Hacked

by Linda Gerber

  Since I left them in Greece, Zoe and Nikos had become best friends, just like Logan and me. Well, almost like Logan and me. The difference is that Zoe knows Nikos likes her as more than a friend, and that’s something I can never tell with Logan.

  Am at my diving invitational, Zoe texted. Nikos is here, and all the girls stare at him in the stands. I have to tell my teammates to think of the competition or we will lose, but still it is hard for them not to watch Nikos.

  Well, yeah, I texted back. He’s only a movie star’s son. And completely adorable. What’s not to stare at?

  Zoe texted a smiley face and then wrote, I know, yes? At first I worry about the attention, but when he waves to me from the stands, I feel proud that the other girls stare. Is that bad?

  I laughed and typed, Not bad at all. But now you know you don’t have to worry so much.

  Which is the same thing Logan said to me the night before. There was nothing to worry about. Bayani’s friend would track down our villain, I could do one of those public-apology posts on my blog that my followers seemed to like so much, and Logan and I would show the sponsors how in control we could be. Everything was going to be fine. Better than fine. This whole episode could actually turn out to be a good thing, like Nikos waving from the stands. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  The first hint I got that something was up was when Bayani didn’t show for breakfast. Britt said he had probably slept in, but that wasn’t like Bayani; he’s usually one of the first people at the table when there’s food involved. Plus, since he’s the fixer, he has to get an early start to make sure all arrangements are in place. I checked his room anyway, just to be sure, but he wasn’t there.

  “Don’t worry,” Logan told me. “Da said Yans took the early ferry this morning and that he’d meet us back at the farm. Probably, you know, checking into…the situation.”

  He was right, of course, but I couldn’t shake the niggling doubt in my gut. Which didn’t help on the ride back across the lake when Liz wanted footage of Logan and me looking carefree and outdoorsy in our sponsor-provided boating attire.

  “Talk to each other,” she instructed. “Show us that you’re having a good time. Cassidy, dearest, could you at least try to smile?”

  I did my best to grimace in a way that made the corners of my mouth turn up, but I probably didn’t succeed, because Liz finally called it a morning and let Estefan and Claudia go for the rest of the ride. I suppose I should have felt bad, but she said she wanted real, and the reality was, I was scared.

  It was one thing to ask Bayani to help track down a hacker, but it was quite another to think he actually may have found something. Once we knew who the hacker was, what then? Ask him/her to stop? Demand whatever tabloid he or she worked with to leave me alone? That would only create a bigger story. Maybe I should have let it go.

  The anticipation got worse when Bayani wasn’t waiting at the farm when the rest of us got there. Logan tried calling Bayani’s cell, but, of course, the farm was one huge dead zone, and he couldn’t get a signal.

  I paced and twisted my hands. “What if something happened to him?”

  Logan didn’t even say the words. He just gave me a look. I worried too much.

  Victoria strolled up beside us with her lesson folders nestled in the crook of her arm. “All right, you two,” she said. “What are you scheming about?”

  I jumped back from Logan as if I was actually guilty of something, but he didn’t flinch. “Just talking about our research animals. I’m saying a spider money could take a tapir in a fight any day. What do you think?”

  “I think your evasion technique is just a tad unrefined. Now come along. Let’s get started before the camera crew arrives to distract you from your schoolwork.”

  We followed her to the conference room but didn’t even get a chance to sit down before Bayani slipped through the door, closing it carefully behind him like he was afraid to make a sound. “Sorry for interrupting,” he told Victoria. “I need to talk with Cassidy and Logan for a minute.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “Go ahead.”

  He rubbed his palms against his pants nervously and cleared his throat. “Alone.”

  Victoria crossed her arms. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but Cassidy hasn’t been herself all morning, and Logan checked out before he stepped inside this room. As their tutor, I think I have a right to be let into the little circle of conspirators we have here.”

  Bayani looked to me for confirmation, which I have to admit scared me a little bit. He’s always joking around and full of himself, and he never defers to me. Seeing him like this made the hairs at the nape of my neck start to itch. I nodded to him; of the four of us in the room, Victoria was the most practical and level-headed. If Bayani was losing it, we needed Victoria on our team.

  “You’re going to want to sit for this,” he said. He took a chair from the conference table and turned it around so that he could straddle it, facing us. “Okay, so. I told you my geek buddy could track down anything, right? So he worked his tech-guy magic, or whatever, to track down our hacker and…” He looked around like he expected someone to crash through the walls and bash him on the head. Then he leaned forward over the back of the chair and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Whoever hacked into Cassidy’s account was doing it from right here.”

  “I knew it!” I thought of all the eyes I felt watching me the past couple of days, and I shivered. “So are we talking here as in Costa Rica, or here as in Monteverde?”

  “Here,” Bayani repeated, pointing to the ground. “I mean your hacker is right here, at the farm.”

  I heard the words, but they didn’t compute. “But…the Internet has been down the whole time we’ve been here. I know; I’ve tried to connect. Mama Tica even said—”

  “All I can tell you,” Bayani said, “is that my guy isolated the IP address, and it was assigned to a computer here at their office address.”

