Blind Instinct: A Tess Barrett Thriller

by Michael W. Sherer

  “Theresa Camilla Barrett, where have you been?”

  “Alice? I, uh, I—”

  “I’ve been worried sick! Someone called to say the school was in lockdown because of a shooting! That was hours ago.”

  “I’m fine, Alice. Really, I’m fine.”

  “I’ve been trying to call you all afternoon, young lady! The least you could do is text me to let me know you were all right!”

  “My phone didn’t ring.” Tess frowned, confused.

  “It must have,” Alice insisted. “What have you been doing all this time?”

  “That’s my fault, Alice.” Oliver’s voice came from behind Tess as he entered the kitchen. “We went to go talk to someone.”

  “Who? Why?”

  “A friend,” Tess said, turning defense to offense now. “You’re not my mother, Alice. Stop grilling me like I’m a murder suspect. I’ve already been through that once today with the police.”

  “I’m responsible for you, Tess, when Travis isn’t here. But it’s your responsibility to check in so I know where you are. For you not to call, especially after an event like the one at school today, is not only the height of irresponsibility, it was thoughtless and cruel. I care about you, Tess. I don’t just make sure your clothes are clean and your meals are prepared, I actually care about your wellbeing and what happens to you.”

  Tess felt her ears burn. “I’m sorry, okay? What do you want from me? I didn’t hear the phone!”

  “You should have called. And you, Oliver, are just as responsible for this situation. You’ve been told on more than one occasion that I expect to know where Tess is at all times. You should have made sure she checked in.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Oliver said, sounding meek. “I see what the problem was. Tess’s phone needs charging.”

  “No.” Alice’s voice was firm. “The problem is that neither one of you took the time to think about anyone else after what happened today.”

  “Stop it!” Tess cried. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like!”

  “No, and I’m sure it was awful for you,” Alice went on, more quietly now. “But just imagine for one second what it was like for me knowing there had been a shooting at school, but not knowing who’d been shot, if anyone had been hurt or killed, and not being able to get any information because the school was locked down. Imagine what it was like still not hearing a word even when the lockdown ended, still not knowing where you were or if you’d been involved in any way.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  Silence filled the space between them for a moment. Oliver shifted his weight behind her and cleared his throat.

  “Yes,” Alice said, “well, I’m sorry, too. You’d better get started on your homework.”

  Tess shuffled out of the kitchen down the hall to the library. Oliver tried to help her, but she shrugged him off both times.

  “It’s my fault,” he said softly. “I should have called Alice.”

  Tess shouldered her way through one of the library’s double doors and headed for the study table, hands dusting imaginary furniture as she went.

  “I know better,” she said, the words tasting bitter on her tongue. “Today was just so weird, and I got so stressed out by that whole thing with Matt that I forgot. I hate it when Alice does that to me. She’s always trying to control me. Everyone around here tells me what to do. ‘Tess, you can’t do this. Tess, you have to do that.’ It was bad enough when my mom…”

  She left the thought unsaid, knowing if she dwelled on it she’d get teary-eyed. She wanted to hang onto her anger, not let sentimentality turn her insides to mush.

  “So, homework?” Oliver said.

  He almost sounded fearful, and Tess knew it was because of her foul mood. She didn’t care. She was sick of being ordered around, of being treated like a child.

  “Where’s my backpack?” she said.

  Oliver dropped it on the table with a thump and slid it across to her. Her fingers found the right pocket and pulled out her phone. She groped inside another pocket, withdrew a USB cable and plugged it into the laptop already open on the study table. The other end fit neatly into a socket on her phone allowing its battery to charge.

  “Well?” Oliver pressed.

  “Look, after what happened today none of the teachers are going to expect us to do homework. Why bother?”

  “Come on, Tess. Don’t be like that.”

  Tess’s head rose automatically at the sound of a knock on the library door. She knew her eyes were aimed in the general direction, but only a clean blackboard registered in her brain. Nothing but blackness.

