by Young, Luke
“Good.” Returning to her purse, she fumbled through it another moment then looked him in the eye. “I know… It’s in the safe in my room.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll just run and get it. It’ll give me a chance to change. It’s so cold on the ship today.”
“You’re going to change?” He asked with concern.
“Yes, I’m a little cold.”
“Hold on.” He pulled a small communication device from his belt and pressed a button.
A moment later it buzzed and a voice spilled out of the speaker, “Yes Captain?”
“Make it three degrees warmer in the South Sea Lounge.” He smiled to Victoria then added, “In fact, make it that much warmer in all the common areas, right now.”
“But sir—”
“Just do it!”
“Yes, sir.”
He rose to his feet and pulled off his jacket. “Would you like my jacket?”
“Oh, thank you.” Standing, she smiled appreciatively.
He helped her put on the jacket then motioned for her to return to her chair as he slipped back into his. She performed the leg cross routine once more then gazed into his eyes, waiting.
“I don’t think I’ll need your credentials.” His eyes dipped down to her bare knee then back to her face. “Now, what would you like to know?”
She smiled. “First, it seems like you are treating this matter, no disrespect intended, with a—”
“You think we’re overreacting?”
“Well, maybe just a little. I mean, it’s not as if someone was actually raped and, I mean, let’s be honest the victim was a man and an old one at that.”
The super-masculine Captain Waterbrook’s lip quivered and he appeared as if he might burst into tears at any moment.
Leaning forward with concern, she placed her hand atop his. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“Agent Wilde, you—”
“Victoria,” she interrupted.
“Victoria, when I was thirteen, I…” he took a deep breath before continuing, “… I was nearly a victim of a sexual assault myself.”
“Oh my God.”
“It was our football coach and I actually suspected he was molesting other members of my team and I didn’t do anything about it. I just sat by and watched, too terrified to tell anyone what I thought I knew. But the day he put his hands on me he pulled back broken fingers.”
“What happened to him?”
“That day I also broke my silence and he was arrested, but the damage to three of my teammates had already been done. I could have ended it sooner.”
“You can’t beat yourself up over this. Those other boys could have come forward too and you said yourself that you weren’t sure.”
“I know. I know.” He let out a long, slow breath and shook his head. “I take sexual assault very seriously, especially if the victim is a child or a woman, but even an elderly man deserves justice.”
A genuine tear streamed down her face. “I was, um… I was almost raped myself.”
Waterbrook narrowed his eyes angrily.
“I did something stupid and put myself in a dangerous situation and—”
“No means no! Miss Wilde. I don’t care if you’re wearing sexy clothes or acting a certain way, no is still no.”
“Yes, I know. The man I’m on the cruise with saved me that day and I’m so grateful and he’s… he’s a wonderful guy.”
Waterbrook shot her a proud look. “I’d love to shake his hand.”
Pulling a tissue from her purse, she dabbed her eyes, then grabbed another and handed it to the captain. He turned to look behind him and upon finding them alone, he wiped his eyes and they shared a gentle smile.
For a brief moment she felt terribly guilty, but she shook off that thought remembering that there was no real rapist onboard and that her story, at least her near-rape story, was, in fact, true. She sighed then looked at him with genuine concern. “Now I understand what’s going on here. I get it and I want to help.”
“Thank you, Agent. Now, what else can I tell you?”
“Do you have any security camera images of the hooded man’s face?”
“We do, but they’re so grainy that at this point they’re unusable. I have two members of our audio visual staff trying to enhance the best images we have and a dozen other officers searching through the security footage now looking for clues.”
Victoria sighed. “Your staff is probably overwhelmed with this search and I’m sure they have so much other work to do, that isn’t getting done. You have four thousand passengers to keep safe onboard and I’d hate to see another incident occur while everyone is preoccupied with the search.”
“I appreciate your concern, but if we don’t solve this before we reach our next port the individual responsible might slip away when we dock.”
“My unit has developed an advanced facial recognition system which is currently in use in seven airports throughout the United States. I have access to this system.”
“Okay.”
“Now, this project is so highly classified that I shouldn’t even be mentioning it to you.”
“You can trust me, Agent.”
“I know I can. If you give me access to the Internet along with access to the suspect’s image and your passenger database I can help. In less than thirty minutes I will be able to tell you with absolute certainty whether or not you can identify your subject with the footage you have.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes, this software is so advanced that if it can’t find the match, no crew ten times the size of yours spending months searching will find it. Either I will find the match or you can sleep easier knowing you did all that you could.”
“Okay, let’s do it.”
“I’ll need private access to a computer. No one without Level 1 United States government security clearance can even know what I’m doing. Can we keep it our little secret?”
“Yes.” Waterbrook rose to his feet. “Follow me, Agent.”
