Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3) by Jenny Schwartz Page A

further.
    An angry smile drew his lips back from his teeth.
    As per Kora’s instructions to report anything significant involving Lewis directly to her, Shawn would be on the phone to Kora, waking her. That suited Lewis just fine. If Kora wanted to worry about anything, let her worry about the Collegium. Its president could look after himself.
     
     
    Gina wound her red hair into a knot and secured it with a pencil. She’d spent the morning meticulously tracing the activities of the people Lewis had noted, paying particular attention to the times leading up to and away from the dates he’d listed. It was fascinating.
    He was right. Money had been made around the events he’d noted. Well, money was always there to be made, if you had the intelligence and ruthlessness to exploit tragedy. Corey Gagnon, Nathaniel Smythe and Brad Wilson apparently had that ruthlessness. Their intelligence, she was less sure about. They were hackers, but not inspired ones. They had the requisite skills and a resentful attitude, but a little cautious prying soon revealed their presence at the end of strings leading to and from the events Lewis had listed.
    The fourth group member was a woman, Lindsay Perez. She’d hidden her identity more effectively. In fact, Gina had only just cracked it, having broken her hours at the computer with a cheese sandwich and a walk along the beach. Maybe it was the soaring flight of a gull that had inspired her to creep up on the woman’s identity by riding the eddying waves of activity from the other three.
    Lindsay Perez had obscured her links to the events that had caused devastation in thousands of lives, and made her rich. However, she hadn’t been able to prevent the lesser talents of her fellow group members from revealing her. From the movement of their money, Gina had looked for echoes elsewhere. That and their veiled contact with Lindsay had revealed her.
    It hadn’t revealed the fifth member of the group. He or she was smarter than all of them.
    “I will find you.” Gina sipped her lime and soda water, and set the glass down, its ice gently tinkling. But if the fifth member had hidden their identity so well then they’d also have installed virtual tripwires. Gina had to be careful she didn’t alert them to her pursuit. “Good thing I love a challenge.”
    She was whistling in the dark.
    Lewis had understated the Group of 5’s activities. The more she learned of them, the more they scared her. It was the cumulative effect of all they’d done. She was aware of a growing sense of menace. Since she trusted her instincts, she moved even more cautiously online, but she wasn’t abandoning the puzzle. She would unearth the fifth member’s identity.
    So far, the four she’d identified all shared a legitimate public persona. Each either ran, or had founded and sold, a software company. Each had built software that solved a logistical problem. That meant they had minds that saw the world as flows of demand and supply. No wonder they were so good at scheduling disruptive events where relatively minor actions could have cascading, multiplying effects. They saw the world as a set of problems and opportunities.
    But just because four of the five were ex-hackers now supposedly legitimate, didn’t mean the fifth was. The fifth could be a more skilled hacker who’d never surfaced, preferring the dark web. Alternatively, he or she might have limited coding skills, but a grasp of organization and logistics.
    The fifth member might be a psychologist or a confidence trickster, someone skilled in people rather than code, because when she thought of the events Lewis had listed, they shared one other element in common: they instilled horror.
    “Definitely something to consider.” Gina chased an unaccounted-for one hundred thousand dollars from Lindsay’s Cayman Island secondary account. It had been sent two days ago. Where to? For what purpose?
    Bring people’s nightmares to life and they respond with