by Jan Coffey
God, why was it her fate to always hook up with losers and weirdos?
Well, she thought, he wasn’t going to cost her money on those videos, and God only knew what he’d do with her shoes.
Picking up the phone, she called her friend Mary, another waitress at the restaurant. No one was home. She left a voice mail message saying that she was going to her next-door neighbor’s house to pick up a couple of videos she’d loaned him yesterday. Debbie asked her friend to call her back later.
If something happened to her in Lyden’s condo, she thought, then she wanted people knowing about it. She wasn’t going to end up a rotting corpse in anyone’s basement.
Debbie looked one more time out the window at Lyden’s empty parking spot before grabbing her cell phone and going out. They’d had a couple of hours of steady rain early this morning. The sky was still overcast and as gray and dingy as the walls of the restaurant’s kitchen where she worked. Her shoes sank in the mud as she tried to take a shortcut through the bed of evergreens between the two condos. She wiped her feet on the rubber pad in front of Lyden’s door.
To be safe, she pressed the doorbell. No answer. She looked over her shoulder at the quiet street. The only cars that came up to this end of development belonged to the residents of this block.
Debbie turned around and rang the doorbell again, this time following with a couple of knocks on the painted steel door. Again, nothing. She pressed her face against the narrow panel of glass running next to the door. It was dark inside, but she could just make out that the door of Lyden’s basement office was closed. She reached inside her pocket and took out the key. Her hand trembled and it took her couple of tries before she could get the key into the lock.
Debbie slipped inside quickly. Her breath was short. She felt like she’d been running for miles. The smell of stale beer immediately reached her nostrils. Her jean jacket was still on the floor and she picked it up. Hugging the wall, she stayed as far away as she could from the hallway leading to the basement and ran up the stairs. Shards of glass were visible near the top step. Upstairs, she saw the rest of the beer bottle Lyden had flung at her head lying at the foot of the wall. He hadn’t even bothered to clean it up. The dried stain from the beer on the wall and the carpet made her stomach twist.
Everything else looked the same. The videos were exactly where she’d left them. Debbie felt like she was tiptoeing through the apartment as she grabbed the two movie cases and her shoes and started back again toward the steps.
Lyden’s girlfriend’s framed picture drew her attention at the last minute. Debbie paused before it, studying the woman. It was impossible to say how old this Emily was. She had a delicate, fine-boned face, not too much loose skin to flap around when she got old. Debbie guessed that she was much older than Lyden, though. It was the sophistication in the expression. The pose was one of a teacher. Not even a hint of a smile. This Emily was someone very serious. A high-collared shirt, fitted sport jacket, diamond stud earrings, no other jewelry. The picture was definitely taken to make her look professional.
Debbie walked to the open door of the bedroom. Lyden was obviously not one to make a bed. The clothes he was wearing yesterday lay on the floor where he’d dropped them. Debbie looked up at the poster on the wall. The bathing suit’s cut was pretty conservative. Still, it was obvious the woman had a decent body. No fat, nice curves in the right places.
She started to turn away and then stopped and looked back at the poster. There was something about the woman’s expression. Emily’s eyes were closed and her face was partially turned away from the camera. She wasn’t posing for the picture. Debbie wondered if she’d even known it was being taken.
Curiosity had replaced fear in Debbie’s mind as she headed back down the steps. She paused in the front hallway, peered briefly through the glass at the deserted street and made up her mind.
The hallway was dark. There were no pictures on the wall. Debbie’s knees felt like they were made of rubber as she pushed herself to the office door. The room was not locked, and the knob turned easily in her hand. The glow from the three computers cast a cool blue light across the room. The soft hum of electronics filled the space. The first thing that Debbie’s gaze focused on were the screens of the computers. They all had the same screensaver—the picture of Emily in the bathing suit.
Debbie shook her head and looked at the dozens of small copies of Emily’s face taped to the edges of the screen. Then she saw the walls.
“Shit,” she breathed.
She was everywhere. Every inch of the walls from the top of the desks to the ceiling was a collage of pictures and photographs. Debbie turned around. Emily looked back at her from more enlarged photographs mixed in amid endless computer printouts, newspaper clippings, flyers.
“God, you’re more screwed up than I thought.”
Twenty-Four
The Monday morning team meetings that often stretched to two hours were mandatory, and the five to ten minute presentations by each software engineer, updating everyone and their brother about their current projects, were another excruciating part of the routine.
Lyden sometimes felt like he was back in college, tuning out the droning voice of some dead-boring lecturer. It was bad enough sitting through the status reports and time lines and PowerPoint presentations given by his peers and himself. The part he couldn’t stand was the fucking whining by sales and customer service bozos about client complaints. To his thinking, the problems of his company lay with the field engineers. They were all morons. Most of them didn’t know a drive head from a blackhead.
More and more, he found he couldn’t stomach stupidity.
After the meeting ground to an end, Lyden was first out of the conference room. As the rest of them stayed behind to earn extra brownie points, he hurried back to his desk. He needed an Emily fix.
