Prologue
Barton Clay was an idiot, and it wasn’t going to work.
Worse, he risked them all spending their lives in jail! Yes, they had clients who were brilliant at manipulating AI. They were amazing at artificial intelligence, but the plan Barton wanted…
Crazy.
It was really his need to impress and obey Celia Smith, and Celia was always trying to prove how important she was to Nathaniel Wharton and so the game went on and on. But no matter—Barton thought his and his wife’s friendship with Celia meant he could talk to her and…
No, no, no!
Marci Warden was angered by the whole ridiculous thing, and she slammed the door after entering her house. Right! Slam the door. That’ll help. Take it out on the house!
She smiled briefly. Time to chill, to relax. Not only could her house’s artificial intelligence system open and close doors for her, turn lights on and off, control the TV, even run the faucets…
The house could even behave like a real friend!
It could give her answers about movies, about the weather, the state of the world, and more, so much more! She’d given her personal AI system one of her favorite names and even chosen the voice.
“Chrissie!” she commanded the house’s AI, “Turn the lights on. And go ahead and get the TV going, too, any news channel!”
Lights came on; the television sprang to life presenting the weather.
“Lights, TV. Welcome home, Marci!” Chrissie said.
“Thanks!”
Of course, AI didn’t care if it was thanked or not, but what the heck? She should stay in practice for dealing with the human world.
Yep. She loved Chrissie. She hated Barton Clay.
Shaking her head, Marci headed on into the kitchen.
She was hungry. She looked around at the oven, the range, the toaster, mixer, coffeepot, cutting board, electric knife…
There were all kinds of things she could find in the refrigerator, but first…
Her eyes went to the bar, set up on the marble-topped counter between the kitchen and the dining room.
After the day she’d had…
A drink.
She poured herself a large whiskey, swallowed it in a single gulp, and went for another.
Then she was ready for the rest of the kitchen. She was, she knew, very hungry and at the rate she was drinking, food was going to be necessary, even if she was hoping the whiskey would help her sleep, close her eyes, and black out the day.
So…
“Chrissie, open the fridge,” she said.
Obediently, the refrigerator door slowly swung open. She began to peruse the contents thoughtfully. A salad would be good, but not filling. But it could go with some toaster pastries. Easy. Fast.
She was vaguely aware of the weather making way for the news. Wall Street was at it again. Well, of course. The world had become a place that could be so easily manipulated!
Setting her drink down, she reached for the lettuce and grabbed the box of toaster pastries from the pantry. The fridge automatically whooshed shut behind her.
Walking past the sink, she set the food down on the large cutting board on the counter and put the pastries into the toaster.
“Chrissie, start the toaster, please,” she said. “Not too well done!”
She frowned. That was all she said, but the electric knife had suddenly started whirring.
“Hey,
Chrissie—hey! What’s going on? I said toaster, not knife!”
But Chrissie wasn’t listening.
The knife was on high, flopping all around on the counter, almost flipping about like an excited puppy. She tried to reach past it to pull the plug, but her hand hit the toaster—which was red-hot! The metal burned her and she instinctively jumped back, only for the automated refrigerator door to swing open, throwing her forward toward the counter and the wildly hopping knife.
She managed to grab it, only for the toaster to sizzle and burn with such a vengeance that it was jiggling on the counter, moving toward her, and from the nearby sink, the water suddenly began to spray wildly from the kitchen spigot.
Her stereo system suddenly came on, the music incredibly loud.
Her lights began to flash!
“Chrissie, what the heck? Stop! Shut it all off!” she screamed.
But it would be her last command. The water spray reached the outlet, and a sizzle of electricity went surging through her body, her arm spasming and slamming the knife and its serrated edges into her chest and up to her throat.
She was going to sleep all right, closing her eyes…
But she knew, even as the world turned to darkness, that she hadn’t truly been killed by the evils of artificial intelligence gone awry.
For artificial intelligence to exist…
There had to be a human mind behind it.
A human mind…filled with evil, and evil that could fester, grow, and within this new world of AI, explode into bloodshed and murder and so much more…
The darkness came. And her thoughts about the day were finally and absolutely set to rest with her last one being that yes…
The house was just like a friend.
Chrissie could and would do just about anything.
Including kill.
One
Jude Mackenzie stared at the scene, mentally shaking his head. He had to admit he’d never seen anything quite like it.
And he’d seen a lot.
The woman’s body lay on the floor in the kitchen. An electric knife lay near her head, and the floor was an entire pool of bloody water. The horrific scent of burning flesh seemed like a whisper in the air, along with the smell of blood. Everything appeared to be saturated, but the faucet was now off.
