Public Secrets (Artificial Intelligence Book 1)

by Liza O'Connor

  She sighed. “So I gave up. I got a job at a local radio station. Since I had a good voice, it wasn’t long before I had the drive time show.”

  “That must have been an interesting job.”

  “Actually, once I got the hang of it, my job went directly from terrifying to terribly boring.”

  “A lot of jobs can seem that way,” Luke replied, thinking about how the idea of being in the FBI was certainly more exciting than the reality of it.

  Carla laughed softly. “Be very careful what you wish for in life, Mr. Gallagher. Wishes can come true in terrible ways. My boring but successful life was altered by the addition of my very own celebrity stalker.” She closed her eyes. “His name was Billy. At first, he seemed a harmless annoyance. I thought I could handle it. I thought it was part of my job.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “The death of the station’s engineer’s wife. She had come to my house, expecting to catch her husband and me in bed. Billy was waiting inside. He killed her and then he killed himself.”

  Luke sighed. “How old were you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Were you having an affair?” Luke asked. He knew the answer, for he had made himself very familiar with her background. But he was curious how honest she planned to be.

  She shook her head. “It’s ironic. Angie had been accusing Jed of sleeping with me for months. Her accusations had practically driven him into my arms. The reason I didn’t go home that night, the reason Billy killed her instead of me, was because I was with Jed for our first and only time. That infidelity saved my life but almost cost me my sanity.”

  Luke frowned. He was uncertain whether she had spoken the truth but unable to prove it a lie. The file suggested the affair had been going on for months, based entirely on second-hand speculation. However, the only night the investigator could actually verify the two had stayed in a hotel room together was the night of the murder.

  “The reporters were horrible, stalking me day and night. I couldn’t stand it. I quit the station and moved to a new town, changed my name to Carla Simon and hid in my house, too afraid to go out in case I might be recognized.”

  Not likely, Luke thought, remembering the pictures of her as a radio announcer with short brown hair, and then as an anorexic blonde the following year. “So what did you do with your time?”

  “I wrote stories, characterizations, and profiles of characters. I’d write ‘til four in the morning, sleep until noon and resume writing. It was all trash: poorly written, misspelled words, bad grammar, and typos. Most of the time I was so fuzzy from sleep deprivation that I could barely think, much less write a coherent sentence.”

  “What I read on Eder and Juan seemed pretty coherent to me.”

  “They are now, but then they were two-dimensional trash.”

  “When did you rewrite them?”

  “I didn’t. I received a package from a lawyer who was handling the estate of Carl Gates.”

  “Your boyfriend from college?”

  “Yes. He had died in a freak accident—electrocuted when he touched his wall switch.”

  Luke’s eyebrows rose in disbelief.

  “I didn’t believe it either, but that was what the letter from the executor claimed.”

  “And why had the executor contacted you?”

  “He sent me a 64 Gigabit USB along with a letter from Carl. The letter explained how Carl had embedded his own program in mine, which was why he couldn’t allow me to sell it to XCaliber Software. He couldn’t risk them getting his life’s work.”

  “And the USB?”

  “His copy of my program. He had kept track of me and knew I was writing again. He thought it might help me recover.”

  “How did the executor know where to send it? You didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address.”

  “Carl could find any information he wanted. He was the God of hackers.”

  “Did he have a pseudonym?”

  “Einstein.”

  Luke recognized the name. When he had first come on to the Bureau, the FBI had been going crazy about Einstein hacking into the classified files. They’d never been able to stop him from breaking through their security, nor had they been able to discover his identity. There had been an entire organization set up just to find him. They’d never come close. Then one day he’d just stopped. Electrocuted by a light switch. Someone must have found him after all.

  “I tried downloading the program on my computer, but I didn’t have enough memory and couldn’t afford to buy a better one. Thus, I put the USB in my drawer and would have forgotten about it, except a week later I won a door lottery at the local computer store. I had to network my old and new computers together to get sufficient processing power to run the program, but it was worth the effort. The program worked beautifully, better than I recalled. I’d pull up one of my pathetic stories and it would revise it into a masterpiece.

  “I was so pleased with the end results that I sent a manuscript off to a publisher. I fully expected to receive a rejection slip for my efforts. I knew how hard it was to break into the publishing business. You can’t imagine my surprise when a week later Dan Anderson knocked on my door. I was in total shock. He wanted to publish my book; no rewrites, no changes needed, just my signature on the contract.”

  Carla smiled. “And what a contract it was. I was to give them sole publishing, marketing and movie rights to my next nine books. In return, I would get three percent of the net take.”

  Luke frowned. “That doesn’t sound very good.”

  “Good? The contract was criminal. Dan intended to take advantage of my innocence. He’s lucky I signed with him at all.”

  “So you got a lawyer?”

  “No, I couldn’t afford one. Instead, I retyped the contract into my program. The program rewrote the document in far more favorable terms. I signed the revised document and sent it back to Dan with a note to accept or reject it, but there would be no negotiations on terms.”

