And now he was following her, no matter how intentionally slow or fast she drove.
“Just pull off up there and let him go by,” said Taylor. She was beginning to sound annoyed.
“No, fuck it,” said Carly. If she spoke loudly enough, maybe she’d even convince herself. “We’re driving to Wells. He can go fuck himself.”
Nothing like fake bravado. Fake it till you make it.
And then she looked in the mirror again.
It probably would have been a non-issue were it not for the little surprise she’d received that morning at the motel. A bouquet of flowers delivered to her door by the inn-keeper. He’d come by their room in the morning, smiling, maybe expecting a tip. But all Carly could afford was a look of confusion and a meek “thank you” before swinging the door back and shutting it in his face. When she’d read the card, her confusion turned into a sharp, stabbing fear.
Cscape
One word written in blue ink. Nothing else. No sender’s name, no note, no explanation.
It was a mystery, and it had been eating away at her the whole afternoon. The flowers, the blue pickup, it had to all be connected to her late-night-hacking efforts. She’d dug a little deeper after Dan’s phone call the night before and what she’d uncovered about the server they were asking her to hack . . . well, it was enough to make her seriously question what the hell she’d gotten herself into. Add on the phone call about Joan’s mysterious death and she could feel the panic attack coming from miles away. From the salt flats of Utah to the rocky desert mountains of northern Nevada, an anxiety grew from Oasis to Pequop Summit, and onward to their destination of Wells. It was a part of their original plan, where they were supposed to meet up with the honey-oil buyers. It would have been a big payoff, the reward for all the risk and all the bullshit—bullshit, in this case, now meaning everything to do with being in a traveling, gigging band.
“I still can’t get into it,” said Megan. “I just can’t.”
Carly nodded in agreement before checking the mirror again.
Maybe in their younger and more naive days, the music itself would have been the reward. There was even a time when they’d been excited about playing for free. But this tour had a way of gutting the last vestiges of youthful enthusiasm. Maybe thirty was too old. Maybe she should just finish up the tour, and definitely finish the hacking job, and then settle down in Fort Collins with any halfway decent man. Just get married, have a baby, and fade away like everyone else.
“Like, what’s the point?” said Megan, looking defeated with her head almost resting down at the armrest she’d been picking at. For three days, she’d been peeling at the covering with a nervous, if not angry energy. “We’re not going anywhere. Like, we’re never gonna get signed to a record deal or anything. And touring sucks. I’m sorry, but it does. I have to just say it.”
The van stayed quiet. No one had the strength to muster up a counterargument. Or maybe there just wasn’t one anymore.
“So,” Megan huffed. “So it just makes me wonder what the whole point is.”
“Money,” said Carly. She said it coldly, logically. Just how it should be said.
The van went quiet again, as if everyone knew exactly what kind of money she was referring to. And that was the ugly truth of it. Their tour was not about the music. Or even the music money. Perhaps it never was.
“So, what do you want to do, then?” asked Taylor.
“If it’s about money,” said Megan, “then we should keep going to California. Skip our Nevada shows and just head straight there. We could be in Tahoe by midnight.”
“So we’re just drug mules, then?” said Taylor. “That’s it? That’s all we are? I don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather be a failed, broke musician than a fucking drug mule.”
Megan turned around to face her drummer. “Then why’d you agree to this? You knew what it was the whole time.”
“Yeah, a vacation. Roadtrip. We get to play a few shows. I thought we could maybe make some money along the way, like, with the honey and stuff. But no way was that the whole reason for coming out here. If that’s your only reason, then . . . I don’t know. That’s fucked up.”
“Okay,” Carly said. Fuck, the band was about to reach a breaking point. “Now I think I will pull off the road.”
“Just keep going,” Megan said, disgust evident in her voice.
“Well, let’s get it together, then. We’re playing a fucking show tonight.” Carly checked her rearview mirror. The blue pickup was nowhere to be seen. “So can everyone just chill? Please? I’m making us a bunch of money, and you all need to be thankful for that.”
There were a few apologetic grumbles from her two bandmates.
“We’ll go big in Reno,” said Carly. “Okay?”
But first they had to go small in Wells.
Another small town, another cheap motel, another few hours of hacking. What else would she do with her time in an old Nevada mining town? Swim in the motel’s postage-stamp-sized pool? Visit the 49er gold trail visitor center? Stand on Main Street and dodge tumbleweeds? In that way, she was lucky. The town’s lack of any worthwhile attractions made it easy for her to focus on work—which was really beginning to feel like work now that the novelty of hacking again had entirely worn off. The transition reminded her of their tour, the arc of it, high expectations that crashed hard and burned fast. At least with hacking there were no illusions, no myth of enjoying hacking for hacking, as if it were some holy experience. It was work. Sometimes dirty work, and she’d been slogging away at its current iteration as best as she could, and for as long as she could before the negative thoughts could throw her off track. She was usually able to go about twenty minutes or so before thinking back to the flowers, how her name looked on the card. She might also think about Joan, wondering if she had received any strange flower delivery leading up to her murder. Or if she was leered at by some creepy guy at a gas station, and then followed by him. If he was the one. . . .
