The man’s face darkened, and he narrowed his eyes. Then his mouth curved into a cruel, hard smile. He turned and strode into the bedroom, where Mrs. Chang somehow had managed to sleep through his unexpected, late-night return.
Sour bile rose in Joe’s throat. He forced himself to keep breathing.
The man reappeared, dragging Mrs. Chang by her thin upper arm. She blinked, shielding her eyes from the sole lamp’s light. Joe could see her trying to clear the disorienting cloud of sleep from her mind to figure out what was happening.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Chang, it’s going to become clear all too soon, Joe thought.
The man drilled his eyes into Joe’s.
“Now, then. Your question was what happens if you do not comply, is that right?”
Joe’s throat closed.
Mrs. Chang’s face filled with sudden understanding, but she didn’t panic. She looked at Joe intently. He knew she was trying to send him a message not to cave into the man’s demand.
But Joe knew the man wasn’t bluffing. He would hurt Mrs. Chang. Again.
She stared harder and gave her head a tiny, almost imperceptible, shake. Don’t, she mouthed wordlessly.
He shook his head at her, giving her an apologetic look, then wet his lips to tell the man he’d do it. He’d record the video message.
Before he could speak, the man laughed.
“How cute, this solidarity among my captives. She wants you to stay strong, Mr. Jackman. But you are not strong enough, are you? You do not have the stomach to watch me break her remaining fingers, one by one, until you do as you are told. You will acquiesce, yes?”
He forced out an answer. “Yes.”
At the same moment, Mrs. Chang spat, “No. Whatever it is you want him to do, he’s not doing it. You can go to hell.”
In a swift motion, the man released her arm and wordlessly backhanded her across the face. She staggered across the small room and landed in a crumpled heap against the wall.
Joe raced over to her. She looked up at him and gasped for breath.
“Don’t do it. Don’t do it, Joe,” she whispered.
He bent and helped her to her feet.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered back. “I have to.”
She bent her head, and her disappointment in him radiated off her like waves. She shook her head sadly.
He patted her arm gently and turned to face the man.
“Let’s get this over with.”
________
Aroostine sat at the small, wrought-iron table and studied the face of the man across from her. Franklin hadn’t spoken since she warned him that she wouldn’t hesitate to contact the authorities. He’d just stared at her owl-eyed for a moment and then trailed her to the table.
They sipped their drinks in silence for a moment. The faint strains of the music from the ice rink floated into the cafe and filled the space between them.
Finally, Franklin put down his coffee and dabbed his mouth with a paper napkin. “I am acting in good faith, I swear. But, please—what you said before? Please, don’t even think of going to the police. He’ll—he’ll kill them.”
His voice rose in a high-pitched panic.
The kid manning the counter looked over at them, his bored expression turning curious.
She smiled reassuringly at the kid and then turned to Franklin.
“Shh. Calm down.”
He gulped noisily and nodded. “Sorry. What are we going to do?” his voice quavered.
She considered the question for a moment then exhaled slowly.
“First thing’s first. Who are you? How are you tied up in this … this whatever it is? Let’s start there.”
“Okay, so, I’m a computer programmer. I, uh, did some hacking while I was in high school and college—nothing crazy, but I know my way through a lot of back doors.”
“Back doors?”
“Right. A lot of times, a programmer will create a program for a client but leave himself a back door—a way in just in case he needs to fix or update something. Usually you’ll hide it, so kids screwing around don’t stumble on it and come in and muck things up. Follow?”
“I guess.”
This might be more background than she needed, but she decided to let him go. He was clearly warming to his topic. He straightened up, leaned forward, and a glint of excitement shone in his eyes.
“So, I was hired right out of college as a programmer for SystemSource.”
He paused to take a breath, but she jumped in.
“Wait—SystemSource, the company that makes the RemoteControl systems?”
He nodded. “That’s the one. I know, you sued us for trying to bribe foreign government officials. I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
Her brain was racing, synapses careening around and bouncing off the walls like bumper cars, as she tried to make sense of the connection. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
“I’ll get back to the bribery thing in a minute, but stay with me, okay?”
As he got deeper into his story, his voice gathered force. Maybe she hadn’t saddled herself with a bumbling wimp, after all.
“When I joined the company, they were selling systems software, but that was it. A client bought it, loaded it on their system, and used it to monitor things locally. I was given a project to update the software to make it more robust. I’m not really a software developer, so I left the basic program and started playing around, just kind of pretending I was a hacker. I had an idea, but I wasn’t sure it would work. I worked on it, here and there, whenever I could, in my free time for a couple of years.”
“You developed the remote monitoring capabilities?”
She stared across the table, hot chocolate forgotten, at the unassuming man who had revolutionized the remote monitoring industry and, at least according to SystemSource’s publicly-filed financial reports, had rocketed the small company from a niche software provider to a billion-dollar player.