His cubicle was the last one in a row of perfectly aligned squares. The only thing good about it was that it backed up to a window overlooking the parking lot. He’d only gotten it because the guy who was here hadn’t liked the glare. Lyden didn’t give a shit.
The software engineering company occupied the entire third floor of the five-story building. Lyden had set up his computer so he could see anyone walking down the row. No supervisor could poke his head over the short divider. There was no way anyone could see what he had on his PC screen unless they walked inside his cubicle.
He logged in to her e-mail account. As always, she had hundreds of e-mail messages waiting in her in-box. Some other day, with more time on his hands, he would have perused through some of them. Today he was only interested in her sent mail. He wanted to know if she’d been online and who was important enough for her to write to.
There was only one e-mail she’d sent in the past twenty-four hours. It was dated this morning. He opened it.
“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, reading the content a couple of times. How the hell had he missed this shit going on with the detective? When did it start? Lyden hadn’t lost any sleep about it when Conor mentioned it last night. Kids were generally full of shit. But this…
“Keep pushing me, Em,” he muttered under his breath. Detective Simpson and Ms. Doyle obviously needed a little reminder who was in charge…who she really belonged to.
He grabbed his keys and stood up. He didn’t bother to grab his jacket. It was times like this that he especially appreciated living just ten minutes away.
Helen, the busybody department secretary, was coming out of the ladies’ room, and Lyden almost bowled her over as he rounded the corner. He pushed his car keys deep in his pants pocket. She thought she’d been ordained by God to keep track of who came in a minute late or left two minutes early. The fat bitch was a waste of space, but she drove an old car. If she didn’t, Lyden would have taken care of her long before now.
“What’s the rush, Lyden?”
Lyden’s escape route was blocked by the wall of cubicles on one side, the water fountain on the opposite wall, and the
Helen’s XXL body.
“Diarrhea.”
She made a face and pointed behind him. “The men’s room is right there, young fella.”
“Thanks for the help. I’d just as soon shit outside today. It’s good for the grass.”
“Nice mouth.” She glared at him but moved aside enough for Lyden to squeeze past.
He had no doubt that their exchange would reach his boss’s ear before Lyden was out of the parking lot. He’d be called into the corner office before the end of the day, for sure, and have his hand slapped for vulgarity in the workplace.
But he didn’t care about any of that shit right now. He had more important things to attend to. Another step in his grand scheme. And it was time to be moving ahead with it.
Mixed in with her lesson on Monday nights, Emily was known for throwing out the names of one asshole or another that she admired for different reasons. Entrepreneurs, teachers, scientists—any of a number of pompous jerks.
Lyden knew what she was thinking. It was her fantasy list. It was her “who she’d like to fuck” list. He kept track. She’d mentioned Jay Sparks, the millionaire playboy in Miami, three times. Lyden had taken care of that little romance. Nipped it in the bud. He’d arranged for the asshole to have a nice little accident back in September.
Whenever Lyden was pissed off—like now—he simply went to that list to blow off some steam. Shortening that list up a little always made him feel better.
Lyden didn’t try to kid himself. The truth was that he wanted to be on her fantasy list. He wanted to be at the top of it. It’s where he belonged. The code that he, in his own brilliance, had come up with—the control he could exercise over millions of cars on the road at this very minute—earned him that spot.
Enough of being a nice guy. He was done courting her from afar, just one more faceless fan in a legion of fans. The time had come to give her an idea of what he was capable of. It was time to make the princess take notice of him…Lyden Gray.
It was time to get his hands on the goods.
A few others from his building were sneaking out early for lunch, but he was ahead of the rush. Lyden pulled out of the parking space, planning step-by-step what he was about to do. He ran a yellow light at the entrance to the building parking lot. Traffic was light.
The sweetest thing about his entire plan was that he was untouchable. They couldn’t trace him. The vehicle control program was something he’d thought up in college, when he’d still been doing grunt work in the grant project for that douche-bag professor.
Devising the virus had been simple. His genius had surprised even himself. He’d let the idea hang for a while, just thinking about it from time to time. When he’d realized this was an opportunity of a lifetime, he knew he had to plant the trojan and let it lie dormant. Once out of school, he’d developed his abilities to tap into other networks and governmental databanks. Then, suddenly, he was ready to spread his wings, certain that there was no way they could touch him. He’d learned how to make himself one hundred percent invisible.
The traffic lights cooperated, staying green at every intersection on his way home. In seven minutes, he turned into the entrance of his condominium development. On his own street, Lyden spotted Debbie’s car. Five spaces down, he also saw Mr. Romero, sitting behind the wheel of his new Caddy. The engine was running, and the old guy was listening to his radio and smoking a cigar. The poor bastard wasn’t allowed to smoke in his own house.
Lyden parked and answered the old man’s wave as he walked toward his unit. As Lyden turned the key in the lock, his gaze was drawn to a blot of dirt on the doormat. He pushed the door open. He smelled Debbie’s perfume. It was impossible not to notice it. She was there, or had been there pretty recently.
“Debbie,” he called, stepping in. He’d been pissed off before leaving work. Now he was totally ripped. “Where are you?”
