Afraid of the Dark

Chapter Sixty-three

Jack was feeling the jet lag. It was technically still day one in London, but his body was telling him that he’d gone too long without rest. His chin snapped up off his chest as the sound of Chuck’s voice roused him from a state of semisleep.

“I cracked the code,” said Chuck, speaking over the computer.

“What took you so long?” asked Jack.

He was being facetious. Anything less than intelligence-grade encryption was no match for Chuck’s supercomputers.

“Does that mean we can view the files now?” asked Shada.

“No need,” said Chuck. “I ran them through my database. Part of Project Round Up is the cataloging of every single video file traded over the worst of the P2P networks. Trust me on this: The files that you copied from that creep’s computer are not the kind of things that any normal human being would want to watch.”

Jack was almost afraid to ask. “What kind of content are we talking about?”

“Some people would call it sexually explicit. I call it graphic violence.”

“Not against children, I hope.”

“No children in these videos. Interestingly, the violence is against grown men. By women.”

That took Jack aback. “Dominatrix stuff?”

“It goes beyond that. From a trading-frequency standpoint, the most popular video shows a woman ripping out a man’s pubic hair with her teeth.”

Jack squirmed at the thought, then refocused. “So are you saying that every single file that Shada copied has already been traded on the P2P networks?”

“All of them-except one.”

“Which one?”

“Jamal’s.”

Jack went cold. “What does that one show?”

“I haven’t watched it yet, and since it’s never been traded on the P2P networks, I don’t have the content cataloged. I thought I would pull it up now for the three of us to see.”

Jack and Shada exchanged uneasy glances.

“I don’t need to see it,” said Shada. “This may not matter to you, Chuck, but I feel bad enough for the mistakes I’ve made without watching these videos.”

Chuck didn’t bite, unwilling to acknowledge her contrition just yet.

“What about you, Swyteck?” he asked. “Jamal was your client.”

Jack wasn’t eager to say yes, but if Jamal’s mother was going to hear about this from anyone, he wanted it to be from him, not Chuck. “I should,” Jack said, bracing himself, “so I will.”