by Willow Rose
“What’s going on?” I ask and throw my dishtowel on the counter. The look on her face is scaring me.
“Chloe?”
“Something is very wrong,” she says and taps on the keyboard again.
I walk up behind her and look over her shoulder. Then I gasp. “What on earth is this?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I think we’ve been hacked. Someone has placed a bomb in here sending out all kinds of messages to your followers. Completely spamming them. This is bad, Mary. People are going to be so pissed. We’ve already lost five thousand fans. If this goes on, we’ll end up losing every one of them.”
“What kind of messages?”
“Like this one,” she says and points at the screen.
“What the heck? I never said that! And that picture of me? Where did that come from?”
Chloe shrugs. “I don’t know. What are you doing in this picture anyway?”
“I was stuck in the toilet. Hey, don’t judge me; I was like ten years old. How did this get on here?”
“Who has access to these photos?” Chloe asks. “Do you have them on Facebook? Instagram?”
“No. I don’t have any of my childhood pictures online. Most of them were lost in the fire. I don’t think my dad has any left…wait a minute,” I say. “There is someone who could have had access to them before the house burnt down.”
Chloe nods. “Blake.”
“Yes, Blake.”
“Looks like he wants a war,” Chloe says, while tapping on her computer.
“How has he done this?” I ask. “I didn’t know he could do anything remotely like this on a computer.”
“Well…I taught him,” she says. “Now, if I could only…I need to stop this before…”
“You did what?”
“I taught him everything, all right? Remember I had a thing for your brother a while back? Well, it is very clear to me now that he used me. I taught him how to hack and how to destroy webpages like this. I was using it to destroy child-porn sites. He wanted to know more; he was interested in what I did. I thought he was interested in me…but now he is using what I taught him to get to you.”
“But that means you can also stop it, right?” I ask hopefully, while Chloe’s fingers dance crazily across the keyboard.
“I don’t know yet,” she says. “This bug he has created is pretty advanced. I can’t seem to get back into the page.”
“But you can stop it, right?”
Chloe doesn’t answer. I stare at the screen while she works her magic. I have never seen her like this, so frantic. Meanwhile, the number of followers drops drastically by the minute. I feel so helpless. It frustrates me that I know so little about computers and the world of hacking.
“Oh, no!” Chloe exclaims.
“What? What’s happening?”
“He knew I would try this, so when I did, I activated another bug.”
“What bug? I don’t understand anything that is going on, Chloe.”
“Neither do I,” she says and looks up at me.
Meanwhile, my blog is crashing on the screen, in an inferno of old pictures of me flashing on the screen one after the other, numbers and letters flying around until the screen suddenly goes black and one message remains, blinking:
READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!
Chapter Thirty-Nine
April 1975
People on the boat are cheering as it pulls away from the shore. On the outside, some people are still trying to jump on the boat, most of them without success.
Danh holds his sister tightly in his arms. He doesn’t know whether to cry or join the cheering crowd, so he chooses to do neither. He can only hope one of his brothers is on the boat with them or will be waiting for them wherever they are going to end up.
Soon after, the cheering subsides and everything in the bottom of the boat goes quiet. They have entered the big ocean.
Now what?
In the ocean, the small fishing boat hits rough seas. It feels like the boat is being thrown high into the air only to slam back onto the waves. Soon people are screaming instead of cheering. And some of them start to get sick. One after another starts to puke. Being on the bottom, a lot of it comes down on Danh. He lies on top of Long, covering her so it won’t hit her as well. She is scared and whining, so he starts to sing for her, the songs their mother used to sing. It calms her down and soon she falls asleep.
By some miracle, or pure exhaustion, Danh manages to fall asleep as well. When he wakes up, it is light outside. The seas have calmed down. Many people are still asleep. That’s when he sees it. Up on the deck. The red shirt.
“Bao!” he yells.
The red shirt turns around and looks towards him. Danh waves.
“Bao!”
Bao walks closer, then reaches down his hand and grabs Danh’s. He pulls him up and they both help grab Long. They carry her up, away from the crowd of sleeping or sick people. Danh’s heart is beating so fast. He is so happy to see his older brother he is almost about to cry.
“We’re actually allowed up here on the deck,” Bao says. “We’re among the few who have paid for this ride.”
Danh looks down at the many people at the bottom of the boat. There has got to be at least a hundred and fifty people. It seems like a lot of people for such a small boat.
“They disguised it as a cargo ship,” Bao said. “Clever, huh? They hope no one will stop and check for refugees. They’re carrying colas.” Bao points at the many bottles.
Danh doesn’t look at them. He keeps staring at his brother, wondering about the word, refugees. Was that what they were now?
He struggles with this term and wonders if that means they’ll never go back again. But what about their parents? What about their many brothers? Will they ever see them again?
Long moans in her sleep and Danh hopes she won’t wake up yet. He doesn’t have the answers she will be seeking and he doesn’t know how long he can keep lying to her, pretending everything will be all right, when he doesn’t know. When he is terrified they won’t.
