by Alison Ryan
I sprinted back across campus, determined to identify the hacker who’d hacked me.
Only my screen was dark and no trace of my conversation remained. I scoured my computer, went through my messenger program, did everything I knew to do, but nothing. I searched for the name Poe, but no clues were forthcoming.
I asked around on a few hackers’ message boards and mentioned the name Poe to my friends who were involved in cyber-espionage, but nobody seemed to know a thing.
A few weeks later, still stymied in my search, I decided to try getting into the ACT database to see if it would lure Poe out of hiding. This time, my webcam was in a drawer.
Within minutes, a message window popped up, again blank where the name should be:
Who are you trying to impress this time?
Just trying to find you, actually. If this is Poe?
It is. You’re still sloppy. You might as well have a billboard on the interstate with your name and address on it.
I used to think I was pretty good. How are you doing this?
I had to concede, as good as I thought I was with a computer, Poe was clearly my superior. I was annoyed, since I wasn’t used to being second best at much of anything, and Poe was miles beyond me. But I was also curious and wanted to learn everything I could.
Doing what?
All of this. Intercepting me. Messaging me with a blank name. Hijacking my webcam last time. Everything.
Magicians who give away secrets don’t stay magicians for long. Tell me my first name. YOU of all people, should know. I’ve given you plenty of clues. Do that and we can talk more. And stay out of the ACT database, too. My scores need to remain beyond reproach, and your meddling endangers them. Behave yourself, Odin.
With that, Poe was gone.
I pulled out a notebook and a pen, determined to figure out who Poe was.
What did I know? Poe claimed to have a “perfect SAT score” and equally impressive ACT. Poe was a very accomplished hacker, but I’d already struck out going that route.
The name must hold a clue. Edgar Allan Poe? There was a singer named Poe. I had to look her up on-line, she had a song I liked that I hadn’t heard in a while; Angry Johnny. That was too obscure, I thought. Had to be Edgar Allan Poe. Unless that was just the mystery man’s real name.
I started going through Edgar Allan Poe’s work in my mind; The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Raven. Nothing jumped out at me. It could be any of the characters from any of those stories.
So I refocused on the SAT and ACT aspect of the mystery. If Poe really had perfect scores on both tests, he had to be part of a pretty exclusive club. And since he seemed to know Calhoun, I guessed he had to at least live in the Constitution State, if not reside in the immediate vicinity.
I started a painstaking search through newspapers from all over Connecticut for anyone who had achieved a perfect score on either test.
One of my classmates, Phillip Woo, had turned the trick. I never knew Phillip well, other than to know that he was a certifiable genius. He was only 12, one of those prodigies who earn multiple doctorates before their teenage years are over. I doubted he’d much care about anybody else’s score or that anybody would doubt the brilliance of somebody who had been doing calculus for fun by the time he was eight years old.
I expanded my search parameters and uncovered a handful of perfect standardized tests in Connecticut. Gerald Ginsberg had done it. Russell Dalton. Yale beckoned for both of them. Amy Lin had gotten the miracle double. Stanford was in her future. Ryan O’Halloran had a perfect ACT. He was expected to receive an appointment to the Naval Academy. None of them struck me as Poe. They were mostly children of big money New Yorkers whose parents made the commute to Manhattan.
It was late, and I was becoming exhausted when I hit pay dirt.
I found an article about somebody from a gritty school in Jersey City, NJ, named Verna Conway, who had achieved SAT perfection, and was hoping for the same from the ACT, to go along with a 5.0 GPA in weighted honors courses.
She had grown up in a series of foster homes and had spent part of her youth in Connecticut, two towns over from Calhoun. The article was a plea for help, since Verna had spent part of her freshman year homeless, living out of a car. She was being offered full scholarships from the entire Ivy League, as well as MIT, Cal Tech, and every other top academic institution in America, but the problem wasn’t money for college, it was money for life. Money to eat. To replace shoes with holes in them. To buy pens and notebooks.
The more I read, the more impressed I became and the more curious I grew. She was apparently a computer whiz.
Suddenly, it dawned on me.
Verna.
Verna was an anagram for Raven.
Raven meant Edgar Allan Poe.
It was nearly dawn, but I didn’t care. I followed the path I’d walked before, carefully tiptoeing through SAT cyber-security. Even at that late, or early, hour, my messenger came to life instantly.
You’re persistent, I’ll give you that. You must really want to get in blondie’s pants.
It’s not her I’m focused on right now. It’s you, Verna.
The cursor blinked endlessly on my monitor, and I worried I’d been too forward and scared her away.
Odin Emerson Titan. Brother of Atlas, Achilles, and Canaan. Would you like me to tell you your Social Security Number? Your daddy’s bank balance? Home address?
I had definitely scared her.
No, none of that is necessary. I’m no threat to you. I want to help you.
How can you possibly help me? I can hack circles around you.
Can we speak on the telephone? Or meet in person? I’m frankly fascinated by you. And it seems like you have some sort of special interest in me.
