Miz Scarlet and the Imposing Imposter

by Sara M. Barton

  Sure enough, there it was. Not a big window by any means, but definitely glass. I let Jim guide me onto what felt like a table top. Looking down at my beautiful beach, with the waves rolling in, I saw three bars. Paradise found. In seconds, I got into my contacts list and found what I was looking for -- as Kenny’s phone number appeared on the screen, I punched “send”.

  “Scarlet!” Relief flooded over me as I heard Kenny speak. There was desperation in his voice. I know the feeling, pal! “Where are you?”

  “Listen. I don’t have much time. I’m with Jim Jordan at the Toms’ mansion. I think we’re in the garage, in a closet or storage room of some kind.”

  “I’ll be right there....”

  “No, wait! Kenny, listen!” Now it was my turn to sound desperate. “Jim doesn’t know where they took his wife and kids. If you come rushing up here, like Duddly Do-Right, we might never find out where they are!”

  “Scarlet, we’ll handle it,” he promised.

  “Kenny, it gets worse. Remember the ex-boyfriend? Jere’s one of the kidnappers.”

  “The community college professor? The tech geek?”

  “And it gets worse. The boss is another ex-boyfriend, Kenny. It’s Ned.”

  “Ned who?”

  “Ned Sorkin.”

  “Ned Sorkin, the environmental activist?”

  Even as I heard him say the name, it suddenly all hit me right smack dab in the face. “One and the same.”

  “The guy who wants to return the forests to their original state?”

  “Yup.” Listening to Kenny, it dawned on me that I had been a complete and utter idiot.

  “The guy who has sued every single forestry company in the last decade?”

  “You made your point,” I countered. “I get it. I know it was stupid. Can we focus?”

  “Holy moly, Scar. This has to be the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. He must have been one hell of a lover for you to be so over-the-moon stupid!”

  “Kenny!”

  “Okay, listen. He didn’t kill you outright, so he must need you for something. Any idea what?”

  “Not a clue. He said he’s not done with the Wilson family yet.”

  “How the hell did he not take your cell phone away?”

  “I was wearing it around my neck. He didn’t know I had it.”

  “Hmm...okay, listen. Do you think you and Jim can stay calm a little while longer? Give me a chance to figure out something? I’ll get the ball rolling here. And yes, I do get the point about rescuing the Jordans. I’m just not sure they’re still alive.”

  Even as he said that, I cringed, knowing Jim was listening at my side.

  “Tell him I know they’re alive. Ned’s been using them as pawns.”

  Kenny heard those words and instructed me to put my new friend on the line. I didn’t want to miss any of the action, so I punched the speaker button.

  The details Jim shared were chilling. The former hacker was forced to take down Steve Kim to finance Ned’s ambitious operations. The insurance executive, currently out of the country on a two-month sabbatical, would soon come home to find his entire life had been snatched out from under him, including this mansion, which had been moved to a new real estate trust, controlled by Ned. The sale was expected to go through next week, putting another million and a half dollars in Ned Sorkin’s coffers. As head of the Defend the Earth non-profit, he accepted donations from across the globe, and Jim had spent the better part of the last three months as an Internet vampire, co-opting computers of thousands of unsuspecting citizens to funnel the money through their accounts as supposed donations to Defend the Earth. The bogus donations were mingled with legitimate donations sent to the organization. The electronic records protected Ned from prosecution, as long as the victims of the vampire hacking scheme never caught on. He planned to use the carefully laundered money to finance future lawsuits against the forestry products industry.

  “I think he plans to leave me holding the bag when Kim comes home,” Jim told us. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. People will think I went back to my hacking ways, and I won’t be alive to correct the lies. And once I’m dead....”

  We all could see where that thought was going. No more reason to keep Julie and the kids as pawns. Think, Miz Scarlet! How does this fit in with what you know?

  Ned had picked Jim and forced the reformed hacker to commit major crimes to keep his family alive, and once he didn’t need him any more, Ned would murder the entire Jordan family to keep it all quiet. Ned kidnapped me and brought me here to get Bur involved. But why? And then it hit me. My brother was the real target.

