Patty moved the laptop in view. “Show me which directory has the scalability libraries.”
Jen shook her head. Patty pressed cold steel against her temple. “Do what I say.”
Sweat popped over Jen’s forehead, and her teeth chattered under the nausea inducing sock. She shook her head again.
Patty leaned in and whispered, “See that little girl sitting on the sofa watching TV? She’s Dave’s daughter, Abby. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll shoot her, wrap your hand around this gun and help you shoot yourself in the head.”
Emily was Abby? Or was Patty using her as a decoy? Jen’s heart pole-vaulted as spikes of adrenaline sizzled through her insides. She had to get loose, find help. She couldn’t let anyone be hurt, Abby or not Abby.
“I’ve found it!” Patty said. “Now all I have to do is link the scalability libraries into the upgrade.” Her fingers made quick work on the keyboard. “I trigger auto-upgrade and flush it to the Mississippi servers. And flooey, everyone’s bids will be executed thousands of times until their credit cards max out.”
Jen strained against the ties, struggling not to throw up. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. She had to save the girl. She’d do anything. Oh, God, please help me. Get me out of this. Please.
“What’s the password to the upload server?” Patty brought up the screen. “Bruce, untie her hand so she can type it in.”
Bruce sauntered over and cut the ties with a box knife. He let her use her right hand while twisting her left arm behind her back. Patty held the gun to her head. “Don’t force me to use it in front of your precious Abby.”
Jen typed the password.
“Change the password.” Patty looked at the clock on the oven while Bruce pecked in a new password and forced Jen to key in the old password. He zipped new ties around her wrists, bending her hands painfully behind her back and strapped her back to the chair.
A smile licked Patty’s thin lips as she hit the ‘Enter’ key. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
A dull heaviness pervaded Jen’s chest. They hadn’t much time. In about an hour, the virtual staging servers would upload the bad build to all of the Mississippi.com sites, and Dave’s company would be ruined. And what would Patty do to Emily? Jen had to save her, she just had to.
Bruce switched off the television and dragged a whiny Emily to her feet, promising her ice cream sundaes.
Patty stuck the gun in Jen’s ribs. She kissed Jen’s cheek and whispered, “I’m Sherry Miller, Dave’s first lover.”
* * *
“Chief, you gotta see this.” Eddie barged into Dave’s office in the new location a few blocks from Lystra. Steve Tyler, Lystra’s CEO, looked up from the presentation they had been reviewing.
“What’s going on?” Dave asked.
Eddie rested his palms on the table. “There’s a build going on right now. I thought engineers hadn’t finished fixing the bugs.”
“Maybe they finished early.”
“I don’t like it.” Eddie shook his head. “It’s pushing the fixes to the staging servers at Lystra for auto-update. We’re still replacing our testbeds and setting up the lab. There’s no way this was tested.”
Dave shrugged an apologetic shoulder at Steve. He had to remain calm in front of his biggest investor. “It’s late, can we meet again tomorrow morning?”
“Yes, I was getting a bit hungry. It’s way after ten. See you.” He picked up his jacket and stepped out the door.
Heat rose under Dave’s collar, and he turned to the monitor. “Is Jen logged in? Send her an instant message.”
“I tried already, but she’s turned off messaging. She’s the one pushing the update through the Lystra cloud.”
A cold spear of fear pierced Dave’s heart. Jen’s in trouble. He called her cell phone. No answer. “She'd never do something like this without checking with me. She... she just wouldn’t.”
Dave grabbed his car keys to race out of the building when his cell phone rang.
“Hello, Dave, remember me?” A gravelly female voice with a slight drawl intoned through the earpiece.
“Who are you?” Dave’s throat was tight and dry.
“Oh, come, come. Don’t play dumb. It’s me, Sherry.” Her laughter cackled through the line.
Dave sunk into his seat. Sherry Miller. It figured. “What do you want?”
“It seems you have an emergency going on. In less than an hour, the Shopahol network will execute all outstanding bids thousands of times and max out every customer’s credit card. The only person who can stop this upload is with me. Would you like to speak to her?”
