Betrayed

by Karen E. Olson

  ‘Yeah.’ Zeke helps me up off the floor. ‘Come on. Let’s go downstairs,’ he says.

  On the way, I ask, ‘How are we going to find out anything if we don’t have the laptop? We really need to get in there. I want to see what’s inside. Maybe whoever planted that stuff in there left some sort of calling card that we can use to trace him.’ Just as he was able to throw down footprints that led into the laptop.

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Come on.’ Zeke grins. When we get back to the living room, I see what I didn’t notice before: the messenger bag on the floor next to the sofa. He pulls a laptop out of it and waves it in front of me. He opens it, boots it up, and sets it on the coffee table as he sits. He pats the cushion next to him, and I squeeze between him and the sofa’s arm. He doesn’t move over, but I am unaware of being uncomfortable as I stare at the laptop. It’s worse than when I was in the interrogation room – the need that rushes through me. Before I can stop myself, I reach out toward it, my fingers grazing the edge. I want nothing more at this moment than to touch the keys, feel them under my fingertips. The desire overwhelms me, and I feel myself taking a short intake of breath.

  Zeke turns the laptop toward me, pushing it closer. I yank my hand back as though I’ve touched fire.

  ‘Is this the laptop?’ I ask, aware that my voice cracks. I clear my throat as I wait for him to answer, but he doesn’t; he merely touches a key and the screen pops to life. I see the messages I got last summer in Quebec, the ones telling me my laptop had been hijacked and the hijacker wanted a million bitcoins. I read the exchange we had about the bank account that the FBI never found – I had set it up for Tracker – and I realize something.

  ‘Isn’t it evidence?’ I ask, referring to the laptop

  ‘I can’t do my job without it,’ he says, but he doesn’t explain how he is able to take evidence and just walk off with it.

  I decide I’m not going to nag him about it. He’s the one who will get in trouble if they find out. Instead, I study the messages on the screen.

  ‘He never actually says what bank account or anything that implicates me,’ I say softly, thinking out loud.

  ‘No, he doesn’t, but this did raise some flags – wondering exactly who the messages were aimed at. They know that whoever it is, is allegedly responsible for the hit. The IP address was like a gift.’

  ‘Isn’t it a little too obvious?’ I ask. ‘I mean, wouldn’t your people figure that someone wouldn’t be that stupid?’

  ‘Criminals are really stupid, Tina,’ Zeke says with a short chuckle. ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘But I’m not that stupid.’ As I say it, though, I know that I’m wrong. It was a stupid move on my part that led Ian – and Tony’s people – to find me on Block Island. Zeke, who knows this, doesn’t bother to contradict me.

  I want to change the subject, so I go back to the laptop’s contents. ‘What about the pictures? Of Steve and Jeanine.’ My friends in Block Island who were threatened.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he tempts me, the laptop even closer now.

  I can’t help myself. I pull it on to my knees. Zeke watches me, but I barely notice. A few keystrokes and there they are – it’s too easy to find the pictures. I know now that this is definitely a set-up. It wouldn’t be that easy.

  But as I’m thinking that, it also strikes me that the shadow never used Steve or Jeanine’s names – just called them my friends – and from the photographs, it might be difficult to identify them or where the photos were taken.

  For a moment, I forget about what I’m doing – my willpower gone and my relapse all too real – as I gaze at the pictures, even though I don’t need them to remember them. All I have to do is close my eyes, and they’re in front of me. In that second, I realize something. If I’m free, maybe I can go back. Back to Block Island.

  Zeke is closing the laptop cover. ‘We don’t have time for this now, Tina. We’ve got to get going. Whoever put these things on this laptop knows you’re here, probably knows that you’ve been questioned, and may even be watching the house right now.’

  I catch my breath. ‘But why?’

  ‘That’s what we have to figure out.’ He won’t meet my eyes. He knows more than he’s saying. He’s had some time with that laptop, and I know what he can do.

  ‘I want to see the conversations about the hit.’

