Spiders in a Dark Web

by Emily Senecal

  If our plan failed, well… We’d just have to figure things out from there. I could only hope Peter was still an unknown factor, one that the DiGregorios would dismiss if I, or Marianne and I, were out of the equation. If that meant we were dead, or framed for crimes we didn’t commit (or did commit, on Marianne’s part, but only under duress), I couldn’t worry about it. I just couldn’t. It was unthinkable—and I’d had considerable practice, in the last weeks, of avoiding unthinkable fears. My dread was with me, heavy in my heart and stomach, but I forced it down and worked to focus on what was directly ahead of us.

  The evidence would be sent this afternoon, immediately. Before it was done, I booked a room at the Four Seasons on my credit card, making a reservation for three nights—Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Three nights in even the cheapest room cost more than a month’s rent in LA, but I had just enough credit to cover the cost. Peter suggested we drive home, since we had time, leaving early the following morning and arriving in San Francisco Saturday evening. It was about a thirteen-hour drive, if we went through LA and up Interstate 5, joining the same route I’d taken on my mad rush north, and would save us hundreds to rent a car versus booking a last-minute flight.

  Though it seemed like an inopportune time for a road trip, I thought it was a good idea. Short of cooling our heels for an extra day in Tucson, the only other option was to head back to the Bay Area early. It was tempting to think of going home for a quick stop; the camper had become home, my tiny sanctuary. Even more so for Peter, who could check on Osiris and Delia. But it would be harder to get away again if we went back, we both saw that. While we didn’t want to show up in the city too early, getting there late Saturday and staying in our room should be safe enough. After all, the DiGregorios, as I still thought of them, no matter how quickly they’d want to strike, would also need time to travel from wherever they were. Out of the country, Marianne had said, though giving no indication where. From what she said, she might not know.

  Before we left his house, Brendan used his Tor account to upload, encrypt and push the information to sites the agencies would be monitoring, flagged and programmed to catch their notice in ways he didn’t bother to describe in detail, and neither of us questioned. It had to do with whistleblowers and anonymous tips. Each agency had many of their own accounts on Tor and other darknet browsers, according to him, though like everyone else they were impossible to identify. He described what he was doing as similar to commenting on a public blog with links, except it was more layered than that, which would take them directly to the downloads he’d set up.

  On Brendan’s suggestion, he also uploaded an encrypted copy of the folder to Marianne’s IP address, along with a key. Whether she’d feel safe enough to access it, or took steps to use it, we couldn’t predict or control, but he pointed out that anything she did could only help our cause.

  “The doomsday clock has officially started,” he said, as soon as he’d finished. He went for a third beer, offering us the same, but Peter refused for both of us, suggesting that we head back to town to figure out what we were going to do next.

  “Welcome to stay,” Brendan said, yawning and gulping down more beer.

  “Thanks, but we’ve got a few other things we should take care of,” Peter told him. “Sorting out the rental car, for one thing.”

  “Sure,” Brendan said amiably, getting up to walk us out—though I suspected this was more to make sure that the door was secured behind us than out of politeness.

  “I can’t thank you enough—for all your help,” I said earnestly, feeling slightly ridiculous as he herded us down the hall. Now that we were leaving, Brendan was more than ready to have us on our way.

  “Wouldn’t have missed it,” he said, not bothering to suppress an even bigger yawn. “Hope to see you again sometime.”

  “We’ll let you know what happens,” Peter said.

  “Yep. Do that. Bye-bye,” Brendan said, ushering us out and closing the door with a definitive thud.

  The air outside rushed over my skin like a soft, hot blanket, making me realize how chilly the house had been. I checked the time and was surprised to see that it was after one. The strange little interlude, both exhausting and exhilarating, had left me feeling somewhat blank.

  “Sorry about that,” Peter said, unlocking the car. “He doesn’t mean to be rude.”

  “He wasn’t rude—his mind’s just moved on.”

  “Exactly. I’m glad you see it. It puts some people off.”

  He rolled the windows down and started the car; the seats were warm but bearable after being parked in the shade.

  “He told me Kathe didn’t trust him,” I said.

  “No, they didn’t get along. She found him… shifty, was her word, I think. And socially inept.” Peter started the car and turned the A/C up to full blast, carefully backing out of the driveway.

  “He’s not inept,” I protested. “He’s just… a little abrupt. Not everyone cares about being liked.”

  “Kathe does, of course. Being liked and respected matters so much to her that it’s hard for her to relate to anyone who doesn’t feel the same.”

  That made sense. Even more reason why she and Peter wouldn’t have worked—she placed a much higher value on societal approval and recognition than he did, which was made clear by the professions they’d chosen. He ran a small bar in a small town, content to stay behind the scenes, while she made her mark as a homicide detective in a growing city, no doubt often in the public eye. Even if their relationship hadn’t fallen apart when and how it did, it was easy to see how Peter wouldn’t have fit with the image she cultivated. I wondered briefly what her current husband did for a living, but before I could ask, Peter changed the subject.

  “As soon as we get back to San Francisco you can start logging into your accounts on your phone—whatever tracking stuff it does. Aren’t there ways to sort of check into where you are?”