Closing the door behind him, Lyden looked down the hall. The door to his office was ajar. He closed the distance in a half dozen angry steps and banged it open. She wasn’t there. But he could smell her. She’d been here, too.
Lyden looked around the place quickly and backed out of the room. He went up the stairs three stairs at a time. Her shoes were gone. So were the videos. He did a quick survey of the bedroom, the kitchen. The bitch had already left.
From the kitchen window, Lyden’s gaze focused on Mr. Romero’s car before looking up at the wall clock.
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready to go to school, bitch?”
Twenty-Five
A steady line of FBI field agents, computer specialists and other experts streamed back and forth between the large conference room and the adjacent computer forensic lab. The university building officially shut down to civilians around ten o’clock. That was only an hour after Emily was able to confirm that the electronic fingerprints of the virus activity she’d seen on Ben’s car were the same ones present on the Petersons’ car and the accident that took place in Miami last month. Three other sites had yet to get back to her, but she knew. The facts were solid enough that, after Adam had called Gina, the local and state police, followed by federal agents, had immediately converged on the building.
She had explained her findings to each new wave of people that swept into the lab. Emily had discovered a trojan horse type virus on the Aston’s board. The virus, after infecting the system, created a back door for someone on the outside to further exploit the system. In this way, the car’s entire drive-by-wire system was made slave to a remote control operator. Part of the exit strategy for the remote user included altering the event log to mask the specific operations. Afterward, the initial virus closed off the back door, effectively disguising the method of entry. Emily had been able to decipher this information by realizing that the virus author had utilized a “root kit,” a software package that replaced standard system tools to disguise certain actions. The virus had the ability to hide itself, but not to someone looking very, very closely. Success lay in reading between the lines.
The FBI Special Agent in Charge was a man named Hinckey who had come in by helicopter from New York. He was a powerfully built man in a charcoal-gray suit, and he’d taken control the moment he arrived. Almost instantaneously, agents were expediting the answers from tests that were being run in New York, Providence and San Diego. Others were following up on what Adam had started, coordinating efforts to test the same hypothesis on new boards in the vehicles of different automakers. The next step would be to figure out how the trojan had been planted in the various makes of cars.
If Emily thought for a moment that with so many “experts” on the job, her presence was no longer required, she quickly realized that she was mistaken. Everyone treated her as the one and only authority. Time was of the essence here. With SAC Hinckey keeping a close watch over the proceedings, she was even interviewed by two agents from the Department of Homeland Security. The possibility of terrorism was not about to be ruled out.
Jeremy Simpson and Adam Stern continued to serve as a shield for her, as well, helping Emily to maintain an ounce of sanity. Her big relief came, though, when Gina arrived from New York. Like a mother bear in search of her cub, she found Emily and whisked her off to a corner.
“You were right,” Emily told the lawyer. “This was more serious than anyone thought.”
“I can do without being right on things like this. How are you holding up?”
“Surprisingly well,” Emily admitted. “Have you heard anything from the hospital?”
“Last I heard, Ben was out of the surgery, but they still had to put a cast on his wrist.” Gina looked around the busy lab. “He’ll be furious that he missed all this action. I have to give him credit, though. Adam and I were ready to kill him when he promised a two-week turnaround to our customers in finishing the investigation. But the way things look now, he may have been right.”
Emily leaned against the wall, suddenly feeling the lack of sleep catching up to all the excitement of this morning. Across
the room, Jeremy stood up. He glanced at his watch and nodded at her, saying something she couldn’t make out to one of the agents before leaving the lab. She looked at the time herself. It was two minutes to twelve. Emily didn’t know what Jeremy planned to do, but from the way he looked at her, she had a feeling it had to do with her stalker. Those troubles seemed so insignificant compared to what was going on here. She turned back to Gina.
“I don’t want to be a voice of doom,” she said in a hushed tone to the attorney. “But the only thing we have so far is a common virus signature in three cars. I’ll feel much better when all six of the vehicles confirm the same results. And I’ll feel great when we can confirm the same thing on some supposedly healthy boards out there.”
Gina looked at her incredulously. “You must need some sleep. That sounds to me like the makings of a national disaster.”
“Not really. It’ll cost a lot of money to identify and recall the units, that’s true. But if the results confirm our hypothesis, we’ll know they have every one of them off the road.” Emily motioned with her head toward the Homeland Security agents visible in a conference room through the large glass window. The middle-aged man and the young woman were both speaking seriously on phones. “Can you imagine some lunatic out there with the ability to control any automobile? Think of what he or she could do. He could shut down highways, tunnels and bridges. Any new car or truck would be a robot that he could use as he wished, and I have a sick feeling crashing them into government buildings would just be the beginning.”
Twenty-Six
Debbie came down the stairs to the front door of her condo, loaded with more than she could carry. In one arm, the two videos she wanted to get rid of perched precariously on top of four textbooks she planned to return to the bookstore on the way to class. A large canvas bag filled with notebooks and textbooks and bottles of water hung from her other shoulder, vying for space with a large pocketbook. She also had clothes for the dry cleaners over that arm. She was definitely overloaded, but she hated running up and down the stairs a couple of times. She could handle it, she told herself.