  ‘We have time for that later. I’m curious, though, how much you know about anyone in the chat room. Besides me, anyway.’ He looks at me now. His face is so close, and again I am aware that his leg is pressed against mine and I can feel the heat coming off his body. I squirm a little, but I don’t have any room to move.

  I force myself to consider his question, which is curious. ‘I don’t know much about anyone there – not personally, anyway. We’re all anonymous. Supposedly,’ I say. ‘Do you think the shadow is someone in the chat room?’ That would be a huge betrayal. Everyone on the chat site is there anonymously, but it is a place where that anonymity is respected.

  At least that’s what I always believed.

  Zeke shrugs. ‘I think we need to find out more about the people on that site. It might narrow things down a little. Process of elimination.’ He stands. I am relieved that he is no longer so close physically. It makes me uneasy, reminding me of what we had a long time ago and how I do not want to repeat it. Yet there is still an attraction.

  ‘I tried to find out about Tracker,’ I say slowly, wondering if I should even admit it.

  He gives a short chuckle. ‘And you couldn’t find out anything? I’m surprised. I found out about you pretty easily.’

  I stand and face him, trying to force my competitiveness down but not being too successful. ‘I was a kid.’

  ‘You were twenty-five.’

  ‘You didn’t know who I was before then? Before the job?’

  He smiles. ‘No. Even though I tried to find out.’

  I can see something in his expression, and it dawns on me. ‘Something gave me away. I gave me away somehow, didn’t I?’ I try to remember what I might have said, what I might have done back then, but it’s too long ago, too much time has passed.

  He’s not going to tell me, either. He’s too busy putting the laptop back in the messenger bag. He goes over to the front window and stares outside.

  ‘They wouldn’t be so bold that we’d see them, would they?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  ‘If someone’s watching the house, then he knows you’re here. With me.’

  ‘We have to make it look like this is normal.’

  ‘You and me?’

  He smiles. ‘It might not be so difficult. For either of us.’

  I choose not to address what he’s really saying. ‘So, what, he sees us leave together?’

  ‘We have to make it look like you’re not leaving for good. That it’s just another day for you.’

  ‘It’s not, though. I would be at the shop now, at work.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what you have to make him believe. That you’re going back to work. That it’s business as usual.’

  I’m dubious, but I don’t have a choice. He’s right: I can’t stay. I already knew that, but the difference now is that I’m not leaving alone.

  SEVEN

  I am packing again. The backpack that made it through Quebec and all the way to Cape Cod is again going to hold all of my necessary belongings. Everything else gets left behind.

  I desperately want to think that this is the last time. The last time I ever have to pack like this, the last time I ever have to leave a place like a fugitive.

  I remind myself I’m not a fugitive anymore. Never was. But I can’t seem to wrap my head around that. Being a fugitive is habit. It’s been my way of life for so long.

  I pause in front of the bedroom window, and I can see the water from here. Its color changes with the seasons; instead of a bright, deep blue, it’s more silver today, reflecting the clouds that hang lower in the sky. Sometimes I walk along the beach and find a place to sit, my
fingers tracing the cool sand, digging up white, shiny shells. If I had my own house like I did on Block Island or Isle-aux-Coudres in Quebec, I might collect those shells in jars. I used to have jars filled with the smooth rocks I found on the beaches on Block Island. But here, I don’t have my own house. I have been housesitting for an elderly couple who go south once the air begins to get frosty.

  My eyes snap open when I realize I have to contact them, let them know that I won’t be coming back, that they need to find someone else to live in their house and water the plants.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Zeke tells me when I mention it.

  ‘But I can’t leave the house unattended. Let me call someone.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it.’

  I narrow my eyes at him. ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he says impatiently, grabbing the pile of clothes that I’ve laid out on the bed and shoving them into the backpack.

  I take the pack from him and pull everything out. He watches me sort through the T-shirts and jeans, neatly rolling them up so more will fit. I’ve got this part down.