  “And he accepted.”

  “He first said he couldn’t sign until he had spoken to my lawyer. I assured him that would not be possible, and if he didn’t sign and return it by the end of the week, then I would shop my book to other publishers. Dan signed the contract. He’s grumbled about it ever since. He still asks me for the name of my lawyer.”

  “So how did a word program know literary contractual law?”

  Carla shook her head. “It didn’t know law until it needed to write a legal document. I believe it sources its information from the Internet.”

  “You believe? Wouldn’t you know?”

  “Before my first book sold, I didn’t have money to pay for an Internet line. Evidently the computer made use of my phone line. The only reason I had the phone line plugged into the computer at all was because it had a rather nice phone message program that enabled me to screen my calls. But sometimes, when I would pick up the phone to call someone, there wouldn’t be a dial tone. I would have to click the receiver several times before I finally got an active line.”

  “You’re saying the program was calling the Internet all by itself?”

  “I have no other way to explain the facts,” Carla replied, clearly annoyed by his tone. “There was only me and my computer in the house. If I wasn’t on the phone, then who was?”

  “How could it do that?”

  “Carl must have taught it. Keep in mind the program he wrote had the ability to learn. All it would have to do was monitor his hacking capabilities one time.”

  Luke sat down on the couch beside her. “Now you’re scaring me.”

  Carla looked at the computer. “The thought worried me as well. That’s why I moved it to a laptop once I could afford one capable of running the program. I thought I could confine its reach by turning off the Wi-Fi.”

  “If it scares you so much, why don’t you just reformat the hard drive?”

  She stared up at him in horror. “That would be murder.”

  “It’s a progr
am, not a person.”

  She shivered and pulled the robe tighter around her. “You want to destroy my program?”

  “Me?” Luke replied. “Not at all. I’m just trying to understand your point of view. You represent it to be this evil, all-powerful thing, but you refuse to stop it.”

  Carla frowned. “I never said it was evil. All it does is rewrite my novels into bestsellers.”

  “Novels that happen to be true and destroy lives when you make their secrets public.”

  “The program just wants to be accurate. It doesn’t understand the pain the truth can cause.”

  Luke rose and massaged around his eyes with his fingertips. “So you’re saying the program digs up all these secrets about people.”

  “Yes. I’ll write about a character type, and the program will alter the details to reflect reality. That’s why I was stunned about Chad. It always uses the correct name. It wouldn’t misspell his last name. It creates everything correctly.”

  “But how? How does it know what I was thinking the first day I saw Julia?”

  Carla didn’t reply for a long time. Finally, she looked up and met his unwavering gaze. “It doesn’t. That’s my part. I provide the feelings. I provide the motivations based on the facts it gives.”

  Luke approached her like a stalking lion, sitting down in front of her. “And how do you do that? How did you know my feelings on a summer day so long ago?”

  “When I was writing, I became you. The person you were at that time, given your background and your history. I knew what you would feel when you saw her. She was white light in a bleary world of gray.”

  Luke was speechless. He had thought those very words several years ago when he was trying to understand why he couldn’t seem to exorcise the memory of Julia from his mind.

  This couldn’t be for real. They had profilers on staff, but none of them had this level of skill. He reached out and stroked her cheek. “So what am I thinking now?”

  “You’re thinking I can’t possibly be legitimate. You’re testing me to see if I will mistake professional interest for sexual interest.”

  Luke smiled. “You’re very seductive. Why wouldn’t I be interested in you? You certainly aren’t gray.”

  “No. You see me as red.”

  Luke held his surprise in check. He did see her as red. Dangerous but important. The combination of her and her program could be a gold mine for the FBI.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but be careful,” she pleaded.

  “About what?”

  “How the FBI could use my program and me.”

  “And would that be such a terrible thought?” he asked softly. “We need the truth to provide justice.”

  “But is that what will happen? I wanted to be a famous DJ, and I was. I wanted to be a bestselling writer, and I am. Yet each of those wants has come with a terrible price. And it has usually been someone else paying it, not me. Before we start selling the truth like a commodity, you’d better consider whether there are people who would do anything to stop that from happening.”

  Luke frowned. Thinking about the profile on Juan Coralles, he had no doubt she was correct. There were too many people with secrets. So far her targets had mostly been harmless, with the exception of the Temple. But what if she profiled the President or a congressman? How could anyone protect her then?

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to learn to sing and bring joy instead of pain to the world. I want a life with Chad.”

  Luke’s eyebrows rose. “I think you should give Chad a wide berth at the moment. Or I could be investigating your real homicide next time.”

  “Chad wouldn’t seriously harm me,” she protested, then turned towards the window. “Gary Eder, however, is a different matter. He has never failed. He is patient and cunning. He once spent months secretly training the neighbor’s dog to attack on-command whenever a dog whistle was blown. Then he had the dog kill his baby sister. Eder was only eight years old at the time. Over the years, he has honed his deadly skills to such a degree that he’s never failed a single elimination.

