Free The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller by Drew Chapman

program. Mitty loved that.
    “Could work,” she said. “But you might come up with nonsense. I mean—you build a hypothetical profile, but the real person, the flesh and blood, they’re totally different. Because real people never fit a profile exactly.”
    “Agreed.” Garrett continued to enter queries into his database. “But it’s better than nothing.”
    Mitty shrugged, then flipped through the channels on the motel TV. She skipped over Fox News, then quickly cycled back to it. She stared at the screen. “Oh shit, big guy. We got trouble.”
    Garrett looked up from his computer to the television and saw his own face staring back at him.
    • • •
    Alexis saw the news reports as well. She watched them from her office at the DIA. They were short, obviously cribbed from an FBI press release, and to the point: Garrett Reilly was now an official “person of interest” in the killing of Phillip Steinkamp. He was on the run, unknown location, possibly armed. Anyone with information leading to his capture should call the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the following number. Cable news flashed a passport photo of Garrett on-screen, then spent a few minutes speculating on what this all meant. A twisted love affair? A crazed loner? Or—speculated on with more relish—a broader conspiracy?
    General Kline walked into her office in the middle of the CNN broadcast and watched it with her. He shook his head slowly, muttering, “Bad, very bad,” under his breath. Then, louder: “We need to get as far away from this as possible.”
    “They’re trying to force him out of hiding,” Alexis said.
    “We need to start scrubbing Reilly from our records.” Kline sat opposite Alexis. “Anything you want to tell me?”
    Alexis considered her options. She was considerably less certain of Garrett’s innocence now than she had been before seeing him—he had been erratic, strung out, and raging, but he’d also been spot-on, as usual, and she wasn’t ready to turn him over to the police. Not yet. Her instincts told her to wait.
    She studied General Kline, the age lines etched into his face, the streaks of gray in his hair. Was Garrett right? Was Kline burned-out, about to retire? Would he leave her in the lurch to find her own destiny at the DIA? Possibly. No, probably. But she still couldn’t involve him. He was her boss, and her mentor; he had helped her rise through the ranks, and she would protect him for it, no matter what the future brought. And protection for Kline, at this point, meant ignorance.
    “No,” she said. “Nothing.”
    He stared at her, as if waiting for her façade to crack, then left her office without saying anything else.
    Ten minutes later an e-mail showed up in her in-box from a Gmail account. The sender’s name was Profiler. She read it once, briefly, then printed it out. She considered deleting the e-mail, but she knew all e-mails, deleted or otherwise, sat on government servers for what amounted to eternity. She folded up the printout, jammed it in her pocket, then walked out of the building to a smallwooded area on the south end of the base. The day was warm and lovely, as opposed to her mood, which was like a battered ship crashing against the rocks. Alone, unwatched, and in the shadow of a spreading elm tree, she unfolded the printout and read it carefully.
    A profile. Of what he should look like. We made assumptions and tried to match the assumptions to what we already know. Inference from facts. Then calculated probability.
    •  He will be male. 99% certainty. Professional hackers almost always are. And only a pro could do what he’s done so far.
    •  Young. Again, 99% sure. 20s, early 30s.
    •  Probably from Eastern Europe. 85%. Ukraine. Russia. Most non-state criminal hackers are. Attacks in Europe have seemed random, but avoided eastern countries. Ergo, that’s where he’s from.
    •  Will have degree from University. Math/Science. Probably Moscow. There have been a