  “Almost every social media site lets you check in, if you have location services turned on,” I said. “It might look suspicious if I suddenly flooded my accounts, but one or two check-ins on the way and once we get there should do it. It probably won’t surprise them to see I’m in the Bay Area, I could easily be visiting friends or taking care of business up there.”

  “Right. So we have to make them sit up and take notice. Any ideas?”

  I thought for a moment, looking out the window as we turned back out of the twisting neighborhood streets onto a main road.

  “I think I need to email Marianne,” I said slowly. “She has the evidence now. Even if she guesses what we’re doing, she still might try to force their hand by showing it to them. I can tell her that I’m worried… that I know she said not to write but that I don’t think it’s a good idea to meet her right now. That everyone else is convinced that this will work, but I’m not, and I don’t want to go through with it.”

  “As if you’re panicking, but it’s out of your hands?”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “That should get their attention. Do you think she’ll see the message?”

  “Maybe. If she still looks at that email account. But if you’re right that she wanted this, she’ll understand what we’re doing—and anyway the point is for them to see it.”

  “True. It might not make a difference, you know.”

  “I know. But we have to do everything possible to get them to show up, don’t we?”

  “We do, yeah. If the plan has any chance of success.” After a minute, he said, “I’m leaving a copy of everything with Brendan. He said he’ll get it to Kathe if anything—goes wrong.”

  “When did you decide that?”

  “You were there, but I think your mind was on something else when we were talking about it. If he doesn’t hear from me, he’ll take it to her and explain… Well, I have no idea what he’ll say, but he’ll convince her to look at it.”

  “Not that I’m questioning, but… Why didn’t you want to go to her—from the start?” I asked. “
She could’ve sent it to the right people.”

  “Of course—and she’d have done everything possible to help us. But we couldn’t avoid being the center of a swarm of police, answering awkward questions they might not believe the answers to—and there’s no way they’d agree to work with us to set a trap for the DiGregorios. Marianne would be in just as much danger, or more—her parents might decide it was time to do something drastic to keep her quiet, to her or both of you. Not to mention someone might arrest us for collusion or something. It wouldn’t help that I’m closely associated to a suspected drug trafficker. It—doesn’t exactly inspire confidence,” he concluded with a curt laugh.

  I pinched his arm very lightly.

  “I’m glad we’re doing it this way,” I said, and it was mostly true.

  ■ ■ ■

  After a quick visit to a nearby office of the rental car agency, where we extended the rental contract and arranged to return the car in Oakland, and a second stop to pick up sandwiches and large iced teas, we went back to the hotel. I wanted to clear my head and wash off the day with a shower, after which we could discuss our plans in the cool privacy of our room. Our intention was to leave early the following morning, not rushing, but aiming to get to Oakland by about eight, return the car and take BART into the city.

  We could have gone to the airport and driven my car instead, since it was—I hoped—still parked there, but the cost of parking at the hotel was astronomical. On top of that, we’d be less encumbered without it if we wanted to get away quickly. It was about the same length of drive to SFO as it was to Oakland, but it just felt safer, somehow, to approach the city from a different route.

  We’d agreed to all of this, and I was settling back onto pillows propped against the headboard, holding my phone in preparation for loading apps and logging into all the accounts Marianne had warned me to stay out of, when something occurred to me.

  This was my life now.

  From the minute Marianne called on that Friday so many weeks ago—two weeks, I realized… two weeks ago—everything had shifted to a kind of bizarre alternate reality, where I considered how fast I’d need to get away, who might follow, who would be watching. Where people I grew up knowing as distant and unlikeable humanitarians became menacing figures who forced my only remaining family to work for them under the threat of harming me. Where I’d recklessly risk my present and future safety because the alternative was that much worse.

  Where I had a partner—the first partner I’d ever really had. Someone to plot the downfall of villains with me. To support me through danger and investigations and the dismantling of old beliefs. To fall asleep beside every night, our arms or legs touching, damply satisfied from making love or simply relaxed and tired from a long day of travel and adventure. To wake up to every morning, stale-breathed and tousled, doubting what the day might bring, but never doubting we’d be together for whatever it did.

  In just fourteen days, everything I’d ever known or thought about my cousin, my past, my future, had been unwritten. I’d always just assumed that the disturbing things that happened to other people, other families, hadn’t had a chance to touch us. Cancer and illness and death were terrible. Brutal beyond endurance. But they weren’t malicious or sordid. No person was responsible for deliberately depriving me of my parents; no one had devised that aching tunnel of grief and forced me into it; no malevolent plot or actions led to their deaths. The wounds inflicted were painful but pure, just as the gray dim doldrums I’d lived through the past five years were soul stifling in their own shallow way, but still wholesome, the way plain, unsalted oatmeal is wholesome.

  Without ever recognizing I had these assumptions, I believed that we were removed from and untainted by the evil that exists in the world. Separated from it by an invisible, impenetrable barrier that could never be violated. I was profoundly naïve, sincerely convinced of this truth.

  I’d been so wrong.