I like this better, came her reply to my open invitation.
You can’t hide behind a keyboard forever, Verna. Teach me how you do what you do. I can make it worth your while, you must know that. Besides, I need a Muninn in my life.
You need a Huginn more.
Huginn (thought) and Muninn (memory) were two ravens who belonged to my namesake, Odin the king of Norse mythology. He’d send them out each morning to fly all over the Earth, Odin’s eyes and ears in the world. They’d report back to him each evening with news of the day from all over his kingdom.
We chatted until midday, and her story blew me away. She was born to a teenage mother in Baltimore and never knew her father. Her mother overdosed when Verna, named for a great-grandmother she never knew, was just five years old. Distant relatives in Stamford took her in, but when that situation didn’t pan out, she became a ward of the state.
She bounced from foster home to foster home, never quite finding the perfect fit, and she found solace and security in books. No matter how unsettled and sometimes abusive the real world was to her, she could count on the printed word to provide an escape. She’d often find a library and walk in when the doors opened in the morning and be the last one to leave when the lights were turned out. Her computer acumen came naturally; she had an innate understanding of them from the first time she tapped the keys on a library PC in elementary school.
By middle school, she was poring over technical journals, computer magazines, anything and everything she could get her hands on. The article I’d read about her was accurate, she had less than nothing, and no matter who might offer a full scholarship, she’d never have reliable transportation or spending money without help.
She taught herself web design and bartered her geek skills for groceries, clothes, and having a stylist work on her trademark hairdo; a set of thick dreadlocks that framed a face wise beyond its years. What she couldn’t trade her skills for, she found a way to acquire, whether through legal means or otherwise. It was up to her to provide, from a very early age.
Her green eyes sparkled with mischief, but she rarely smiled and had a difficult time with social interactions most people would consider part of everyday life. She was more at home behind the an
onymity and safety, of a keyboard.
I was obsessed with Verna Conway, or Raven, as she preferred to be called. She was resourceful and street smart, having had to do for herself since she was barely out of diapers.
If anyone was a complete more opposite of me, I couldn’t imagine who they might be. Whereas Atlas and I were raised in luxury, with every opportunity, and never spent a moment of our lives wanting for anything, Raven had a very different experience growing up.
We chatted back and forth until midday, when I finally got her to consent to meeting me for dinner that night. I mentioned how much I loved Roselli’s Chop House, a high-end steak house in the city, but also that I wasn’t certain I could get a reservation on such short notice, even with my last name.
She told me not to worry about it, that she could arrange it.
The son of a billionaire couldn’t get a table, but someone who’d been living out of a car two years ago could?
I asked if she needed me to send a car for her, but she declined. Whenever I zigged, she zagged. Rarely had I been at a disadvantage in life, but Verna Conway held all the cards.
The restaurant had a line outside when my driver reached the curb, and I wondered if the whole thing was a wild goose chase; if I’d been set up.
I gave my name at the door, but the hostess, a pretty black girl with shimmering blonde hair, couldn’t find anything, and seemed to almost delight in my absence from her list. Neither did she have a Verna Conway, and when I mentioned the name, she rolled her dark brown eyes at me. I shook my head and gave a sheepish smile, annoyed yet apologizing as I turned to flag down my driver. Three steps toward the curb, it hit me. I returned and asked if she had anything under the name Raven. This elicited a smile, and with a heavy Jamaican accent she apologized for the confusion and asked me to follow her inside.
The maître d’ led me to a private room in a loft overlooking the main dining room, where a waiter appeared with a wagyu beef carpaccio appetizer and a caviar dish. I was suitably impressed, even Titans didn’t usually eat like this.
Raven, however, was nowhere to be found.
I didn’t love caviar, but I had to admit that the stuff I’d been served was top quality. The wagyu beef was nonpareil, and I considered asking for a main course of the stuff, if ever Raven arrived.
My phone was quiet, and I began to go through my mental rolodex to see who I might be able to coax into the city to join me for dinner when the curtains to the room I was in parted and the hostess from downstairs waltzed in.
Without bothering to introduce herself, she slid the blonde wig she was wearing off her head, and then pulled the dress she’d been wearing off as well. Beneath it, she had on tight black leather pants and a white tank top. She shook out her braids and sat down, pulling out a pair of glasses from the bag I’d just noticed she was carrying. She produced a black sport coat from the bag and put it on. “Dress code, you know?”
With a broad smile, she reached across the table and extended a hand.
“Raven. Nice to meet you, Odin. By the way, you’re paying for all this, in case that hadn’t occurred to you yet.”
I shook her hand and then leaned back to give her a slow clap. “Well done, Raven. I had no idea. What happened to the Bob Marley accent?”
With that, she went into a startling recital of accents, from French to German to Aussie and then various American dialects. She sprinkled in actual foreign languages as well, Russian, Spanish, and what I guessed was Mandarin.
When she finished, I raised my eyebrows and then made a show of counting the fingers on my right hand. I caught a quizzical look on her face.