  “Miz Barrett,” a male voice said. “Someone here to see you. I figured it was okay I let him in the gate out front.”

  “Who is it?” Tess said.

  “Oh, sorry. It’s Luis.”

  “No, I meant who’s here to see me?”

  “Right. Tim Daley. Said he’s a friend of yours.”

  Tess’s breath caught and her heart hopscotched before settling into a faster rhythm. “You can show him in, Luis. Thanks.”

  Tess had known Tim since fifth grade. In middle school, they’d developed a minor crush on each other, but, being gawky pre-teens, hadn’t done much about it. They’d stayed friends going into high school, and even though they hadn’t seen as much of each other when she and Toby had started going out, they’d remained amicable. Instead of getting pissed and jealous, Tim had gone out of his way to support her. He’d been the first person who’d called the house after her accident, not Toby or Addie. Of course, back then she hadn’t wanted anyone to see her swathed in casts and bandages, her once pretty face contorted by pain and self-pity. Funny how her looks had faded in importance when mirrors had become useless.

  “Hi, Tess.” Tim’s voice came from the spot where Luis had been a moment ago.

  She didn’t think her heart could beat any faster without exploding. It’s just Tim, and you’re just friends. She beamed, unable to keep her cheeks from rising up somewhere near her ears. The world around her slipped away until it was as if her uncle’s disappearance and the shooting at school had never happened. No more Alice or Yoshi nagging her, no more Oliver, no more school. All that remained was the pounding of her heart and the echo of Tim’s voice in her ear.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice sounded breathless, and the question sounded lame. “I mean, I’m glad you came, but—”

  “Oh, come on, Tess. I’ve been calling for weeks, ever since I heard you were coming back to school. You kept putting me off, so I figured I’d just stop by. I wanted to see if you were okay after what happened at school today. That’s okay, right?”

  “God, yes. I mean, sure. You know you can drop in anytime.”

  Tess felt her cheeks flush. Now she sounded too eager, like some star-struck freshman.

  “Really? That’s not the impression I got.”

  “She give you a hard time?” Oliver said. Tess had forgotten he was in the room. “I’m Oliver, by the way, Oliver Moncrief.”

  “Tim Daley. You’re Tess’s assistant. I’ve seen you with Tess around school.”

  “That’s me,” Oliver said, “seeing-eye guy.”

  Tim laughed and Tess’s face burned red-hot now. “I don’t treat you like some dog.”

  “No, I guess not. More like a go-fer.”

  Tim’s laugh sounded nervous now, and her embarrassment turned to anger.

  “Nice, Oliver,” she said. “I think you can go now.”

  “What about homework?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

  “Tim can help me with whatever I’ve got left,” she said.

  “Sure,” Tim chimed in. “No problem. Happy to help.”

  “Don’t you have practice with Yoshi this afternoon?”

  “I can practice in the morning before school. Stop being such a worry-wart, Oliver.”

  “You’re going to blow off homework, and Yoshi,” Oliver said. “Are you positive that’s what you want?”


  “Go home, Oliver,” Tess said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Fine. But don’t blame me tomorrow if your work isn’t done right. And no whining about how tired you are because you had to get up early for jiu-jitsu.”

  Tess fumed, convinced they could see smoke curling out of her ears. “I can handle it. I’ll get all my work done. Tim’s here, remember?”

  “I’m not blind, Tess,” Oliver said quietly.

  Her mouth opened in shock, but no words came out. A hot boulder sat in her belly.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Oliver said.

  His footsteps receded as he walked out the door and down the hallway.

  Chapter 16

  For the umpteenth time on his way back to the office, Derek ducked into a storefront. A casual observer might have thought he’d gone in purposefully to tick some errand off his list, or that he simply wanted to get out of the rain for a minute. But Derek wasn’t interested in casual observers. Looking around to get his bearings, he headed toward the back of the store, listening for the sound of the front door opening behind him. He stopped in front of a rack of clothes marked “Clearance” and shuffled the hangers, pretending to look for and admire some gross looking Hawaiian shirts. He moved around the circular rack until he faced the entrance, and surreptitiously watched both it and the front window for signs that he’d been followed.