  Just beyond my sight was a vast darkness, a thick black web of greed and lies and violence. It touched me, had touched my parents, though we never knew it existed. And now that I’d seen it, I couldn’t ever go back to unseeing. I was a part of it now. Connected by a dozen different strands, held fast by its sinister influence.

  The DiGregorios, as I still thought of them, were the architects of that spreading ugliness. How they became what they were, I’d probably never know. And it didn’t matter. They had done such harm to someone I loved, done such irreparable damage to the daughter they should have honored and cared for, that even if they’d been innocent of any other crimes, I would have despised them for that.

  As it was, they were thieves and crooks and killers. They were without conscience or common decency. Catching the unwary in their snares, we were tightly bound and sucked dry for their swollen avarice, at their narrow pleasure.

  Even if this didn’t work, I knew it was what I wanted to do. I wanted to bring them down. End their reprehensible schemes for good, free my cousin from their control. Maybe I wasn’t the person to do this, but that was just too bad. I was given this chance, and was willing to try. Even if we were arrested or—worse.

  As far as Peter was concerned, it was far too chilling to imagine he might be hurt in any way, so I couldn’t consider that. They didn’t know him. They knew me. They’d want me. He had a chance of getting out of this even if our clumsy schemes fell apart. Believing that was the only thing keeping me from screaming aloud in panicked rage at the thought that those awful people might do him harm.

  I didn’t want to die. I had no desire to be recklessly daring. It wasn’t that I was prepared to martyr myself for him or anything so dramatic. But if it came down to it, it was fair for me to be the one in the crossfire. He was only part of this because of me. It was his choice, but it was still because of me.

  Maybe we’d just get arrested.

  At this point, that really didn’t sound so bad.

  Chapter 17

  “OK, what do you think of this?” I asked Peter an hour or so later. In that time, while he mapped out our trip, I’d downloaded several social media apps and logged into my accounts, keeping location services off for the moment. I’d also added my email accounts to the phone and downloaded my contacts from the cloud. By tomorrow, I’d be traceable again. I planned to turn everything on in LA, as if I’d gotten a new phone in SoCal and was driving up from there.

  “‘Marianne, please don’t do this,’” I read aloud. “‘I know you said not to write but I can’t sleep and I don’t know what else to do. There’s no other way to reach you. I’m on my way to LA and will be in the city by Sunday. I DON’T WANT YOU TO COME.’ (That’s in capitals.) ‘Let them figure it out without you. You did enough by getting the files—the police have everything they need to find these criminals and put them away for good. Please please stay out of sight. Please. Do this for me. It isn’t worth it. I love you, Lo.’”

  “I like it,” Peter said.

  “That’s the first one. I figured I’ll send it tonight around two, and maybe another on Saturday night saying the same kind of thing along with the fact that we’re at the hotel as planned. I don’t know how to work a fake meeting location into that—but maybe it doesn’t matter at this point?”

  “I don’t think it does,” he replied. “Since we’re counting on the idea that they’ll move on us first.”

  “Do you think it’s enough?”

  He rubbed my back a few times and smiled.

  “I really hope so. I’m somewhat out of my depth in all this, if you couldn’t tell.”

  “I’m totally out of my depth—but you know,” I said reflectively, “even though I’m doubting all the time what I’m supposed to do next—what the right thing is… I’m not doubting that this—that it’s the right thing for us to do. Like it’s… an opportunity that I know I don’t want to miss. Not only to help Marianne, and not just to do something crazy or risky. But to—to…”

  “Make a difference,” Peter said, his dark eyes thoughtfu
l.

  “Yeah. I’ve never done anything remotely heroic before—never helped anyone or saved anyone. Even if this plan doesn’t work because we don’t know what we’re doing, even if they get away and we’re all in danger for it, I’m—I’m glad of the chance to try, you know?”

  He didn’t speak, but pulled me into a long, deep kiss, one of his hands tangling in my hair while the other slid around me. I’d gotten somewhat used to kissing Peter in the week we’d known each other. Even with the other distractions of the trip, we’d managed to put in some time making out as well as having a few sexier interludes. Of course our relationship was so new, everything we did was novel and exciting, but even so kisses and holding hands had become the norm, comfortable and natural.

  This kiss, though, knocked me sideways.

  Sweeter, more intense, more full of love and longing and intimacy than any other physical touch we’d shared. I felt an ache welling up in my chest—a good ache, as all the pain and loss of the past few years rose up and pushed forward. At long last, it could be shared, and understood.

  As we moved tightly together, breaths and mouths mingling, I felt more reverence than passion, as if my very heart was expanding, my soul reaching for eternal, starry bliss. It would be impossible to describe in any other way than a spiritual experience, born of the body and carried out of it into the realm of poetry and song and wildly ecstatic drug-induced trips, unlike anything I’d ever felt.

  After a long moment—or maybe several millennia—we pulled slowly apart and stared at each other.

  “Damn, Lola,” Peter laughed shakily, “I really hope you feel the same way I do.”

  I reached up to touch his cheek, which seemed to be slightly damp; only then did I realize that I was crying. My eyes had gently overflowed onto both our faces, since his—though bright with unsaid things—didn’t appear to be wet.