“Anybody who can do disguises, accents, languages, computers, and everything else as well as you obviously can is either a criminal mastermind or a super hero. Since I don’t see a cape, I’m checking to make sure you didn’t keep anything when you shook my hand. Who are you?”
I laughed, hoping I hadn’t offended her.
She set about carving the slab of Kobe beef she’d ordered, carefully considering her reply.
“I,” She chewed a bite of her steak, eyes closed in an expression of gastronomical bliss. “Am someone in need of the sort of legal shield that goes with being part of your father’s organization.”
I started to answer, but she raised a hand to quiet me.
“As good as I am, and I think you’d agree, I’m damn good, even I can only stay ahead of the authorities for so long. I can disappear in an empty room, reroute my internet trail to servers on every continent, talk my way in or out of pretty much any situation you can imagine. The Justice Department, however, is a different story. I have some trouble looming, and although I know how they operate; they’ll offer me a job with them in order to avoid prison time, I don’t want to work for the government. I don’t always get along well with others. I want to go to school, have it paid for, and come out the other side with a job waiting for me. Not necessarily with Titan, but with the Firm.”
I savored my lobster while I listened to her pitch. “Which firm are you talking about?” I asked. “And what makes you think I can magically snap my fingers and make whatever legal problems you may have disappear?”
“Oh, Odin, I know you can’t do much of anything, but you’re my connection to the people who can. Your father has influence, which in many ways supersedes wealth, fame, or privilege. He can make a phone call and make the JD forget the name ‘Verna Conway’ ever popped up on their radar. As for which firm I’m talking about, do you mean to tell me you don’t know the name Richard Hunt?”
I was baffled. That name didn’t mean a thing to me. I shrugged and shook my head.
“Well, that’s disappointing. I guess maybe I let your name distract me. The Odin-Raven connection just seemed too perfect. Maybe I should have given Miles Redbridge a try instead.”
Miles was a year ahead of me at Calhoun, the only son of a loaded British industrialist. I’d never gotten along particularly well with him, but he had an uncle in Parliament and his family was near the top of the food chain when it came to European movers and shakers.
“Miles is a giant douchebag, if I’m being honest,” I replied.
“But one hell of a swimmer, no?” she asked.
Miles and I were teammates on the Calhoun swim and cross country teams. We’d finished 1-2 in both the 100 & 200-yard freestyle events at the All-New England Swim Meet. He’d beaten me in both races and was being touted as a potential British Olympian.
“Touché. That he is. But he’s also a racist asshole who I doubt would be interested in helping you with anything,” I countered.
“You’d be surprised what people are willing to do, given the proper motivation. But he doesn’t suit my purpose anyway. And I prefer to work with people I can respect. Like your father.”
We continued our dinner, trading verbal barbs and comparing notes on hacking, colleges and a myriad of subjects. Whichever direction the conversation turned; she could hold her own. I couldn’t figure out if I’d made a friend, a potential work colleague, if she was a professional networking gold mine, or if our relationship was heading in a romantic direction.
She disabused me of the last notion over dessert.
“So, what’s the deal with Charlize?” she asked.
“Charlize? Oh, she’s just a friend, nothing serious,” I was being honest, nothing was happening between me and Charlize since that aborted effort to raise her SAT score. I assumed Raven was steering things in that direction to gauge my availability. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Well, introduce me to her, and set up a meeting with your dad, and I’ll owe you one. Or two. You know how resourceful I am; I’d be a good person to have owing you a favor,” Raven suggested, the first genuine smile of the evening crossing her lips.
“I’ll definitely discuss you with my dad. If nothing else, he’ll probably want to sponsor you, send you to college, that sort of thing. As for Charlize… really?”
“Really. She’s just my type,” Rave
n laughed. “But I doubt I’m hers. Scratch that part. Be my connection to your father and, through him Richard Hunt, and I’ll be there whenever and wherever you need me.”
It was a promise she would keep.
11
Clara
Piper and the baby couldn’t be better. I was so proud of her for carrying her precious cargo so well after having to endure the stress of the shooting and, prior to that, the events that occurred in Alaska, a nightmare scenario I’d caught snippets of from Atlas and Piper both.
I gave them both a well-check, which they passed with flying colors, before attending to Odin. I entered his room alone, recalling my dream of the previous night and feeling butterflies as I reached down and took his hand in mine. Butterflies weren’t all I felt, my body went on automatic pilot in his presence, arousal causing my heart to race in my chest and my thighs to tremble as I allowed my mind to wander to the orgasms he’d given me in my dream.
Once my general duties were done, and Odin’s IVs were changed, I sat in the chair next to his bed and began to talk. I felt some guilt over my attraction to him, but at the same time, I felt my husband’s presence in the room with me.
The love I shared with Callum had been deep and rich.
We met as undergrads, his Irish brogue drawing my attention as we jockeyed for position at a campus bar. We’d both arrived with friends, but once we caught each other’s eye our groups were quickly forgotten. We snuck out together, making out in the parking lot like teenagers in a basement at our first kegger.
