Commodity by Shay Savage Page A

been on a project a few months before, working on the programming for that system, and one of the other accountants I’d worked with asked me to look at it.  I followed the data through the system and found this holding company.”
    “Baby Blue, Limited.”
    “Yes, that one.  I kept seeing all these small amounts—much smaller than the one I was investigating being funneled to this holding company.  It looked odd, so I searched for Baby Blue on Google but couldn’t find anything.  That was weird, too, so I asked a friend of mine to check into it and see what he could find.”
    “Daniel McIntyre.  The hacker.”
    “We were in school together,” I say with a nod.  “We took a lot of the same computer classes, but he was a lot better than me.  He could find anything anywhere—get into any system he wanted.  I didn’t know he would end up…”
    “He was killed in a car accident.”
    “He was run off the road.  It wasn’t an accident.”
    “I realize.”
    “He linked Baby Blue to a bunch of porn sites.  Porn sites with underage girls being raped.”
    I take a deep breath.
    “He sent me a picture from one of them,” I tell Falk.  “He sent it because he thought one of the girls looked like me.”
    “Your sister.”
    “Yes.”  I swallow again, tears welling in my eyes.  “Her body was found with the others in that compound in Nevada.  It brought us some closure, at least.  It’s the only good thing that came out of it all.  At least we know what happened to her.”
    “That paper you talked about writing in college,” Falk says, “was about your own family.”
    I nod, and Falk reaches over and lays his hand on top of mine where it lies on my stomach.  He grips my hand for a moment and then relaxes.
    “I turned it all over to the police,” I tell him.  “All the evidence Daniel and I found.  Their investigators linked it back to Tyler Hudson through some offshore accounts.  A week after Hudson was arrested, Daniel was dead.”
    “The arraignment was the day before, but he was let out on bond.”
    “Yes.”
    “You were attacked the following week.”
    “Yes.  How much of that did you read?”
    “I know you were leaving your house,” he says, “and you were on your way to do some shopping.  It was approximately three-thirty on a Saturday afternoon.  I know they were waiting for you outside and dragged you into a van.”
    “Yes.”  I clear my throat as the memories surface.  “Someone came up behind me and threw a bag over my head then put his hand over my mouth.  I tried to scream, but there wasn’t anyone outside to hear me.  I heard a sliding door open, and my leg got scraped when I was shoved inside.  The van started moving right away as I was pushed down to the floor.”
    “I don’t know exactly how many there were—at least four—plus whoever was driving.  One of them held my hands up above my head, and two others held my legs.”
    “You don’t have to give me the details,” he says.  “Don’t put yourself through that.”
    I nod, feeling tears coming to my eyes as Falk’s arm slips around my waist.
    “I recognized Hudson’s voice right away.  I’d only met him in person a couple of times at the office, but he did all these employee engagement videos, so I knew his voice well.  He was…he was between my legs.  He kept saying how much I had fucked over what he was doing, and how he was going to fuck me over as payment.”
    “He was…really rough.  He wanted me hurt.  They said I had a lot of lacerations when I went to the hospital.  A lot of bruises, too.  When he was…was about done, they pulled the bag up so he could come on my face.”
    Falk tenses behind me.  I can feel his hand shaking slightly.
    “It felt like it was all over me,” I say.  “I kept spitting, trying to get it away from my mouth, and then someone else was holding my legs up, and he started…”
    I take a gasping breath.
    “He must have been the one holding my