He is the predator, I am the prey, and my body has decided only absolute stillness can save me. I wish I could say I could fight it, grabbing the stun gun tighter as I struggle against the paralysis. However, that would be lying, because in this moment there is nothing except life-strangling fear.
Something blocks my view of the predator, and I distantly recognize Emily’s voice. She says something to the doorman, takes the driver’s license, hands it to the girl. Her words are garbled as she turns to me, grabs my arm, and pulls me outside, my body resisting all the while.
Outside, I’m still numb. I’m distantly aware of Emily going through my bag, prying my hand off the stun gun, and pawing through the contents until she comes up with a blister pack of olanzapine, breaks out a pill, and slips it under my tongue. She zips my bag up, pushes me back against the wall, and pushes down on my shoulders a few times, harder and harder, until I finally sit on a bench.
I sit and stare directly ahead without moving. Emily sighs and pulls out her phone.
It’s maybe ten minutes later when I turn my head and look at her.
“Why’d you get involved?” Emily says.
My brain tries to reconnect with my vocal cords. “She needed help.”
“You can’t help.”
“I can, I can help people like her.”
“No,” Emily says. “You can barely keep yourself going. Don’t interfere in other people’s shit. Come on, this is us.”
She grabs me by the elbow, pulls me toward a car idling by the curb.
Tomorrow I’ll replay this conversation in my head. If she was less drunk she might have said something different, encouraged me for trying, and told me I will eventually be able to do it. I’m not sure which Emily is right.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE doesn’t start with abuse. It begins with charm, love, and seduction. I know this from personal experience. My husband was a paragon of support, a loving partner who comforted me when I was going through my biggest professional challenge. That lasted one year, five months, and six days.
Abusers know exactly how long it takes to establish dependency. There’s nothing random about their behavior. Place a group of domestic violence offenders together in a room, and they’ll compare notes. How long before you move? When do you suggest they quit their job? Six, twelve, or eighteen months before it’s okay to threaten them? They approach their victims like an experienced bank robber planning a high-stakes heist.
I’ve researched Nancy and Todd’s relationship, looking through old photos, status updates, and especially the messages Nancy exchanged with her best friend. I read secondhand how Todd told Nancy he loved her, how he appreciated the beauty she created as an interior designer. Later, he disclosed that he wanted to overcome the abuse he survived as a child and start a family with her. Nancy gushed to her friend about how funny and smart he was, how she loved to stare into his blue eyes.
They married, and then with the predictability that comes from thousands of these cases, he isolated her. He lost his job, seemingly through no fault of his own, and got a new job outside of Santa Clara with a tech startup. She moved a thousand miles to a town with no family, no friends. Because she once said she dreamed of a farm house, he bought a home far out in the foothills. They were in one of the biggest, most well-off metropolitan areas in the world, yet she was still alone.
Then, when she was separated from any kind of support, the violence started, hand-in-hand with the threats he would kill her if she left, and then he would kill himself.
At least, the last bit is my conjecture, based on the patterns of domestic violence. Because her online trail slowly fades after they move to Santa Clara, and there’s no way to be sure. At some point he probably began monitoring what she posted on Tomo. Then one day there’s no data going in or out of their house when he’s not there, which means that he took away her access to a computer or even a phone.
This is the most dangerous time of all.
I’m in the VW van, parked in a multi-level garage downtown. It’s a great viewpoint with wi-fi access to hundreds of locations. Using the directional antenna I glom onto a strong open signal a few blocks away.
I will fly down to Palo Alto on Wednesday, in theory to visit Tomo headquarters. I want to do a bit of last minute research before I go because there’s so little data available from Nancy right now that I must take more active measures.
Todd should be home now, and he’s got a smartphone, and it’s on, and it runs Tomo. He checks into Tomo every day to visit Nancy’s profile, her parents, and her best friend.
There’s a tiny part of me that wonders if she’s already taken off, and he’s simply not telling anyone. Or if he’s already killed her. Strange as it might seem, I won’t kill him if Nancy is already dead. I’m not doing this for vengeance. I’m doing it so people can rebuild their lives. On the other hand, he’ll probably repeat the pattern.
Still, I’ve got to know.
I’m sitting in my chair in the back of the van, curtains drawn. Cameras monitor all four directions and feed a small display to warn me in case anyone approaches, and another panel displays the status of my private onion-routing network. I lost two nodes last week, which happens from time to time. Eventually someone climbs up on a roof for maintenance or cleaning, discovers one of my solar-powered computers, and picks it up. Then the unit self-destructs, and I’ve lost a node. Still, the network comprises three hundred live routers, more than enough to securely route my packets and hide my origination point.
I’ve got a connection to the router in Nancy and Todd’s house, which I’ve usurped so I can intercept all their traffic. Every fifteen minutes, the Tomo app on Todd’s phone checks for notifications. My code running inside Tomo’s data center receives the request and responds with the control packets to set debug mode on Tomo.
The console prints out “debug mode on,” and I’m in. Now the app will accept an extended set of commands, and I turn the microphone on.