Everything was off.
Aidan Cypress, one of the state’s best forensic experts, gloved and in booties, balanced on his toes while he studied the floor near the body. Dr. Emil Dresden, medical examiner, did his best to avoid disturbing the grisly puzzle as he examined the charred and bloody body.
Both looked up at Jude as he entered the room and stood, nodding in acknowledgment of his arrival. Maybe they knew, or maybe they, too, were wondering why—as he was—an FBI agent had been called in for what appeared to be a ridiculously horrible and sad accident, a local situation, one for the St. Augustine police force or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Thankfully, he had worked with both agencies before; since he liked and respected Dresden and Cypress, he was glad he’d be getting the particulars from them even though they were state and he was federal.
“Jude, cool to see you. Well, it would be, in better circumstances. All right. There’s something off and…” Aidan began, before pausing thoughtfully. Aidan was a member of the Seminole tribe of Florida and he had the striking strong cheekbones of his lineage and a talent for finding the smallest speck of evidence that had kept him in demand with local, state, and federal authorities.
Aidan, like Dr. Dresden, worked for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement—which again left Jude wondering why he had been called in since he was federal when it seemed the groundwork was being carried out by the state. He hoped that someone in the hierarchy hadn’t demanded the feds take the case. He hated stepping on toes and in jobs that demanded the best from everyone. It wasn’t pleasant to work when resentment was in the mix.
“Marci Warden, thirty-three, single, parents deceased, one sister in Nevada, no known significant other at the moment, receptionist at the law firm of Wharton, Dixon, and Smith.”
“Time of death approximately eight hours ago. Exsanguination,” Dr. Dresden added. He winced, shaking his head. To examine the body, he had been forced to stand in the pool of bloody water.
“This looks like a tragic and horrid accident,” Jude said.
What else? A very strange murder, if that was the case. Suicide? And why am I here?
“Was she a suspect in organized crime, in serial murder, in a major federal crime?”
“No, local police checked her record. She doesn’t even have parking tickets,” Aidan told him.
“A romance gone bad?” Jude murmured. “Fingerprints? Skin or foreign substances under her fingernails?” Jude asked. “Have you gotten that far? In this mess of water and blood with everything soaked, can you get anything? Any signs of a break-in or other areas of struggle?”
Aidan shook his head. “The only fingerprints are hers. Scanned what the techs picked up and they’re hers. Hands are clean, nothing under the nails. We do think it’s a break-in, though. Just not the usual kind.”
“You’ve lost me there. So. Someone was here?”
“Not physically,” Aidan said.
“Okay. Suicide? How did she slit her own throat with an electric knife? Not that hard, I’d imagine—but then again, I must admit I haven’t tried it,” Jude told him, grimacing.
However gruesome, the scene truly appeared to be that of a tragic accident. He wasn’t lacking in empathy; he just couldn’t figure out how they were considering the scene to be a homicide.
And who would kill themselves in such a horrific manner? Had the knife done the trick, or had she been bleeding out when the spraying water and flying cord caused a lethal electric jolt? Exsanguination, Dr. Dresden had said.
“Not physically. But if not a suicide, then someone, somehow, made her do this to herself? They would have had to come in here in some physical manner, right?” Jude asked.
“No. We’ve been asked to investigate this as a murder,” Aidan said. “By, um, your people.”
“My people—as in the Bureau? Hey, I’m always happy to work with you guys,” Jude said, “but a single incident that appears accidental or even suicidal but may have magically been murder…why bring in the feds?”
“As I said, the powers that be—local, state, and federal—are suspecting something else,” Aidan told him. “We don’t understand everything. A neighbor called it in when they saw the house behaving weirdly—”
“The house was behaving weirdly?” Jude asked.
“Horrendously loud music, lights flashing… Anyway, he called his headquarters right when information had come in. They called state, Dresden was called in, I was called in, and—”
“This whole thing is confusing, but it will all be straightened out as far as chain of command. Or responsibility,” Dr. Dresden said dryly. “But I need to be able to call my people in and get the body to the morgue,” he continued. “I’m willing to bet my preliminary assessment is correct—yes, what’s obvious is obvious. She would have bled to death if it hadn’t been for the electrocuting jolt that I believe stopped her heart. I don’t think I’ll find anything other than that, but we won’t know until the full autopsy is complete.”
Dresden was a good man. Jude had worked with him before, and his preliminary assessments tended to be right on, but he was always determined to know everything before ruling a death as natural, accidental—or homicide. He was a man in his late forties, lean and fit, just beginning to go gray, and on the nerdy side with steel-rimmed glasses. He had been working as an ME for over twenty years.
