Lance Henderson - TOR DARKNET BUNDLE (5 in 1) Master the ART OF INVISIBILITY (Bitcoins, Hacking, Kali Linux)

H ell hath no fury like a woman scorned .

Scorned might be the wrong word choice here, since it was I who invited the Homeland Security agents into my home .

"Come on in, the water's warm," I told them .

They strolled in like vampires. It felt a little queasy to walk behind them, like today was some kind of initiation day or something and I was the fresh white meat of the month. I also noticed one of them (the female) humming softly as she came in. Some death row harmonica tune as I recall. The one from Shawshank Redemption. Or was it The Green Mile ?

To be honest neither resembled Mulder or Scully like I thought they would (nor had a gun that I could see), but it didnt really matter. Both agents sounded professional; suited up and as stone-faced as any statue on Easter Isle with little in the way of humor or human warmth that could be discerned. Automatons dressed to kill. In fact, the male agent looked every bit the consummate professional hitman Alberto the Shadow was in Scarface. You didn't turn your back on a guy like that .

Yet here I was contemplating asking them to leave after only inviting them in a nanosecond ago. Wasn't happening. Worse was the whiff of air my nostrils caught scent of as they passed me. It was the scent of something dead. Or maybe just the last guy that asked them to leave .

As I poured a drink I asked myself, were they real agents? I couldn't tell. I suppose I should have asked for ID but I was still feeling jet-lagged from the Rio trip. With two days to go before Mardi Gras, I'd raced home from the New Orleans airport to get some sleep so I could meet my brother to fast-paint an Endymion parade float at mom's house. Only this time I'd be late. Terribly late. Because vampires .

A fitting end I suppose, since my brother Stephen and I have PhDs in lateness. Like clockwork I had waited until the 11th hour to do what Mom tasked us with: paint the Endymion float fast and neat and all cool like something out of Willy Wonka. Only fast and neat where we were concerned was like asking the Marx brothers to do a rush job on a Mona Lisa forgery. I could paint well enough, but my brother, like Groucho, painted single-handedly with one hand holding a joint as the other brushed. Hustling was his specialty, not painting. He hustled everything. Even me .

He'd often give me a list of places where his friends lay in wait along Veterans Blvd near New Orleans, friends who dressed the part but none of whom were actually veterans. The mission? Bomb them with the best booty and beads when our float came around. Only knowing my brother like I do, he'd brag down at Igor's bar long and loud like some train in the night and take all the credit. I'd get nothing .

The man never gave credit for squat unless he was in trouble with the law. Even as far back as sixth grade, he'd scoff whenever I said to knock off the bar bragging in the school yard. It never helped. Sooner or later, I warned, a shark would come along and sink a mouthful of teeth into those lying teeth of his .

Then one scorcher of a day in August (middle school, as I recall), a thresher shark showed up when he caught the attention of the local police. It seemed one freckled boy told every other boy in the school yard that my brother had bragged he owned a shed containing every automatic weapon imaginable, even (I kid you not) a suitcase nuke straight out of Fallout. They all bought this lie, of course, only one of the ugly kids he'd teased had ratted him out. Shocker, right? Next thing you know our puritan principal summoned him and the cops and when the boys in blue arrived, they cuffed him like he'd pinched every girl's pink bum in the yard .

I sat there mumbling and trembling in Ms. Needles math class thinking I was next on the hit list. Had I overheard the words 'search warrant'? And that odd scent that one of the cops dragged with her. A dead animal? No not quite. It reeked of a dead human .

Truth be told I was more worried about my secret stash. They'd steal my porn stash and take Suzanne Somers away from me forever, I was sure of it. Asses would sting (mine) and if not by Dad than surely that sharkey cop with the razor-thin mustache whose last name sounded an awful lot like ' thresher '.

But my brother didn't rat. They suspended him and Dad hit the roof, but he didn't rat. Turned out that my father pulled some strings to keep him out of jail. The lucky loser .

Fast forward to now, in my living room, and that same shark cop from sixth grade eying me in perfect dark; her eyes filled with wet Texas crude looking to bury a dinosaur like me. She'd no doubt had eaten a few dinosaurs by now, slit a few throats on the way to the top, and now here she was staring me down like I was a fresh-born kitten meant for the Coyote grill. Come on in, the water's warm, I'd said. Stupid .

Speaking of, my brother was in trouble again. A deep sea of trouble .

It seemed that he had targeted hidden Tor sites scattered around the Darknet, playing his usual lame pranks, when in one instance he took it too far. The two agents came because, well, Stephen just didn't know when to leave on a high note. He had told two undercover agents that he owned an underground storage bunker full of illegals that he sold off as sex slaves for a grand a pop. A side hustle, he called it. I knew this to be a prank, but they did not. How could they ?

Only now the very shark I'd warned him about had come back to bite me . Oh irony. Teaching Tor when he didn't understand the risks posed by Google and all other social media tyrants was a colossal blunder of biblical proportions on my part. A terrible mistake and one I'd not likely recover from. It was like handing Frodo's Ring of Power to one of those guys down at the Bayou Swamp Tour that stick their heads into the mouths of crocs for a few dollars more. A lot of fat good it'd do .

Oh and he had used a cell phone. Brilliant, right ?

It hadn't been hard to track the goober down. Google had helped them connect-the-dots. Now they were here for a side of beef off my backside, the only question being which side .

So I escorted the agents into my kitchen expecting to be butchered by my own knives. I politely I offered them a beer or a Coke or a steak. Hell even a three month old Twinkie, which they declined. I huffed and then straddled a bar stool and invited them to do the same. Once again they declined. They could not be bought, bribed or bamboozled for any price .

"This won't take long," the male agent said. It's what all agents said, everywhere. Even the census taker has said the same a year prior and as I recall it'd taken forever and a day. The next words he said cut like dry ice .

"We take every threat to this nation seriously, Lance. Your brother has made some serious threats," said the taller agent as he crossed his bulky arms. "He's in our custody now but whether he stays there depends on you. In this very instant ."

Custody? I didn't believe him. "Do tell," I said as I folded my skinny arms .

"We'd like to see your phone ."

My heart stopped as all color drained from my face, all monochrome .

"Ahem. Right now," added the female agent. It was then that I asked for ID. They showed it but it was too late. They were in like Flynn .

"Prostitution rings carry a hefty sentence as does issuing threats to federal law enforcement officers," the agent began to say, "... and even dumping manure on our department's front lawn ."

He glanced around the kitchen, running his hand along the granite countertop .

"Asset forfeiture is a big industry these days." He knocked on granite .