“I’ll be right back,” she said to the group as she headed toward the cellar doors, unfurling the cable as she went. She figured she had about fifty feet of it. She hoped that would be enough.
In the bright light of day, Caroline’s vision went white, but she didn’t slow down. She needed to provide Curtis with his torrent quickly or else lose her window to hack Security Images. Examining the backyard, she looked for something to climb.
The fence overgrown with ivy in the corner of the backyard would work.
She glanced at the house across the yard, saw no one. If she got caught, she had some lame excuses she could use. Or try to use, anyway. She hoped not to find out how bad they were.
Tucking the cantenna under one arm, she scaled the fence until she was high enough to see the top of USC’s redbrick administration building in the distance, amid a gaggle of low-rise offices and apartment complexes. She wedged the cantenna into a tangle of vines, facing USC, then hopped back down into the yard.
When she returned to the cellar, she found Curtis sitting in front of his monitor.
“Now?” he asked, his eyes hopeful behind his blue glasses.
Caroline nodded.
Curtis navigated to eight different websites on four different screens.
He brought up YouTube videos of pets performing unexpected acts of heroism.
He brought up a group of Swedish musicians who played an array of vacuum cleaners like bagpipes.
He brought up a montage of flash mobs from India.
All of the programs and images ran unimpeded.
“Huzzah!” Curtis said in a stage whisper. “I’ve dreamed of watching The Fugitive, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and The Care Bears at the same time.”
He closed his eyes and bounced his head up and down in satisfaction. “It will be a perfect symphony of ideas and sound.”
“We have a deal,” Caroline reminded him.
“Yes, a deal.” Curtis stood. He removed his glasses and offered them to her.
“I’m cool for now,” said Caroline, waving away the offer, “but thanks.”
“If you need them, they are here.” Curtis folded the glasses, put them at Caroline’s elbow, and gave them a gentle pat-pat.
Hitch drifted up to Caroline’s shoulder. “Now what?”
“I make sure no one can trace us,” Caroline said. Enough people had already been hurt on her account. “Then, once I get into Security Images, we’ll need to find a way to narrow the segment of surveillance footage we need to review. I’m hoping the website has decent search capabilities so we’re not stuck watching days of footage.”
Reaching Security Images’ website, Caroline prompted the password page.
Finding the username would be fairly simple. Permutations of “BanCorp” would probably yield a hit. But hacking the password could take a while. She needed an effective algorithm but didn’t have time to write her own.
She opted for a brute-force attack using a bot. She set the parameters, using every possible combination of corporate-identifying information. Combinations of letters and numbers, symbols and underscores. It would work. Eventually.
The next hours passed slowly. And silently.
Whenever anyone started to speak, Curtis held up an index finger and glared at the would-be speaker, who’d fall back into muteness.
Occasional sounds of shuffling from the ceiling above gave testament to the presence of Curtis’s upstairs neighbors and hammered home the rational nature of Curtis’s caution.
Soon, more of those neighbors would be arriving as students came home from class.
Caroline wondered how long Curtis had lived beneath the house. Not that she’d ask him, lest she receive The Look and dreaded finger wag.
And so the group waited.
Jake sat on a pile of unused cables and discarded keyboards, petting the dog.
Hitch hunched his shoulders, pacing, probably wishing for a drink of something stronger than the water they’d subsisted on for the last forty-eight hours.
Caroline chewed her dirty cuticle, watching the brute-force attack flicker by at many thousands of attempts per minute.
Finally, the screen froze.
Then everything changed.
They were in.
Caroline retook her seat at Curtis’s workstation. It was time to figure out how Security Images arranged its data.
The answer was a relief. The company saved the footage for each bank client’s account by bank branch, date, and hour—all relatively searchable, once she found out what time the last Oasis withdrawal had occurred at the Hope Street branch.
Pulling out the spreadsheet of information about the affidavit withdrawals, Caroline read the list of transactions until she found the information she sought: the last Oasis withdrawal from the Hope Street branch of BanCorp had been at 10:35 a.m. on September 13.
She navigated to the archived footage for 10:00 a.m. Though that was the time stamp on the withdrawal, the person she sought would’ve entered the bank sometime before then to begin his or her transaction. She needed a good image of a face.
Caroline hit “Play.”
Black-and-white footage of the bank appeared on the screen.
There were no patrons at 10:00 a.m., just a handful of bank employees, getting ready for the day. Preparing coffee. Placing cookies at the private banking desk.
Caroline advanced the feed. In fast motion, the employees scurried, zooming from one side of the screen to the other in efficiency the directors of the bank could only hope to imagine.
At 10:22, a man entered the door of the bank. He wore a pin-striped suit, and his hair had been neatly combed to one side. He carried a briefcase in his right hand.
When the man in pinstripes reached the teller, he pulled a wallet from his back pocket and removed his driver’s license. He slid it under the Plexiglas wall for the teller to inspect.
Looking up from the driver’s license, the teller gestured toward the private banking desk.
With a nod, the patron joined the teller. He sat down with his back to the camera.
“Come on,” Caroline muttered. She still hadn’t gotten a look at the man’s face.
