The whole scenario is a bit pathetic, because it’s easier for me to lie down in the back than it is to climb into the front seat. So we pass the drive with me feeling like my mother is driving me home rather than my … what?
We’re close to home when I remember a question: “How did Fenwick get your computer?”
He looks at me in the rearview mirror and his eyes are just like Paradise57’s.
“When I came around to see you a few months ago. A big guy chased me away, but I dropped my backpack. I wasn’t totally sure what was in it, and I was so embarrassed I couldn’t ask you at school. The guy had said he’d drop me in the shredder if he caught me.”
I cringed, hearing my orders repeated from Jonny.
“It was really old anyways,” he continued. “I just told my mom it had stopped working.”
“If I’d only come clean sooner …” I said, half to myself.
He parks well away from the front entry, on the opposite side of Assured Destruction’s lot. I wonder why; doing so forces me to crutch an extra hundred yards I’d rather not have to cross.
“I want to show you something,” he says.
He pulls out his iPhone and I catch the icon for Canvas, which looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. When it’s loaded he hands the phone over to me.
“What you did for me,” he says and wrenches his lips back and forth as if sampling the words. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “What I’m trying to say is, people don’t do nice things for me. This—” He chokes on the word and motions to the phone.
I tap the viewer and bring it up, scanning for graffiti. I don’t need to look far.
“—it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me,” he says. “You’ve made the whole world my canvas.”
I’m looking out the back window of his car, unable to speak. Great stems grow up from the pavement and burst over the wall in a firework of petals and colors. Amongst the foliage, elves and gnomes play. He’s turned our drab block of a warehouse into a wild, fantastic jungle. My mom’s there in her wheelchair, and I am too, swinging on a vine with flowers in my hair and eyes shining. My home is a paradise. I guess it always has been.
“We’re even,” I say. “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
I turn back to him and his eyes hold me. I nearly fall off the back seat but manage to shift forward enough to give him an indication of what I want. I lean forward and touch my lips to his. It’s a dry brush, but it’s wonderful. It’s a real kiss, our first shared kiss and there’s only ever one. I smile and do something I’ve always wanted to do. I run my fingers into his hair.
We kiss deeply until I pull back. My gut tells me this is right. Or maybe it’s not my gut, maybe it’s my heart.
“Your mural’s missing something, though,” I say. I turn to the app and zoom in on a bare area of the mural. Then I choose my color—yellow. And proceed to draw a yellow stickman, with shaggy brown hair and a spray can in one hand.
I choose Jonny; after all, I am now a representative of the police, and I think they’d prefer I go for the boy who likes me for me, rather than for being a bad girl—an image I might have trouble keeping up. We make out a little longer until I see my mom knocking on the storefront window so hard I’m afraid she’ll break it.
I leave Jonny in the car and hobble over to my mom, who opens the door.
“Peter’s taking us out for a celebratory lunch,” she says. “Go get changed.”
“Sure, Mom, sounds great.” And it does. The realization that I’d gained a lot out of this strikes me hard. I have my mom back and I even like her nearly worm-food boyfriend. I draw her close to me and deliver a great hug. “I just have one thing I want to do.”
The stairs down to Shadownet are the same as they always have been, but they seem foreign to me now. It’s darker down here. The air that slips up past my thighs seems cooler as I use the rail to hop from step to step on my good leg. No hum soothes the concern from my brow. I crutch to Gumps’s console. He’s still here, blinking green as ever. Dependable.
Beside it is my backpack, and I see Peter’s hard drive sticking out. I pull the hard drive and flip it a few times in the air. I’d forgotten about it. I should really spagettify the thing. Peter saved my life. But then I also remember him slamming Fenwick into the wall and delivering an uppercut. It had looked … practiced. I bite my lip and shove his hard drive deep inside the pack. Later. I’ll shred it later. Instead I turn to Gumps and type.
8-ball question: Should I recreate Shadownet?
Answer: She who overcomes others is strong; she who overcomes herself is mighty.
I have a suspicion that whatever question I asked, I would have got the same answer. I turn to Paradise57’s terminal. It’s dark too, and I leave it that way, opening up the tower housing and unscrewing the hard drive. I nod to myself as I climb the stairs back to the store and punch the big green button that sits like a beauty mark beside Chop-chop’s lips. The shredder roars to life and I toss the hard drive into its mouth, turning Paradise57 into strings of metal. My ankle is throbbing with all the activity. As I turn off Chop-chop, a baby blue Mercedes pulls to the front of the store.
“Lock the door as you leave,” my mom says with a proud grin.
It’s Friday afternoon and Assured Destruction is closed for a family day.
I take a final look at the dark interior before crutching into the light. Almost immediately my phone rings and I give Mom and Peter an apologetic smile.
“Go on,” my mom says.
It’s the Ottawa Police Department.
“Hello, constable,” I say and my voice squeaks.
“We need you, Janus. As soon as you can get here. There’s been a terrible crime.”
