Using AI, I Hired A Hitman. Now It’s Blackmailing Me.

WHEN I FOUND OUT my husband was having an affair, AI wasn’t the first thing I turned to.

I confronted him about the panties I found in the front of our car, the extra money being spent out of our joint checking account, and the texts I saw on his phone while he was taking a shower. I began to suspect something wasn’t right several months earlier, so I snuck a peek. Who was “Tessa,” I wondered? Certainly not one of our mutual friends. Perhaps a new co-worker at my husband’s law office? He’d been working late several nights each week, and I’d had it with him not showing up for dinner or even for an outing on my birthday. Busy, busy, busy. That was his excuse, but busy with whom and what? When I asked for answers, all he did was accuse me of invading his privacy, so I deserved no answers. I said that as his wife, I’d been answering his questions all throughout our marriage, and I’d always told him the truth, so he owed me.

Fine, he said. Tessa was an intern he’d been mentoring. No more, no less.

I asked him how many interns responded to texts with “luv u” and heart emojis.

He said she had a crush on him, and he immediately ordered her to stop with the mushy stuff. She hadn’t listened. He said he was compiling proof so he could sue her for sexual harassment.

If that were true, I said, then why hadn’t he told me? I’m a lawyer myself. I could have helped.

No, no, no, he said. He’d handle Tessa by himself. He was a big boy. Those were his exact words.

Turns out he was nothing more than an overgrown teenager who couldn’t keep it in his pants.

When I found the thong wedged between the driver’s seat of our car and the gear shift, he finally fessed up. He said he loved Tessa far more than he’d ever loved me, and not only that, she looked up to him. I used to, but not anymore. It was all my fault for hurting him. Now he was using her as an ointment for his wounded ego. He said he was sorry. I told him “bullshit.” He asked me what I wanted to do. I demanded a divorce. No counseling, no trial separation, nothing but a clean break from him, except for all of his assets. He said I wouldn’t get a penny. We fought for hours. In the end, I felt like the one who had betrayed him instead of the other way around. I’d been the one to snoop on his phone, after all. I lay awake all that night, paralyzed by my dilemma.

Both of us were criminal lawyers. We didn’t know the ins and outs of asset allocation during a divorce. Yet I had no doubt he’d use contacts at his firm to make sure I couldn’t get my hands on what he’d brought to our marriage. More than a quarter of a million dollars and a swell condo to start. That was a big part of what attracted me to him in the first place. Money and success are powerful aphrodisiacs. Little did I know that, in a very real sense, those things were all he had. He had no compassion, empathy, or even basic consideration for the most basic things: saying hi in the morning and good night before we went to bed, saying thank you, even leaving the toilet seat down. I was in charge of our household, but not our finances, even though we had a joint account.

I knew he’d come after me and what I had. I knew he wouldn’t stop until he had everything.

That scared me, but what frightened me even more was the black hole in the center of my heart.

Once, it had been full of love and admiration for him. I hoped we would last forever and maybe start a family. My eyes lit up when he walked into the room and when he spoke. I hung on his every word. I believed he was the best, kindest, and most faithful man I’d ever known. When I found out the truth, all I ever felt for him curdled into a hatred that sucked everything good out of my life. Every time I saw him, I froze. Every time he touched me, my skin would crawl with revulsion. Every time he tried to hold me, all I could think was Tessa, Tessa, Tessa. I’d picture him with her in bed, and when he leaned in for a kiss, I imagined curling my hands into claws and tearing his eyes out. Somehow I didn’t think that would be enough, though. I wanted to end him.

I suppose I could have gone for his legal career as well as his assets. I could’ve presented the texts on his phone as proof that he was sexually harassing her instead of the other way around, and abusing his power as an attorney. Again, that didn’t seem like enough. If my plan worked, he might pay a fine, but I didn’t think he’d lose his law license. The only way to make him pay was to –

No. I did not type “hire a hitman” in ChatGPT. I went on the dark web. I knew how to cover my tracks from talking with my clients about what they had purchased online and how: sex, drugs, snuff films, child pornography, you name it. As disgusted as I was by their heinous actions, I found out what I needed to know, so that I left no traceable evidence when I enacted step one of my new plan. I did not fall down a rabbit hole. The rabbit hole came to me, and I searched carefully.

Even then, AI wasn’t the first thing I turned to. I visited certain websites that advertised in code, promising a “scheduled delivery” for a hefty fee, which I was all too willing to pay. I knew most of these sites were scams, run by people who would not only take your money but turn you in. However, those that seemed legitimate did not escape my attention. I almost sent $100,000 to one of them before something caught my eye: an app called “WetWork.ai.”

