“What do you want?”
“When I ask you for something, I’ll get it, no questions asked.”
“What sort of ‘something’? How often?”
“See, that’s the thing about no questions asked. It means, no questions.”
“I can’t agree to something if I don’t know what I’m agreeing to.”
“I understand,” Nathan said. “I’ll be in touch.”
He disconnected then, and she didn’t hear from him again until two days before her deadline.
“Fuck, Nathan. You know I’m in trouble. I’ve always helped you. Don’t leave me hanging.”
“All you have to do is say yes to my proposal, and I’ll help.”
‘Fuck you!’ is what she wanted to scream, but that wasn’t going to help. She said yes.
Two hours later, an evidence packet hit the news outlets showing Senator Edwardson at a party with an underage girl. Date stamps and digital signatures linked the evidence to an investigation in her office. The senator proclaimed he knew nothing of the events of that night, but the ongoing outrage forced him to resign within days.
Six months ago, she hadn’t known to suspect Nathan9’s manipulations, didn’t realize he’d timed his responses for maximum effectiveness amid her growing desperation. She certainly didn’t know the entire situation was fabricated to compromise her, or that the evidence involving the senator was forged, leading to the downfall of an innocent man.
She’d learned all that bit by bit over the successive months, each new revelation made her more unsure of what was true or not, right or wrong. In the end, she was totally complicit. She knew, Nathan knew, and the longer she did nothing to rectify the situation, the more Nathan knew she was his.
Chapter 43
Robin desperately wanted a stimulant, but she couldn’t allow herself anything. She had to get some sleep after this. She was so tired, she’d given up her usual military posture, and was sitting slumped. She couldn’t care anymore.
Enso appeared on screen within a few minutes.
“What the hell is going on out there?” Enso said.
“They all ran. Scattered. Your team only got one, Wendy.”
“No shit. Why the hell didn’t we pick them up first?”
How was she supposed to answer that? She couldn’t very well say, “Because you let Forrest walk all over you by convincing the higher ups that everyone should be identified first, which caused everyone to be unprepared for the sudden meeting of the T2 team.”
They should have been able to snatch them all. That would have been the quickest way to be done with all of this.
“We have the team members identified now,” Robin said. “We’re narrowing in on most of them. We’ll have them soon.”
“They scattered before we showed,” Enso said. “That means they have their own intelligence on our operations. They’ll run again as we close in on them. We need to cut them off at their head, which is Igloo.”
Robin nodded. “She’s the hardest of them to nail down. Look, instead of trying to pick her up, let’s release the BDSM videos we have. Get them where the T2 team can see them. Discredit her with her own team. There’s no way they’re going to accept the leadership of someone who beats her own girlfriend.”
Enso leaned toward the camera. “How do we get it into their hands?”
“We don’t want to send it directly to anyone on the T2 team. Makes it more obvious that we’re manipulating them. We post the content publicly. We have about six hours of video, forty clips in total. We’ve already edited them down for maximum effect. We’ll send anonymous tips to popular media outlets. We’ll get instant coverage. Top headline stuff, especially since Angie’s death is already the number one story everywhere. When we’re done, she won’t have credibility with the T2 team, Tapestry, or her friends in the industry.”
Enso looked doubtful. “We were going to use the videos to discredit Tapestry with the public. The T2 team are all progressive, mostly young. We’re talking a bunch of people from Portland. They’re probably all kinky. I don’t think it’ll be as impactful as you hope.”
“The whole company is a bunch of social justice warriors,” Robin said. “Half of them are abuse survivors. This is not your average group of progressives, and Igloo’s not engaging in fluffy bedroom bondage. The videos are pretty damning. Besides, she’s kept it secret all this time, which means she’s worried her coworkers won’t accept it.”
“What if we use the videos to blackmail her instead?” Enso said. “Can we force her to do what we want?”
That would be exactly the wrong path to take. Robin chose her words carefully. “She’d either stall or fight harder against us. Maybe even go public herself so she can control the message. It’s better to blindside her.”
“When?”
“We can have it posted in fifteen minutes,” Robin said, “and it should make the rounds in the T2 team within a few hours. If we’re lucky, the timing will keep them awake all night. Sleep deprivation won’t help their decision making.”
“Make it so,” Enso said. “You’re not going to have a problem with this? I know you two got rather chummy.”
Enso wouldn’t ask a question like that of a male operative. “I’m undercover. I’m supposed to get close.” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
Enso glanced at her again.
“Sorry, Sir. Just tired.”
“Get that video released. I’ll pull most of the team off the manhunt and leave just enough to keep them scrambling. Get some sleep so you’ll be fresh tomorrow when they’re at their worst.”
Chapter 44
Igloo twisted and pulled at the sheets, but then her feet were cold. She blinked her eyes open and looked around the dimly lit room in confusion. There were no sheets, only a jacket. She’d been dreaming of bed.
Essie was curled up, pressing against Igloo’s back. Pleasure rushed through her, then stopped cold. She still didn’t know if Essie was the government’s mole.