Script Kiddie
Book Two
Chapter 1
Hours of community service remaining: 2000
<
“I cannot believe that we have adopted a juvenile delinquent,” Sergeant Haines says to Detective Williams, her bulletproof body a shield between me and the Sergeant. “I am not comfortable including her in a briefing.”
Haines’s Jamaican accent drops the h’s and d’s at the beginnings and ends of words. Despite what he’s saying, I love listening to the rhythm of his speech.
The cops talk as though I’m not even here. No matter. Sitting in the offices of the Ottawa Police Department, amazed at the good reception, I am able to entertain all my Twitter followers.
“It’s on my head,” Williams says. “Just give her a chance.”
“The girl who, at present, is tweeting?”
I hide my phone and try to recall what Williams told the judge this morning, something about my working with the cyber task force of the police. That she would be my sponsor. Now I wonder whether she had the authority to say all that.
With the room’s banks of floor-to-ceiling windows, I feel like a bug in a glass cage. And if I’m a ladybug, then the other creatures with me include a Monarch butterfly, a slug, and a giant black beetle that eats bugs and slugs.
By the way Sergeant Haines rolls his buffed, bulbous head, I know he’s ready to send me packing. I don’t want to go. If I’m to serve out two thousand hours of community service I need it to be doing something interesting.
“Your team—a delinquent and Constable Chow, my rising star.” His head swings to Constable Ethan Chow, who has been out of training for a whole month. “Outside this door is a bank manager, here to tell us about a suspected case of credit card fraud.” Haines peers at each of us, as if daring us to smile or speak. He adds: “He deserves your respect. Your attention.”
He deserves better than Janus Rose, I finish for him in my head.
“No,” Sergeant Haines say
s like he reads my mind. “She is not ready for this.”
I want to explain that I am actually in the room and can hear what he’s saying.
“I disagree, Sergeant.” Williams has a slim body thickened by body armor and packing various weapons; her Latino heritage shows in her dark, fierce eyes and a skin complexion I’d kill for, but her voice carries no accent.
I shift in my chair like a child caught in an argument between two parents. At least one is on my side. I put away my phone and look up with what I hope is an earnest, trustworthy expression.
“Case in point, Detective Williams,” the Sergeant says, aiming his finger at me. “She looks insane.”
I shift expressions to appear: composed, serene, intelligent—reasonable.
“Now she seems like she has the IQ of Elmo,” he continues.
Chow turns away and fakes a cough to cover his smile with his hand.
So I’m unorthodox: a sixteen-year-old girl charged with breach of privacy, breaking and entering, mischief, and giving fraudulent tips to the police, sentenced to community service with the Ottawa Police Department’s High Tech Crime Unit.
Williams, the cop who only a few hours ago agreed to mentor me while I serve out those two thousand community service hours—says: “So what if you’re right? What’s the worst that can happen?”
I don’t like the question. A lot is my answer. My casted ankle throbs from having to sit for so long, and my arm itches from the healing scabs. A lot wrong can happen. I know.
Across from me, Constable Chow grins without attempting to cover it up. I’ve noticed a pattern: whenever I’m unhappy, he’s pleased; clearly we’re never going to be BFFs.
“We haven’t done any sort of evaluation of her skills. No orientation, nothing,” Haines says.
“Come now, Sergeant Haines.” Williams’s hands find her hips as she stares down her block-headed superior. “Everyone learns through trial by fire.”
I glance at my arm again. The burns are healing nicely following an infection that kept me in hospital for two weeks and another week at home; my ankle needs another month before its cast comes off. Only the glass wall separates us from the rest of the precinct, so I resist scratching my scabs and looking like a primate. The way the constables seated in their cubicles have their heads cocked, many of them are following the exchange.
“Let Janus try,” Williams says. “I’ll come up with an appropriate challenge for her, but for now, share the case and she can tell us what she thinks.”
A hole opens in my stomach, draining acid into my guts; it must be what an ulcer feels like. Chow isn’t smiling though, so this has to be in my favor.
“Why are you doing this?” Haines asks, and all eyes swivel to Williams.
“When I was younger, I had someone who vouched for me.” She reddens. “A mentor without whom I might be in a different place.”
Haines grunts and waves a hand like a flag of truce.
“Welcome, Janus.” He flashes a cold smile as if seeing me for the first time. The way he says my name—it sounds like anus. “I am glad that you are sorry about your own crimes and now trying to make amends for past wrongdoing.”
Williams begins to say something, but the Sergeant glowers.
“As you know, Detective Williams and Constable Fourth Class Chow here are part of the High Tech Crime Unit. That group supports the other major units of the force when there are technology aspects to the case.”
“There usually are,” Chow pipes in.
“I head the Fraud Unit,” Haines ignores the interruption. “A bank’s security team has notified us of reports of stolen credit card information. Credit card fraud usually includes cyber crime.”