  Ever since Oliver’s phone call, Derek had been spooked. He’d heard about the shooting at the school. Who hadn’t? It had been all over the news, but never in a million years would he have connected it to Never Bitten. The game had been his baby for two freaking years. He’d written more than half the code and had gone over every line of other people’s code a dozen times or more. The app was as close to perfect as anyone could get it, even software genius James Freaking Barrett who, though he’d recently been communicating from beyond the grave, was no longer the head of MondoHard. In fact, Derek defied anyone to find something wrong with the game. Yet Tess and Oliver seemed to think this kid at school might have wigged out because of something in it. If that was true, someone had messed with it.

  The bell over the front door of the store tinkled, jangling Derek’s nerves. He glanced up to see a kid stroll in with a skateboard in one hand. Water dripped from the deck and ran in rivulets off the ends of his stringy, long hair down his waterproof jacket. Not the enemy. Derek looked past him at the glistening street outside the stippled window. Still no movement except that of passing cars. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. He glanced around the store and caught the eye of the heavyset Hawaiian woman behind the register. She grimaced and looked away. Derek flushed and moved away from the rack of shirts. She probably thought he was a shoplifter from the way he’d been acting.

  He walked back toward the front of the store, eying the shelves for something he could buy so it wouldn’t look as if he’d come in for nothing. He settled on a bag of Hawaiian taro chips, took them to the register. The cashier looked him up and down as she rang up his purchase, took the five-spot he proferred with an audible harumph, and made change. He shoved the change in his pocket and mumbled his thanks as he turned for the door.

  Outside, he stopped and looked both ways as if uncertain where to go, taking in as many details as he could while he scanned the sidewalks on both sides of the street. He noted pedestrians, their positions, gender and the color of their clothes. Setting off down the street, he tore open the bag of chips and ate a few. A block down, he stepped off the curb and craned his neck down the street the way he’d come as if peering for a bus or a cab. No one darted into doorways or averted their eyes. If he had a tail, he couldn’t spot it. He walked another two blocks and caught a bus after a short wait. Two bus-rides later, with some walking in between, Derek made it back to the MondoHard building convinced he hadn’t been followed.

  Striding into his dim office, he stripped off his wet coat and threw it over the back of a chair. Two other desks sat empty, the teammates who normally occupied them out for some reason. Probably down in the cafeteria getting coffee or soda. Paul, the only one of his officemates still there, glanced up from his keyboard, face painted blue by the light from the big monitor in front of him. Annoyance flashed across Paul’s face before he turned back to his work. A poser. Paul couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag, but he wasn’t bad enough to fire outright. Derek shrugged. He wasn’t Paul’s boss, and if Paul was given clear enough direction at least he took some of the grunt work off Derek’s shoulders.

  “Where you been?” Paul grumbled. He pushed black-framed glasses back up the bridge of his nose and blinked rapidly, his eyes magnified by the thick lenses.

  “Lunch.” Derek eased into the chair in front of his computer.

  “Long frickin’ lunch.”

  “Had some errands,” Derek said, fingers flying over the keys.

  He tuned Paul out, focusing on the task at hand—figuring out what was going on with the app on the shooter’s cell phone. First, he checked the app version he had running on his workstation. He ran the game and found no problems. A quick glance told him that Paul was deeply absorbed in his own work, so he quickly unlocked a desk drawer and pulled out a small touchscreen notebook computer. He kept it for times such as this when he wanted to access networks anonymously while at work. The notebook had a partitioned hard drive in case it became infected with a virus or Trojan, and he knew tricks to disguise its IP address.