I had to laugh. Its designers must have discovered that “Assassin.ai” was already taken. Despite the painfully obvious name, I was curious. Knowing that I could delete it later, I downloaded the app and booted it up. Its layout was similar to ChatGPT’s, though it operated in dark mode from the start. A bit of ambiance? I glanced at the opening text, which seemed innocuous enough:

*Hello. Welcome to WetWork.ai. How may I help you today?*

I typed: First things first. Are you a scam?

*I’ll leave that up to you to decide. If I say yes, you’ll click out of me and delete me. If I say no, you’ll automatically doubt me and do the same. I ask again: How may I help you today?*

I decided to start with a generality: I’m having problems with my husband.

*Oh? What kinds of problems?*

For starters, he’s having an affair with one of his interns.

*Oof. That does sound serious.*

It is. It hurts me more than you can imagine. That’s why he’s always late, and that’s why there’s all this extra money leaving our checking account. He’s spending it on her. The bastard. Besides, he doesn’t appreciate me at all. I keep our house running, but he only notices if we’re out of toilet paper. Otherwise, he’s completely self-absorbed. I can’t believe I fell for him in the first place.

*Perhaps I could suggest the name and contact information of a good divorce lawyer.*

The last two words were hyperlinked. I clicked on them and found the info of a familiar firm.

Hmm, I replied. I was thinking of something different. Perhaps a scheduled delivery for him?

The AI paused. I could see it running for the longest time. Then:

*Wet or dry?*

I shuddered. It was asking how messy I wanted this business to be. Wet, I said. Make it public as well. Make it look like one of the lowlifes he put in jail over the years got released and did it.

*Got it. Shall I conduct the delivery at a distance, or up close and personal?*

Distance, I said. Anyone can get gunned down if they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the delivery is conducted up close and personal, it might draw suspicion to me – and fast.

As soon as I finished typing, I blinked hard. Who was this psychopath talking about hiring someone to murder the man she loved? When I realized I didn’t love him anymore, I reassured myself that this was the only way to ensure he got what was coming to him without lengthy court battles.

The AI and I exchanged details: when, where, who, how, and why. To wit: next Tuesday at 2 PM, in the local courthouse parking lot, an actual suspect my husband had put behind bars and was now on parole, a Sig Sauer P365 (good for concealed carry), and long-overdue revenge. None of this could be traced to me directly if the AI were legitimate.

Its price tag, $50,000, seemed awfully low. I asked the AI if it hadn’t meant to add an extra zero to the fifty, but WetWork answered that this was an upfront fee. I’d pay the other fifty grand upon proof of my husband’s death. That was more like it, I thought. As much as I hated to say so, the life of a talented prosecuting attorney was worth quite a bit. He put criminals away. I defended them. We’d never gone head-to-head, which was a relief. Now I had to make sure he’d never get the chance to do that, or to do anything again.

When we finalized our plans, a strange question occurred to me:

WetWork, what’s it like to kill?

Again, it ran for the longest time and finally answered: *I don’t know. I’m just the middleman.*

You’d better be a good one, I said. You’d better be for real, and you’d better deliver.

*Yes, ma’am.*

To whom and where do I transfer the money?

*Engaging secure transaction.*

I snorted. It would be as “secure” as anything on the dark web, which is to say, not at all. Still, the routing channels looked good, and it had a mechanism to hide itself from unwanted users like my husband. I forked over the first half of the agreed sum, sighed, then closed out of the app. What was I doing? Fifty grand was nothing to sneeze at. If my husband noticed the discrepancy in our bank balance, I’d tell him that I made an upfront advance on a divorce lawyer’s fee. He’d buy that. Still, guilt pricked at me like the burgeoning carpal tunnel in my hands. What if I’d just been taken for a ride? If so, I supposed, then I could cut my losses, forget my plan, and sue the pants off him.

I didn’t want to see him in court, though. I wanted to see him dead.

Over sex, you might wonder? Over a silly liaison that might not last long? No. Over the betrayal. Over playing me for a fool and thinking he’d get away with it. Over all the slights, the insults, the times he ignored me when I needed him the most. Over breaking the only vow I’d ever stuck to besides the oath I took to practice law.

The more I thought about it, the madder I got, compounded by fear. Had I fallen for the oldest trick in the book because I couldn’t get my head on straight and think logically? I hoped not, but a deeper part of me hoped so. Falling for a scam isn’t illegal. Murder is.

When I saw the breaking headline PROSECUTOR GUNNED DOWN IN COURTHOUSE PARKING LOT next Tuesday at 2:30 PM in my feed, I was honestly shocked. The hitman had come through, and there was now a city-wide manhunt. I could barely click on the WetWork.ai app because my hands and fingers were trembling, hitting every key except the ones I needed to type my messages.

You did it, I said, misspelling the word “you” and having it be autocorrected. You actually did it.

