘We’ll be finished by the end of the month, easy.’
    ‘Okay, but we still have to finish the updates for all the educational software …’
    Roadrunner lifted his hand and waved. ‘I finished those this morning.’
    Harley folded his big arms across his chest and grunted. ‘All right, all right, so maybe we can squeeze this in. Big whoop. The bottom line is, I do not trust the guy, I do not want to work with him looking over my shoulder, I do not want him in my house.’
    Roadrunner shrugged. ‘I kind of liked him.’
    ‘Yeah, but you’re a dipshit.’
    ‘Besides, we’ve got more bad-guy radar in this room than all of MPD, and if he is one, we’ll know it after the first hour.’
    Harley blew a raspberry. ‘Oh yeah? It took us ten years to figure out who was trying to kill us. Our record for reading people isn’t exactly sterling.’
    Grace didn’t exactly make a face. The one she already had just went very still and stayed that way. For a woman who had spent her entire life anticipating and preparing for
    ‘In an hour.’ Harley grabbed a manila folder off the counter by the stove and slid it over to Annie. ‘In the meantime, Roadrunner and I did a little surfing on some of the websites the Feebs red-flagged for us at the seminar. This came off one of them this morning.’
    Annie opened the folder and pulled out a photo. ‘Oh Lord, is this a real dead person?’
    Roadrunner shrugged. ‘No way to tell. We scanned it for Photoshop-type alterations and couldn’t find any, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t staged and posed. Heck, we did that for the Serial Killer Detective game and even the cops thought it was the real thing. We called Smith to have the thing pulled and passed to Cyber Crimes and the recruited geeks, but it doesn’t look good. The ISPs are