  “Kenny, could Ned be after Bur because of the Leland Hardwoods thing?” Ten years ago, Ned Sorkin sued Leland Hardwoods for, as he put it, utterly and completely destroying the North American forests. My brother wrote op-ed pieces in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other major newspapers, touting the commitment of Leland Hardwoods to its reforestation project. He discussed how important it was for companies to work towards meeting environmental goals. This was the future -- not only to use the environment in more sensible ways, to preserve it, but to replenish it for future generations and keep it viable for American business interests. He explained how these new practices not only strengthened the forest products industry, but also the overall economy. We should not think the only solution was to stop cutting down trees. We could, and should, work to develop new forests, plan for sensible growth that would keep a better environmental balance between all or nothing. The company’s stock soared, Bur became even more in demand as an analyst and adviser, and Ned Sorkin had lost his class action lawsuit on one important point when it finally came up for consideration before the panel of judges. Leland Hardwoods hadn’t ravaged and pillaged the forest primeval. That’s because Bur used the old Four Oaks Pressboard connections to bring Theodore Toms Van Erk to the party and it worked. The company had hired a team of experts, led by Teddy, to begin the process of rebuilding the forests named in the lawsuit, tree by tree, utilizing new techniques to encourage faster growth. By the time the court docket was set and the lawsuit finally got a hearing, there was substantial proof that the reforestation program was working, despite the constant vandalism by eco-terrorists and their sabotage efforts to sink it. Case dismissed.

  “Of course!” Kenny concurred. “That’s why they went to Bur’s apartment after they killed Lonnie. They were going to set him up to take the murder rap!”

  “What?”

  “We found the physical evidence they planted there. Bur told me that’s why he panicked after Gretchen’s purse turned up in his place. Your mother was supposed to be a victim, Scar, but she went shopping with your brother and the killers couldn’t find her.”

  “People were supposed to think Bur killed Laurel? Why?”

  “Not just Laurel. You, too,” Jim acknowledged. “To get his hands on what was left of the Wilson fortune.”

  “That’s why Ned said he wasn’t done with the Wilson family yet. He must still be hoping to murder me and let Bur take the blame.”

  Now it all became clear. My romance with Ned suddenly went into focus. That fortuitous meeting with Ned in the city -- I was there for a week of cultural fun with an old college chum. We took in the sights, saw a few plays on Broadway, and went to museums. Ned was there at a tapas bar down by the waterfront. He played me for all I was worth, poured on the charm until I could no longer resist him. We had an affair that lasted all of four months. He took me to the moon and when we got there, when I was smitten by the magical glow of that beautiful orb, he dropped me back down to Earth like I was nothing but space trash.

  I never told my family about my affair with Ned. I knew they would be appalled. After all, Ned was the enemy. We were part of the original Four Oaks Pressboard family. To Bur, Ned Sorkin was the epitome of evil, a man so determined to stop capitalism in its tracks, he was willing to destroy anyone and anything that got in his way. And I led him right to Bur’s doorstep. />
  “Lonnie called him Eddie. She must have known him and that’s why he killed her. She was part of his past,” I informed Kenny. “Was Bur supposed to be blamed for all four murders?”

  “Damn.” I was the hostage Ned would dangle in front of my brother. In his effort to save me, the real target of this horrifying plot would walk right into a trap.

  “I know what he’s planning to do,” said a quiet voice in the dark. Jim. “And I know how he plans to do it.”

  “Excuse me?” I paused in mid-conversation.

  “He made me spy on you guys for months. I’ve been tracking your emails, your Skype calls, your online banking, the stock trades....” His voice trailed off as the list of invasive breaches grew. “Last night, when he found out that you installed an Internet-based security system, he made me knock out the security camera on the porch.”

  “That explains that,” said Kenny. “They created a diversion at the front of the house, blew out four windows, and while Zuk and I were responding, he broke in and snatched you.”

  “The Googins girls must be terrified.”