Joan must have been followed by somebody. Stalked like a defenseless prey.
The thought sent a shiver down Carly’s spine. She opened the drawer of her nightstand, relieved to see the sharp, gleaming barrel of her .38 Special safely inside. Maybe that was Joan’s problem. She wasn’t prepared.
But what should she be preparing herself for? Trouble of all kinds was mounting up in all aspects of her life, attacking from all angles, past and present. At least she was in Nevada for it, the loneliest and most isolated state of the mainland. Barren and forgotten, it was a place for off-the-grid survivalists, where people could bug out and drop off the face of the earth. Maybe Carly should try doing just that, follow one of the tumbleweeds from Main Street to the desert. Get lost for good, away from Bryce Johnson or his thugs, or the Feds, or flower-delivery boys.
She was daydreaming again. Procrastinating on the most morbid of thoughts.
It was so easy to dwell on anything other than her current work—on how much she wished she wasn’t doing this again, or whatever horrible thing had really happened to Joan. She would rather think about anything other than how she was hiding out in a hotel room breaking into a secured server a few hours before her next pointless gig at a trucker drive called the Dolphin Club.
With a groan, Carly sat up straight, then pulled the laptop closer. She squinted at the strings of characters on the screen, the names of files she’d just created to cover her tracks. It was part of her countermeasures, setting up more honey pots for any inquisitive cybersecurity agents. It had already worked last night, trapping something, or someone.
Which meant she now had a whole new problem. She’d probably put herself on someone else’s radar. She might now be the next in line for a honey pot, one that she might drown in. It was a concern that had been growing with each round of work, as she inadvertently learned more about the target. It became almost impossible to ignore, especially because the environment looked so familiar. She’d seen similar surroundings on previous hacks, back in
her hacktivist days with The Collective. Certain short-forms of words in the various file names. The types of files, their locations in the server. Most importantly, how the server was organized and defended.
And it all screamed United States Government.
Back in her heyday, Carly felt perfectly comfortable in even the deepest and most Top Secret of government webs. It was how she was able to procure a great deal of evidence and leaks, all of it aiding some great humanitarian cause or another. “Go big or go home” was the motto.
Back then, she would “go big” of her own volition, accepting the risk as just another necessary hurdle for enacting some positive change in the world. But what was this project’s positive change? What great cause was she furthering by breaking into a government server and stealing documents? The cause of making money? Trying to recuperate The Dotties’ loss from a botched drug run?
Without the backing of any sensible moral component, and after the novelty of hacking had worn off, the job had begun to feel as empty and mindless as her corporate toils back in Fort Collins. But simple website programming, at least, wouldn’t end up hurting anyone.
She tried not to think about it, about who she’d be hurting.
No, it was no one. Just the government.
She noticed him early, a few songs into their first set. Dark sunglasses. Ball cap over a possibly shaved head. He was nice to look at—his broad shoulders, the way his biceps seemed to barely fit inside his tight black t-shirt sleeves.
She liked the distraction. At first.
It took well into their second set for Carly to realize that he’d been staring at her, and at her alone. Maybe under different circumstances she’d be intrigued, even flattered by the attention. As a performer, she was used to being looked at. But as part of a group. A visual option, one of three. It was a little unsettling how fixed his gaze was.
Even worse, he sat alone. No one to socialize with. Nothing else to do but to look at Carly. For as much as he was staring at her, it made her want to avoid him at all costs, aiming her gaze at anything else but him and his unsettling intensity.
What was it today with men staring at her? Did someone write something on her forehead while she was asleep? Or maybe no one had the heart to tell her about a glob of bird shit that had somehow landed in her hair without her noticing?
And then Carly remembered that she was in character. A character who wore an eye patch. For anyone wearing a patch, anyone who wasn’t a pirate, it would usually attract some attention. But this man, though . . . the way he stared . . . it was not the kind of look one gave to someone who wore a patch or a glass eye, or bird shit. At this point, she would have welcomed that look. Better to be annoyed than scared.
Carly tried a few times to communicate her unease to Megan, giving her a look to get her attention, and then nodding over to the guy. With her eyes she tried to say, “What the fuck is with that muscle-head freak who keeps starting at me?!”
But Megan could never get the message right, remaining oblivious the whole time, as if he were a ghost.
Relief came after the second set, when he left the bar and disappeared back into the Nevada night. Maybe he had some pushups to do, or some other female bass player he could obsess over. Still, it made her reach for her gun at her side holster. Who knows what, or who, would be waiting for her after the show.
But her holster was empty.
She hadn’t remembered her gun.
It sat uselessly in the van, locked inside the glove compartment.
Shit.
She could only hope the mystery man would stay gone.
12
Carly
“Do you still have your father’s gun?”
“Mom? What?”
“Is it on you? Do you still keep it on you?”
“Yeah, sometimes.” Carly looked around, making sure she was still alone. Thank God the man from their set hadn’t made a reappearance for the rest of the night. She’d been pacing back and forth in the club’s back room after the gig, alternating between tapping her fingers on her legs and biting her nails. She’d finally gotten up the courage to step outside and go get her gun when her phone had buzzed in her pocket.
