Catching On Fire

by Sue Knott

  “Where are you now?”

  “Out in the middle of the country, a hundred feet from my car, freezing my toes off.”

  Amir laughed. “I knew you were the most cautious woman on the face of the earth. Good girl.”

  “I’m glad you can laugh about this.”

  “You have done nothing to warrant an arrest. And there is nothing yet to point toward me. I sincerely doubt the FBI is aware of our visit. You said this Bill started dating your friend before we met?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea how he might have taken interest in you?”

  “Rachel’s First Law of Peril.”

  This time Amir roared. “Your laws are the frustration of my existence! What is this law?”

  “Something you could never have possibly foreseen will go wrong.”

  “That is a good law. Are you related to a Mr. Murphy?”

  “Probably. The Irish are all interbred.”

  “I thought we agreed: no exchange of personal information.”

  “Are you telling me you could not tell I was Irish by looking at me?”

  “Point well taken.”

  “So, where does all this leave us?”

  “I am afraid you will have to be extra vigilant. Keep an eye on your watcher. Also, keep your computer with you as much as you possibly can. When it is not with you, hide it well. You must assume that your car and your home could be searched at any time without your knowledge. Find a place to hide your batphones, as you call them. Do not keep information about me or your partner, Jim, on your computers, ever. You need to give the appearance you are working alone. With luck, they will think you a kook and dismiss you.”

  “Great. Kook. Just what I want in some federal file.”

  “Do not worry. If you do these things. We should be safe. The FBI are not the ones hauling people off to Guantanamo.”

  “Guantanamo? This has nothing to do with terrorism!”

  “I know, my little worry blossom. Please, do not fret. I merely meant that the fact that the FBI is involved suggests that they know nothing of your friendship with an Arab. I did not explain myself clearly. I apologize.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to terminate our business relationship?”

  “I am as happy to continue our business relationship as I am to continue our friendship. I received your note. Thank you for…being so understanding.”

  “And thank you for the amazing necklace…I…oh, no! Oh, no! Oh no!”

  “Rachel? What is it? What is wrong? Rachel!”

  I didn’t answer. I was too busy trying to tear off my necklace. I finally got it off and examined it thoroughly.

  “Oh, Amir. I’m sorry. Thank God, everything is okay. I just realized Bill had touched my necklace. But, it’s clean, there’s nothing attached to it.”

  “Rachel, do not do this to me. Just now, the thought of you in danger…I feared I might have to leap from the roof of the building.”

  “Don’t go all Romeo on me Amir…we agreed to just be friends.”

  “I would like you to keep yourself alive nonetheless.”

  “Ditto.”

  “Good night, Ms. Capulet.”

  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Montague.”

  Chapter 31

  I gave my notice at work on Monday morning. I had wondered how they’d handle it. I gave two weeks’ notice, but we were getting a day and a half off for New Year’s…would they just tell me to pack up and go?

  Surprisingly, the agency seemed to regret my leaving. They offered me a $3,000 raise to stay (okay, it wasn’t like they were throwing serious money at me, but at least they made a gesture). They were letting me work the last two weeks (drat!). And I got the feeling I’d be welcome back in the future. All-in-all, my departure was going to be as friendly as I could possibly hope for.

  I used the job change as part of a plan to throw Bill off my tail. When the three of us met for coffee, I sprang my new job on Kim and Bill simultaneously.

  Kim thought I’d found nirvana. “You’re getting more money and working from home? That’s fantastic!”

  Bill wanted all the details. “Who will you be working for?”

  “I’ll actually be kind of working for myself. I’m going to handle all the marketing for a startup company that’s trying to break into the outerwear business. I’ll be working as a consultant, doing a lot of guerilla marketing.”

  “What’s your client’s name?”

  “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.”

  Bill seemed momentarily taken aback, but Kim was giggling. “Rachel’s ad work always has all these nondisclosure clauses. She can never tell us what she’s working on until after it’s out running on TV or in the papers or wherever.”

  “I can tell you it’s a company I did a little bit of freelance work for on the side already. They were really happy with what I’d done and they agreed to a one-year contract.”

  Bill played right into my plan. “So, Rachel, what exactly is ‘guerilla marketing’ anyway?”

  “It’s pretty much any promotional efforts that don’t involve traditional media. Stuff like getting college students to wear t-shirts, hosting attention-getting events, creating viral e-mail campaigns.”

  “You send out computer viruses?”

  I was kind of surprised Bill didn’t know what viral marketing was about…or was he just pretending not to know? “Heavens, no! You try to create something that’s so cool that people forward it to all their friends…then their friends forward it to all their friends. It travels like a virus, but it’s not a virus. Usually it’s just a funny picture or a link to a YouTube video…something like that.”

  “So, what did you do for the company so far?”

  “Mostly just get some t-shirts designed and out there…plus a little bit of website work.”

  By the time we all said goodbye, Bill seemed pretty satisfied with the information I gave him. I was kind of hoping this would help throw him off my trail. I was giving him the information he was looking for openly and honestly. No need to skulk around digging it up.

  Plus, I gave Bill the computer to optimize. Anyone tracking any activity on my mom’s computer would get awfully bored awfully fast.