  I am on my bike, my pack on my back. I feel the burn in my thighs as I pedal hard; I am not used to the weight anymore. I am wistful as I pass through the familiar neighborhoods, nodding at other bikers, joggers, women pushing strollers. I hate it that I have to leave yet another bicycle behind. I wonder if I will be able to get another one wherever we are headed.

  The plan is for Zeke to meet me in the alleyway behind the bike shop. He’d parked his car around the corner, in front of someone else’s house, as though that would fool anyone. If he is right that someone has been watching me, he is as exposed as I am.

  The scent of the ocean hangs in the air – salty, briny. I think about my watercolors hanging in the gallery in Woods Hole. Through my art, I have tried to capture the magic of this place, of the places where I’ve found refuge these past years. I never knew I had any artistic talent; I spent all my time in front of a computer screen before I went on the run. But once I discovered this about myself, I embraced it, just as I embraced my new identities. I was reborn in so many ways, and again I wonder about my new destination – I still don’t know where I’m going; I’m almost afraid to find out.

  I reach the bike shop much too soon. I want to take the whole day, make my way down Cape, maybe even go as far as Provincetown, where I can’t go any further and the ocean spreads out in front of me as far as I can see.

  The shop is locked up; Beth and Roger must still be tied up at the police station. Either that or they’ve decided to stay closed today. Maybe they’re at the Coffee Obsession, huddled over a couple of lattes and pastries, trying to figure out how their laptop got all tied up with a hit on a mobster.

  I open the side door and walk my bike past the front desk and into the workshop. I breathe in the rubber smell, close my eyes, and commit it to my memory. I have a feeling that I may not be part of this sort of life again for a while.

  I lean my bike against the wall and scurry out, not wanting to linger or I may never leave. I lock up the door I came through and go around to the office and slip outside.

  Zeke is waiting in an SUV. I toss my pack into the backseat before climbing into the front.

  It seems so clandestine.

  I am not sure I want to go with him to be squirreled away with some unknown hackers whom I don’t know. I have been on my own – alone – for so long that the idea of cohabitating is not appealing. I touch the jade necklace in the shape of a dragon that sits against my chest. It has given me strength before, and I’m afraid I will have to call on it again.

  ‘I don’t understand something,’ I begin when we are a few miles away, heading toward Boston. ‘Why have you continued to use the screen name Tracker after all these years? Why didn’t you give it up?’

  The SUV slows, stops at a light, and he turns to look at me. ‘Would you have trusted me if I wasn’t Tracker? If I was someone else?’

  ‘So this is about me? Finding me?’ It’s too simple.

  He reaches over and touches my cheek. ‘Yes.’

  The light turns green, and the SUV shoots forward. I can still feel his fingers on my skin, and I wonder if he is telling the truth.

  ‘I’m not only Tracker, though,’ he says suddenly, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Like you, I’ve got a few screen names. They do know about those; they know what I can do. That’s how I was able to assemble the team. Cybercrime is on the rise.’ He says this last bit as though it’s news to me, as though he’s reading a script. He is smiling now, too, to show me that he is spouting the company line.

  ‘Who are they, this team you’ve got? And why do I have to meet them? Hackers don’t meet each other, Zeke.’ I pause. ‘It will be the biggest regret of their lives.’

  He tenses up and bites his lip. I am throwing Tracker’s words back at him, the ones he wrote to me so many times when I suggested we meet and he refused.

  ‘You met me anyway,’ I accuse before he can say anything, aware that my voice is getting louder as my anger rises, but I can’t help myself. ‘You came to my father’s house under the pretense of watching him, and you met me. You knew who I was; we already had a relationship. But you took it a step further, didn’t you? You seduced me.’

  He chuckles then, despite himself. ‘You seduced me, Tina. Remember?’

  I shrink back in my seat. Yes, I did. It was all part of my plan to make Ian Cartwright jealous. But looking at it now, Zeke set it all up. He showed up; he put everything that happened afterward in motion.