  “They’re under police guard in an undisclosed location, Scarlet, out of harm’s way.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “At least now we know who and what we’re dealing with,” Kenny told us. We’ve got to get your family out, Jim. Any ideas at all where he might have stashed them?”

  “He lets me speak to them once a week by Skype.”

  “What kind of security do they have up there?”

  Among Jim Jordan’s duties for Ned Sorkin over the last several months was the electronic stalking of the insurance executive. Every digital snippet of Kim’s life was used to keep him busy in Europe and away from his Cheswick home. The security system he thought was protecting his empire was being surreptitiously employed to bring about his downfall.

  “He must be targeting Teddy Van Erk, too,” I realized. After all, without Teddy, Ned would have won that Leland Hardwoods lawsuit.

  “His last reforestation project was a bust. The data on his research was changed, so he looked like he faked his own results,” said Jim, confirming my fear.

  The Googins girls. The cousins. Steve Kim. Teddy Van Erk. What did we all have in common? The Four Oaks legacy. The property on White Oak Hill.

  “What’s Ned trying to do, turn our homes into more parkland?” I wondered aloud.

  “He wants to tear them all down and return them to their natural state,” the former hacker admitted.

  Looking back, as I leaned against the cool cement wall of the storage room, I could see the beginning of the end of what the Googins and Toms families built. Was it all part of the war strategy Ned employed? Had he been doing this for the better part of a decade?

  And where did Jere fit into all this? I had known him since....since he got a job at Cheswick High. Back then, I was still getting together with my former colleagues for the occasional drink, and when I started my tutoring business, I often coordinated with the teachers, to bolster their lesson plans. Where did Jere come from? I couldn’t recall. Oh, Lord! How long had he been setting me up?

  I thought back to that financial disaster, when the Wilson fortunes were lost to that rip-off artist who replaced our financial adviser. Bur was so horrified that what seemed to be a safe investment turned out to be written in invisible ink. Overnight, I had lost about ten years’ worth of savings. Laurel had lost even more. And Bur? He took the biggest hit of all, because it came on the heels of that nasty divorce.

  But we had bounced back. We had taken Aurielle and Hank into our home when they needed care. We had renovated the house and turned it into the Four Acorns Inn. Maybe that was the problem. We didn’t fold our house of cards. We didn’t quit. It wasn’t a victory.

  “Set your phone to silent mode, Miz Scarlet, and keep your head down. Don’t go looking for a fight. Your job is to survive this ordeal. Got it?” Kenny prepared to end the call. I felt like the only tether I had to the outside world was about to be severed. Could I let go?

  “Yes, Captain Peacock.” Tears filled my eyes, and I found that big lump in my throat as I tried to get the final good-bye out. What if this is the last time we ever speak? Be brave, Miz Scarlet. The man already lost one woman unexpectedly. Let him remember you as courageous.

  “Over and out.” My fingers fumbled as I turned off the ringer.

  “The next time they come in here, Scarlet, they’ll probably turn the lights on. They know it will be disorienting. Best thing to do is to stare at the floor. That way, you aren’t blinded.”

  “How long have you been held here?” I wondered. “What happened at Wallace’s house?”

  “You know my history, as a hacker?”

  “I heard something about it,” I replied, noncommittal in my answer. Better to let him tell his own story. It would tell me what mattered to him.

  “I was a student at MIT, in my senior year, when I was recruited to participate in Operation Mudpack. We thought we were changing the world. In less than eight months, we hit the Pentagon, six major financial institutes, seven oil companies, and three foreign governments. We wreaked havoc with their dealings, to the tune of sixty million dollars. We rerouted weapons shipments, sent refunds to credit card customers, sold oil for a dollar a barrel, and exposed the names of CIA assets in those three countries. We thought we were the greatest heroes on the planet. And then, when we were celebrating our achievements at a hackers’ convention in the Azores, all hell broke loose.”

  Jim paused. As the silence lengthened, I stepped in to prompt him, knowing full well I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “What happened?”