  I was so darn proud of myself, I got worried. Being too cocky was dangerous. Rachel’s First Law of Peril was bound to come into play again.

  Chapter 32

  Setting up the front to fool Bill gave me another idea. Why not make our dummy website more of a business itself? It might throw off anyone else who chose to investigate us…and maybe even help pay the bills.

  I didn’t expect to be too busy with new Glyphs input until the ads I placed ran…and that wouldn’t be for another week or two. I used that time to find a web-based supplier who could actually print up some windbreakers on demand and fulfill any orders that came in for CussedEmOuterwear.com jackets.

  I had a cool graphic designed for the jackets. Basically, the graphic incorporated the exact same message as the billboards. I had “Do you see what I see?” translated into seven languages so I could sell the merchandise around the globe. Anyone who ordered a jacket would become a walking billboard…so we’d get the message out at no cost to us. Plus, I contracted with Google Ad Words to put ads up on the commercial side of the website. We might get lucky and generate some income off of those.

  To anyone who wasn’t familiar with the Squiggle vision, we’d just look like another business. The only people I’d have to worry about were those that knew about Glyphs. And I did worry about those. Who knew if some crazy dictator somewhere would want the formula all to himself? A guy like that could come up with the means to knock me off. It wasn’t like I had any security to protect me.

  I trusted that I was able to keep myself untraceable. But, I realized that I couldn’t be too careful.

  Chapter 33

  I was glad when Jim was finally back in town. His month-long semester break in NYC made me acutely aware of how much I needed him. He was
the one person I didn’t have to keep secrets from. I wanted to bring him up to speed on everything that was going on. He was eager to get together with me, too…to ream me a new one! We met at his house.

  “You are never, ever to take a risk like running off to meet some stranger alone again. I lost five years off my life worrying about you.”

  “It’s not like I just ran off. You knew I was going.”

  “I never should have let you go.”

  “It worked out fine.”

  “What if it hadn’t?”

  I could see I’d put him through a lot of anguish. And I felt terribly guilty over how lax I’d been in calling him from Vegas. I promised it wouldn’t happen again.

  Jim had mixed feelings about my new job, too. I was taking this to a level neither of us had previously imagined. Not having met Amir, Jim was naturally more nervous about his involvement. He calmed down a little when I pointed out that I was still in control of every step…and that Amir didn’t know my real name or address, just that I was Rachel from Buffalo.

  Then came the really hard part. I had to tell Jim about Bill and the FBI. He had a right to know. I thought he was going to explode.

  “Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?”

  I slunk down into my seat.

  “You’re in this neck deep, charging full speed ahead, and the FBI is surveiling you?!”

  “I don’t think they’re actually following me. Just checking me out.”

  “Oh, this is priceless. I can’t believe I’m sitting here with a…a…a person of interest to the federal government! Do you know what this could do to me?”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what?’?”

  “What could it do to you?”

  “Arrrgh! It could ruin my reputation!”

  “I doubt that talking to a woman who runs a website full of Glyphs would make the front page.”

  “They could get you on identity theft.”

  “All of my identities are now non-real persons. I will be paying taxes on my income, albeit under another name. I took the website offshore. As far as I know, I’m not doing anything illegal.”

  “All of your identities? Offshore! Do you know how that would sound to Kiku? She’d think we were nuts. She’d leave me in a second.”

  “Why? Doesn’t she trust you?”

  “She trusts me.”

  “But, she controls you.”

  “What?”

  “She wasn’t going to let you take a year off. You think she won’t let you do something you believe in if she’d find it strange. She treats you more like her lapdog than her fiancé.”

  Jim didn’t answer. I’m guessing he was feeling so much rage, he thought best not to.

  “I’m sorry you are unhappy with our situation. But, you really don’t have to be involved. Your brother provided the groundwork we needed, but now I’ve got the resources to move forward without you. I don’t want you to worry about ruining your opportunity to become a doctor. I won’t bother you anymore. You are off the hook.”

  Before I walked away, I had to get in one, last word.

  “I care about you, Jim. A lot. For your own sake, I’d like you to think about one thing: If Kiku told you she was taking a year off school to pursue something important to her, would you threaten to leave her?”

  I bought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia on my way home.

  Chapter 34

  I started working fulltime on my new “job” on the third week of January. I sat alone in my cold apartment after my roommates left for work and assessed my life. I was deeply attracted to two men. One I could never have a future with and one who pretty much hated me at the moment – and was engaged to someone else, no less. The FBI was watching me. My best friend, who thought she was in the first wonderful relationship of her life, was actually being used by the FBI to get to me. I couldn’t warn my best friend about this guy. In fact, I had to lie to all my friends and family about half the goings on in my life.

  All of this was my fault. I longed for a big bag of pretzels. Instead, I figured I’d better start working to turn the year around. I’d start off on the right foot, even if it was a few weeks late. I drove to the Southtowns YMCA and joined up.

  It was a beautiful facility, just a few years old. I spent an hour on the treadmill and twenty minutes on the resistance machines. I hated dragging myself to the gym, but it was worth it. I felt so much better afterward.