“Yes. Put her on.”
A young girl’s voice said in the background, “Why do I have to talk on the phone? I want chicken fingers. Okay. Hello.”
Who? What? Where was Jen? Dave rubbed his hand against his prickly buzz cut.
Voices urging the girl to say ‘Hello, Daddy’ could be heard in the background. Dave gripped the side of his face and dug in. What kind of sick game was Sherry playing?
“Hello, Daddy,” the young voice said. “How is Heaven?”
“Are you Abby?” Dave’s voice cracked.
“No, I’m Emily, and I want to go home.”
Dave coughed, unable to catch his breath. Emily acting as Abby? All part of the extortion. Sweat trickled down the side of his face.
The phone shuffled around. “Sherry back. Now listen and listen well. You’re going to meet me at Marina Baptist Church with the money. Come alone. If anyone’s around, get rid of them. Shut off your instant messaging and don’t try to contact anyone.”
Dave cupped the receiver. “Uh, Eddie. My mother’s on the phone. Shut Jen’s access to our network. Lock her account.”
He looked up from his laptop. “It won’t work. She’s changed the password. The image has already been built and is being uploaded to Mississippi’s servers.”
“Do what you can.” Dave waved him aside and grabbed his jacket. “I have to go.”
“And leave the code? Can’t you send someone to Jen’s house?”
“She’s not there. She went to a church activity. Please leave.” Dave gave Eddie a stern look to indicate the conversation was over.
Eddie backed to the door. “Fine, you sort it out.”
Dave picked up his keys and headed to his SUV. “Okay, I’m alone. What’s the deal?”
Sherry’s laughter scratched through the airwaves like fingernails on a chalkboard. “You can’t be three places at the same time. To save your company, you have to crack the password and stop the upload. To save your girlfriend, you have to go to her apartment. She’s tied with a time bomb next to her chair. I’ll even give you the password. It’s B-O-O-M. To save your daughter, you have to meet us at the Marina Baptist Church parking lot with the money. Don’t think of sending anyone else. If I don’t see you, I kill the girl.”
Dave swallowed a surge of bile. He’d buy time and tell her what she wanted to hear. “I’ll be at the church, and I’ll be alone. Just don’t hurt the girl. I’ll drop the money, and you hand over the girl unharmed.”
“Deal. Oh, and don’t bother calling the police. If my lookouts spot anything suspicious near Jen’s apartment or the church parking lot, they’ll call me and I simply won’t show. Bye-bye.”
The call ended.
Dave loosened his tie and fanned himself. Jen could die. Who could he call? He dialed Bruce, his lab tech. There was no answer. He tried Lisa. No answer. Who could he trust? Lester? Satish?
No, he couldn’t trust anyone, and he couldn’t endanger any of his employees. The image of the flipping sand-dollar crested in his mind. He’d save Jen, the woman he loved. The girl was a ruse. He dialed Vera’s number but hung up. How did he know she wasn’t involved in the plot?
* * *
Patty took Emily to the bathroom. Jen tried to appear disinterested, but raw, primal fear gripped her throat and crushed her chest. Bruce set the time bomb, a bundle of wires and pipes with a digi
tal display attached to the top. The display counted down.
Jen relaxed and slumped in the chair. Once Patty left, she would wiggle the chair toward the bottle opener screwed into the side of the kitchen counter. She would rub the ties against it and free herself. Then she’d call the police.
What would she do once free? She’d pull the fire alarm. She didn’t know how to disarm the bomb, and she didn’t want her neighbors injured. Then she’d call Dave and warn him. She lowered her head to pray.
A sharp thud cracked behind her ear. Pain exploded through her head.
Chapter 40
Dave ran out the office door and bumped into a group of shocked employees.
“We can’t let the fix go through,” Praveena said. “It has a bug. We haven’t put a ceiling on it.”
Satish caught Dave’s arm. “Auto-update will crash all the servers. You have to stop it.”
Bob, the test manager, cut him off. “It was working as of last Friday. I downloaded the build that went out to Mississippi and tested auto-update on my desktop. The log showed it completed successfully.”
