That program was All the King’s Horses, her all-but-abandoned attempt to decrypt the scrambled data she had stolen from Tremblay Property Management.
Someone knocked on her doorframe, startling Jill so much she leaped out of her chair.
“Jill?”
It was her mother.
Dear God it was my mother.
She understood it all now. Her mother had cracked open the user session. She had found All the King’s Horses sitting open in the background. She investigated it. She figured out what Jill was trying to do.
Ratted out by my own mother.
“Mom, what did you do?”
“I know you value your privacy, Jill.”
“Damn right I value my privacy.”
“Please don’t be angry at me. I’ve seen you struggling in here. I knew you were working on something, and like I told you, I’ve run out of work to do.”
“So you hacked into my machine and looked at the software I was writing? Mom, how did you even do that? Have you been snooping on me? Did you steal my password?”
“I used our home network to speak to your machine at a deeper level than the operating system. It’s an easy trick if you--”
“I know all about the trick, Mom.” She almost added, I invented the trick. Her mother had broken into her work station the same way Jill had once broken into Annika’s laptop. Go figure. Like daughter, like mother.
“I suppose it was a rude thing to do, but you have to understand, I’ve run out of work.”
She spoke as if running out of work was the same as running out of air.
“Why did you open my program? What interest is it to you?”
Her mother coasted into the room now, clearly excited to answer the question. “Oh Jill, all these algorithms you’ve written on your walls…I came in here on Monday and I was entranced. You’ve been struggling with one of the great questions of our time and you’ve made tremendous progress. You are asking the computer to find order in chaos. It’s groundbreaking work, and the implications are extraordinary. The universe tends to disorder. With this program you might well turn that all around. I’ve spent the past week thinking about the algorithms you’re trying to write, and I’ve never had so much fun in my life.”
Jill felt herself starting to relax. It sounded like her mom had no idea what All the King’s Horses was really about. All this stuff about reordering the universe might be nice and all, but Jill was just trying to recover some data she stole.
“This first version of the software has limited applications, of course,” her mother said, “but the things we could build on top of it…the potential for science and medicine...”
“The first version of the software? Mom, I never got the program to work.”
“You came close enough. All the pieces were there. The only thing I did was give you a push.”
At that moment, Jill had the strange experience that she was floating, as if the air around her had turned to water and wanted to take away all her bodyweight.
“Mom, are you saying you got the program to work?”
“I couldn’t help but notice you had some scrambled data you were using for tests. What a smart way to make the program work. I ran the data through the program after I modified it. Have a look now. The file is named Output 1.”
Jill saw the file right away, sitting there on her desktop. She opened it. An electrical diagram for a single wing of a house appeared on the screen. It was the sort of document one would find on the TPM servers—a piece of proprietary info about an immortal’s mansion. It was a snippet of stolen data, run through the software, and perfectly reassembled.
“Mom…this...”
Jill didn’t know what to say. I can’t believe it? How did you do it? This is amazing?
No combination of words was adequate. What her mother had done was more than amazing. It was game-changing. It was world-saving. Her mom had solved the unsolvable problem. All the King’s Horses could now reassemble the stolen data. A full terabyte of the Samarin clan’s most treasured secrets. This would change everything.
Strangely, in her stumped silence, Jill felt like she and her mother were communicating more than they ever had before. They were looking at one another, neither of them able to speak, but both of them understanding what the other wanted to say.
For Jill, the unspoken words were, “Thank you.”
For her mother, they were, “I’m sorry for everything.”
With nothing more to say, Jill began to laugh. Apparently her laugh was infectious. Her mother, who wasn’t one to find humor in anything, began to laugh as well, and before Jill understood what was happening or how, she and her mother were hugging. Not awkward half-hugging like Jill’s previous attempt, but actual hugging, both of them with their arms around each other, expressing their love. The hug only lasted for a few seconds, but for Jill that was all it took. Holding onto her mother, she was able to let go of a lifetime of resentment.