  ‘I didn’t know what was going to happen between us, Tina,’ he says softly, reading my mind, which makes me even angrier. He isn’t Tracker. Not now. Tracker lives online. He is not flesh and blood. He is not this man who lied to me. Betrayed me. Tracker would never do that.

  And yet he did.

  I slump down in my seat and watch the world pass by outside the car window. I want to ask where we’re going, but at the same time I don’t want any more conversation. I watch the highway signs and see that we are nearing Boston. I turn the radio on, the music swirling around in my head.

  Zeke reaches around behind me and pulls out a large white envelope, which he drops in my lap. I frown, opening it. I take out the driver’s license and the passport, both in the name of Susan McQueen, the name I used when I lived in Quebec. I raise my eyebrows at him.

  ‘I’m Susan again?’

  ‘Figured you’d answer to it if someone used it.’

  He’s right about that. I was Susan for over a year, and I got used to her. ‘But why not use my real name? I mean, if I’m not a fugitive?’

  He pauses, as though thinking about how best to answer this. Finally, ‘There are news stories online.’

  He’s right. Stories about my father. About how he bilked his rich and famous clients out of millions and ended up in prison. How he died there. I wonder if taking back my real name is not a good idea after all. Even if I am not a fugitive, even if the bank job never comes back to haunt me, my father sealed my fate. I can never come completely clean if I want to build a new life.

  I shake the thoughts aside and study the documents. I don’t recognize the street address on the license, but the city is Miami. The photograph is one I took of myself when I was in Quebec with the idea that I could use it for this purpose, but I never followed through. How did he get it?

  ‘It was in the laptop,’ he says.

  The one that I gave him over a month ago when he told me he was Tracker and I vowed never to go online ever again. Even though I wiped it clean, he was able to find this photograph; he was able to pull it out from deep inside.

  For a moment, despite myself, I do think of him as Tracker, as the person on the other side of the chat room who could do anything, whose skills surpassed anyone else’s I’ve ever known. The hacker I wanted to emulate, the one I learned from, trusted.

  And when I realize what I’m doing, I push the thoughts aside and allow myself to become angry again. He in
filtrated my laptop. What else did he find?

  ‘You needed documents,’ he said.

  ‘And you just so happened to have my laptop and just so happened to have those documents made up. Were you so sure of me? That I would say yes?’ The fury rises as `I think about it, how I have played into his hands so easily. I reach for the door handle, forgetting that we’re going seventy miles an hour. ‘I want out. Now. I’m done.’

  The car swerves to the side of the road and I hear the screech of tires as the cars behind us brake and veer around us. I’m thrown against the door as we jolt to a stop, despite the seat belt, and he throws his arm across me as he unclasps his own seat belt with his other hand. Even if I want to escape now, I cannot open the door for the weight of him.

  ‘You can’t,’ he hisses in my ear, his breath hot against my skin.

  I try to yank back, but the seat belt keeps me from it, and I am more a prisoner than I was in that interrogation room.

  ‘I thought this was a free country,’ I mutter.

  ‘You are on tenuous ground, Miss Adler.’ He is reminding me that a new crime could unearth my old one.

  I glare at him. I hold his secret; I am not the only one who is at risk here. But he doesn’t seem concerned.

  ‘I’m going to sit back,’ he says softly, as though I am a danger to him and to myself. ‘You have to stay in the car.’

  I am more than aware that he could overpower me again, so I mutely nod. He settles back into his seat, and although I do not try to get out again, I try my best to disappear into the crack between the seat and the door, as far away from him as I can get.

  ‘You and I are a part of this,’ he says. ‘Someone made it his business to set us both up. It’s in our best interest to find out who, so maybe we can both move on with our lives.’

  His voice does not rise as he speaks; his tone is as though he has merely invited me out to lunch. But the threat is present. I need to help him or I will never be free. As it is, he has been searching for me for years and has finally gotten me where he wanted me all along.