  “Wait a minute.” Victoria held up both hands like a London traffic cop. “Back it up. What’s this about?”

  “I want to find out who’s been hacking into my blog,” I explained. “Maybe then we can convince the sponsors this isn’t going to be an ongoing thing, and they don’t have to pull out.”

  “I see. And you’re encouraging this, Bayani?”

  “Hey.” He raised his hands defensively. “Not my idea. I just did what they asked me.” Then, as if he realized how lame that must sound, he added, “I didn’t know we’d actually come up with a location. I figured anyone good enough to get past network security would have routed their input through proxy servers or something so they couldn’t be found. I thought if we came up with a goose egg, Cassidy and Logan would forget this crazy idea of catching the perp and let it go.”

  Victoria raised her eyebrows. “We’ve gone from an anonymous hacker to a perpetrator now? Don’t you realize you are encouraging them?”

  “Look,” Bayani said evenly, “it was different when I thought of this person as some anonymous, faceless entity. But if he—or she—is here among us, it’s personal. It goes beyond showing the world how clever you are because you can get around a firewall or two. Now we’re talking sabotage.”

  I gasped, remembering how some of the posts were written as if the hacker knew my every move. And no wonder, if he or she was living among us.

  Victoria took one look at my face and shot out of her seat. “All right. That’s it,” she told Bayani. “We should discuss this outside.”

  “No!” I grabbed her hand. “This is about me. My blog. I want to hear what he has to say.”

  “Cassidy, I’m afraid you three are building on one another’s paranoia. And Bayani, I don’t think that isolating one IP address is enough to pinpoint a location.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not really sure how it works. That’s why I have smart friends. Like you.”

  She pressed her lips together. “How kind,” she said drily. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go fetch Liz and we can
—”

  “No!” I jumped up after her. “No Liz. You heard what she said. If she even suspects my blog can be hacked into again, she’ll call off the show.”

  Victoria paused. She had heard Liz’s lecture on the boat just as well as the rest of us. “Cavin, then,” she said. “Or your mum and dad.”

  “They’re all in town,” Logan reminded her. “We can’t sit around and do nothing while they’re gone.”

  “Let’s just look for the source,” I said. “If we can find the one working computer on the farm, then we know we’re on the right track.”

  “Or completely offtrack,” Victoria muttered.

  “But you’ll help us” I asked hopefully, “to narrow down the list of suspects?”

  “I’ll help you,” she said, “not to make fools of yourselves by accusing innocent people.”

  With Liz and the cameras on their way at any moment, we didn’t have much time to argue the different possibilities.

  “Okay,” I said, “the way I see it, we have three main suspects: Marco, Claudia, and Estefan.”

  “And Mama Tica,” Bayani added.

  I shook my head to keep his words out. “No. No way.”

  “Well, it is her place,” Logan said.

  “She wouldn’t do that,” I said firmly.

  “How do you know?”

  I stared him down. It was a fair enough question, but I didn’t know how to explain. What was I going to say—I know it can’t be Mama Tica because she reminds me of my gramma? It sounded lame when you said it like that, but it was the truth. Some things you know. “I just do, that’s all. Let’s concentrate on the ones who really could have done it.”

  “Someone with the means, opportunity, and motive,” Victoria put in.

  “The what?”

  “It’s how detectives narrow down their list of suspects. Are they capable of the crime? Could they have done it? What would compel them to do so?”

  “Any of them could be capable,” Bayani said, “but why would they want to mess with your blog?”

  “One of the tabloids could be paying them for a story,” I suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Victoria allowed, “but I don’t know when you think any of these people on your list would have had the opportunity. It can be time-consuming to get through the network’s security and firewalls. We’ve all been together most of the time.”

  “Most of the time,” Bayani repeated ominously.

  Victoria shot him a look, but continued. “If it will put your mind at ease, perhaps we should watch these three over the next couple of days. See if anything about their behavior warrants suspicion.”

  “Good idea,” Bayani agreed enthusiastically. “No one knows about the tracking but us, so they won’t know we’re watching.”

  Victoria folded her arms. “You, sir, are enjoying this entirely too much.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “Haven’t you figured out yet that drama is fun?”

  I was pretty sure Bayani was joking, but I hoped he remembered that attitude. Because I had the feeling that if we went ahead with our amateur investigation, we had a lot of “fun” in store for us.

  Travel tip: Costa Rica possesses about 5 percent of the total world’s biodiversity. Remember that this biodiversity extends into the insect world.

  The next day, since it was only drizzling instead of full-on raining, we decided to go ahead with the cloud forest walk that kept getting postponed.

  Logan and I had to figure out how not to let our sponsor’s clothing gifts get completely covered up by our mandatory rain slickers. I had to come to terms with being filmed wearing rubber farm boots. Daniel did my hair special for the combination of rain and humidity by pulling it back into two French braids that merged into one at the nape of my neck. The style showed off my new Marc earrings.

  “Do you like it?” he asked proudly when he was done.

  I assured him that I did, but to be honest, he could have teased my hair into a full bouffant and I wouldn’t have known any different. I was too busy watching my suspects and formulating theories. I was anxious to see if Bayani, Logan, or Victoria came up with anything similar.