From downstairs, the doorbell rang, and her mother changed. Her response was almost Pavlovian, as if the doorbell had resulted in a conditioned response. Her arms fell to her sides, her face went blank, and she said, “I should get back to work.”
“Back to work? What work? I thought the whole reason you broke into my computer is that you don’t have anything to do.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Jill’s mother was like a new person now, or rather, an old person. She had reverted entirely to the old version of Carolyn Wentworth, the one that didn’t laugh, didn’t smile, didn’t hug.
“I can do good things with that program,” Carolyn said, “and until Walter presents me with a new task, that’s what I’ll do. Now that I understand the algorithm, I can rewrite it from scratch, scaled up to be more robust.”
Carolyn was already turning to leave. Downstairs, the maid was answering the front door.
“Is that it?” Jill said to her mom.
“I have nothing further to discuss. Do you?”
Jill opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. There was plenty more she could try and discuss with her mother, but she knew where it all would lead. The more affectionate, more human version of Carolyn was already gone. Jill needed to be thankful that she got to see this other side of her mother at all.
“No, see you later Mom.”
“Have a good evening, Jill.”
Jill smirked, thinking of all the things she could say to her mother about the evening ahead.
I’ll be at Nicky’s. A vampire might show up. A team of assassins might kill that vampire. They might fail and I might die tonight.
Her mother gone, Jill opened a new email to Alvin.
Hey Alvin,
Good news. The attached program should decrypt all the data we stole from TPM. Run it through tonight and see what comes out.
Jill
She attached a copy of All the King’s Horses and hit send. Then she looked at her computer and thought about all the sensitive info she had assumed was secure behind her own, hard-coded security. It had taken her mother mere moments to break inside and start fiddling with Jill’s software.
“Thank God for backups,” she said as she brought up a command line to bypass the operating system. With a simple two-word command, Jill set in motion a complete system wipe on her computer. Tomorrow, if for some reason Carolyn wanted to break into this computer again, she wouldn’t find a single thing on it.
Jill got up from her chair and thought about packing for another night at Nicky’s. For the second time that afternoon she was startled by someone standing at her door. This time, it wasn’t her mother, but instead was a beautiful vision from her recent past, one that she never expected to have the joy of seeing again.
“Zack, what are you doing here?”
He was wearing black pants and a white T-shirt that gripped tightly to the muscles in his arms and chest.
“That phone number you gave me,” he said. “It led to a kindergarten teacher. She and I have had fun texting back and fort
h, but I’d rather be talking to you.”
Looking in his eyes, Jill remembered the carefree night at the carnival.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Apparently not, but here I am. Why didn’t you give me your real number? I felt like we’d made a connection. Didn’t you?”
“Zack, it’s more complicated than that. How did you….what are you doing here?”
“It isn’t hard to find out where one of the richest families in America lives,” Zack said. “You know there are whole message boards on the Internet dedicated to comparing your landscaping to your neighbor’s? Seriously. Some people are really into fantasizing about the good life.”
“Okay, that’s just creepy,” Jill said. “And beside the point. Zack, there are…” She sighed and tried again. “You have to…”
She couldn’t finish any sentence because the thoughts in her mind were loaded with secrets Zack shouldn’t know. There are people here watching me. They will follow you now. They’ll find out who you are and where you live and Melissa will come after you.
“You can’t be here Zack,” she said, then, taking a deep breath, added, “It isn’t safe.”
The look on his face, which had been one of mild bemusement thus far, went more serious. “What do you mean?” he said.
“Zack, the reason I didn’t call you is because I don’t want to mix you up in my problems.”
“Maybe I want to get mixed up in your problems. Maybe I can help.”
“Listen to me carefully. If you try to help, you’ll end up dead. That’s why I didn’t give you my real phone number. That’s why you have to leave now.”
“What kind of trouble are you in?”
“Vampire trouble. Now go. I’ll show you to the door. Don’t try to kiss me goodbye and don’t linger. There are people watching us.”
“People watching us? Jill, this is insane.”
“Tell me about it.”