Bao grabs a cola and throws it at Danh. “Here. The captain says we can drink these to stay hydrated. He has rice too.”
Bao puts his arm around Danh’s shoulder and pulls him closer. “We’ll be all right, brother,” he says. “Don’t you worry.”
Danh eases up and smiles. For a few seconds, he believes his brother is right. Until he looks down at the crowd of people on the bottom and then back at the sodas, and realizes there is far from enough for everyone.
Chapter Forty
April 2016
“I did it. I’m back in!”
I literally have no nails left when the words I have been longing to hear for hours finally fall.
I get up and walk to Chloe. The table is filled with empty chocolate wrappings from me binging in anxiety. “Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes. I have taken control back of our site. It’s over.”
I take in a deep breath of relief, pull up a chair, and sit right next to her. “How bad is it? What’s the damage?”
“We’ve lost a million followers so far. There might be more along the way. We still have almost four million, so it’s a sustainable loss.”
“Phew.”
“Now all we have to do is clean up. I think I might have to make an entire new design. It may take a few days to get it completely up and running, but I think I can manage,” she says.
“I have no idea what I would do without you,” I say, and pour the both of us some more coffee. It is late in the afternoon and I am exhausted from this emotional rollercoaster.
Chloe sips the coffee, before she looks at me. “Maybe we should spice it up a little?” she asks.
I walk to the cabinet and grab the whiskey. I pour some in both of our cups.
“Just what the doctor ordered,” she says.
I close my eyes and take a big sip. The alcohol soon makes me calmer. I am so angry with my brother I can hardly contain it. I push my anger
back by eating another candy bar, just as I hear a knock, and seconds later the front door is opened. Danny walks in. He looks tired. Like he hasn’t slept at all.
“She’s not the only one,” he says, his bloodshot eyes staring at us, looking almost manic.
“What do you mean?” Chloe looks up. Danny slams the door behind him. I just hope he doesn’t wake my dad, who had to take a nap.
Snowflake attacks him, wagging his tail and whining for him to pet him. Danny greets him with a short pat on the head, then walks to us.
“I mean she is not the only one,” he continues. He lifts a stack of papers in his hand. “Look at all this. I have been up all night searching the news, scanning the local newspapers for other missing persons, and look at what I found.”
He throws the stack on the desk next to Chloe. “Four cases within the last two years. Four cases of missing single mothers and their child. And there seems to be a pattern to it. If you look at the dates, there are exactly six months between the disappearances. Exactly.”
Danny spreads out the papers and shows us the dates. “These two, Kim and Casey Taylor, a mother and a daughter, just like the rest of them, disappeared exactly a year ago. Last seen at the mall on a surveillance camera. Kim’s mother filed a missing persons report a week later, when her daughter and granddaughter still hadn’t shown up, and these pictures appeared. According to the newspapers, it is believed Kim Taylor ran away with this man that she is talking to in the surveillance video, the one you can only see the back of. They closed the case, stating she had met a man and left town with him. But Kim’s mother didn’t believe any of that, so she has started a Facebook group to help find her daughter and grandchild. I spoke to her earlier and she told me it is odd that Kim would leave everything behind in her apartment and not even take her clothes if she had left, or made sure the cat was taken care of. She has told this to the police, but they say they believe Kim is on drugs and this is typical addict behavior. If someone comes along, offering them drugs or a better life, they leave. Next, there is this case, exactly six months earlier, to the date, Jenny and Stacey Brown disappeared. They are last seen by a neighbor in Publix, where she greeted them on their way out. Since then, no one knows what happened to them. Again, they live in a bad neighborhood; the police believe drugs were involved. The mother owed a lot of money and was known by the police for petty theft, shoplifting and so on. They believe she left town to start over somewhere else. Jenny’s sister, who filed the missing persons report, accepted that explanation and stopped looking for her. Exactly six months earlier, in April 2014, two years ago, Joan and Nicola Williams disappeared. The newspapers haven’t written much about it, but they did send out an Amber Alert for the daughter when the father asked the police for help, but they were never found. The story reports nothing about their home or whether they took everything or not. But it fits with the pattern. The same with Maria and Tara Verlinden. Their disappearance came exactly six months after Kim and Casey Taylor’s. No one seems to care because that stupid mother of hers doesn’t care. There you have it. All four cases are from Brevard County.”
I grab the printed out articles that he has found and look at them one after the other. There are a lot of similarities in the cases, I can give him that, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions. It could all be coincidence. But the fact about the dates being so accurate intrigues me. I can’t just ignore it.
“Six months, you say?” I look at my phone to check the date. “If you’re right in your theory, then that would mean that a mother and a daughter will disappear again tomorrow?”
Chapter Forty-One
April 2016
A thunderstorm hits Cocoa Beach that afternoon, just as I park the car behind the building housing city hall and the police department. I don’t have an umbrella or a jacket to cover me, so I decide to make a run for it. When I go through the glass doors to the police department, I am soaking wet, and water is dripping from my hair and clothes onto the tiles. I leave a puddle as I walk across them to the front desk.