  “He followed you here because he knows you’re looking for me. And now he wonders why you’ve remained for so long. A part of him wants to enter the grounds, to question the guard. But he’s a cautious man. He hopes you’ll leave soon so he can kill me and retrieve his pay.”

  “Not happening. You and I will return to the States together,” Luke assured her.

  Carla shook her head. “You weren’t listening. Gary Eder has never failed to kill his target. You won’t be able to protect me. He’ll just kill you too.”

  Luke looked at the broken lamp. “Well, I can’t leave you here.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Grabbing her shoulders, he turned her to face him. “You seem to be missing the big picture. Chad Tyler has every reason to wish you harm. Your novel will destroy everything for him: his family, his reputation, his fame and his fortune. I cannot leave you here.”

  Carla shrugged him off and went to the computer. She typed in a few sentences and watched as her words altered. “You have no jurisdiction. You can’t make me leave this house.”

  “So you’re an expert in jurisdictional law?”

  “No, but when I wrote this scenario out, the computer changed it to the truth.” She turned and looked at him. “You should go now. Eder is becoming more certain that I’m inside.”

  “Then come with me, and I’ll get you into protective custody.”

  “You wouldn’t get me two miles down the road. Eder wants to finish this and go home.”

  Luke gave her a cold smile. “Is it me personally, or just the FBI that you hold in such low esteem?”

  Carla took Luke by the arm and escorted him to the door of the library. “Luke, you don’t even believe the man in the red car is Eder. How can you protect me when you don’t even take him seriously?” As she opened the door, on the other side stood Chad.

  “Are you through interrogating the subject?” Chad asked with angry sarcasm.

  “It looks like I am,” Luke replied. “For the moment,” he added as a warning for both of them. “I would appreciate it if you’d both remain here for the time being.”

  “With her?” Chad asked. “You expect us to remain in the same house?”

  “I recognize the difficulty, but it is a big house…”

  “You’re insane. Take her with you! I don’t want her here!”

  “Well, it looks like you’re stuck with her until I can check this Eder guy out. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “Longer than the time it takes me to wring her neck?”

  Luke focused on Carla. “He just threatened your life in front of me. I really cannot leave you here in good conscience.”

  “Your conscience will survive. If I leave with you, we’ll both die.” She walked away, carrying her laptop in her arms.

  Luke shrugged and headed to the front door.

  Chad sputtered. “Wait one goddamn moment. You can’t just leave her here!”

  “Don’t go outside, and stay away from the front windows until I get the guy in the car checked out. I’ll be back tomorrow morning with a recommended plan. Try not to kill her in the meantime,” Luke advised as he walked out the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chad watched the agent leave. After locking the door, he returned to the library, but Carla had disappeared. He searched the house, determined to find and evict her now that Gallagher was gone. She could call a taxi and go back to the YHA. There was no way in hell she was remaining here.

  He found her in the weight room, studying the closet. “I want you out of here.”

  She didn’t reply but continued to stare up at the ceiling.

  Jerking her around to face him, he yelled, “I want you to leave now!”

  “Chad, I know you’re angry.” Her voice was so soft he could barely hear it. “But you’ve got to trust me. Your life depends upon it.”

  “Like hell, I’ll trust yo
u!”

  “It’s because of the story?”

  “Of course, it’s because of the story!” he screamed in return.

  She pushed the laptop into his hands. “Then take it. Take it with you. Take it to a computer store and have them erase the hard drive if you must, but you’ve got to leave this house now.”

  He wrapped his hands around the laptop. Knowing her possessiveness over the PC, he was stunned she’d give it up.

  “Go! Now, before it’s too late!”

  “Why do you want to get rid of me?” he asked, distrusting her every motive.

  “Because Gary Eder is coming for me, and if you stand in his way, he’ll kill you. But he only wants me. If you leave, you’ll be safe.”

  “So why give me your computer?”

  “As a gesture of trust. You have every reason in the world to destroy it, and I’m trusting you not to do that. I’m trusting you to keep it safe.”

  Chad felt paralyzed by the duality of his feelings. Part of him wanted to smash the computer onto the floor while another part desperately wanted to trust her.

  Carla took advantage of his indecision and pushed him towards the door. “You must go now, and make the staff leave as well. Eder won’t wait much longer before he searches the house.”

  Chad halted at the door. “What about you?”

  She smiled in gratitude that he still cared enough to ask. “I’m going to hide somewhere he can’t find me. Once he searches and finds no sign of me, he’ll leave.”

  Chad almost told her to be careful but forced himself into silence. He mustn’t let her know he cared. He mustn’t let her know she still had her claws in him.

  He first sent the staff home, then turned and walked out the door, careful to lock it behind him. Once in his car, he turned right onto the road, so he could pass the red car. He glanced at the man inside the car, who was likewise watching him with eerie black eyes that sent a chill down Chad’s spine. It was like looking into the eyes of Satan. Chad almost turned the car around and returned to the house. How could he leave her alone, unprotected from such a man?