Garrett held the phone to his ear. “There’s a voicemail from your mother. She says that we need to go to the police station. We can’t stay at DEF CON because we need to get away from the people who hurt your dad.”
“She’s just trying to scare us.”
“I thought that an informant shot him.” Garrett held out the phone. “You’d better listen.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Jess…”
“Garrett, I came here to get Rudeboy to help figure out who hacked into my mom’s phone. What part of that did you miss?”
“The part that says we might be in danger.”
“You sure don’t look like a wuss, Abercrombie.”
“What?” protested Garrett. “Who’s Abercrombie?”
Jessie walked outside and made her way to the head of the taxi line. “So you told your parents?”
“Are you kidding?” said Garrett. “My parents would have called out the National Guard by now if I wasn’t home. My mom waits up by the door to make sure I walk in before midnight. I’m not joking. By the door. I may be disobedient, but I’m not cruel.” Garrett caught himself. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Jessie had never thought of herself as cruel. “My mom’s just freaking out because I didn’t tell her where I’ve gone. Once we get to DEF CON, if you see any guys in dark shirts and sunglasses looking at us strangely, let me know and we’ll get out of there.”
Garrett cued up the voicemail. “Just listen to her.”
“I don’t want to.”
“It’s your mother. She loves you.”
Jessie grabbed the phone out of his hand and deleted the message. “My mom thinks I’m a freak. She can’t stand that I don’t wear tight blue jeans or put on makeup or straighten my hair and that I hate Taylor Swift and that I’m fat and I don’t like to run or go to the gym. Okay? She may care for me. And yes, I know that she’s worried. But she doesn’t love me. Not really. My dad loved me. That’s why I’m here. You want to go, go. I’m staying.” She climbed into a minivan with an advertisement for a strip club on top. “What are you looking at?” she said.
“Nothing…I mean…oh, forget it.” Garrett climbed in and closed the door. “I’m staying.”
“Take us to the Rio,” said Jessie.
“DEF CON, right?” said the driver, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. “You guys are getting younger each year. Pretty soon I’ll be driving babies out there.”
“Hey, buddy,” said Jessie, “just drive.”
“Punk.”
They turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard and drove past the Mandalay Bay, the Mirage, the Bellagio, temples of neon. The lights reminded her of Bangkok, the night markets, the hotels lining the Chao Phraya River. The two cities were nothing alike, really. Maybe it was just being in another city where it was hot all day and all night, with so many tall buildings. All she knew was that it made her sad. Her dad had been alive in Bangkok. Mouse hadn’t been sick yet. And she hadn’t made her mom miss her dad’s last message.
“You okay?” asked Garrett, his hand touching her arm.
Jessie wiped at her cheek. “Be quiet.”
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t mean it. I’m just tired.”
“Me, too.”
Jessie leaned her head against Garrett’s shoulder. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
Jessie wanted to say for a thousand things, but the words tripped all over each other. “Just thanks.”
The cab turned onto Flamingo Road and Jessie saw the hotel at the end of the block, towering before them like a brightly lit birthday cake. It was big and pretty, but it didn’t look as glitzy as the others. That figured. Hackers and computer nerds weren’t glitzy either. They were just smarter.
Another turn and the cab pulled beneath the hotel’s porte cochere. Jessie paid the fare and added a dollar for a tip, getting out before the driver could call her a punk again. She led the way into a lobby the size of a football field and spotted the placards for DEF CON at the entry to the East Corridor.
“This is it.” Excited, she jogged the length of the hall. A blue banner with the words Capture the Flag hung above the entrance to the Miranda Ballroom. Jessie dialed the number for Linus’s former teammate and announced their arrival. A few minutes later a short, skinny guy with a few days’ stubble and messy hair came out of the ballroom.
“You Jesse?” he said, looking at Garrett.
“Actually, I’m Garrett. She’s Jessie.”
Max shifted his gaze in her direction. “You’re Jessie?”
“Didn’t Linus tell you I was a girl?”
“Guess he forgot that part. He just said you were smart as a whip and we’d be idiots not to let you join our team.”
“Guess you’ll find out soon enough.”
He stuck out a bony hand. “Max. Good to have you aboard. Here, put on your shirt.” Max thrust an orange, yellow, and black T-shirt at her. “Welcome to the Ninjaneers. And here’s your ID. Wear it around your neck at all times when you’re on the playing floor.”
Jessie pulled on her T-shirt and strung the ID over her head. Her sadness and anxiety fled. She was at DEF CON. She was a Ninjaneer, and she was about to play Capture the Flag against Rudeboy. It was pretty much the coolest moment of her life.
“What about Garrett?” she asked. “He’s pretty good with code, too.”
“Sorry,” said Max. “Eight men to a team. Garrett, if you’d like to watch, there are stands all around the game floor. The room opens at seven-thirty, thirty minutes before start of play.”
“No worries.” Garrett thrust his hands into his pockets. “I’m going to get something to eat. I’ll see you.”
“See you.” Jessie stared at him hard so that he wouldn’t even think of doing something cheesy like try to kiss her.
“Later.” Garrett headed off down the hall. Jessie adjusted her shirt, bending to get a look at the design of a cartoon ninja putting his samurai sword through a laptop. The drawing was lame, but she didn’t care. She was a Ninjaneer now, too, and she wouldn’t allow a word against her team.
“Come with me,” said Max. “We’re doing some warm-ups. Root-the-box problems. Standard stuff. You’ll need to meet everyone and let them know what we can expect of you.”
He pushed open the door and Jessie followed him into a cavernous ballroom. Only eight out of two thousand teams had qualified for the finals. Each team occupied a U-shaped configuration of tables arrayed around a central command square. A scoreboard on one wall listed the teams. Besides the Ninjaneers, there were the Plaid Purple Pioneers, Team Mutant X, Big Bad Daddies, the Mummies, Team Koo Teck Rai, Das Boot, and, finally, Rudeboy.
“New rules this year,” said Max. “We’ve got a TV audience, so they’ve shortened the game. We’ve got eight hours to solve four problems. Each problem is broken up into parts-‘flags’ that you have to win.”
“That’s all?”
“Short and sweet. Fewer hacks, but harder.”
Max arrived at the Ninjaneers’ command post. Six guys in team T’s were in various states of preparation-attaching network cables, plugging in laptops, lining up bottles of Red Bull for easy access. Max introduced Jessie to each member of the team. All were polite enough; none of them tried too hard to hide his skepticism. Jessie looked at the other teams. Of course she was the only girl.
“We divide our team into three squads,” said Max. “Attack, Research, and Defense. Attack analyzes the problem we’re given-usually it’s an admin code-for vulnerabilities. Once we find one, we hand the problem over to Research and they figure out any possible ways of exploiting the vuln. Defense keeps a watch on our own board to stop the other guys from stealing our flags once we get them.”