Free Hit List by Jack Heath

any time the
door was unlocked.
    Ash scanned the table the computer sat on, looking for signs of the hard drive. No luck. Just a phone, a fax machine, a modem and a printer. The set-up must have been decades old – these
days, a single device would perform all the functions of those four machines. The computer chassis looked like it belonged in a museum rather than a library.
    Ash stared at it. Where’s the best place to hide a hard drive? she asked herself.
    The answer was right in front of her. Inside a computer.
    She kneeled beside the chassis and felt around the edges for a release catch. These old computers had lots of empty space inside them – even combined, the motherboard, processor, hard
disk, memory card, video card and disk drives didn’t take up much room, but the chassis needed to be spacious to keep the components from overheating. There might just be enough room inside
for a clever thief to conceal a four-terabyte hard drive. It would be the perfect hiding place, since the computer chassis wasn’t likely to be opened, and even if it was, the drive
wouldn’t look out of place to anyone other than a computer engineer. If she could just—
    There! With a faint click, the wall of the chassis came loose, and Ash was staring into the innards of the computer.
    Bingo. The hard drive looked much newer than the other components. Less dust, sleeker design. It was smaller than she had expected, but still conceivably large enough to hold 4TB of code. Ash
unplugged it from the motherboard, put it on the floor, and reattached the wall of the chassis. Then she pocketed the drive, stood up, and turned to leave...
    Wait. She turned back, staring down at the fax machine. Something had caught her eye. A sheet of paper in the printout tray of the fax machine. Something was typed across it in 12-point Times
New Roman, the default font for practically every application on every computer in the world:
    HELP ME
    37.4215, -122.0855
    ALICE B
    “Have they found him yet?” Benjamin demanded.
    “They’re looking,” the detective said calmly. “I’ve just got a few more questions for you while we wait, okay?”
    Questions were bad news. Benjamin had been in the back of this police van for almost twenty minutes already, and the more questions he was asked, the more lies he had to tell. The more lies he
had to tell, the more inconsistencies he had to worry about. Inconsistencies like –
    “What exactly was your grandfather doing in the library at this time of night?”
    “Reading, I’d imagine,” Benjamin said. “That’s what it’s for, right?”
    He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Nobody likes a smart-arse, and Benjamin could tell by the detective’s hardening gaze that he was no exception. He looked like a guy
who’d been a cop a long time. Loose shirt, no tie. A mouth that had forgotten what a smile felt like. Eyes as dark and merciless as gun barrels.
    “But it closed hours ago,” he said. “Why was he still there?”
    Benjamin looked at his feet. “Grandpa has Alzheimer’s disease,” he said. “He’s pretty good, mostly, but sometimes he gets confused. You have to tell him things a
couple of times before he hears them. I guess he just missed the announcement that they were closing.”
    The detective looked a bit sympathetic at that. Benjamin guessed that he, like most people, had an old relative whose mind wasn’t what it once was.
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” the detective said.
    “Thanks,” Benjamin said.
    His voice sounded familiar to Benjamin, but he couldn’t work out why. A couple of cops had come to his school on career day, but they’d both been women, so that wasn’t it.
    I must have heard him interviewed on the radio, he thought, or something like that. It’s not like I know any cops. Ash and I always try to avoid them, especially since—
    His blood ran cold. What had this detective said his name was, again?
    “Do you think maybe I could help with the