“Guys, guys. No matter what, we can’t allow the update to go through.” Dave handed Satish his badge. “Go to Lystra and tell them to shut down our pods. I’ll call Steve Tyler and tell him to allow it.”
He ran out the front door and left a voicemail with Steve Tyler. He popped the trunk of his SUV and checked the briefcases. Still heavy. Good.
He started the engine and jammed his foot on the accelerator. Jealous Sherry. This had nothing to do with Jen, but with him. Sherry had disappeared more than ten years ago, but the anger in her voice sounded like yesterday.
He sped toward Jen’s apartment. No one seemed to be tailing him. Thankfully traffic was light. He swung down the expressway, screeched around the corner and double parked in front of the manager’s office. So far, nothing had exploded. He pulled the fire alarm before rushing up the stairs.
The high-pitched whine caused residents to peer out their doors. With no time to explain, Dave dived through Jen’s open door.
“Jen? Where are you?” He checked the rooms. Empty. In the kitchen, a plastic drainpipe sealed with duct tape was attached to a digital readout, counting down with seventeen minutes to spare. A few people gathered at the door. Dave yelled, “There’s a bomb. Everyone out. Someone call the cops.”
He dashed down the emergency exit and ran toward his car. He rolled away from the apartment complex, narrowly missing the approaching fire truck.
His phone rang and he fumbled to answer it.
“You’re late.” Sherry’s voice was calm and steady. “If I’m correct, you went to the apartment.”
“Where’s Jen?”
“Who cares? I still have your daughter, and I’m about to slice off her ear.”
“You’re not going to hurt her.” His breath came in gasps. “She’s your friend’s daughter, and you’re using her to destroy my company. What did you do with Jen?”
“Oh, you mean your sweet little Puerto Rican twit? She’s destroying your company. Right about now, all the auto-updates are executing on thousands of Mississippi servers. Your little build bitch screwed it all up for you. She was quite willing, especially after she found out about us, how I was your first one, how I taught you everything. Better hurry with the money, I’m running out of patience.”
“I’m not giving you anything until you put Jen on the phone.”
Dave heard a sharp slap and muffled moans before the phone cut off. He floored the accelerator and careened down an alley before cutting onto the expressway. A car beeped at him, and he barely avoided a slow-moving truck. Tires squealing, he swerved around the cloverleaf and thundered up North 1st Street. After a right and a left, he slowed. The parking lot was empty. His heart froze. Where were they?
He parked the SUV and jumped out, running back and forth, looking into the wastelands. A lone streetlight lit the entrance of the parking lot. A few security lights brightened the perimeter of the church. Had this all been a ruse to ruin the code? But Jen was in danger. He should never have let her out of his sight. He thought she needed time and space to think about the marriage, and he hadn’t wanted to push.
Dave jogged to the driveway and scanned the street. Tire marks from recent street racing gigs and broken beer bottles littered the road. The cops had shut down racing in Fremont, but the kids always found another place to congregate.
The sound of an approaching car alerted him. Two vehicles without their headlights on crunched over the roadway. A white sedan, souped-up street racer style, crossed and rolled to the center of the parking lot. A black extended-cab pickup blocked off the entrance of the driveway.
Dave loped to his SUV and stood in front of the trunk. His phone rang.
“Good boy. You showed. Now listen very carefully. Which one do you want? Your daughter or the bitch? Choose.”
“She’s not my daughter.”
A child’s cry broke the silence. “She is, idiot. Rodrigo seduced your stupid nanny, and she handed Abby to him. He passed her off as his niece and named her Emily. He used Rey and Patty’s daughter’s original birth certificate, the one with No Name.”
“No, you’re lying. Jen would never have helped him.”
Laughter. “He gave her ten thousand dollars. Where do you think she got the money for the plastic surgery? Step up with the money and meet me in the middle of the strip. The girl or the bitch?”
Shit! Rod stole Abby after all. Abby was here all along?
“I’m waiting…” The voice mocked. “The whore or your daughter?”
Jen would rather die for Abby. Oh, God, help me.