  I had concentration issues on the tour as well, and after being scolded by Liz a dozen times to look “engaged,” I finally signaled the rest of the group that it was time for a break. While everyone else took five, I grabbed Logan, Bayani, and Victoria and told them we needed to talk. Now. We ducked behind a big tree to discuss what we’d found.

  Logan and I unplugged our lavs and bent our heads together. “I’m telling you, it’s Claudia,” I insisted. “She’s so emotionless.”

  “Yes, but Estefan is always watching everyone,” Logan said. “Watching, watching, watching. It’s kind of creepy.”

  “Or it could be Marco,” Bayani put in. “Why is he always casing out the farm? Suspicious.”

  “He’s not casing out anything,” Victoria argued. “He’s walking. Getting exercise. There’s a difference.”

  “Oh, there you are!”

  We all jumped in unison and turned around to find Liz standing behind us in her jungle khakis, with her hands on her hips and a perplexed look on her face. “Do I want to know what you four are up to?”

  “We’re just checking out this bromeliad,” Logan said without missing a beat. “There’s a frog in it. Look.”

  I found his hand and squeezed it. Nice save.

  He nodded toward the bright red plant, and I looked closer, catching my breath. There really was a little frog nestled among the leaves. I had to hide my surprise since I was supposed to have been already looking at it, so I couldn’t show how awed I was. The colors of the little guy were incredible. He had crimson-red eyes and tiny orange feet with a little round sucker at the tip of each toe. His back was leaf green, but his sides were blue like Arenal Lake in the sunlight.

  “It looks like a red-eyed leaf frog,” Victoria said, slipping right back into lesson mode. “Notice how well it blends in with its environment.”

  Which was true. You wouldn’t think that anything so colorful would blend in instead of stand out, but in the cloud forest, where everything was green, with random bursts of color, he was perfectly camouflaged.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Liz cooed, and then yelled over her shoulder, “Claudia! Marco! Here!”

  “Shh,” Victoria reminded her. “We don’t want to get too close.”

  Immediately, everyone in the group hovered around, pointing out the tree frog, talking about the tree frog, filming the tree frog. And while they watched the tree frog, I watched them, looking for a tell, a sign—anything that would give the hacker away. Marco glanced up as I was studying him, and suddenly his face changed, became a complete blank.

  The tree frog quickly had enough of being examined and hopped off to hide among the leaves. Once it was gone, Marco suggested we come see the quetzal bird he and Claudia had been filming earlier. Everyone filed back up the trail except for Liz, who hung back to bring up the rear. I was second to last.

  “Strange,” she mused as she walked behind me, “how your mics keep hitting dead spots. I do hope we won’t have to resort to having Claudia follow you around with a boom. That would be most inconvenient.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  I hurried ahead of her, my footsteps muffled by the spongy moss on the cloud forest floor. Liz made me nervous. Wouldn’t it be weird if she was actually the one who hacked into my account? It was an intriguing thought, since she was a very unlikely suspect.

  I had just about caught Victoria to tell her my addition to the suspect pool when she cried out, and then limped over to lean against a tree, obviously in pain.

  “What’s the matter?” I hurried over to her to see if I could help. “Did you twist your ankle?”

  She pressed her lips into a thin straight line and shook her head. “Bite,” she managed to say. “Something bit me.”

  My hands went cold. At the beginning of the walk, Marco had warned us about tu
rning over rocks or even leaves and potentially disturbing a poisonous snake or a spider or even a dart frog. What if whatever bit Victoria was poisonous?

  “Marco!” I yelled. “We need help!” Even though he was a top suspect, he was our guide and knew the forest well. He would know what to do.

  Sure enough, in no time, he rushed back down the trail to look at Victoria’s foot, carefully peeling back her sock. “It’s a spider bite all right. From the size of the punctures, I’d guess a wanderer. You didn’t happen to see it, did you?”

  Victoria shook her head. Her face had gone gray.

  “Probably not much to worry about aside from the pain,” Marco assured her. “Except for allergies. You’re not allergic to anything, are you?”

  Victoria closed her eyes and took a deep breath before answering. “Yes.”

  “What are you allergic to?”

  She looked down at her foot. “Spider bites.”

  “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” I asked for about the tenth time that morning.

  Mama Tica had given Victoria some antihistamine pills when we returned to the farm and had offered to call a doctor, but Victoria, in true Victoria fashion, insisted she’d be fine. That night, she had been unable to sleep because her foot was throbbing, but she didn’t want to disturb anyone, so she quietly soaked her foot in the hopes that the swelling would go down. It didn’t. By morning, it was clear she had a serious problem on her hands.

  She was trying to hobble down the stairs when my mom saw her and sounded the alarm. Within minutes, the entire group gathered in the front room, where Victoria had managed to make it to a chair, and arrangements were quickly made to have the bite looked at.

  “Does it hurt bad?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said again, not even bothering to correct my grammar. That omission told me much more than her words.

  I shot a panicked look toward my dad, and he hooked one hand around the back of his neck. “That’s it,” he said, “we’re going to cancel the segment for today and go with you to the hospital.”