The man opened his briefcase and removed a stack of papers. He arranged them in two piles in front of the teller.
“The wills and affidavits,” Caroline surmised.
The teller took the papers with him back behind the Plexiglas wall.
“Now he’ll cut the checks,” Caroline said.
Sure enough, the teller returned minutes later, holding a pile of thin pieces of paper.
One by one, the teller presented them to the patron, who placed the whole pile inside his briefcase. Rising, he locked the briefcase and rose to his feet.
As he exited the bank, the man finally looked up toward the camera, which must have been located near a clock.
Caroline froze the image.
“Gotcha,” she said.
The man’s face, tilted up toward the camera, was bland. Eyes neither too far apart nor too close together. Chin neither too pointy nor too round. A neatly combed side part gave him the visage of a Republican congressman.
Moving quickly, Caroline copied the clip and sent it to herself at the retrieval point she’d used to store the BanCorp data her dad had let her swipe. She’d access it again later, when she had time to study the image. For now though, one thing was clear.
“It isn’t Simon Reed or Conrad Vizzi,” Caroline announced. The fact was surprising. She’d expected either the operating head of Oasis or the on-site director of Oasis to be the bagman—the guy that handled the money. Clearly, that was wrong. This new man with the bland face and fancy suit was someone she hadn’t yet encountered. Identifying him wouldn’t be hard for Albert. He had facial recognition software at his disposal.
Glancing toward Curtis, Caroline loaded FreedomPop onto the computer. After running it through a VPN server to hide the source of the call, she dialed the number printed at the bottom of Albert�
��s business card.
At the sound of the buzz and pause of the Internet phone trying to connect, Curtis emerged from the shadows, frowning.
“I promise to make it fast,” Caroline said, her eyes pleading.
A creak of the floorboards above her head reminded her of Curtis’s other stakes.
“And quiet,” she added, turning down the volume.
With a single nod, Curtis gave his assent.
Exhaling, Caroline prepared to explain what she wanted from Albert.
But instead of hearing Albert’s voice, Caroline heard his secretary’s prerecorded voice mail greeting, advising callers that Mr. Khaing was in trial. Caroline recalled Albert saying he’d be in court each day and would not be available to talk until close to 8:30 p.m.
She hung up. She couldn’t leave the prosecutor a voice mail without risking getting him in trouble. In the silence, Caroline realized there was one other person whose voice she desperately wanted to hear. Someone who might bolster her spirits, which presently felt about as buried beneath the earth as the cellar where she now sat.
Caroline dialed her father’s phone number.
A woman’s voice came onto the line. “Hello.”
Caroline’s stomach sank. She’d called her father’s cell phone number, but the voice on the line wasn’t William Auden’s. It was Lily’s. Caroline’s stepmother.
“Is my dad around?” Caroline asked, trying to keep her tone light.
“The police are looking for you,” Lily said.
Caroline restrained a groan.
“I know, but I didn’t do anything wrong—”
“Then go to the police.” Lily’s tone brokered no dissent. Unspoken, but as loud as an air horn was her judgment that turning oneself in was what any law-abiding citizen would do.
“I can’t,” Caroline began but then stopped. Any effort to explain herself was doomed to failure. While she strongly doubted her father had ever told his new wife about his daughter’s hacking exploits—and his near incarceration because of them—Lily seemed to have some kind of sixth sense for dishonesty.
“Can I just please talk to my dad?” Caroline asked.
“No,” Lily said.
“No?” Caroline echoed, her voice rising slightly.
A pop of floorboards overhead bespoke the presence of upstairs neighbors.
“Why not?” Caroline lowered her voice, controlling her tone.
“I saw the police reports from your father’s probation.”
Caroline exhaled. So much for Lily having no basis for her poor opinion of her.
“I wasn’t going to bring that up,” Lily continued. “I’m not your mother, and I don’t need to scold you for what’s in the past, but this latest incident—”
“But I didn’t do it,” Caroline said, her voice rising again.
“You need to learn to play by the rules, Caroline. You’re not better than the rest of us. The sooner you learn that, the easier life will be for you.”
Caroline’s face flushed.
“Please tell my dad I called,” she said, trying hard to control the fury that roiled her soul and threatened to break her composure.
“No. I won’t let you destroy him.” Lily’s tone let Caroline know she’d block her calls, lose the phone, or do whatever else she needed to do to keep her wayward stepdaughter from contacting her husband. “Turn yourself into the police. It’s the only way.”
“Please, Lily—”
The line went dead.
Caroline’s chest flared with anger. She’d planned to talk to her father. To receive his succor. Instead, she’d received a full measure of Lily’s heartless wrath. Turning herself in to the police was absurd. Leaving the streets for a holding cell was a death wish. It was wrong—all wrong—and Lily was a jerk to demand it when she knew nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Fueled by rage and humiliation, Caroline brought her hands back to the keyboard.
If no one could help her, she’d help herself. Lily was right about one thing—the rules would be no impediment. She’d e-mail her father. She’d hack Oasis. She’d do whatever she needed to do to bring down Oasis and save herself.
But then the floorboards creaked again overhead.