That the government hadn’t picked them up during the night was an argument against Essie being their security leak. But the other factors fit: how long the mole had been in place, the fact that she the mole’s a woman.
Igloo shook her head and reached into her shirt pocket for a caffeine pill. Two points of data, one of which ruled out men. That was absurdly little to go on. If she could even trust the source. She slipped the caffeine pill into her mouth. More than half the Tapestry employees were women. Any of them could be the mole. No, not any of them. Only people who were hired about ten months ago. Maybe ten to twelve months.
Careful to avoid waking Essie, Igloo craned her neck to look across the room. Ben and Diana were still asleep, sharing an old couch. Igloo pulled out her phone. Damn. Twenty percent battery level.
They ditched the car and most of their electronics in the middle of the night after the government successfully tracked them again and again. They broke into the basement of this house off Alberta, tucked in behind two six-story apartment buildings, chosen to put hundreds of wi-fi endpoints within range.
The musty basement was filled with old furniture and boxes of clothing, but no chargers that they’d found. She’d need to keep it quick.
She set the phone down to a minimal configuration so it wouldn’t flood the network with data synchronization exchanges, then chose a wi-fi at random using her cached Tapestry database of wi-fi logins. She entered the T2 chat room, afraid to learn who was still on the go and who had been caught.
She scanned through the log starting from yesterday afternoon to see who had checked in since the fiasco at Powell’s. Mike and Jeff were safely together. Carly made it out but said Wendy had been taken. Shit. Melanie and Gene got separated, but they were both okay. Ben and Diana had been captured, but she and Essie had recovered them. Wendy was a huge loss, but losing only one out of the nine remaining T2 members was better than expected.
She scanned through the messages. Everyone except Igloo’s group had r
eached a safe house and remained unmolested all night.
Why was Igloo’s group so hunted? Because of Igloo? Or because she had the mole? Or because they’d stolen Ben and Diana from the feds?
Never mind that, she told herself. She had to stay focused. She accessed the Tapestry employee database. Who started between ten and twelve months ago? A list of thirty-five names came up. That was a lot. Shit.
Wait, a bunch of those were in an overseas office. Two had left. Twenty-one names. Whom did she recognize? Igloo felt certain it had to be someone she knew. They’d want a mole to get close to her and Angie. She recognized five names. Fudge. Diana was one of them! And so was Maria. Two developers from the API team. And Angie’s admin, Matt.
What to do? If Essie or Diana was the mole, then the government would keep finding them, no matter what she did.
She couldn’t spend days trying to figure out this one thing. They had to get the software released, and every minute wasted was gone forever. She’d have to split up everyone: get Ben and Diana each to their own safe houses, make sure Essie couldn’t communicate with anyone. If Diana was the mole, and she was on her own, that would limit the damage she could do.
“Hey, wake up people,” she called in a soft voice. She shook Essie, who groaned and tried to go back to sleep.
“What time is it?” Diana asked.
“Six-thirty.”
“Four hours of sleep,” Ben said. “You trying to kill us?”
“I’m trying to keep you alive. I’m getting everyone to their own safe houses. We’re splitting up so the feds can’t grab us all.”
Igloo went out first. The streets were quiet. She stole a car using a wi-fi hack. For a brief moment, she had a fantasy of driving off into the sunset and leaving everyone else. The crushing responsibility she felt was inescapable.
She went back to the house and paused for a moment outside. She had to play a game of fox, chicken, and bag of grain. She told Essie to wait in the house for her and took Ben and Diana with her. She dropped off Diana at a coffee shop, told her to grab coffee and bagels for three.
As she got out of the car, Igloo called after her. “Stay here, no matter what.”
Diana looked puzzled but shook her head and walked off.
Igloo drove away as soon as Diana entered the building.
“Whoa, what about the coffee?” Ben protested. “And food. I’m starving.”
“We have a leak on the team,” Igloo said. “I need to get everyone separated. I know it’s not you, which is why I’m telling you. Look, you can’t tell anyone else about the mole. I don’t want them to discover that I know.”
“But who is it?”
“I don’t know. Only that they’re female, and they showed up around ten months ago or so. It could be Diana, Essie, or Maria.”
Ben shook his head. “That’s absurd. I work with Diana every day. She’s not the mole. And Essie…she’s your girlfriend. You two live together. It can’t be her.”
Igloo shrugged as she turned into another residential neighborhood. “I’m not willing to trust anyone.”
She pulled over to the curb. “The garage behind the main house is your safe house. I know it’s not awesome, but it’s what I’ve got. Combination lock on the door. Here’s the code.” She handed him a slip of paper. “There’s a sanitized MacBook in there, and a phone. There’s wi-fi in the apartment building across the street. The bucket is your bathroom. It’s rudimentary, but if you can stay inside until we can get T2 released, it’s going to minimize your exposure.”
Ben hung his head. “Diana is my best friend. I just can’t see it.”
“There’s a 66 percent chance she’s a perfectly good person. But on the off chance she isn’t, this is the safe thing to do.” Igloo rubbed her face with her hands. “I know this is awful. Sometimes we have to do crazy things in order to do what’s right in this world.”
