by Camilla Monk
This should have tasted like victory, but it didn’t. My throat tightened more and more with each line I read. I had wanted so hard to believe that Thom had nothing to do with the hacking of EMG’s accounts . . . yet what scrolled before my eyes was a large-scale simulation—if you could even call it that when the accounts seemed very real—combined with an ingenuous overlay to deactivate all of Ruby’s security restrictions, giving it unlimited access to external networks and free range to attack any kind of banking system.
My eyes met Alex’s. “It’s what you were looking for. But these files only contain the target accounts. I can’t see any parameters for the wire transfers. Maybe those were entered at the last minute to preserve secrecy.” I frowned. “At this point, judging by the way this was coded, I can confirm Thom engineered this . . . ‘simulation.’ But I can’t tell you the money’s final destination.”
Colin gestured to his laptop’s screen. “Yeah, like I told you, he split the cash and had it transferred thousands of times through offshore accounts and ghost funds to cover his tracks.”
A sudden anger coiled inside me at the way he assumed Thom was the mastermind behind the operation. “You’re saying that like he did it for himself. Just in case you forgot, Thom is dead!”
Colin cowered. “I’m sorry. We know someone was there with him, likely overseeing that he’d launch Ruby as planned. They also cleaned up after him: his phone was missing when his body was found, and I haven’t been able to track it. My best guess is that it got destroyed.”
I listened to his explanations, my fists clenched tightly on my lap. Alex took my hand. “Island, I’d like you to come with me to check Thom’s office again, see if there might be something we missed.”
As I nodded my agreement, I felt his thumb linger on my wrist for a second. It reminded me of what he had done in the Caterpillar’s car, but this time I could tell Alex wasn’t trying to check my pulse. A tingle traveled up my arm; I pulled my hand away carefully. “It’s okay, I’m fine. Take me there.”
NINE
The Coupons
“Ramirez sleeked his thick mustache lasciviously. ‘My beautiful Rica . . . Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you under a French maid disguise?’”
—Kerry-Lee Storm, The Cost of Rica II: Ramirez Strikes Back
I guess I watch too much television, because when Alex, Colin, and I entered Thom’s office, I expected to see tons of yellow police tape all around the room, but there was nothing like that. Since the whole episode had already been ruled a suicide and the paperwork was done, there was no “crime scene” left, just an empty room. Not that some tape would have made much of a difference. Now that Alex’s colleagues were done questioning my colleagues and everyone had left, EMT and the police had basically put the entire floor under a lid, the same way they’d locked down access to the fifth floor. The handful of people still allowed in there operated under tight surveillance, as evidenced by the presence of a cop to monitor all movement in the hallway and the silent open space.
Alex flung his jacket on a guest chair, and Colin sat in its twin, opening his laptop. A bleak morning light bathed the sparse white furniture and the sea of books, folders, papers, and LEGOs covering Thom’s long glass desk.
I couldn’t stop myself from walking up to the window and looking down at the street below, where Thom’s body had been found after his killers had thrown it from one of the fifth-floor windows. The Kit Kat was sandwiched between Greenwich Street and Washington Street. The glass building across the street did have a clear view of ours. In the middle of the night, however, there had probably been no one there to witness the murder.
I moved away from the window and scanned Thom’s desk. I could see him again, sitting in his chair right before I had left, unaware that this was the last time I’d speak to him. I had never been big on displays of affection, but I wished I had told him, at least once, just how much I admired him and how happy I had been to work at his side. I turned to Alex and Colin with a heavy sigh. “What do you want me to check? His computer?”
“Could be a start. Colin says he didn’t use it to launch Ruby, but maybe you’ll see something else.”
A faint buzzing interrupted our conversation, and I watched Alex reach for his phone in his back pocket. He checked what appeared to be a text, typed a brief answer, and shoved the device back in place.