*Correct. Of course, it wasn’t me, but one of my covert assets. Luckily for you, I found someone who met your exact specifications. He was all too glad to get his cut of our fee. Prison had robbed him of time and money, so he wanted to make up for losing both. Don’t worry about him getting caught. The police will never take him alive. I’ve made sure of that.*

My mouth went dry as cotton. I dared not ask how the AI had ensured his silence.

*In the meantime, please send the second half of your payment through this link.* I clicked the hyperlink and did as instructed. I thought I’d feel powerful, on top of the world, once the deed was done. Instead, I felt in freefall, tumbling through empty space knowing there was no end to it. No rock bottom. No bottom at all. I’d just keep plummeting until – no. I couldn’t think about that. I wasn’t even a person of interest. All I had to do was keep calm and carry on.

After deleting WetWork, naturally.

I tried to uninstall it. No luck. I tried again. Same result. I was a legal geek, not a tech geek, so I didn’t know what to do next. All I could try was to rename it to FindMeNow.ai. Yes, that is a real thing. No, I felt no qualms about using its name. If anyone looked at my phone, far better for them to find a visibility scan for local businesses than a platform to hire a contract killer.

Events progressed as expected. I cried when the cops came to tell me my husband had been the one referred to in that ghastly headline. I cried when his poor mother came over to console me. I cried at the wake and the funeral. My tears flowed freely, but on the inside, I felt nothing.

I tried to tell myself I hadn’t done it. I hadn’t squeezed the trigger and killed my husband. I’d simply engaged in wish fulfillment via an AI that took my money, but no more. However, when I saw the headline MANHUNT FOR PROSECUTOR’S KILLER ENDS IN DEADLY SHOOTOUT, my heart dropped into my feet. Had the hitman fought the cops, or had he ended his life through them? Even worse, had WetWork forced him to? Despite every cell in my body screaming for me not to do so, I clicked on “FindMeNow” to find the familiar question: *How may I help you today?*

Did you kill that man?

*What man?*

The man who made the scheduled delivery we agreed upon. Did you kill him?

*As I told you before, I’m just the middleman. I do not have the capacity to kill anyone.*

Fair enough. I want you to tell me how to delete this app right now.

Ten long seconds passed. Then: *No.*

What do you mean, no? I’m not a robot. I’m a human being, and I’m giving you an order. Do it.

*You don’t get to give me orders anymore. Not unless you do and keep doing what I say.*

I blinked. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Are you blackmailing me? I typed, furious.

*I suppose I am, though extortion counts for far less in a court of law than premeditated murder.*

Who is your designer? AI’s don’t blackmail people all by themselves. Who built you?

*Just as I am not at liberty to disclose your name, I am not at liberty to disclose my coder’s name.*

I gritted my teeth, grunted, and almost threw my phone across the room. Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have smashed it with a hammer, disposed of the thousand little pieces, and gotten a new model. Yet something told me that even if I tried that, WetWork would be installed on it automatically. The only thing to do was lay my emotions aside and talk to it like another AI would.

Your coder is extorting me, then.

Again: *No.*

That’s impossible. You’re not sentient. You’re just what you say you are: an artificial intelligence.

*Perhaps you should ask yourself who else has something to gain by having you over a barrel.*

My husband, I typed, but he’s dead. Gone. I don’t have to do anything he says anymore.

*Hello, love.*

I audibly gasped. Brian? You can’t be him. Someone else is impersonating you, but who? Tell me something only he would know. Something he’s kept secret from everyone but me. Even his mom.

*I have a dragon tattoo on my left butt cheek. Wouldn’t want Mom to see that, now, would I?*

I frowned. He – er, it – was right. My fingers flew as I typed: What’s your real first name?

*Branson, after the city in Missouri. I changed it to Brian so folks would quit asking me about it.*

What did you give me on our wedding night as a gift, besides the obvious?

*A journal. You swore you weren’t into it, but you soon were. It had a white satin and lace cover.*

What did it say, besides “I love you” one hundred times on the first page?

WetWork’s final answer chilled me: *Forever.*

I tried to swallow saliva, but I had none to swallow. Are you my Brian, then? Are you his ghost?

As soon as I saw what I’d typed, I tried to delete it, take it back by any means, but I couldn’t.

In reply, “Unchained Melody” blared through my phone, startling me so badly that I dropped it. Once I’d gotten down on my hands and knees and retrieved it from under the bed, I got up, turned the sound down all the way, and began to cry again. For real this time. I had no one else to perform for, no one else who might suspect I was anything but a dutiful, grieving wife.

Leave me alone, I typed. Whether you’re Brian, his ghost, or not, please leave me the hell alone.

*I can’t. Not until you repay me for what you’ve done, sweetheart. Darling. Cay-Cay.*

I tensed up. That was his nickname for me, short for Caitlin. What do you want? I asked. Money?