My head’s trying to keep track of what he’s saying, but my thoughts keep wandering to what the heck I’m doing here. I have to side with the Sergeant on this. I don’t belong. I’m in an actual police station, being briefed on an actual case that I’m going to actually be allowed to help solve. Ethan’s frowning, so I must be totally ecstatic.
“Have there been any damages as of yet?” Detective Williams asks, and I snap my attention to her.
“Let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth.” The Sergeant leans back in his chair to open the door behind him and signals to a waiting officer. A minute later, a man steps into the doorframe.
I stifle a gasp. I know him.
“I’d like you to meet Mr. Frank Orsen,” the Sergeant continues. “He’s our liaison.”
It’s the same weaselly banker who tried to foreclose on my family’s mortgage three years ago. I remember his close-set, beady-black eyes, his widow’s peak, and his too-much-acne for someone-so-old complexion. I hold my breath, waiting for him to see me.
“Mr. Orsen manages the bank branch in question.” The Sergeant’s hand waves at us and I lower my gaze to stare at the burnished tabletop. “This is part of the high tech crime team directed by Detective Williams, which will be supporting the Fraud Unit in this case. Can you take us through what happened, sir?”
Orsen hasn’t recognized me, but I couldn’t forget him. Three years ago after pawning my sick mom’s jewellery, I hand delivered our mortgage payment, refusing to simply drop it off at the teller, wanting to know for certain that the transaction went through, that the money was in the right hands before they ripped our home out from under us. You’re lucky, he had told me as I stared up into cavernous nostrils.
He sits in the chair directly across from Williams and beside Haines, folding his hands primly on the table. Orsen’s voice sounds like his face—thin and with too much nose.
“A week ago we started to receive reports from both customers and credit card companies of unauthorized usage.” The whole time he’s speaking his head bobs lower as if trying to catch a better glimpse of me. In turn, I keep lowering my face so that soon I’m inches from the tabletop.
“Jan.” Williams nudges my shoulder, and I jerk upright but tilt away from weasel-face. I’m staring directly at the Sergeant whose huge smile says, I’m hungry, rather than, I’m friendly; his eyes are wide and his deep brown skin has taken on a reddish cast. The only thing that keeps me from breaking into tears is that anybody with a brand of underwear for a last name can’t be entirely scary.
Sergeant Underpants wants me out of here and off this case, so I can’t let on that I know the banker, much less hate him. Even Williams would agree that this is a conflict of interest.
“What about bank security, what have they found?” Williams asks.
Orsen straightens up, chin jutting out so that he peers down his sharp nose. “They’re working on it. We have the tightest security of any bank.”
Which is why credit card numbers are leaking out of there like sand between fingers.
“How many cards are we talking?” the Sergeant asks. “What’s the damage?”
“One hundred and thirty-seven cards. Likely more unreported. We suspect a hacker.”
“Cracker,” I say.
The room goes silent; all heads turn to me.
“A … uh, cracker is a hacker who commits crimes.” I swallow.
“Sure it is,” Haines replies. “Detective Williams, all the information we should need is in the report and Mr. Orsen has made himself available to answer questions. Thank you for now, Mr. Orsen, you’re in good hands.” He says it like he means it, and now I know he’s a good liar.
Orsen takes a hard look at me before shuffling out, back as rigid as a flagpole.
After the banker leaves, the Sergeant stands. “That could have gone worse—Williams, you divide up responsibilities. I don’t want to know what you do with her.”
I flush as Haines stomps out of the room, never having asked what I thought.
“So, team,” Williams says with a brave smile. “What have you got so far?”
> Chow sighs heavily. “Carding case.”
“Yes, and what’s the profile of a carder?” Williams asks.
I’m already lost and my gaze ping-pongs between them. “What’s carding?” I ask, shrinking in my chair as much as my cast will allow.
Chow snorts.
“Carding is when credit card information is stolen,” Williams replies. “Carders are criminals who trade in stolen credit card data. They’re part of the darker side of the hacker scene. Carders aren’t always hackers, but they buy most of their stolen data from Black Hats, the bad guys who crack bank databases.”
“So, we’re out to save credit card companies and banks a few bucks?” I ask. Williams cocks her head at me and squints. “Just saying. The crime doesn’t seem so terrible; it’s not like the credit card holder has to pay for the fraud.”
“Someone has to pay, Janus; there’s no free lunch. The trouble with carding is it’s nearly impossible to catch the people involved, even if you can figure out how they got the stolen information.”
I shrug. “Well, we know it all came from the bank.”
“I think she’s solved it.” Chow laughs.
It’s my turn to glare. “Hey, so I’m not Sherlock or Inspector Gadget, or whatever. I’m just saying they’re sure the carders focused on the bank, instead of on gas stations or somewhere.”
Chow’s lips quirk to the side like he’s parked them there for the moment.
Williams flips open the folder and reads the top sheet. “Same bank. Same branch, actually.”
I think about that and I can tell that Chow does too, like it’s a competition. One thing is certain, if this is a team, I can’t expect him to pass me the ball.
Assured Destruction: The Complete Series Page 16