I didn’t dare ask, but he spoke anyway, as if in afterthought. “Island, I need to go take a look at something with Agent Murrell. I won’t be long. Can I ask you to stay here with Colin?”
I froze, and behind me I could sense Colin was staring. My eyes darted to the hallway. “Agent Morgan? Can I speak to you alone?”
Alex nodded and opened the glass door for me, before closing it behind us. Farther down the hallway, the policeman guarding the open space’s entrance glanced at us from the corner of his eye.
“Why would you do that?” I whispered.
He tilted his head, faking a surprise the curve of his lips belied. “You mean trust you?”
“Yes. Alex, are you testing me or something?”
“Not really.” He reached behind his back and under his shirt; I heard a clicking sound.
I recoiled as he pulled out a Glock 21. Yeah, after my time with March, I’d spent a lot of time on Wikipedia researching the fascinating subject of modern firearms; also, it was written on the barrel. Unaffected by the fact that the cop might still be watching us, Alex racked the gun, spun it around with deft fingers, and handed it to me, barrel facing him. “Now I’m testing you.”
God, I didn’t like the intensity in his gaze. I shook my head, palms rising in a defensive gesture. “Look, I—”
“Good.” In the blink of an eye, the weapon was safely back in its holster and under his shirt. “You passed.”
I could have punched him for that, but I was still trying to calm my heart’s frantic beat. “Please don’t do that again. I’ve seen this documentary about a guy who accidentally shot himself in the face while robbing a Walgreens, and doctors were trying to graft a chimpanzee’s jawbone on his face—”
My ramblings were interrupted by his hands moving to cradle my face delicately. I felt my cheeks flame up as he bent down, closing the distance between us and studying me with those hypnotic cinnamon eyes. “Island. The safety was still on . . . and that guy deserves a Darwin Award.”
I knew I should have pushed him away, now that he was nothing but a stranger I had met a few hours ago, but I could still see, still feel the old Alex, his outline blurred with the new one in something akin to a watercolor portrait. I babbled the first thing that came to my mind. “He can’t have a Darwin Award; he’s still alive.”
His lips quirked. “I expected no less from you.”
I freed myself from his hands and looked down at our shoes, at the tiny curls in the gray carpet. Did he feel it too, that our geeky banter wasn’t working anymore, and each word exchanged between us now rang strained, stilted?
“Alex.”
“Island?”
“Don’t play with me like that again. This is difficult enough as it is.”
I registered the cotton of his shirt grazing my forearms as he moved closer, felt his drawn-out sigh breeze against my forehead. “I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for me either.”
Alex’s hand brushed mine—perhaps a substitute for the kiss he knew he couldn’t risk with people watching us—and he walked past me toward the elevators.
I heard the doors slide shut with an odd mixture of regret and relief.
Colin and I were, in many regards, the same. For example, when I have a problem with someone, I never dare to bring it up; I just keep stealing anxious glances at them until either they react or I give up and go eat some brownies. Which was exactly what Colin was doing at the moment. No need to ask whether he had seen Alex play trust games with his gun and touch my cheeks earlier; the answer was written all over his face.
When his eyes darted to me for the hundredth time in five minute
s, I abandoned my scrupulous analysis of the activity logs on Thom’s Mac and spun my chair around to face Colin. He seemed to shrink in his own chair and allowed his long black bangs to fall in front of his glasses in an attempt to conceal his discomfort. Too bad I already knew this technique—it was my favorite one too.
“Did you find anything new?” I asked casually.
More shrinking.
“Is there something you’d like to say?”
Raisin-level shrinking.
“About Agent Morgan, perhaps?”
Subatomic particle–level shrinking. Before my eyes, the Wall Street Avenger was now threatening to disappear. A low gasp indicated he was trying to force words out of his throat. “No . . . I mean—” Slender fingers left the laptop’s keyboard to play with the black cotton of his T-shirt. “Look. I know . . . I’ve heard you guys were sort of . . . close. But I think you should be more careful around him.”
