Tell No One by Harlan Coben Read Free Book Online

the face.
    What Vic had learned right away—and not to get too technical here—was that your cable choices worked by codes, relaying your order information via the cable switch box to the computers at the cable company’smain station. Vic would climb the telephone poles, open the boxes, and read off the numbers. When he went back to the office, he’d plug in the codes and learn all.
    He’d learn, for example, that at six P.M. on February 2, you and your family rented
The Lion King
on pay-per-view. Or for a much more telling example, that at ten-thirty P.M. on February 7, you ordered a double bill of
The Hunt for Miss October
and
On Golden Blonde
via Sizzle TV.
    See the scam?
    At first Vic would hit random houses. He’d write a letter to the male owner of the residence. The letter would be short and chilling. It would list what porno movies had been watched, at what time, on what day. It would make it clear that copies of this information would be disseminated to every member of the man’s family, his neighbors, his employer. Then Vic would ask for $500 to keep his mouth shut. Not much money maybe, but Vic thought it was the perfect amount—high enough to give Vic some serious green yet low enough so that most marks wouldn’t balk at the price.
    Still—and this surprised Vic at first—only about ten percent responded. Vic wasn’t sure why. Maybe watching porno films wasn’t the stigma it used to be. Maybe the guy’s wife already knew about it. Hell, maybe the guy’s wife watched them with him. But the real problem was Vic’s scam was too scattershot.
    He had to be more focused. He had to cherry-pick his marks.
    That was when he came up with the idea of concentrating on people in certain professions, ones who would have a lot to lose if the information came out. Again the cable computers had all the info he needed.He started hitting up schoolteachers. Day care workers. Gynecologists. Anyone who worked in jobs that would be sensitive to a scandal like this. Teachers panicked the most, but they had the least money. He also made his letters more specific. He would mention the wife by name. He would mention the employer by name. With teachers, he’d promise to flood the Board of Education and the parents of his students with “proof of perversion,” a phrase Vic came up with on his own. With doctors, he’d threaten to send his “proof” to the specific licensing board, along with the local papers, neighbors, and patients.
    Money started coming in faster.
    To date, Vic’s scams had netted him close to forty thousand dollars. And now he had landed his biggest fish yet—such a big fish that at first Vic had considered dropping the matter altogether. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t just walk away from the juiciest score of his life.
    Yes, he’d hit someone in the spotlight. A big, big big-time spotlight. Randall Scope. Young, handsome, rich, hottie wife, 2.4 kids, political aspirations, the heir apparent to the Scope fortune. And Scope hadn’t ordered just one movie. Or even two.
    During a one-month stint, Randall Scope had ordered twenty-three pornographic films.
    Ee-yow.
    Vic had spent two nights drafting his demands, but in the end he stuck with the basics: short, chilling, and very specific. He asked Scope for fifty grand. He asked that it be in his box by today. And unless Vic was mistaken, that fifty grand was burning a hole in his windbreaker pocket.
    Vic wanted to look. He wanted to look right now.But Vic was nothing if not disciplined. He’d wait until he got home. He’d lock his door and sit on the floor and slit open the package and let the green pour out.
    Serious big-time.
    Vic parked his car on the street and headed up the driveway. The sight of his living quarters—an apartment over a crappy garage—depressed him. But he wouldn’t be there much longer. Take the fifty grand, add the almost forty grand he had hidden in the apartment, plus the ten grand in savings …
    The realization made