  “It turned out that we weren’t just college kids on a lark. All the time we were finding our way around the firewalls of corporate America and the US military, the people giving us directions were working for another government.”

  “What government?”

  “I never found out. I knew enough not to dig too deep. My college roommate, Mike Dusleski, called me, to tell me that a package arrived for me. He wanted to know if he should open it. I didn’t recognize the name on it, so I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ I was still on the line when the bomb went off and Mike was blown to smithereens.”

  Chapter Nineteen --

  I sighed. Why did I think there was more bad news to come? A sense of dread settled over me.

  “Later that night, when I tried to catch a flight back to the States, I found out that there was an arrest warrant issued for me. The cops thought I killed my roommate to keep him from talking. My whole life went up in smoke. I went on the run, called a family friend who was a lawyer, and he arranged for me to turn myself in.”

  “Is that when you publicly denounced your days as a hacker?” It had been in the news for weeks. Jim Jordan became the face of his generation, warning others to be wary of being used as pawns for intelligence purposes. He made the rounds of all the news talk shows. In a plea deal, arranged by his lawyer, he served twenty months in a minimum security prison, and in exchange, the FBI got a full accounting of his hacking activities, along with his service as a consultant.

  “How did Ned Sorkin find you?” I asked, cutting to the chase. “And why didn’t you tell the FBI when they approached you?”

  “I was home one afternoon, working. Julie had taken the kids out to a skating party. I got an email in my inbox. Someone sent me a video clip. They were holding my family. Have you ever seen a finger broken? I have. Every one of my children had a finger broken because of me. So did my wife. The left pinky. It took them less than ten minutes to snap four fingers on the people I love most in the world, while I watched it on the TV monitor. I heard every scream. I heard every whimper. How could I tell the FBI? What could I tell the FBI, that wouldn’t get my family killed? These people mean business.”

  We sat in silence, the sorrow heavy upon both of us. I knew he spoke the truth because I had seen what was done to Gretchen Powick, just as I had seen the angry mark across Lonni
e’s neck. Senseless brutality. Surely Gretchen and Lonnie were not any threat to environmentalists. If anything, they were accomplices. Or had they, like Jim Jordan, been coerced into cooperating?

  Sitting in the dark as the hours pass has some advantages. No distractions. You’ve got nothing to do but think. In Jim’s case, he was focused on that video. It was all he could see through the darkness -- the horror of it all. But me? I had too many other questions, and I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  What if Ned wasn’t just bent on changing the environmental policies of the United States government? What if there was more to his plan than just saving the forests? What if he had bigger fish to fry?

  I thought about my love life. That probably sounds strange, given the circumstances. Here I was, sitting in a locked storage room in Steve Kim’s mansion with a man who had disappeared months ago. Romance should have been the farthest thing from my mind, and yet it was the one subject I couldn’t shake off. Every time I started dating a guy, every time the romance seemed to be going somewhere, something happened to end it unexpectedly. Tony got a job offer in Dubai that he couldn’t turn down. Randy hooked up with a woman who shamelessly made a play for him while we were at a New Year’s Eve gala. It only lasted five weeks, but once he made that bad choice, I burned the bridge on my way out. There was no going back. And Dilby Marshall? He had that terrible accident, the night he supposedly got drunk and went off the road. What if my romances were deliberately ruined? Trying to tie together the loose threads, I considered things from my own perspective. Jere had tried to seduce me for ages. When that failed, he hung around, even as my other potential relationships tanked.

  And then Ned had come along, after I had rebuffed Jere many times over. Claiming to have an extensive list of enemies, and having earned the wrath of a number of state and federal agencies, Ned insisted that we keep our relationship under the radar. We met in out of the way places, never seen publicly together. I used a disposable cell phone for our calls, as did he. What did all that mean? Jere was Ned’s inside man, gathering information on us that Ned could use. But it had to be more than that. For Jere to be here so long in Cheswick, there had to be a viable interest, a big payoff of some kind. Either that, or there was a local connection of some kind. Maybe this wasn’t just about the environment. Maybe it was personal.