I stole a guilty glance at the hallway, where I knew Alex might show up at any moment. I knew Colin and I were alone, but I whispered anyway. “What do you mean?”
“They had an eye on you, even before this Ruby thing,” Colin hissed back.
I shook my head, half-relieved. “It’s okay, I know about that. Alex and that old guy—they made it clear that they have a file on me. That’s actually why I have to work for them. I guess . . . I guess my life is a little complicated.”
Colin’s eyes widened in apparent outrage. “A little complicated? You’re the South African’s daughter!”
A prickling sensation spread across my cheeks as if I had just been slapped. The only man I had ever heard being called that was March. But we were clearly talking about Dries, my biological father. I looked down at the laptop’s keyboard, unnerved by Colin’s intense scrutiny. “I’m Simon Halder’s daughter.”
“No, you’re not. I managed to access part of your file. You’re his daughter. The older South African, I mean—” I noticed his hands were trembling a little, but that energy radiating out of him seemed more like childish excitement than fear. “And the young one, his disciple . . . You’ve met him too, right? What’s he like in real life? I mean, I’ve read some crazy stuff.”
The first words my brain conjured upon hearing this were “bazooka” and “sniper rifle.” I mentally cringed. March was, indeed, capable of some crazy stuff.
“Do you know what the NSA’s code name is for him, the young one?” Colin asked, his tone turning conspiratorial.
“Um, no.”
“The Tomato Guy.”
I gave him a wary look. “Do I want to ask?”
The grimace twisting his mouth was an answer in itself. “Have you seen The Goonies?”
“Oh no . . .”
“Oh yeah. They actually have him on some old Russian surveillance tape doing that . . . Well, they’re pretty sure it’s him, anyway. You can’t really see his face.”
Against my best efforts, my brain conjured up the infamous scene that had scarred my—and quite a few kids’, it seems—childhood. I felt my stomach heave as I pictured Mama Fratelli threatening to put young Chunk’s hand into a blender and mixing a couple of tomatoes to demonstrate. The kid’s crying, the blender’s ominous noise, all that juice . . . I prayed it was someone else on that NSA video. I didn’t want my number one fantasy to be ruined by visions of bloody fingers being pureed next time my own hands took a trip under the covers.
I took a deep breath. “Look, Colin. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s not what it seems.” God, I sounded like Bill Cosby. “I-I hardly know them, and, uh . . . I don’t want to discuss this.”
“Discuss what?”
Colin blanched, and at the same time my spine turned to a Popsicle. Alex was back. And he apparently possessed ninja skills on top of a gun.
“Nothing!” I said, turning around with what I prayed passed as a confident smile. “Colin and I were just chatting. About . . . stuff.” My ears were red. I could tell they were.
Alex tilted his head, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “If you say so . . . Murrell got results from the lab. They were able to connect some fibers we found on Thom’s body to an army surplus store in Queens. Buyer hasn’t been ID’d yet, but we have a physical description and a license plate. If we’re lucky, they might even still be in town.”
“But you don’t think they are?” I asked, reading the slight twist of his lips as he said this.
He shrugged. “Decent pros will usually vanish once they’re done. Our best hope is for those guys to have some sort of business left in New York. Might make them easier to trace.”
“What about DNA?” I inquired—yeah, CSI made me a supercop, just like everyone else.
Alex seemed to fight a smirk. “We’re not dealing with guys who leave hair and fingerprints everywhere, Island.”
Figured. I remembered the way March always wore his black leather gloves, how he kept his light chestnut hair in a short Caesar cut and sported a close shave all the time. Those probably weren’t just fashion choices.
“Island, are you done checking things in here?” Alex asked.
“Almost. We didn’t find anything unusual in his files or his papers, but I wasn’t done with his e-mails and chat logs.”
Alex looked at Colin over my shoulder. “Thank you for your help, Colin. You can leave with Di Stefano if you want.”