I listen and hear only muffled, distant sounds. Someone washing dishes. Maybe talking. I turn up the volume as far as I can, which only results in louder noises in a background of hiss, the conversation too indistinct to make out. I suppress the camera indicator light, and turn on the front and back cameras. Nothing. No light at all. More time goes by, more distant sounds. The accelerator says the phone is absolutely motionless, lying on its back.
After a half hour of this, I risk turning on the screen for a second to throw off a little light for the camera to see by. I’m staring at something tan, with a piece of wood running across the screen. I tilt my head from side to side trying to puzzle it out. If I were to guess, I’d say I’m looking at the underside of a desk. Like maybe the phone is in a drawer. This whole exercise will be fruitless if the phone is stuck in a drawer.
I sit back and settle in for the long haul. I never know what might turn up. A few minutes later my speakers erupt in a roar of sound. The accelerator says the phone jiggled back and forth. There’s a bloom of light, and the drawer is open, and the front camera is aimed at a woman staring at the phone.
I see her grow frustrated, and realize she must be trying to unlock the phone.
I leap forward and bend over my keyboard, desperate to remember the code to unlock the screen without the password.
“What are you doing?” A man’s voice.
“Nothing.” A woman’s voice as the camera image shifts. I glimpse her backside as she puts the phone back in the drawer.
“You’re trying to use the phone again,” he says. “You know it’s not good for you. Those people are trying to make you think you’re unhappy. They don’t understand you the way I do.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Don’t lie!” he yells.
My stomach clenches at those words and I’m going to be sick. I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake. I can’t handle this. I try to reach for the keyboard, to cut the sound, but my hand is frozen and I can’t breathe.
More crying. A scream.
Todd yells, “Don’t fucking raise your hand against me.”
A release valve inside me lets loose and vomit spews from my mouth, covering the laptop. I hit my head on the table, and my vision goes gray and fades away.
* * *
I wake up and everything is wrong. My face is in a pool of vomit and I retch again, dry-heaving with disgust.
I pry my body off the floor, putting my hand in the vomit. I climb to my knees, weak, so very weak. I wipe my hand on my pants, and realize I’ve pissed myself.
I’m still on the floor, leaning against the wall of the van, covered in piss, tears, and puke, when I notice dozens of blinking lights on the screen above me on the tabletop.
I’ve passed out, this much is clear. Maybe from pure fright. During my recovery, after the amputation, they warned me this could happen. When the body undergoes something so traumatic, the mind can’t cope, and it blacks out to protect itself. I find a napkin to wipe my face. When I touch my forehead, pain blossoms as I encounter a swollen bump. I must have hit my head. Maybe that’s why I was out.
I glance at the clock, try to remember what time it was before. I’ve been out for an hour. That’s not why my screen is full of blinking alarms. Something happened to my onion routing network. I grab another napkin and wipe away the worst of the vomit on the keyboard, then type a few commands.
Four nodes have dropped off the Internet because the underlying latency suddenly changed, tripping my counter-surveillance triggers.
If someone discovered the onion network and wanted to backtrace the connection to me, they’d subvert an individual node, like I did with Todd’s network router, and make all the traffic flow through them.
Even with the connection intercepted, they couldn’t read the payload data since I’m using three-layer encryption, stacking AES, Serpent and Twofish. Even the NSA’s new datacenter shouldn’t be able to crack that combination anytime soon.
Whoever is monitoring would instead look to see where the node received traffic from, and node by node, they’d try to trace each connection until they reached all the way to me. If it is the NSA, and if their capabilities are as powerful as I’ve heard, they might use the pattern formed by the size and speed of my network packets, then see where those patterns repeat in the Internet.
Either way, by observing and copying the traffic in real time, they’ve minutely affected the latency of packets. This is what I’ve detected. In four different nodes. Across the network. This can only mean one thing: someone powerful monitoring me, trying to figure out who I am.
I hit a button and kill the connection. The routing display fades away, leaving my heart thumping in my chest. Who is trying to find me? How close did they get? Though I possess a big bag of security tricks, I can’t tell you how many nodes in the onion network could be compromised, and still have the network be able to guarantee my anonymity.
If they’re onto me, I’m fucked. Kill someone in self-defense, and you can get away with it, even if your friendships evaporate and coworkers suddenly avoid you at all costs. Kill dozens of people in premeditated ways, and you’re going to jail. It doesn’t matter that I’m rescuing people.
Now I’m truly panicked. I’ve got to decamp ASAP, regardless of how shitty I feel.
Then I remember why I was here in the first place. Nancy is in danger. Immediate, extreme danger. What can I do?
I grab the directional antenna to change networks, pointing it around wildly, my hand trembling so much I can’t establish a connection at first. Finally, I get a strong signal and VPN into work, then remote desktop to a machine in San Diego I compromised, and launch Skype. Using a text-to-voice synthesizer I phone in a domestic violence call to the Santa Clara police.
My vision and hearing are clouded, and I’m starting to disassociate from my body. I need to extricate myself, but my call to the police isn’t sufficient by itself. I find a shelter hotline for Santa Clara, someone who will actually drive out there and remove Nancy from the house. Because when the police release Todd, as they do too often, if Nancy is still there, her risk will increase.