“My daughter.”
“Hey, you heard that?” Sherry’s raw voice hollered. “He chose the girl over you.”
Oh, Jennifer, forgive me. I will fight them, I swear to you, after I save Abby.
A large figure stepped from the car in the street. He walked to the white racer at the center of the lot. Dave squinted. The man looked familiar. His lumbering shape, baseball cap pulled backwards, a snake-like pony tail. It was Bruce, the lab tech at Shopahol.
He led a little girl by the hand. Dave’s heartbeat jumped hurdles. Was that really Abby?
“No weapons,” Bruce yelled. “Put the briefcases down and open them.”
Dave went to the trunk and unloaded a row of briefcases, opening each one to reveal the cash.
The man closed in. The little girl rubbed her eyes. “I wanna go home,” she said. “Is the game over?”
“Now, nice and easy,” the man said. “Step away from the money.”
“Bruce, why are you doing this?” Dave kept his eyes steady.
Bruce’s cold eyes drilled into him. Bruce Miller.
“You’re Sherry’s brother, aren’t you?”
Bruce grunted. “You fucked my sister. She spent years in the mental home instead of getting her PhD.”
They were only four feet from him. The girl hugged a teddy bear while Bruce bent over the money. Dave reached for the child. “I’ll take you home.”
He was about to grab Abby when footsteps rattled behind him and a sharp sizzle threw him to the ground. He jolted as if his heart stopped. Pain radiated in every nerve like millions of needles stabbing him. The probe wires swept over his arm. Another charge was pressed to his chest. He seized, unable to even breathe, shaking as if a giant hand had broken every bone. His entire body cramped, and he lost control of his limbs, numb. Flashes of white light encircled his vision.
He was handcuffed and dragged to the white car. He looked wildly for the girl. She screamed and ran toward the pickup truck. Bruce shoved Dave into the passenger seat of the white sedan and locked his handcuffs to the safety handle with a rock climbing clip. Then he belted him and tied him to the seatback.
Dave gasped as pins shot his every muscle. Dizzy, he forced himself to breathe.
The car door closed. Muffled sounds emanated from the back seat. Dave’s jaw trembled, and he formed his words with gre
at concentration.
“W-what do you want?”
Sherry sat in the driver’s seat and slapped his face. “Wake up. The best part is yet to come.”
She yanked his head around. Jen, gagged and bound, squirmed in the backseat. She kept shaking her head. Tears streamed down her face.
“Let her go. She hasn’t done anything.” His words came out slurred.
Sherry calmly pressed the button of the stun gun. The electrical charge buzzed between two prongs. “Don’t make me use this.”
“Sherry, why? Why are you doing this? What’s happened to you?”
“You, of all people, should know. You slept with me to get an “A.” You had me write your code, and you stole my ideas. When I got pregnant, you dumped me like a used pillow.”
“I didn’t know what to do. You disappeared and said you took care of it.”
She huffed, her brown eyes narrowed. “Yes, I took care of it all right. After we dump this bitch, me and you are taking our son, Alex, across the border. They’re in that car right now with my brother. And you better not try anything funny.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sherry rolled her eyes. “Do I have to spell out everything for you? I masqueraded as Patty Brown and got Alex to be your Little Brother so he’d get to know you. The real Patty is Jen’s roommate, the one you think is Sherry. We traded names after leaving the loony bin. Ever wonder why you never saw me? After we cross the border, you’re marrying me, comprende?”
“You’re not going to get away with this.”
“Ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome?” Sherry leaned over his face and kissed him on the lips. “Too bad Jenny isn’t going to enjoy watching you pant after me like Pavlov’s dog.”
Dave shifted his gaze to Jen. Her eyes were wide open, staring at him. He was in no position to resist, but he’d save Jen and think of how to ditch Sherry later. “I’ll go with you. Let Jen go. She hasn’t done anything.”
Sherry grabbed his chin and pointed it back at Jen. “Tell her what a user you were. Poor little missy’s going to commit suicide in your car because she found out I’m your true love.”
Broken Build: Silicon Valley Romantic Suspense Page 33