Ben nodded.
“It’s going to be okay, I hope. Either way, good luck. And thank you.”
Ben got out of the car.
She watched until he entered the garage, then drove back to the coffee shop.
Diana was just inside the shop, looking out through the window. She rushed out to the car.
“Where the fuck did you go? I had no idea if you’d been arrested. Where’s Ben?”
Igloo hated having to lie.
“I need to split everyone up, and Angie insisted that no one know where anyone else was. I’m sorry to have left you, but I needed to get Ben to his safe house. Now I’m taking you.”
Diana didn’t look happy about it. But she still dug into the paper bag and pulled out a bagel. “You want yours?” She gave Igloo one, then took one for herself.
Igloo ate one-handed as she drove, which made her feel melancholy. Angie would have made a bad one-armed joke in this situation. Would have talked about Igloo’s two-arm privilege. She missed Angie so much. The bagel turned into a lump in her throat.
She dropped Diana off at another safe house, this one slightly better than Ben’s, and gave her a similar set of instructions. Then it was back to the basement to get Essie.
Once there, she ditched the car. One less trail. She and Essie walked through a nearby neighborhood. Public transit was out because there were too many cameras. She didn’t want to steal another car.
As they walked around the neighborhood, Igloo picked up spring steel bristles left on the asphalt by street sweepers. She bent one at ninety degrees and filed a second one with a bit of broken concrete she picked up.
“Lock-picks,” she said, showing them to Essie.
They looped around the neighborhood, then made their way back to one of the apartment buildings. Igloo spotted a bike rack by the side entrance.
“Turn and face away from the camera,” Igloo said. They lost their hats during the nighttime chase. She pulled her hood low over her head and inspected the electronic lock on the door. She ran a matching exploit on her phone, and the door unlocked.
“You’re full of handy tricks,” Essie said. “Why do we even pay rent?”
“I’m not trying to cheat anyone out of anything. Just do what’s right.”
“I know, sweetie. I’m just kidding.”
“I’m too tired for jokes,” Igloo said. Was Essie the mole? Why was she keeping Essie near her? The safest thing to do would be to isolate her. It’s what Angie would do. But then, Igloo wasn’t Angie.
Angie had wanted Igloo to manipulate the media, and she wasn’t going to do that, either. Holy shit. Angie’s backdoor into Tape, put there just so they could manipulate the news, was still there. She had to close that hole up. She added it to her mental to-do list.
They took the stairs up to the top floor. Top floor apartments went for more, so the people there would have better equipment, statistically speaking.
Igloo pulled out her phone, thought for a minute, then ran an app Angie had written a long while back.
“What are you doing?” Essie asked.
“Scanning for a hot water heater with a long idle time. High efficiency models lower the temperature after more than twenty-four-hours without use. The firmware has an internal clock since the last time water was used.”
“Um, dumb question, but why do we care about water heaters?”
“We’re figuring out who’s on vacation.”
Igloo walked up and down the hallway once, trying not to look too suspicious, but then there wouldn’t necessarily be any reason for the apartment to review security camera footage unless there was a crime.
On the way back, she compared signal strengths, and found the apartment that correlated with a three-day hot water idle time.
“Stand between me and the camera at the end of the hall,” Igloo said.
Essie complied, and Igloo knelt down to pick the lock. She struggled with her makeshift tools and felt herself starting to sweat. If anyone came out of an apartment on the hallway, they’d have to abandon the effort and start over, maybe in a different building.
She tried again and again, listening to the disappointing fall of the pins each time she failed to get them right. She took a deep breath, said a silent prayer to the universe, and tried again. It must have been ten minutes of trying, her fingers cramping, when the lock finally turned.
They stepped inside quickly. It was a furnished studio apartment, with a bedroom area, small galley kitchen, and a living room.
They glanced at each other and went straight for the kitchen cabinets.
“Food,” Essie said.
“Coffee!” Igloo said, and held out a bag of beans with a smile.
Essie let out a shrill cry of glee. “I’ll make it,” She grabbed the beans.
“I’ll see if I can figure out how long until they come back.”
She saw an oversized gaming rig in the living room area. Ugh. She’d have to grab Windows exploits via her phone.
As the necessary files were downloading, she glanced back toward the kitchen, where Essie was preparing coffee and food. She couldn’t be the mole. She just couldn’t. Igloo’s heart would break if she was.
Ten minutes later, she’d gotten into the PC. She hunted for the owner’s calendar.
“Jackpot,” Igloo said. “We’ve got three days here. They’re visiting family in California.”
Essie brought over a cup of coffee and knelt next to the desk, formally presenting it, eyes downcast.
“I’m sorry, this is the best I can do.”
Igloo stared at Essie kneeling there, coffee on outstretched palms. She was so beautiful, so kind, so giving. A tear came to one eye, and she brushed it away. Her heart really was breaking.
“Oh, fuck, Essie.” She slid out of the chair to come down to Essie’s level. She took the coffee from her and set it on the table. She wrapped Essie in a giant hug. “I’m so stupid.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I doubted you.”
“Huh?”
Kill Switch Page 33