“I’m here to see Detective Chris Fisher,” I say to the woman behind the counter. She seems to be pretending I don’t exist and stares into her computer screen, her glasses on the tip of her nose, her red hair in a ponytail.
“Is he expecting you?” she asks, still without looking at me. I try not to let it irritate me.
“No. But it’s important. He knows who I am,” I say. “Just tell him Mary Mills is here and that I have some very important information for him. It’s a matter of life and death.” I try to sound dramatic to provoke any reaction from this lady who doesn’t seem to care about anything. It doesn’t work.
“Have a seat,” she says, finally looking at me above her glasses.
I sit down in an uncomfortable chair. I can’t sit still. This morning has been an emotional rollercoaster to put it mildly, and I can’t calm down. I check my phone excessively to see if Salter has called, but he still hasn’t. I worry about him. He ought to be back from school now. I hope he at least went to school today and not paddle boarding again.
I grumble and curse Joey when the door opens and Chris Fisher pokes his very round head out.
“Ah, Mary,” he says, sounding like he is everything but happy to see me. He steps out and walks towards me with his usual smirk. I can never tell if he is hitting on me or being a jerk.
“To what do I owe the honor?”
I have known Chris Fisher since he was just a kid. He hasn’t changed much since he was that annoying teenager who was always peeking at us older girls. He is still annoying. He is also the guy that is handling my brother’s case, and so far he hasn’t done much of a job finding him.
“I have several things I need to talk to you about,” I say. “We should go somewhere where we can sit down, somewhere more private.”
“Want to be alone with the Fisher-man, do we?” he teases me.
I don’t react to his comment. Instead, I get up from my chair. He senses his joke fell flat and looks disappointed.
“I was going to Juice ‘N Java for a coffee and a muffin anyway,” he continues, and points towards the café across the street.
I sigh. Not very private, but if that is all I can get, I’ll take it. “All right. I could go for some coffee myself.”
He holds the door for me with a grin and I walk out. “So, what’s up?” he says when we’re in the street.
“Two things,” I say. “First of all, there’s my brother.”
“Go on, I’m listening.”
“He orchestrated an attack on my blog. He hacked in and planted something, I have no idea what it was, you’ll have to ask Chloe about that, but it destroyed everything and sent out all these fake messages to my followers. He left me a creepy message stating Ready or not, here I come.”
Chris nods along as we walk towards the café across the street. We stop at the intersection at Minutemen Causeway.
“All right, so he is now harassing you. That’s new. Seems to me like he is being reckless. He probably thinks there is no way we can catch him. That he is invincible. That’s actually a good sign. Makes it easier for him to make a mistake, and then we’ll find him. I want to say that I’ll have my IT department take a look at it, but I don’t think they can do anything that Chloe can’t do. Plus, they’re swamped most of the time, so it might take months before they have the time to take a look at it, and my guess is that doesn’t help us much in catching Blake.”
“So what you’re pretty much saying is you won’t do anything,” I say. “That’s about what I expected.”
“Hey, don’t be sassy. I am working on finding him. Don’t you worry,” Chris says while the light turns green and we cross the street. “It’s just…well, I have other cases too. And as far as we know, Blake is out of the county now so…”
“I know,” I say. “He’s under someone else’s jurisdiction.”
“Until he shows up here, there really isn’t much I can do.”
We walk past H
eidi’s and enter the Juice ‘N Java. Again, Chris holds the door for me and I walk in first. The place is packed as always. Lots of soldiers from the Air Force base come here for lunch or afternoon coffee, along with mostly locals. I especially like it because you don’t see many tourists here. This is our place.
I order a Mint Madness iced coffee and a big chocolate muffin. We sit on the couches by the window. The place always reminds me of the coffee shop in Friends. The old-fashioned furniture, couches and soft chairs, the art on the walls is beachy, made by local artists, and under the ceiling hangs old beautiful surfboards. Sometimes they have live music playing, small bands or local performers. I have been here once for open mic night as well and enjoyed it a lot. The place has a good vibe to it. It’s a great place for me to go when I once in a while miss New York, which, to my surprise, actually isn’t very often. I don’t miss the life I had back then.
“So, what was the other thing?” Chris asks when we’re sitting down. I’m on the couch while he grabs an armchair.
I remove the magazines from the coffee table and place the articles Danny printed out in front of Chris. “I know you won’t have time to read through them, but I can give you a quick summary.”
“Please do,” he says and stares at the stack of printed articles like he doesn’t want to even touch it.
“Single mothers disappearing,” I say. “And their children.”
Chris looks at me, tired. “What?”
“Four cases the past two years. There might be more in the years before, I don’t know, but this is what we’ve found so far. And, get this. There are exactly six months between every disappearance. Look here, I wrote down the dates. April 23rd 2014, October 23rd 2014, April 23rd 2015, October 23rd 2015. Look at them,” I say, and point my finger aggressively at the piece of paper where I wrote down the dates. I take in a deep breath and bite into my muffin. It’s nice and mushy. I realize I haven’t had a real meal all day since breakfast. It’s all been candy bars and cookies.