15
The captain led Victoria to the bottom floor of the ship and its information systems area. Inside a room ten crew members sat in front of screens viewing security camera footage.
Bobby Garboni, a sweaty, overweight, nerdy-looking guy with greasy hair scowled at the captain. “I can’t give her full access to our system! Who is she?”
“That’s classified.”
“But, what if she—”
“Garboni, I want you to give Miss Wilde whatever access she needs right now and I want this room cleared.”
The officers looked up from their screens to the captain.
Waterbrook boomed. “Now!”
Wide-eyed, the ten officers scurried from the room and the captain grabbed the last man by the arm and said, “I want everyone to return to their normal duties. Tell Branson to contact me immediately.”
The captain returned his attention to Garboni. “Do it now!”
“Okay,” he grumbled.
Waterbrook smiled to Victoria. “Thank you for helping us. If you have any trouble getting what you need, please contact me. I can be reached on extension 5634.”
“Thank you.” Victoria smiled. “I’ll call you when I’m done.”
“Perfect.” He turned and walked out the door.
Turning her attention to Bobby, Victoria was treated to a view of him bent over banging on the keyboard with his ass crack showing out of his super-tight corduroy pants. She held back a laugh.
He grumbled, “Tell me exactly what you need.”
“Full access.” She shrugged.
“I know.” He gave her a tired look. “But do you need a secure VPN tunnel or HTTP or HTTPS… What?”
“Um, I, uh… Can I use a phone?”
He scoffed then pointed to the wall. She moved to it, picked up the receiver then looked at him, waiting. “I need just a minute.”
Rolling his eyes and mumbling under his breath, he left the room and closed the door.
She
dialed the number for her cabin and cringed. “Come on. Come on.”
“Hello,” Ethan answered.
“Thank God you’re there.”
“Where are you?”
“In the computer room.”
“The computer room on this ship?”
“No…” She sighed. “I took a helicopter and I’m at the Pentagon right now. Yes, I’m still on the ship.”
“Sorry. With you, who the hell knows? When are you coming back to the room, I really—”
“Look, I don’t have much time. You studied computers, right?”
“No, I was a math major. I thought I told you.”
“That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“Um, no, not really.”
“But, I’m sure you know some things about computers, right?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Okay, so some nerdy computer genius is asking me what kind of access I need… He said VNP or TITS or something.”
“Victoria, what the hell are you doing?”
“I’m pretending to be an F.B.I. agent.”
“What? Why?” He scoffed.
“It’s a long story, but I’ve convinced the captain that I can somehow review all the security footage with some facial recognition software.”
“Wow, you’re an F.B.I. agent? I think I just got a little hard.”
“Really?” She giggled.
“Yeah, maybe later I can pretend to be a terror suspect and you can use whatever tactics you deem necessary to get me to talk.”
“I’ll get you to talk all right.”
“I know you will.”
“Okay, but we can talk about that later.”
“All right. All right.”
“Right now I need to sound convincing if I’m going to get sweaty nerd boy out of my hair. The captain was easy… All I had to do was give him some of that Sharon Stone Basic Instinct treatment and he was like putty in my hands.”
“No way, you flashed him your beaver?”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures— I had to show him my ass too.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did, but something tells me that won’t work with nerd boy, so short of handing him an advanced copy of the sequel to the movie Avatar I’m going to need to know what the hell I’m talking about.”
“Okay, so first find out what kind of system they have. If he says UNIX or Linux then tell him you need root access if he says Windows then tell him you need full admin rights.”
“Okay, UNIX or Linus equals root and windows equals admin.”
“It’s Linux not Linus.”
“Whatever.”
“And if he presses you, just say you’ll setup your own VPN tunnel with special F.B.I. software or something like that.”
“Good idea. Now don’t leave the room in case I need you.”
“Okay… And Agent Wilde?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been a very, very bad boy.”
“I know, and I’ll deal with you later,” she said in a stern voice.
Smiling, she hung up the phone then took a moment to compose herself before opening the door.
Leaning against the wall chewing on his fingernails, Garboni scowled. “So what do you need?”
“What kind of system do you have?”
“It’s a .Net network running Linux.”
She spoke loudly with authority, “I need root access and show me where all the security footage is stored along with the passenger photo database.”
“Wait, are you going to—”
“Now Garboni, unless you want me to call the captain!”
“All right,” he grumbled then waddled past her and plopped himself down in a chair in front of a screen. She pulled up a chair next to his and feigned interest as he quickly opened multiple windows and spit out instructions at a rapid fire pace. His coffee breath turned her stomach and she backed away a bit, covering her mouth.
He spewed out one last run-on sentence filled with crazy acronyms, computer jargon and somewhere hidden inside there may have even been a question, but she ignored all of it and simply said, “Got it!”
“You do?”
“Yeah, I’ll take it from here.”
“But—”
“Go Bobby!” She cringed, sickened. “And you might want to grab a mint.”
