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there.
    Anderson nodded to the guard, who undid the wrist shackles. For the first time in two years Gillette was no longer under the physical domination of the prison system. He’d attained a freedom of sorts.
    He rubbed the skin on his wrists as they walked toward the exit—two wooden doors with latticed fireglass in them, through which Gillette could see the gray sky. “We’ll put the anklet on outside,” Anderson said.
    Shelton stepped brusquely up to the hacker and whispered, “I want to say one thing, Gillette. Maybe you’re thinking you’ll be in striking distance of some weapon or another, what with your hands free. Well, if you even get an itchy look that I don’t like you’re going to get hurt bad. Follow me? I won’t hesitate to take you out.”
    “I broke into a computer,” the hacker said, exasperated. “That’s all I did. I’ve never hurt anyone.”
    “Just remember what I said.”
    Gillette sped up slightly so that he was walking next to Anderson. “Where’re we going?”
    “The state police Computer Crimes Unit office is in San Jose. It’s a separate facility. We—”
    An alarm went off and a red light blinked on the metal detector they were walking through. Since they were leaving, not entering, the prison, the guard manning the security station shut the buzzer off and nodded at them to continue.
    But just as Anderson put his hand on the front door to push it open a voice called, “Excuse me.” It was Frank Bishop and he was pointing at Gillette. “Scan him.”
    Gillette laughed. “That’s crazy. I’m going out, not coming in. Who’s going to smuggle something out of prison?”
    Anderson said nothing but Bishop gestured the guard forward. He ran a metal-detecting wand over Gillette’s body. The wand got to his right slacks pocket and emitted a piercing squeal.
    The guard reached into the pocket and pulled out a circuit board, sprouting wires.
    “What the fuck’s that?” Shelton snapped.
    Anderson examined it closely. “A red box?” he asked Gillette, who glanced at the ceiling in frustration. “Yeah.”
    The detective said to Bishop and Shelton, “There’re dozens of circuit boxes that phone phreaks used to cheat the phone company—you know, to get free service, tap somebody’s line, cut out wiretaps. . . . They’re known by colors. You don’t see many of them anymore except this one—a red box. It mimics the sound of coins in a pay phone. You can call anywhere in the world and just keep punching the coin-drop-tone button enough times to pay for the call.” He looked at Gillette. “What were you going to do with this?”
    “Figured I might get lost and need to phone somebody.”
    “You could also sell a red box on the street for, I don’t know, a couple of hundred bucks, to a phone phreak. If, say, you were to escape and needed some money.”
    “I guess somebody could. But I’m not going to do that.”
    Anderson looked the board over. “Nice wiring.”
    “Thanks.”
    “You missed having a soldering iron, right?”
    Gillette nodded. “I sure did.”
    “You pull something like that again and you’ll be back inside as soon as I can get a patrol car to bring you in. Got it?”
    “Got it.”
    “Nice try,” Bob Shelton whispered. “But, fuck, life’s just one big disappointment, don’t you think?”
    No, Wyatt Gillette thought. Life’s just one big hack.
    O n the eastern edge of Silicon Valley a pudgy fifteen-year-old student pounded furiously on a keyboard as he peered through thick glasses at a monitor in the computer room at St. Francis Academy, an old, private boys’ school in San Jose.
    The name of this area wasn’t quite right, though. Yeah, it had computers in it. But the “room” part was a little dicey, the students thought. Stuck away down in the basement, bars on the windows, it looked like a cell. And it may actually have been one once; this part of the building was 250 years old and the rumor was that the famous missionary in old