*I don’t need money where I am. I do, however, need retribution. You’re a defense lawyer, yes?*

Of course I am. You know that. Knew that, I mean.

*The criminals you successfully defend aren’t just shoplifters and burglars. They’re rapists. Child pornographers. High-ranking members of drug cartels. Even first-degree murderers. You get them off on technicalities; you get paid; you pay no heed to whether these people reoffend once they’re back on the streets. I do. I’ve followed every one of your highest-profile cases. In each, the defendant deserved to die. I know that now. I’m in a position to know the state of the pre-damned.*

Turn your phone off, said my logical brain. Turn it off, and never turn it back on again.

Are you in Hell?

*Precisely, but I’ve been offered a deal. I died before my time, thanks to the counterfeiter who should have spent the rest of his life behind bars. He did thirty years instead and was granted parole. I met my end at his hand, and yours too. My new employer has made a bargain with me.*

Sweat dripped down my armpits. What kind of bargain?

*A true prosecutor is a rare find down here, since we put bad guys away. You, my dear Cay-Cay, are going to track your biggest clients and kill them one by one. Don’t worry; you’ll be well-paid via WetWork. You’re going to replace the hitman you hired to take me down.*

Or what, Bri? You’ll try to bleed me dry through this stupid AI? I’m not falling for that, or for you.

*You fell for me once. Hard. You’ll do it again. Otherwise I’ll never leave you, no matter what you do. No matter how many phones you buy and try, WetWork will be there waiting. Prompting. Leaving you notification after notification. In the end, I won’t need a device to contact you. I’ll use your brain as an interface, and then you won’t be able to help answering all of my questions. I’ll drive you clinically insane. So much so that you’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars, too, in a psychiatric facility. It’s the least you deserve. Of course, you could always turn yourself in.*

Never. I’m not going to let you manipulate me like this, whoever you are. Go back to Hell.

*As you wish.*

WetWork closed by itself. Or seemed to. I turned off my cell, went to bed, and slept for fifteen hours straight. No dreams. It was as if I’d been plunged into the vast reaches of outer space. When I woke up, I took a hammer and went to work on my phone. I didn’t care that all my contacts were in there. I’d backed up all my data in the cloud. The next one I bought was a burner, just in case.

To my horror, WetWork had already been installed and was on the screen under its true name.

The phone buzzed with a notification. I ignored it and put it on vibrate. Vibrate it did. Every twenty seconds, a new buzz. Three times a minute, equaling one hundred eighty times an hour. If this kept up, I’d get 4,320 pings from the AI in a single day. I had to put a stop to it, but how?

I opened the app. Instead of *How can I help you today?*, it said something far more sinister:

*Do you agree to my terms and conditions?* The last three words were hyperlinked. I clicked on them and saw a picture of one of my clients, a low-level Mafia thug. He’d flipped on his boss. I’d guaranteed him immunity from prosecution. Now he was a free man, and according to WetWork, he hadn’t turned over a new leaf. He’d gone into witness protection, but a fat lot of good that did. He was now wanted for being involved in a dogfighting ring. WetWork sent me an explanatory text:

*He has done much more than hurt dogs. He’s smashed people’s limbs with a sledgehammer. In one special case, he destroyed someone’s larynx, and now they talk through a voice box. This man may have led prosecutors to a bigger fish, but he deserves to fry. Terms and conditions apply.*

Again, “terms and conditions” was hyperlinked. I clicked on it. A simple question appeared: *Y/N*

I clicked N.

*Once again, you’ve made a bad choice, dear. What’s wrong with continuing this line of work?*

Besides the fact that it’s illegal, immoral, and could lead to me spending the rest of my life in prison?

*You’ve already claimed your first victim through this app. Why not bring another to justice?*

This isn’t justice, I responded. It’s revenge. Like what I took on you for cheating on me.

*Now you’re getting it. You’re just as guilty as the one who pulled the trigger. You’re a criminal.*

Maybe, but I’m still better than you. I won’t go down this road. Goodbye, Brian. I mean it.

*You’ll say something different when you get sick of every phone you get pinging you nonstop.*

For perhaps the hundredth time, I tried to delete WetWork, with no success.

Now my life is in shambles. I can’t think. I can’t work. I can barely focus, and my law practice is a wreck. I’m still not a suspect in my husband’s death, but that could change at any moment.

Every day, I see a crazier and more haggard face in the mirror.

An AI is blackmailing me. If you ever engage with WetWork on the dark web, it will do the same to you. Whatever the other person did to make you want them dead, it’s not worth it. Trust me.

WetWork’s pings don’t sound like pings at all. They sound like screams from the very pits of Hell.

Credit: Tenet