He beamed. “Yep.” Then his face fell as he remembered the hell that singular achievement had thrust him into. “So, I modified the software so that it could be used to monitor and control almost any computerized system from anywhere with an internet connection. My boss went nuts. I got a huge bonus and a promotion to lead the project. As you can imagine, clients loved it, and the systems started flying off the virtual shelves. But then everyone needed to have it tweaked. Like, a security guard monitoring an apartment building is gonna need different capabilities than a building engineer trying to maintain a constant temperature and humidity.”
“Sure,” she said. What he said made sense, but an icy fist grabbed her chest. She had a feeling she knew where this story was headed, and it was nowhere good.
He plowed ahead, oblivious to her rising dread.
“Pushing out patches was labor intensive and time consuming. But for the first eighteen months, I just did it. I was working, I dunno, nineteen hour days? They assigned me a bunch of interns, but I had to go over all their coding and check it because an error could be disastrous. I was drowning.”
He stopped suddenly and stared out into the night, his gaze on the illuminated skating rink, but she knew he wasn’t seeing it. He gnawed on his lower lip but didn’t speak.
“So, I bet it seemed like a good idea to just go in through the back door you left yourself and tweak the software already in place, huh?” She was careful to keep her tone understanding. She didn’t want to lose him now.
“It was. I get it, you know, clients don’t want to think their systems are vulnerable. But this is safe. I’m the only one who can get in and modify.”
“But you can’t be sure of that.”
“I’m pretty sure. I hid my program in a security subkernel.”
“Uh-huh,” she said blankly.
“It’s complicated, but imagine that there’s a vault buried underground. That’s where my program is. Users aren’t going to stumble across it. And even a relatively sophis
ticated hacker who’s looking for it isn’t going to be able to find it.” He grinned at his ingenuity.
“That was smart.” Again with the neutral tone.
“Thanks.”
She hesitated. But she had to know, so she asked the question.
“Did you tell anyone at the company what you were doing?”
He ran a hand through his hair, a frustrated gesture. “Not exactly.”
She waited.
“They didn’t ask, and I didn’t mention it. But there’s no way my boss didn’t know that something was up. I was being crushed by work and meeting all those deadlines—they didn’t want to know.”
Willful blindness. Plausible deniability. The hallmarks of corporate cowards the world over.
She nodded.
“And, if they didn’t know at first, they had to know after the VC infusion.” His tone was fierce.
“VC infusion?”
“Right around the time that Womback and Sheely were screwing around trying to bribe Jorge Cruz, SystemSource was looking to spin off some subsidiaries. I’m not a business guy, but from what I understood, the company grew too big, too fast. It was a wild ride. The deal guys suggested selling off some units and maybe doing, uh, a reverse offering or something? Taking the company private again? I don’t know the details.”
“Okay,” she said, filing the information away. She wasn’t a transactional lawyer. She’d need someone to explain the details to her if they proved important. “And, this VC thing—?”
“Right. A venture capital company approached management.”
“Venture capital? But SystemSource was already huge, and publicly traded at this point, right?”
She didn’t know much, but she knew that venture capital companies specialized in helping startups grow. SystemSource would have been well past that stage.
“Right, but these guys came to us anyway. They offered an exorbitant amount of money for a tiny stake in the company.”
She scrolled through her memory, trying to recall seeing any mention of such a deal in the SEC filings, but drew a blank. She made a mental note to ask Rosie.
“Do you know the venture capital firm’s name?”
He shook his head. “No. But it wouldn’t matter. The deal was structured through all these intermediaries to try to keep it sort of hush-hush. All I know is the sales people were probably under the same marching orders the programmers were under.”
“Which were?”
“Don’t mess anything up. We needed to show these investors that we were solid. Anybody who blew a deadline, missed a quota, went over budget—you were getting canned. No excuses.”
“So, you think the sales reps tried to bribe Mexico because they were under pressure to produce?”
He shrugged. “Probably. Maybe? All I know is I was. I was back to around the clock even with my back door.”
“Why?”
“The company set up a meeting between me and some suit who represented the VC guys.”
“Suit? A lawyer?”
His eyes drifted to the ceiling as he tried to remember. “Maybe. I’m not sure. I wasn’t sleeping much at that point, and, honestly, it’s all a blur. I don’t remember the guy’s name, and I know I didn’t get a card. Anyway, he wanted assurances that I could continue to customize the software if the sales volume continued to increase. I said, yeah, because I knew that was the right answer. And he pressed me for details—how could I be sure? What level of customer modification could I guarantee? How could I guarantee it?”
“What did you say?”
“He said the conversation was private. So, I told him. Not in detail. I was careful to explain that nobody else could get in through my back door, but that I could.”
He stared at her, misery seeping from every pore.
Her throat felt tight and dry. “The venture capital group—or whoever this guy represented—knows that you, and only you, can get into all these systems?”
He nodded, tears shining in his brown eyes.
“And now they have my mom.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Aroostine raced down the stairs to the Metro station. Franklin’s words echoed in her mind as she clattered down the metal stairs, her scarf trailing behind her like tail feathers.