“All right,” Jude said. “Forgive my confusion. There’s no indication anyone was in the house with her. The method of death is an electric knife that only she handled. The cause of death is exsanguination or electrocution, both brought about by an electric knife and a faulty faucet—”
“Boy, you are old-school,” a voice murmured from the entry.
Jude turned quickly to see that a woman was there, a young brunette in a dark blue pantsuit—hands in gloves and feet in crime scene booties. Her hair was rigidly coiled as if even a single escaped strand might suggest inexperience.
“I’m old-school, and pardon me, but just who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“Special Agent Victoria Tennant,” she said, walking toward him. “Or Vicky. And yes, pardon me, but you’re missing the big picture here.”
He looked down at the corpse and the pools of blood, then back at her.
“Oh, I’m seeing a pretty big picture. There’s the corpse of a woman who died a horrific death. But the finest forensic expert I have ever worked with is telling me that there is no sign of a break-in, no unidentified fingerprints, partial or otherwise, no evidence by the body, and no marks from self-defense—no suggestion that another person did this to her,” Jude said.
“Again, you are missing a bigger picture,” she told him.
He frowned. “Again, I’ve worked this area for several years, Special Agent Victoria Tennant, and I’d like to understand why we’ve never met.”
“I was sent for this specifically because I’ve worked in both the profiling or behavioral science unit and the Geek Squad—sorry, Cybercrime—divisions,” she told him.
“We couldn’t even get in here until Vicky got things…settled,” Aidan told him.
“What?” Jude asked, frowning.
“I hacked in to take Marci Warden’s system offline because we couldn’t take a chance on the doctor or Aidan or any other member of the forensic crew winding up in the same way—”
“You’ve been in here already?” Jude interrupted.
“Yes. No. Not exactly. Look, no, I only just got here and I’m not trying to step on toes,” she said. “The patrolman called it in. Information on a few other situations just hit the desks of the higher-ups across the nation, and the patrolman was ordered to stand down because the entire house was still in motion. I was called to deal with it.”
“The house was in motion?” he repeated. “And you were called.”
“Yes,” she said, and though she was trying to appear as if she was giving him due respect, he could almost hear her inward sigh of impatience. “Sir, you must have heard about these systems. Every major tech company out there has one. Artificial intelligence that turns your lights on and off, manages security systems, music, water…you name it. Most people just use it for their televisions, phones, lights, and security but Marci had everything in her house geared up to work by voice control. She called her system Chrissie, and it appears that Chrissie went crazy—glitched.”
“All right, so we’re looking at an accident,” he said. “A computer glitch.”
“No. Yes—”
“And I’m missing the bigger picture?” he asked dryly.
“All right, I’m trying to explain. We believe there is someone out there causing these computer glitches, and we’re here—
federal agents—because this is the third time that we’ve come across such a similar situation,” she told him.
“What?”
She took another deep breath as if explaining anything to him was going to be far more difficult than solving any crime.
“They all look like accidents.”
“But computers do have glitches,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes, things can go wrong. A computer is a machine. That’s why people backup their work to the cloud or when you’re driving an automatic car, you must still be sober and you can’t go to sleep.”
“But people do drink and/or fall asleep,” he said.
“Yes, they do, and that will be a problem as we move into the future, and there will be more and more on the road. But it’s not…okay. Most of the time when there’s a computer glitch in these systems, someone just needs to turn the lights on manually and check the problem. Defense can be simple—good firewalls, antivirus protection. But the rise of technology has brought about a new breed of criminal, the hacker. Anyway, three incidents were brought to our offices—and yeah,” she admitted dryly, “we were alerted by a computer system. We began to believe there was a serious problem out there.” She hesitated. “There’s the standard meme—technology is wonderful—when it works. But…” She looked at him earnestly. “There are those people who can breach just about any firewall and even hack into some car computer systems. It’s possible to cause a car to crash, or at the very least take control of it. There are those who fear that major transportation fields—trains and planes—can also be hacked. Major businesses can be hacked by anyone who can manipulate code, break firewalls, understand algorithms, and get behind any technological security. Therefore, it’s more than possible to take control of a home computer system.”
“Okay, let me see if I understand this,” Jude said. “This poor woman was murdered because someone took control of her home computer. Someone made her knife jump out and attack her? Turned her water on to make sure it would soak an electric outlet and cause her to be electrocuted if the knife didn’t do the job.”
“Exactly,” she said.
Dr. Dresden cleared his throat and spoke again. “Aidan has done what forensics can. So, am I going to call my people in to retrieve the body?” he asked.
Jude, still looking at the newcomer, nodded.
