Out of Time by Kate Bold

Author:Kate Bold [Bold, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kate Bold
Published: 2023-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

“Are all these obituaries?” she asked Creighton.

“They sure are.”

“But where are they from?”

“Various social media sites.”

Mike looked confused, but Dylan wasn’t surprised.

“It makes sense that whoever is posting them switched to online sites,” she said. “There must be hundreds of ‘in memoriam’ pages out there. It’s a lot easier to post obituaries on those sites than it is in a newspaper.”

"Right," Creighton agreed. "And the killer gets to write them himself, exactly as he wants them to read. Well, a whole lot of them started appearing soon after that warning meme went viral. The obituaries you're looking at are about people who are still alive. Those people already knew about the warning, so naturally, they were terrified to find their obituaries posted online, and they did exactly what the warning told them to do."

“They contacted the FBI,” Mike added. “And the FBI has been contacting the local police wherever these people live.”

Dylan squinted hard at the screens, scanning them more closely and trying to make sense of what she was hearing.

“But how did so many of these happen?” she asked.

Creighton leaned back in his swivel chair.

"Well, it's like this. There are lots of pages on social media sites where people can share obituaries free without charge and no questions asked. And, of course, people can also create pages of their own to pay tribute to departed loved ones. Somebody got really busy this morning posting all these. Actually, they’ve been probably setting this whole thing up for weeks.”

“And these are only the ones the FBI has gotten calls about,” Mike said. “We’re getting a new call every few minutes. The situation is getting out of control.”

Dylan sat down in a chair next to Creighton.

“Can’t you figure out where these obituaries came from?” she asked the technician.

"One would suppose so. But it's not that easy. Somebody has been hacking into people's social media accounts and posting these obituaries in their names. The victims of the hacks didn't have any idea what was happening or that obituaries were coming from their accounts."

“But surely you can still find the hacker,” Dylan said.

Creighton ducked his head and blushed with embarrassment.

“I wish it were that easy,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s devilishly hard to track down social media hackers, even for technicians with my prowess and digital wherewithal. I’ve done my best, though. I managed to run down the hacker’s IP address, which gave me a hazy idea of his location. But all I was able to find out was that these obits originated somewhere in the Washington metro area … from a device that no longer exists.”

“The hacker undoubtedly destroyed his computer as soon as he finished his handiwork,” Mike added.

“Yeah, and now he’s vanished into the cyberworld,” Creighton said. “Not that I’ve given up trying to find the bastard. I’ve got software running right now to try to get some concrete information. You’d better not get your hopes up, though.”

Dylan sat staring at the screens with her mouth hanging open.

“This will be all over the news media soon,” she said in a stunned whisper.

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