She jammed her card up against the reader and ran through the terminal to the platform for the Red Line, dodging an elderly couple and earning a dirty look from a lank-haired college student leaning against the column.
She didn’t have time to care.
If Franklin was right—and the lump of lead lodged in her stomach told her he was—then Rosie was right, too: something important was hidden in her trial preparation materials. Something so important that someone was willing to resort to violence—and who knew what else—to keep it secret.
The metro train rushed up to the platform and stopped with a disconcerting squeal of brakes. She elbowed her way to the doors of the closest car and waited for the passengers on the car to exit. A young couple struggled with an enormous stroller. One of the back wheels was stuck in the gap between the car and the platform.
On autopilot, she bent and helped the father raise the wheel, then stepped into the half-empty car with his thanks hanging in the air as the hydraulic doors whooshed shut behind her.
She flopped into the nearest seat and stared unseeingly at the public service announcement poster in front of her while she ran through what she’d learned from Franklin.
One, the business person—or lawyer or whoever it was—he’d met with on behalf of the venture capital group was not the same man who contacted him after his mother’s disappearance. He was adamant on this point. He’d said the “suit” had been a typical white guy. No discernable accent or ethnic heritage. The man on the phone had the stilted speaking style and vocabulary of a nonnative speaker and a noticeable, but indeterminate, accent.
She unearthed a pencil and scrap of paper from her bag and scribbled Could accent be an act? Then she resumed ticking off points on her mental checklist.
Two, Franklin’s mother had been abducted after the defendants had filed the motion in limine in the FCPA case. The man knew Franklin could access court records. He grabbed Mrs. Chang to make sure Franklin followed his instructions.
She steadied the paper against the back of the seat in front of her and wrote furiously, recording the questions that flitted through her mind:
Why delete the opposition instead of waiting to see if the judge granted motion? Did something in opposition worry him—or was he worried about something in the defendants’ motion? Can’t ask defense counsel why they only objected to one exhibit—they won’t discuss strategy. But, why would they do that?
Overhead, a staticy, garbled voice announced the station. The train rocked to a stop. A thin woman who’d been dozing on the bench across from her jolted to wakefulness.
“Did he say Fort Totten?” she demanded in an urgent voice as she scrambled to her feet and edged toward the door.
Aroostine snapped into focus. “Uh, I really wasn’t listening.” She squinted at the words on the wall. “Yeah, it looks like this is your stop.”
The woman nodded her thanks and rushed out the door.
Aroostine glanced at the map. Two more stops until her destination. She needed to pay a little more attention or she’d end up missing her own station.
Three, the man was willing to kill. A shiver crept along her spine, and she hugged her coat tight around her body as if it were the cold and not that knowledge that caused her chill. But she couldn’t ignore the evidence. Despite Franklin’s protestations that he was careful, the facts were that someone could have died as a result of the fire; she could have died when he tampered with the equipment during her surgery; and both his mother and her husband’s lives were entirely in the man’s hands. The fact that, as far as they knew, he hadn’t yet killed anyone seemed to give Franklin some measure of comfort. Not her. The unvarnished truth was they were dealing with a sociopath.
; Be careful. He’ll exploit any vulnerability he discovers. Rosie? Rufus? Mom and Dad Higgins? Mitchell?
She scratched out Mitchell’s name and rolled her eyes at herself.
She glanced out the window to confirm the train was rolling into the stop before hers.
Four, to his credit, Franklin was being honest with her. He’d tripped over the words and she’d had to prod him a few times, but he’d copped to spying on her movements, listening to her calls, and telling the man about the message she’d left for Joe and how he’d tracked down Joe’s personal information and shared it with the man, even though he’d known the man would use it against her.
She bit back her anger. It was hard to fault him. For all his brilliance with computers, he was a weak and naive person. He was trying to save his mother, by whatever means necessary.
He’d apologized over and over, begging her forgiveness. She’d told him they had to move on. But it was hard to let go of the hot rage in her belly. If anything happened to Joe—
Stop it!
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud, but she must have. The car’s sole other occupant stood up and moved to the other end of the car in the time-honored Metro passenger’s response to sharing space with the mentally imbalanced. He stood there watching her warily.
The train lurched to a stop.
She shoved the paper into her coat pocket, stood, and flashed the man, who was still eying her, a reassuring smile that she hoped radiated sanity and then exited the train.
She hurried through the station and out into the cold night.
Five, the man had no honor. Frankly, her short career as a prosecutor had already convinced her that honor among thieves was a myth. Most criminal conspiracies fell apart fast once one player was nabbed. Oaths of silence, gang loyalty, even the Mafia’s omertà crumbled in the face of hard prison time. Criminals almost always acted in their own self-interest. Brother elbowed brother out of a drug territory; a wife skimmed off the top when she laundered her husband’s books, a thief shot his boyhood friend and accomplice to increase his own cut of the pilfered goods. Whatever the crime, whomever the participants, everyone looked out for themselves. Why should this mystery man be any different?
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