by Sadie Hayes
“But where did Ted find the money to invest in Doreye? I thought you said he was filing for bankruptcy?”
Dawson nodded. “Who knows—maybe he borrowed money to do it, or sold one of their houses or something?”
“I haven’t found anything like that, though,” Amelia said, disheartened.
“Amelia,” Patty consoled, “take a break and eat your dinner.” She turned to Dawson, holding out a platter of ornate sashimi. “Want some? I overordered.”
“Sure,” he said, pulling out his wallet.
“It’s on me,” Patty chirped, waving away his attempt to contribute.
Dawson smirked. “Where does a college girl get money to buy gourmet sushi?”
“Well,” Patty said, grinning, “I was once the proud owner of a very lucrative escort service. But these days it all just comes from my trust fund.”
Patty turned to Amelia to see if she laughed at the joke, but stopped when she saw her friend’s face change.
Amelia sat up in her chair and her eyes darted back and forth as though she were looking at something hanging in the air. “That’s it,” she whispered. She turned back to the computer and hurriedly searched through Stuart Chen’s files.
“Amelia, what is it?” Patty was suddenly at her side.
“The trust,” Amelia said, only her lips moving. She clicked to open a file.
“What?”
“On the third disk I downloaded, remember how we couldn’t figure out why T.J.’s trust instrument was in the documents?”
“You think he stole from his son’s trust?”
“It wouldn’t be stealing,” Amelia reasoned. She opened up the file that contained megabytes of e-mail correspondence between Ted Bristol and Stuart Chen and used a PERL script she’d written to search for language that would answer their questions.
“Let me see.” Dawson pulled the keyboard from Amelia. “I think you’re right.” He clicked through the files, nodding as he read the language aloud. “Jesus, that’s good.” He sat back with a satisfied grin.
“Did you figure it out? Does it say who owns Doreye?”
“T.J.’s trust fund owns Doreye,” Mr. Dawson explained. “I tried this once but got caught. Of course, I didn’t have the expertise to set up a shell company like your friend Ted Bristol.” Dawson went on: “Being a trustee of his son’s fund allows Ted to invest as he sees fit. So this guy Ted, he took money from T.J.’s trust fund and invested it in Doreye. This way, if or when Doreye has a pop in value—let’s say it sells or something—he takes all the profits and filters them through the shell company, then puts the original amount back into the trust fund like none of it ever happened.”
“But if it’s T.J.’s trust that owns it, why doesn’t T.J. just give Amelia back the company?” Patty demanded. “Problem solved?”
“I’m not an expert in these things,” Dawson replied, “but it’s not T.J.’s until the trust is activated. Until then the trustee controls it, who I have to imagine is solely Ted.”
“So Ted is stealing from T.J.?” Patty couldn’t believe it. Ted Bristol wasn’t her favorite person, but he was her parents’ friend and T.J. and Lisa’s dad. “This isn’t possible.”
“Anything’s possible when you’re desperate.” Amelia thought about her own situation, being connected yet again with Dawson. “You’ve got to talk to T.J.,” she said, turning to Patty.
“What about Adam?” Patty asked. “Does he know any of this yet?”
Amelia looked uncomfortably at Dawson. “Adam’s the worst part of all this,” she told Patty. “You know that new girlfriend Adam has? Violet? She works for Ted.”
“Hmph.” Patty was silent for a moment. “And here I thought I was the only one pimping out girls in Palo Alto.”
“I need you to talk to T.J., Patty. Find out the last time he looked at his trust. Maybe there’s another explanation for this.”
Patty put her jacket on and flung her arms around Amelia. “Don’t worry,” she whispered in her ear, “I’m on it.”
62
Caged Animal
Violet pushed her face between the bars and pouted at the guard until he looked up from his desk.
“What is it, Miss Weatherford?” he sighed, looking back down at his paperwork.
“Can you get me something from my purse?” she said in a baby voice. “Pretty, pretty please?”