The sounds were followed by a rhythmic series of thuds.
Footsteps. Growing closer.
Caroline froze.
A shroud of dread, heavy and horrible, descended on her. She’d been too loud. So late in the day, the house was full of residents. Residents upon whose obliviousness Curtis’s shelter depended. She wished she could undo the horrible conversation. She wished she could go back in time and hang up when Lily’s voice had answered the phone, but it was too late.
The ceiling creaked again. Directly overhead.
A flash of terror reflected off the faces of everyone in the basement.
Caroline imagined someone squatting low, head tilted to one side. Listening.
She willed the steps to move away.
Finally, the creaking ceased and the footsteps retreated, fading into the distance.
The residents of the basement let out a collectively held breath.
But Curtis rose from the beanbag.
“It is time for you to go,” he said, jabbing a finger toward the cellar’s entrance.
Caroline looked around for something to waylay him, some other tool she could offer, some inducement to give her more time at the computer. There was one essential task she hadn’t yet accomplished. She needed more time.
But then a better idea occurred to her.
Standing up from the makeshift computer desk, she held her hands up, palms facing out in the universal sign for surrender.
“We’re leaving right now,” she said in a soothing tone. “Soon, you’ll be all alone with Professor Graverstein with all of your new bandwidth. You’ll be able to watch whatever you want.” As she spoke, Caroline edged toward one of the piles of junk that filled the cellar’s corners. “There’s just one last thing I need from you before we go away and leave you with the professor.”
CHAPTER 22
Standing on the sidewalk outside the Victorian house, Caroline smiled for the first time in days. Not the grimace she’d worn upon finding decent leftovers in a dumpster. Not the half grin of satisfaction she’d allowed herself after hacking Southwestern Law School. No, this was a real smile.
It wasn’t the first stars appearing in the early evening sky that sparked Caroline’s joy.
It wasn’t the fresh air, enjoyable after the dank mildew of the cellar.
It was the laptop she held.
Sure, it was ancient and weighed close to seven pounds. Sure, it would run slow and have a pixelated screen. But it would allow her to research and communicate and hack. Once she’d loaded Ubuntu onto it, the world would open up to her. Some people went to war with planes and guns and tanks. Caroline would go to war with her weapon of choice—a computer.
“I need a café with Wi-Fi,” Caroline said, turning to her uncle.
Caroline ignored the smell of coffee. She ignored the baseball game on the TV behind the barista. She ignored the flyer she’d pulled off a telephone pole outside the café, showing a picture of her and inviting the public to contact the authorities with any information about the prime suspect in the paletería incident. All that mattered was the laptop.
She typed as fast as she could. She had to wire funds from her bank account to Western Union. Though the steps weren’t complicated, each took time. Use a proxy server to access her account. Set up a link to Western Union. Authorize the wire transfer.
While she was taking those steps, she remained out in the open. Exposed.
Caroline consoled herself that she’d be back underground soon. As soon as she’d secured the funds to finance her war against Oasis, she’d become invisible again. But for now, she sat with her head down, her hair falling across her eyes, trying to look like an antisocial college student cramming for a test.
With a final command, Caroline authorized the
transfer. Jake would be waiting to collect the cash when the wire hit. It would be almost all of the money in her account, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She needed cash. As much as she could get. As fast as she could get it.
Meanwhile, Hitch was gathering their meager belongings from the alleys and nooks where they’d stashed everything before going to Curtis’s house. They’d all meet at the Royal Residence Hotel at 7:30.
They’d passed the hotel on the edge of Skid Row as they’d departed Curtis’s underground lair. Sandwiched between a marijuana dispensary and a pawnshop, most of the hotel’s windows faced a windowless establishment that advertised NAKED GIRLS ALL DAY LONG. Caroline could almost smell the syphilis.
Her choice of lodging wasn’t driven by penny-pinching. It was driven by administrative realities. Reputable hotels required credit cards. Disreputable hotels didn’t. And anyway, Caroline didn’t need luxury. Just enough space for three people to sleep. And Wi-Fi. The clerk had promised they’d find both when they returned with the cash to secure the room.
Caroline checked the time.
She still had twenty-five minutes before she was supposed to meet Jake and Hitch.
She had time to do one more thing.
Linking back to the virtual retrieval point, she grabbed the video clip she’d taken from Security Images. Then she sent it to the e-mail address on Albert’s business card, along with a request that he run it through the Department of Justice’s facial recognition software. Unlike static images, video clips were easy to match against the state driver’s licenses that populated the government’s facial database. She knew Albert would be able to identify the man in pinstripes who was handling the affidavit withdrawals for Oasis.
As soon as the clip finished loading and sending, Caroline snapped the laptop shut and shoved it into the reusable grocery bag she’d snagged from a trash can. It wasn’t the most elegant laptop bag she’d ever owned, but it would do.
She looked up, ready to leave.
And froze.
New patrons had entered the café. Two uniformed policemen.
With her heart slamming against her rib cage, Caroline took quick stock of the café.
There was no back door. Just the screened entryway at the front, by the register. An entryway that the two police officers now blocked.
Proof (Caroline Auden Book 2) Page 22