“We’ll step out, they can step in. And then, Special Agent Tennant, you can explain to me more of what is going on here,” he said.
“You weren’t told you were meeting me here?” she asked him.
“I was told I’d be meeting another agent. I’d assumed—never mind. Let’s get out of the way and the doctor can bring his people in,” Jude said.
She turned around and walked out to the front lawn. He followed her. And the situation seemed even more bizarre to him.
Inside, the scene was so horrific. Yet, outside…
It was a beautiful day. The sky was a brilliant blue and their victim had kept up a charming yard with flower beds in small brick planters that
enhanced the entrance and a few towering trees by the walkway. As he’d noted, a crystal blue sky with little puffs of clouds floated overhead.
She walked to the side as the peaceful vision of the day was slammed back to reality when Dr. Dresden’s people entered with their gurney to collect the corpse.
Yes, he had known he’d be meeting someone from the main offices up in DC. That hadn’t been any kind of a surprise. Since the case in Colorado, he’d been working with a new partner or team wherever he was assigned.
So, no surprise. She simply wasn’t what he had expected—starting off by telling him he was old-school and a house had killed a woman.
Young and impatient. She was professional to a fault…yet she still appeared to be more likely to walk down a runway than take on deadly cybercriminals. And he wasn’t an idiot—their cybercrime units were huge across the country, following money trails, breaking through firewalls, finding the online evidence needed to take down the biggest thieves, scammers and manipulators out there.
But a house that killed?
She was looking at him. Awaiting his questions.
“All right. I need to understand more of what is going on. And go slow. Old-school, you know,” he told her.
She nodded. “Just like most of the world,” she told him, “people are worried about AI, and in a way… Well, here, of course…” She looked toward the house. “People don’t realize how much AI they’re already using. There’s a combination of tech and AI in almost everything we do, down to simple editorial assistance in writing programs. Anyway, AI and tech can be combined in some instances, and someone determined to play havoc can do so. New cars may have computers which can work wonderfully by warning a driver when something mechanical is necessary, allowing for warnings when something is near, or when danger is imminent. There are well over a thousand internet service providers out there, some huge, some small…but a brilliant hacker can get into any of them, no matter the firewalls or virus protection.”
“I understand that computers—just like social media—can be a benefit and a detriment,” Jude told her. “What I’m still not getting is…what are you implying? My God, computers committing crimes? I understand—I think. I was at a meeting recently where we were discussing the changes in the Bureau. We were once fighting organized crime, major ‘families’ and other criminal concerns. And now we investigate drugs, try to control the cartels if not stop them, and we still have major organized crime. But the cyber division is huge and dealing with white-collar crime and big money. When someone is seen as a danger to the major players in a drug cartel, they usually meet a bullet.”
“And a bullet is obviously murder.
Proving that a situation like this isn’t an accident is difficult. And yes, to most people, it might look like a technical accident—a glitch. But I told you, we’re looking into two other cases. A car accident—”
“A car accident?” Jude asked.
“New cars run on computer systems. And systems can be hacked. The car accident never should have happened. It was in Tennessee on a quiet road that led out of Nashville toward Nunnelly. The driver was just driving straight on a road that maybe sees a hundred cars in a day. Surrounded by farms and ranches and…trees. The driver suddenly picked up speed and crashed straight into a massive oak at the side of the road. The airbag didn’t go off,” she explained.
He shook his head. “That’s tragic. But wouldn’t the car company be at fault?”
“In the world of the law, yes. But…” She hesitated. “All right, look. I am a field agent, so I don’t understand everything that one of the truly brilliant technical analysts knows, but for everything that went wrong to go wrong…there had to be interference.”
“You’re telling me any hacker can—”
“No, no, not any hacker, just a really good hacker. No, a brilliant hacker. And that’s—”
“All right, you believe you know that someone hacked into a car system in Tennessee—”
“Exactly.”
“And you can prove this?”
“It’s a new world, so, as I said, things are often hard to prove, but it wasn’t just the accident. It was who it happened to.”
“And who did it happen to?”
“Judge Ian McFarlane, known to many in the area as the Hanging Judge.”
“All right, a man who might have many enemies. And I assume anyone he handed a harsh sentence to might have reason for revenge, and someone on the outside might be able to find vengeance. But this woman, this poor woman, she wasn’t a judge. She was a receptionist,” Jude said. “I hardly think anyone would kill over being told they had to wait to see someone for a few minutes. Then again…”
“Sir!” Vicky Tennant snapped, somehow making him feel very old. “She was a receptionist, yes, and that’s part of the point here. She was a receptionist for Wharton, ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