  He pulled Matt’s phone from his pocket and hooked it up to the notebook with a spare USB cord. After downloading the app from Matt’s phone to the notebook, he played the game and compared the action to the clean version on his workstation. He noted slight differences on a pad of paper on the desk. Most would have gone unnoticed even by some of the people on his team, like Paul. But he knew every move, every pixel in the app. The changes in the game seemed to guide his play, almost as if steering him. Not in a particular direction in the game, which the others on the project might pick up on, but in an emotional sense. It was almost as if the game was feeding on his mood and driving him into situations that would sustain and amplify it. He found it unnerving, almost spooky.

  After a quick check on Paul, he closed out of the app and turned his attention to the phone again. He scrolled through the main menu and pulled up the tools file. With some manipulation, he was able to find the IP address of the site from which Matt had downloaded the app. Switching to his notebook again, Derek executed a search for the address and found a back door into the site. He took a quick look around, careful not to leave any tracks that would announce his presence. From all outward appearances, it duplicated the MondoHard site exactly. For now, he wanted to get in and out quickly, so he downloaded another copy of the app onto the notebook, got out of the site and broke the network connection.

  He opened the app and ran the opening sequences of the game. When the same changes appeared that he’d seen on the phone, he closed out of the app, switched to a black screen and began typing commands. He needed to find out what was wrong with the code and where the program had originated, and he knew he didn’t have much time. Whoever had messed with the app may have been smart enough to put in a self-destruct command if anyone tried to find code snippets that didn’t belong. He opened an anti-virus program that he’d customized and let it run in the background while he started tracing the IP address that he’d found on Matt’s phone. Just as the program locked in, Derek heard a shuffling noise behind him. Damn, he hadn’t been paying attention.

  “What’re you working on?” Paul peered over Derek’s shoulder, squinting at the notebook screen. He pushed his glasses up with a forefinger then sniffed and swiped the back of his hand across his nose and wiped it on his jeans.

  Derek thought furiously as the combined scents of Slim Jim and Axe deodorant drifted past his nostrils and soured his stomach. Selling the truth was easier than keeping track of a lie.

  “I got a fan complaint.” He glanced back. “Some kid said h
is app wasn’t working right.”

  “Never Bitten? Impossible, right?” Paul grinned as if he was practicing, his facial muscles unused to the movement.

  Derek hated suck-ups, but antagonizing people he had to work with accomplished nothing. He gritted his teeth. Paul wouldn’t last long on his team. Derek just needed to bide his time until Paul was gone.

  Derek flashed some teeth. “You’d think. But I figured, better check it out anyway.”

  “Why not toss it back to customer service? Let those weenies handle it.”

  Derek struggled to turn a frown into something more benign, but Paul had seen the message written on his face and backed up.

  “Right, it’s our program. Well, your program, really.”

  With a jovial tone to lighten the mood, Derek said, “Yeah, man, it’s a matter of pride. We all worked too hard on this. You know how it is; one kid posts a bad review on a game site and we’re toast.”

  Paul nodded at Derek’s use of the word “we,” and walked back to his desk beaming at his inclusion as part of the team.

  Derek breathed a silent sigh of relief and again focused on his work. He checked the location of the IP address that had come up and frowned. Though tempted, he couldn’t take a chance on running the trace again, but he double-checked the search result. Matt had downloaded the faulty app from a server inside the building. From a server in the series that housed the main program and database for the app. It didn’t match the primary address, but if traffic had been heavy when Matt had downloaded his copy, he could have been shunted to this IP address.

  He turned to the notebook when he noticed that his anti-virus program had stopped running. He peered at the stats box. It couldn’t be right. All those files checked for bugs and not a single virus. No corrupted files. Nothing.

  He rubbed his chin until another idea struck him. He typed furiously, making up lines of code on the fly, telling the computer what he wanted it to do. When he finished, he scrolled back up and scanned through what he’d written, checking his logic. He nodded. It would work. Drawing a breath, he taped the return key and watched the characters he’d typed dissolve as the program ran.