“You know I’m not allowed to do that.” The guard didn’t look up, but she could see him blush.
“I just need my nail polish,” she said. “How am I going to cause any trouble with nail polish?”
“You’re about to be extradited to Britain, where you will probably spend many years in jail. Maybe you should be thinking about that instead?”
“I am thinking about that, but,” she said, jutting her hands through the bars and flipping her hands up so he could see her fingernails, “they’re going to put me in the papers first, and I can’t bear for my last public image to be a girl with chipped nails.”
The guard couldn’t resist a chuckle, and she smiled at her accomplishment. He sighed and pushed himself up from his chair, removing the polish from her handbag and passing it into the cell. “Be quick about it, though; Roy’s back in an hour and he won’t like it.”
“I could kiss you.” She tossed him an air-kiss and went back to the bench to apply the bright red lacquer. She hummed as she did so, admiring her handiwork.
The guard shook his head, confused by her good mood. He tried to do his paperwork, but he wasn’t used to having beautiful women under his watch. He looked for something to say: “You know you get a phone call, right?”
She nodded from her perch, and then looked up. “Oh, yes! That reminds me.” She stood up and came back to the bars, careful not to mess up her fingernails. She’d unzipped the orange jumpsuit as far as it could go and tied a piece of string around the waist to accentuate her curves. And it worked: She actually made the jail uniform sexy. “Can you look up the number for Spruce?”
“What?”
“It’s a restaurant, in San Francisco. I need to call them.”
“Your one call is to a restaurant?”
“It’s near impossible to get a reservation at any reasonable hour unless you call right when they open their books three weeks before the date. So I need to call.” She glanced at the clock. “Now,” she emphasized, “if I’m going to get in.”
“In three weeks you’ll be in England,” he pointed out. “In jail.” She still didn’t seem fazed. “For cyberterrorism,” he reminded her, as if speaking to a child.
“No matter,” Violet chirped.
He stared at her, not sure whether to find her carelessness sexy or unnerving.
“You can’t tell me who I can or can’t call, Larry.” She pouted her lips again, and his heart welled helplessly hearing her say his name.
“I know.” He handed her the phone and went back to his desk to look up the number for Spruce.
“Hello?” she said into the phone after she dialed. “Hello, yes. I’d like to make a dinner reservation for two, three weeks from today, at seven o’clock. The name? Dory: D-O-R-Y.”
63
Trust Me
“T.J.!” Patty ran across the parking lot to catch him. It was raining softly and T.J. had pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt as he ducked from the gym back to his car. He turned when he heard his name.
“T.J.!” she repeated, putting her hand on his shoulder and leaning over to catch her breath, lifting the other finger to signal she needed a minute.
“Come on.” He pulled his arm around her and led her to his car. “Get in out of the rain.”
She opened the door to the passenger seat and sank into T.J.’s BMW, squinting her nose at the thick smell of spicy cologne.
“Do you wear cologne to the gym?” she blurted through her heavy breathing.
“No,” he said, and looked at her defensively, then admitted, “the bottle spilled in the back.”
She laughed, and he rol
led his eyes. “I need to get it cleaned, I just haven’t had time, okay?”
“Too busy playing video games?” She couldn’t resist.
He punched her arm. “Owwww!” She kept giggling.
When she finally caught her breath, she said, “I need to talk to you.”
“Evidently.”
“It’s about Amelia.”
His brain clenched and he sat forward in the driver’s seat. “Did you find her?” He didn’t care whether his voice sounded desperate. Lately that’s how he felt.
“Yes,” she said, “but that’s not the point. She broke—I mean, we—well, we’ve found something is up with Doreye.”
T.J. shook his head. “Tell me something I don’t know.” Doreye was all T.J. had been thinking about … except, of course, Amelia. “Wait, Amelia knows?”
“Yeah.” Patty nodded anxiously. “And she figured out who the mystery investor is. She knows who owns Doreye.”