The offer was made with one of those good-cop smiles Alex seemed to have mastered to perfection, but it was clearly an order rather than an invitation. I watched as Colin packed his laptop and the various pieces of equipment he had brought in a large metal case. I still wondered what Alex had overheard a few minutes prior and how badly it might affect Colin’s own detention regimen. I felt guilty.
There wasn’t much I could do as he walked past me. I placed a hand on his forearm to stop him. “Colin. Thank you, for everything you’ve done.”
He responded with a quick nod.
Di Stefano stood in the hallway. He followed her, parting with one last wave of his hand, and as they disappeared into the elevator, I wondered if this was the kind of future awaiting me: a human commodity for the CIA to place where they saw fit.
A pawn.
I don’t know about you, but I have this internal clock for burritos when I’m working. It’s set to twelve thirty. So you can be sure that around that time I’ll stop whatever I’m doing to think of burritos. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll have one for lunch, but I’ll think about them anyway. That’s how I could tell lunchtime was overdue without even checking the clock—I was getting increasingly frequent mental flashes of black beans and guacamole.
Alex and I had remained alone in Thom’s office after Colin and Di Stefano’s departure. I was sitting cross-legged in one of the guest chairs, stomach rumbling while I finished reading Thom’s latest e-mail. My heart sank when I reached our exchanges. It was an indescribable feeling—an elusive mix of pain, guilt, and nostalgia—to read myself telling him that all the servers had crashed during the night, but surely it wasn’t anything huge, maybe a memory leak, and I’d be there soon. Next to me, Alex was swimming with a look of mild exasperation in the capharnaum covering Thom’s desk.
He abandoned his inspection of a pile of résumés to rub the bridge of his nose with a long sigh. “Nothing, right?”
I looked up from the screen, shaking my head. “Not really. Seems like he kept saving his work on those fake image files we found, and even the code he was working on last night has been wiped from the logs. Looking at his Mac, you’d believe he barely worked at all. All I got are his e-mails—everyday stuff, nothing out of the ordinary. Not that he’d have been stupid enough to use his EMT mail address to contact whoever made him do this.”
Alex walked around the desk to stand behind me and take a look. I pointed at a particular list of folders. “We also got some files related to the department’s administrative supervision. But there’s no code here either. Not a single line.”
I heard him scratch his stubble as he always did
when thinking. The only time I had ever seen Alex with a close shave he had looked eighteen, and I could tell he’d missed his precious whiskers, because he kept stroking his chin unconsciously, looking for them in vain. “I see. Those chicken files . . . What was the exact date they were created?”
I checked again. “They were first saved on March 14, basically right after Thom got back from—”
“Zürich?”
Alex had reached across the desk to grab Thom’s beloved quantum physics cat memes calendar. On March’s page, under the picture of a kitten playing with strings, several days had been circled with a red pen.
“Yeah, he was at Mach-T.”
“Mach-T? What is that?”
“Machina Tomorrow,” I explained, getting up and setting the laptop aside to fish for a colorful brochure on the glass desk. I showed it to him. “It’s the biggest machine learning conference. They do it every year in a different country, and EMT Switzerland was the principal sponsor this year, so they organized it in Zürich. I was supposed to go too—I went last year—but this year Thom said he needed me here to finish our beta.”
Alex’s eyes lit up. “So he went alone, and right after he came back, he started tweaking with Ruby’s code in secret. Looks like we’re finally going somewhere.”
“To Switzerland?”
“Yep. And you’ll be coming too.”
My jaw dropped. “You mean . . . with you . . . there?”
“Is that gonna be a problem?”
All I could do was shake my head lamely.
“Not really where I planned on taking you for a surprise getaway, but I guess the cheese wheels will have to do,” he concluded with a sheepish wink.
“A surprise getaway?”
“Well, before all this”—he made an all-encompassing gesture at Thom’s desk—“I’d been thinking of taking you to Ferris Lake. Ever been there?”