  Then, I went to my parents’ house. They were both at work, but they kept their heat higher when they were away than my roommates and I did when we were home. I pulled out Mom’s computer (the one Bill had “optimized”) and wrote a script for a video promoting the website.

  I shopped around on the web for production companies and sent the script out to three places for bidding…and to marketing@CustomEmOutterwear.com for approval. I had dinner ready for my parents and sister when they got home. Not bad for the first day on the job.

  I was determined to keep to some kind of routine. The next day, I started at the Y (water aerobics), then went to Panera’s. They had free Wi-Fi (and free heat). They also had a lot of bakery items, so I had to summon my self-restraint (which I don’t have a lot of).

  Fortunately, once I sat down and started working, I forgot all about the cheese Danish that had been trying to seduce me. I logged onto the Glyph’s website through the public portal. (I didn’t feel comfortable using any of my screen names or passwords on an unsecured Wi-Fi network.) I was shocked at the amount of recent activity.

  Some of the ads had started to run, so responses were coming in from all over. I could tell we were getting a lot of foreign activity from the posts in broken English. Two of the holes in the formula had been filled in, but there were still plenty left.

  I set up another poll asking visitors to vote on some random ideas I had. I replied to the email I’d sent myself from my mother’s computer, approving the script. Then, I checked how our e-commerce business was doing.

  My jaw dropped. I thought we’d sell maybe a couple jackets a week. We’d already sold 200! We weren’t going to get rich off the jackets. I’d priced them low to encourage sales, so we only made a $5 profit on each one. But, if sales kept up at this pace, I could probably cut back on some of our advertising, saving us huge amounts of money.

  Then I peeked at my offshore bank accounts for the first time. Amir had set up a personal checking account where my paycheck would be direct deposited, a savings account, and a business account. He had given me a $50,000 signing bonus that we had not discussed!

  The $50,000 floored me, but it wasn’t totally shocking. (At least, not after getting the necklace.) To Amir, it was a drop in the bucket. But, I wondered what he expected for it? Did he think that paid for all the work I’d done so far…so that this entire business was at his sole discretion? I considered myself a partner more than an employee. (Or, I guess, supplier by Amir’s definition.)

  I also wondered how he’d feel about that after seeing how much our business account had already been drawn down. But, that was silly. We’d agreed that I’d frontload our advertising. I knew how much money I was spending. But still, seeing it all deducted from the account made it seem a little more real. I wasn’t used to being responsible for such a huge budget.

  After my third cup of tea my nerves calmed and I returned to breathing normally. I rationalized that we were getting good results, so I was getting a nice return on the money invested. I still didn’t know what to think about my $50,000 bonus.

  Around three o’clock I packed up and headed to my parents’ house. I used Mom’s computer to read my personal e-mail, make a couple little adjustments on my video script and send myself more emails. Playing the role of both my boss and myself in a game of e-mail tag was confusing. I had to be extremely vigilant about what I knew as myself and what I knew as my boss…I didn’t want the FBI, or anyone hacking my e-mails to suspect that I was my boss.

  For the rest of the week…and the n
ext…I spent every day working at my parents’ house after exercising. (Okay, two days I slept in and skipped the gym.) I figured this way the FBI should get bored quickly with my innocuous routine. I hadn’t even bothered to logon to CussedEmOuterwear.com with my stealth computer that entire time.

  It was killing me not to know what was going on at the website, but I wanted to throw Bill off my trail as quickly as possible. It was heavy lugging my stealth computer around in my gym bag every day. Plus, the sooner the FBI lost interest, the sooner my nerves would calm down. It wasn’t easy living on hyper-alert. Knowing that it wasn’t just a cautionary measure, but a real necessity, made it that much more stressful.

  I hadn’t heard from Kim in awhile. I figured that was a good sign. I assumed Bill had stopped suggesting we all get together. Which would be wonderful. But, I worried Bill might have stopped calling her, which would be disastrous. If he just dumped her flat, I don’t know how I’d ever forgive myself.

  I decided to take matters into my own hands. I had to end the suspense! I called Kim to suggest that she and Bill and I go skiing that weekend. Kim apologized for not calling me in so long. Apparently she’d been really busy…with Bill! The two of them had been out almost every single night. And he’d kicked the relationship up to the next level, finally making the relationship more physical and telling her he adored her.

  When I got off the phone, I could have screamed for joy. I assumed the FBI had some kind of code of ethics that would forbid entering into a physical relationship as part of an investigation…and that would mean Bill wasn’t investigating me any longer. Best yet, rather than dumping Kim after the investigation, he kicked the relationship up a notch. So instead of being the cause of Kim’s emotional ruin, I may have been the catalyst for her happiness. Phew! What a relief.

  Skiing on Sunday was a lot of fun. Except, maybe for Kim and Bill being sooo kissy-huggy that it initiated by my gag reflex. But, I figured it was a long time coming for Kim and she deserved a little lovey-doveyness. It was nice not to get the Spanish Inquisition from Bill. He was a really sweet, funny (he had Kim snorting), earnest kind of guy…even if he was a little pompous and ultra conservative.