“Who?” His heart was beating faster than it had been when he was working out.
“Your father.”
“What?” He could feel his head starting to spin.
“Your father.”
“I heard what you said,” T.J. snapped, “but how is that possible?”
Patty shrugged. “You tell me.”
“But why would he want to own Doreye? He hates Amelia.” A million questions suddenly flooded his mind. “And why would he go to so much trouble to keep it a secret?”
“Because of where he got the money.”
“What do you mean? He has the money.”
“He’s bankrupt, T.J. After Gibly he filed for bankruptcy.”
T.J. gripped the wheel in silence, bracing himself for the next question but already knowing the answer. “So where did he get the money?”
“He used your trust fund, T.J.,” she said quietly. “When was the last time you looked at it?”
T.J. shook his head, unable to believe he’d signed those papers. He still didn’t understand the trap his father set, but he knew now he’d walked right into it. “I don’t have permission to see or do anything with my trust until I’m forty,” T.J. answered. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Well, your trust owns fifty-one percent of Doreye, so if you got control of it, you could give it back to Amelia.”
“Well, I can’t do that, Patty,” he said angrily. “So long as my parents are alive.”
Patty wasn’t fazed by his meanness. “There’s one more thing,” she continued. “That girl Adam is always with—Violet? Amelia thinks she works for your dad. And that someone’s paying her to manipulate Adam.”
“What?” T.J. turned toward her. “I can believe my father is shady and desperate and conniving … but he wouldn’t seriously hire someone to…”
“When was the last time Amelia was wrong about something like this?”
T.J. stopped. Violet was a constant presence at the Doreye headquarters. She was always at Adam’s side. Some of the engineers had started calling her “Lady MacDory.” And she was even the one who … T.J. could feel sweat collect on his forehead. It was all so clear: She was the one who had connected Doreye with the cloud-computing company, and she was the one who had found a buyer for Doreye’s user data. A move that made sense if you wanted to turn a quick profit and then …
“Oh my God,” T.J. croaked. “I have to call Adam.” T.J.’s hands fumbled as he picked up his phone and pressed Adam’s contact number. He connected his phone to his car’s hands-free system. The call was answered on the second ring. “Adam?”
“T.J.? What, uh—” Adam’s voice was already shaking as it filled the car. It sounded like Adam was on edge. “Sorry, I’ve been tied up and haven’t gotten to…”
“We need to talk about Violet.”
Patty and T.J. heard breathing on the other end of the line.
“What did you hear?” Adam finally replied, and then more aggressively, desperately, “Tell me what you heard about Violet.”
“Adam, I don’t think her intentions are what you think they are.”
“No shit they aren’t, T.J.!” Adam snapped. “Is that some kind of a touchy-feely way of telling me that she’s a fucking terrorist?”
Patty’s eyes widened and she stared at T.J. “Is he crazy?” she whispered.
T.J.’s brow squinted but he spoke calmly into the receiver. “Hey, Adam. Maybe you should take a moment to calm down. We can talk about this another time.” He looked to Patty for reassurance that was the right thing to say. “Why don’t I come in and—”
“We don’t have any more time, T.J.” Adam sounded like he was going to cry. “It’s going to happen, and I can’t stop it.”
“What’s going to happen, Adam?”
“The code! The app update! What they couldn’t do with Gibly, they’re going to do with Doreye.”
“What are you talking about?” T.J. insisted as patiently as he could.
“You don’t know?” Adam’s tone changed immediately. “Why did you call me to talk about Violet?”
“She works for my father, Adam. I think he hired her to…” He hesitated to tell Adam given his state. “To manipulate you.”
“What?” Adam’s voice got soft. “Ted’s in on this, too?”
“Adam,” T.J. said quietly, “what happened?”
“I was at dinner with Violet last night. And Marsh—you know Professor Marsh? He arrested her. All those rumors on campus about him are true: He works for the CIA. I saw his badge. He shows up at dinner, flashes it, and then takes her away.”