Before the call, she had been doing some finances, crunching the numbers in her head, but it had been a struggle to stay focused, let alone positive. Instead of the thousands they could have made by selling honey to two real-estate moguls, The Dotties, after playing three sets at the Dolphin Club, ended up with $255 and a few free drinks. Had they at least broken even?
Or was it even worse?
“Why are you. . . ? What are you doing?” Carly asked her mother. “Isn’t it . . . late?” Connecticut was only three hours ahead of the Pacific time zone, but Carly was too tired for the math. She only knew it was late, even in Nevada. And that her mom had somehow gotten ahold of a phone.
“I don’t care how late it is.” This was at least true for Carly’s mom, who had no problem demonstrating that fact all through her college days—nights, rather. At any odd hour. Always the questions, the worries. Even hypotheticals. Suffering from the occasional bout of paranoia, her mother was unhealthily curious about Carly’s life as it was. But once you added in any actual reasons for her to call. . . . “There’s no time too late for a mother to call her daughter. Especially if she thinks she’s in trouble.”
“What trouble?” asked Carly, grinding her teeth together as she tried to keep the irritation out of her voice.
“It’s in the news.”
“What’s on the news?”
“The man you used to work for, Mr. Johnson.”
It was bad enough having to hear about it from a two-bit journalist in Salt Lake City. Now her mother, of all people. . . .
“And this scandal I keep hearing about,” her mom continued, tutting in clear dismay. “It’s just terrible.”
“That’s old news, Mom. It’s all over with.”
“No. It’s back. I don’t know why, but it’s on my TV. Isn’t it on yours?”
“I don’t watch TV.”
“See? That’s your problem, Carly. You don’t pay enough attention. You need to stay ahead of the curve on this.”
“Okay. . . . You’re right.” Sometimes it was just easier to let the storm blow over. To let her mom be right.
“Now are you going to tell me what’s happening, or do I have to learn about it from all my girl friends who can also afford TVs?”
“Mom, I can afford a TV.”
“Carly,” she said sternly. “Be straight with me. What’s going on?”
“I really have no idea. I’m on the road. I’m in Nevada.”
“Nevada? What?”
“I’m on tour. Remember? With the band?”
“Well, you never told me anything about that. Jesus. You never tell me anything about anything.”
Carly had told her. But sometimes it was just easier to apologize and move to the next stumbling block.
“Well, you might want to check on things,” her mother said. “And get in touch with Jerry, because it sounds like you’ll need a lawyer.”
Carly tilted her head up and sighed into the night sky. Like usual in Nevada, it had been a clear night. Which meant extra visibility for stargazers and extra cold for young women alone and miserable in a parking lot.
“Carly? Do you know anything about a computer?”
“What? What computer?”
“They found a computer or something, and there might be evidence.” Her mother took a deep breath, and then asked angrily, “What did you do for that man?”
“Mom, I just worked for him.”
“But what did you do?”
“Nothing!”
Carly was walking faster now, taking hard, angry steps without purpose or direction. It was her only means of burning off the stirred-up adrenaline, other than running her mouth at her sick mother. It was the usual cycle—a revolving door of guilt and anger. The emotions washed over her every time, no matter how determined she was t
o not let her mother get to her. It was as if the process was hardwired into her body and she was powerless to circumvent it.
She clamped her lips shut tight, waiting for the anger to pass. Looking up, she found herself walking behind a row of big-rig trucks. How the hell had she gotten here, clear across the lot? The trucks were parked at the edge of the lot, all dark except for the moonlight gleaming off bits of chrome. Maybe there were drivers inside, sleeping after a long day’s drive. Carly had once heard a story about why truckers left their running lights on overnight. She was glad to see none of them had their lights left on.
“So, then. . . .” her mom began, but then trailed off soon after. She sounded tired, unfocused, like she’d been up all night worrying. “So you have nothing to worry about, then?”
“No, Mom. I didn’t do anything.”
“I know you wouldn’t do anything, Sweetie. I’m just . . . I’m just scared.”
“Don’t be. Everything’s fine. How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m fine.” It didn’t sound too convincing.
“You sure?” asked Carly. “Do you feel okay, health-wise?”
“Yes.”
“And does Robin still come around? Does she take you out and everything?” Carly normally tried very hard to block out the mental image of her mom wasting away in a bed, her confusion, her mind deteriorating further and further into dementia. But even when she managed not to consciously think of her mother’s accumulating and worsening conditions, there was always a constant, low ache of shame. It followed her everywhere in the background, teaming with her other worries.
“I’m scared, Carly.”
“Why? What are you scared of?” She heard nothing but her mother’s soft breathing. “And why did you ask about my gun? What’s going on?”
“I’m scared they’re coming after you.”
It should have been more of a shock, especially after the day’s events. But when it came to her mother, at least, Carly was used to that one. The increasing paranoia was all part of her condition, and it wasn’t the first time her mother had warned Carly about someone “coming after her.” It wouldn’t be the last, either, not by a long shot.
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 29