At last, I’m done. I’ve used the system the way it was designed, and I pray it’s enough. In the back of my mind, I know it isn’t. I know the stats. Five intercessions, on average, to get out.
I kill the power to the computers, move up front, and drive away.
* * *
I’m still covered in puke, although I’m already trying to make a plan. The van is totally fucked. I was never under the impression I could hide all my DNA evidence, but I took every precaution I could. I showered and used clean clothes before I entered. I wore a hat, hairnet, or hairspray to cut down on shedding. Once a week I rode Max, our light transit, to work. Sitting in a corner where the surveillance cameras didn’t reach, I swept up hair and dust, which I blew all over the van the next time I entered, so there was the DNA of hundreds of people.
But now there’s vomit, sweat and urine, and it’s gone who knows where. If I were an international spy, I’d possess some amazing way to sanitize the van, or at least destroy it in a fiery blaze so hot every bit of DNA evidence is destroyed. Sadly, I don’t, and if I give it a try, I’ll end up creating a suspicious fire that would fail to destroy the DNA and instead would trigger an arson investigation.
I drive a few blocks from my house, the closest I’ve ever brought the van to home, park it, and walk home, carrying a bag of electronic equipment. I nod to a neighbor I recognize and cross the street so she doesn’t smell the puke on my clothes, smiling slightly to avoid weird-neighbor vibes.
At home I shower, change clothes, and stick in a wash. I grab a few hundred in cash, a shawl, and a wide-brimmed hat, all of which I throw in a bag. Once in the van, I don the hat and shawl and take the van to a car wash specializing in detailing. I pay in cash to deep-clean the interior, aware the whole time of the surveillance cameras all around. There’s not much I can do. Going other places would expose me to more surveillance cameras, creating more of a record of my existence, this mysterious woman who details an old VW van. I sit in the car wash and read People . . . for hours.
Then I swap plates, drive it up to Seattle, and leave it with a full tank of gas near a park with homeless people camping out, the window partway down and the keys in the ignition.
I walk away, glancing back once. I liked that van. I only ever used it as a secret office, yet I dreamed of camping at the beach in it, in my imaginary normal life. I pay cash for the bus back to Portland.
CHAPTER 10
* * *
DANIEL PEERS around my screen from where he sits on his side of his desk. “Wake up, Angie. You had all weekend to relax.”
“Right.” I’m sitting in Daniel’s office, my laptop balanced on the edge of his desk. I suck down more coffee, bone-weary from the unexpected day trip to Seattle combined with a night of worry. I still don’t know what happened to my network of onion routers, and haven’t had a chance to investigate.
“Can we still optimize ads for PrivacyGuard customers?” he asks.
Marketing’s new numbers for the PrivacyGuard adoption rate has Advertising in a panic. It means a massive shift in revenue for the company, and a probable increase in average revenue per customer. The real problem is the new revenue will flow directly to Product without passing through Advertising. The VPA, Matthew O’Connelly, had a shitstorm in his office when he found out. Shit only flows one way in a corporation . . . downhill.
I partially close my laptop screen. “Daniel, you’re missing the point. The reason people would pay for PrivacyGuard is because they don’t want to be marketed to. They don’t want personalized ads. They’re asking to be left alone.”
“That’s not going to happen. O’Connelly won’t accept anything less than six bucks per user ad revenue. Talk to O’Connelly about it.”
“Ok, fine. I’ll email him right now.” I open my laptop back up and place my hand on the keyboard.
Daniel le
ans forward from his chair and pushes my screen back down.
I snatch my hand away, and hiss at him. My legs react involuntary, moving me toward the door, and I warily keep an eye on Daniel. I force myself back into the seat, will myself to stay there and not make a scene. As usual, Daniel doesn’t notice a thing.
“What the heck, Angie? I didn’t mean you should really talk to O’Connelly. It’s a given. We must increase ad revenue. Optimized ads are more than double the revenue of non-optimized ads. Isn’t there something you can do with, uh, metadata?”
Torvalds help me, there is nothing more dangerous than when a manager learns a piece of lingo. “Metadata is still data. It’s the time it was posted, who it came from, where it was posted, who liked it. Everything other than the actual content itself.”
Daniel looks hopeful.
I shake my head. “Metadata is still personalization.”
“Well, is there something we can do without personalization?”
“Sort of, maybe. There’s a grey zone.” I wave my hands at my computer. “We can disregard everything we’ve got on their profile, their likes and dislikes, topics, and friends. We could optimize on the basis of interaction with the ads themselves: which ones they click on or hover over. We could visually and geographically optimize based on IP address geolocation. It won’t be based on anything truly personal, although now we’re getting into semantics of the word ‘personal.’ Customers will see this as an invasion of their privacy. What’s going to happen when the users realize they’re paying for PrivacyGuard and they’re not getting it?”
Daniel laughs. “What’s going to happen? Nothing’s going to happen. They’ll sit there and take it.”
Adrenaline floods my system, and I stop myself short of screaming; but for once Daniel, who is oblivious to nearly everything, sees my expression and edges away from me, his fear showing in the widening of his eyes. My own breath is ragged. Sit there and take it. Not on my watch.
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