“What do you mean? Why would she be arrested?”
“I thought she was a successful consultant.” Adam sounded like he was hyperventilating. “But she’s…” He struggled to say it. “She’s somehow connected to an organization called VIPER. It’s the same company Amelia uncovered with—”
“With Gibly,” T.J. interrupted, remembering the TechCrunch article from a year ago and the fallout that ensued.
“Marsh said that VIPER might be some kind of a cyberterrorist organization. Well, Violet’s code is in the Doreye app, and as soon as it’s approved it’s going to expose tens of millions of people to whatever VIPER is.”
“Calm down,” T.J. counseled. “I think I know what to do. Go get some breakfast and chill. I’ll call you back in an hour.”
T.J. hung up the phone and turned to Patty. “Where’s Amelia?”
Patty hesitated. “I can’t tell you.”
T.J. slammed his hand into the steering wheel and his voice intensified, saying, “I’m not messing around, Patty. Where’s Amelia?”
“I’ll show you,” she conceded softly as he turned on the ignition. Then she added more firmly, “But, T.J., do not screw this up. She cares about you.”
“And I care about her,” he snapped, feeling the full force of his admission. “Now call her and tell her what’s going on. She’s got to hack into Apple’s approval hub and scramble the new code. We haven’t got much time.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I need to call an attorney. I think I know how to give Doreye back to Amelia.”
64
Old Habits
“How’s it coming?” Patty asked as she entered the house.
“You’re going to have to give me time,” Amelia snapped without looking up from the computer, her voice flustered.
“Sorry,” Patty mouthed silently, looking to Dawson, who shrugged his shoulders. The two were helpless: It was up to Amelia to hack into Apple and fix the code. All they could do was watch and bring her coffee she didn’t drink and hope she was the computer-science phenomenon they all believed she was.
Amelia stared at the screen, but her thoughts were on Adam. The reality of all that had happened was starting to sink in. For the past year she’d seen her brother change, and she always feared that his ambition would cause him to do something wrong. Amelia shuddered to realize how correct those fears were. She’d never not listen to her instincts again.
From
what she could learn about VIPER, if the app update went through, then Doreye would become a vehicle for an event unlike any the world had seen. Tens of millions of phones would be compromised: bank accounts, credit cards, address books, locations … everything personal and private would be available to VIPER. The entire country could become paralyzed—or worse.
Amelia blamed herself. She felt it was her responsibility to convince her brother to be more careful and to not rush into things. They were supposed to complement each other; she was supposed to be the yin to his yang. They were a team. They were the Dorii. She should have fought harder to keep them together.
Her fingers hadn’t moved in several minutes, and she was clenching her jaw to hold back tears.
“You okay?” Dawson noticed the quiet from the keyboard.
She shook her head silently without turning around.
“Oh, Amelia, what’s wrong?” Patty was at her side.
“It’s all my fault.” Amelia’s voice cracked.
“What’s your fault?” Patty’s voice was an impression of her mother’s soothing her after a time-out. She sat on the desk to face Amelia.
“Adam. I should have stopped him.”
“From what?” Patty coaxed.
“From spending time with Violet. From getting to know her. From being influenced by her.”
Patty rubbed Amelia’s arm. “Honey, Adam was going to do whatever he was going to do. You couldn’t have done anything to prevent it.” Patty waited a second, then kneeled down next to Amelia so they were both facing the computer screen. “But this,” she said, pointing at the computer, “this is something you can control.”
Amelia swallowed and nodded. “You’re right.” Her chest heaved one last time, and she shook her head rapidly as if to shake out any remaining sadness and distraction.
Patty left her side as Amelia began typing again. Dawson gave her a silent thumbs-up, and Patty matched it with a silent “Whew!”
Two hours later, Amelia had figured out a way to daisy-chain into Apple’s complicated security infrastructure and access their application update approval hub. She found the Doreye application and searched for its status.