Glaring at her, he stormed toward the door.
“Close it please.”
He slammed it closed and she giggled.
Pulling her iPhone from her pocket, she looked at the time. Then after thinking a moment, she opened up her iBookstore app and picked up where she left off reading Jillian’s latest novel she’d downloaded the previous night.
She spent twenty minutes reading and during one particularly steamy chapter she became so worked up that she considered slipping back to her cabin to pre-interview her suspect. Deciding that was probably a bad idea, she tore her interest away from the book and called Ethan to get some advice on the proper language to use when presenting her findings to the captain. She noted it all on her iPhone notes application and studied it carefully.
She spent another five minutes spinning in her chair before closing each window on the PC that nerd genius had opened. Then she called the captain.
A few minutes later she sat with Waterbrook in his office. “Do you have good news for me?”
“I think so. I used the latest software technology algorithms and ran the images through a pixilation enhancement process, uploaded all the security footage to the super-computer at Langley, and it all came back negative. No match could be found, the images are just too poor. You know, you may want to consider upgrading your security system to HD cameras.” She smiled proudly that she was somehow able to remember all that boring technical crap.
“Huh?” He looked at her confused.
“Basically, I put the full resources of the United States government behind this task and came up empty. I think it would be fruitless for you to spend another minute searching. Unless you get some fresh piece of evidence, I’m convinced it would be a waste of your time.”
“I agree.” He sighed. “Well, thank you for trying, Agent.”
“Well, I’m just glad I could help.”
He smiled. “I insist I have you and your boyfriend as my dinner guests at my table tonight.”
“We would love to.”
“Wonderful— it’s eight o’clock in the main dining room. I’ll leave your name with the maître d’.”
She smiled. “I look forward to it.”
He rose to his feet and opened the door for her. Taking her hand in his, he said, “We really appreciate your help Agent Wilde.”
“Oh, don’t mention it.”
She headed out to the elevator and pushed the button for the shopping area on the sixth floor. Grinning, she thought of all the things she needed to buy for the interrogation of her terror suspect.
16
Lounging on the bed wearing a T-shirt and silky gym shorts, Ethan flicked mindlessly through the channels on the television. Following Victoria’s instructions, he hadn’t moved from the room.
Suddenly a loud banging on the door startled him and he sat upright. Unsure if it was someone at his door or some other kind of noise, he turned off the television and waited. Louder banging was followed by a deep, yet feminine voice calling out, “I know you’re in there Listwood.”
He chuckled and made his way to the door. Looking out the peephole, he spotted Victoria wearing an angry expression.
He took a moment to compose himself then opened the door halfway. “Yes?”
“Ethan Listwood?” Victoria held her toy police badge up and scowled.
“Yes, what’s this about?”
“Agent Wilde, F.B.I.”
He frowned. “But your badge says police.”
She sighed then said in a tired voice, “Just go with it.”
“Okay.” He shrugged.
She returned to her angry expression and growle
d, “You’re under arrest for conspiracy to—”
He bolted for the balcony and she rushed after him. When he reached the closed sliding glass door he pretended to struggle with the lock.
Agent Wilde grabbed hold of his arm and pulled it behind his back. “You’re mine, Listwood.”
“What’s this about?” He glanced back to her.
“Don’t look at me.” Placing a hand on the back of his head, she pushed it against the glass door just a bit too enthusiastically.
“Ouch…” He whined.
“Sorry.” She cringed, breaking character.
“It’s okay.”
“You sure?”
“Uh-huh.” He glanced back to her with his face still pressed into the glass. “This is fun.”
“Isn’t it?” She giggled like a schoolgirl.
Returning to her official tone, she boomed. “Don’t move!”
She pulled a pair of toy handcuffs from the waistband of her skirt and attached one end around his wrist and the other, she cuffed to the sliding glass door handle. “Now stand up straight.”
He did as she commanded.
“Are you carrying a weapon?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I don’t believe you. Spread your legs.”
He moved his legs apart.
“Grab some glass pretty boy.”
“What?” He chuckled.
She shrugged. “I don’t know it sounded cool in my head.”
“Oh, you mean put my other hand against the door… Okay.”
Placing his un-cuffed forearm against the door, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against his wrist.
She moved close to him and patted down his upper body, staring at his back she moved to his chest then down to his abdomen with her mock weapon search. Sliding her hands lower, she felt the growing bulge in his pants. “Uh-huh… What’s this?”
“It’s um, nothing,” he replied with as much terror as he could manufacture.
“That’s not nothing!” She slipped down to her knees and wrapped her hands around his right thigh, running them up slowly to his groin. “You’re packing a weapon and I’d say it’s a big one.”
He held back a giggle.
“You think this is a joke?” Gazing up to him, she somehow kept a straight face.
“Sorry, no.”