Jill grabbed him by the hand and led him down the stairs. When they reached the front room Zack stopped and said, “I want you to know I’m leaving because you’re asking me to, not because I’m afraid. If there’s something I can do to help you--”
“There isn’t,” Jill said.
“Then I’ll see myself out,” said Zack. “If you don’t want to kiss me, can you at least shake my hand?”
Jill felt like a putz. She did want to kiss him. She wanted to kiss him and go with him, never to come back. But that was fantasy. She owed it to Zack to stay in the real world.
She reached out and took his hand, realizing the game as soon as she did. Her hand tightly wrapped in his, Zack pulled her close and kissed her. She didn’t try to resist.
“I’ll come back when the timing is better for you,” he said.
Jill shook her head. “The timing--”
Zack put his finger on her lips. “I’ll come back,” he said. He let her go and left, closing the front door behind him.
Jill raced up the stairs to the guest bedroom, which had a view of the driveway. She watched as Zack stepped inside his red Corvair, fired up the noisy engine, and drove away.
Her eyes turned to the green station wagon parked down the street. It stayed where it was. Zack and his stunningly out of place Corvair were of no interest to them.
Or rather, no interest to him. Was it her eyes, or was there only one guy in the car today?
Maybe the other one’s found a bush to pee in or something, she thought. Deciding there were bigger things to worry about, she went back to her bedroom, grabbed her overnight bag, and left. After she stepped out the front door, she moved slowly, giving Melissa’s spies plenty of opportunity to see her. She strolled leisurely down the driveway, pressing the keyless remote when she was still a few yards away from her car.
Were it not for the earlier security violation on her computer, were it not for the shock she felt after going straight to a user session without a login, she might not have noticed that her car didn’t make the customary beep-beep.
But she did notice. She pressed the unlock button again, hoping to hear her car alarm sing in response. One beep for unlock; two beeps for lock. That was how it worked.
Even as the front of her mind was single-minded in its focus to get moving and bring her pursuers to Nicky’s house, the back of her mind was wary about the lack of beeps when she pushed the button, and when she opened the door and got in the front seat, it was that wariness that alerted her to the shadow of movement behind her. It was that wariness that kept her from closing the door. Not fully conscious of what she was doing or why, Jill leaned out the open door, the shadow behind her coming within centimeters of stabbing her with a needle.
She stumbled to the driveway and rolled onto her back. Now she saw the missing slave from the station wagon. He hadn’t been peeing in a bush; he’d been hiding in her back seat, and was following her out of the car. He was a scrawny kid with long, dirty hair. His T-shirt was filthy. His face was covered in patches of stubble. He was a skater who had gone off the deep end. He held a large hypodermic needle in his hand and had a determined look on his face.
She pushed herself up and broke into a run, getting her legs underneath her just in time to miss a second swipe from skater dude. His feet clopped heavily on the concrete as he followed her to the house, both of them running at full speed. He was gaining on her. She wasn’t going to make it to her front door. Whatever was in that needle, and she could imagine what it was, he would catch her and hit her with it if she tried to open the door to her house.
So she faked. She reached for the door, feigned like she was going to open it, then ducked out of the way at the last second. He swung the needle over her head and it crashed into the wood, the needle cracking off the syringe, the liquid contents spilling out.
She felt woozy on the first smell. Pungent and sharp, like vinegar mixed with rubbing alcohol, it was a smell she knew only because Gia insisted that she learn to recognize it. Addonox. Apparently Melissa had tired of looking for Jill, and was going to have Jill brought to her.
Her attacker was confused now, realizing his broken syringe meant trouble for him. Jill took advantage of the moment to kick him between the legs. A yelp of pain, a lurching body, the tumbling remains of his syringe falling out of his hands—Jill held her breath and grabbed the metered plastic plunger as it tumbled to the concrete. While skater dude moaned in agony and ultimately fell over to his side, Jill took aim with the open syringe. Placing her thumb on the plunger, still holding her breath, she gave it a forceful squirt, and pure liquid Addonox sprayed all over her assailant’s face. He went unconscious immediately.
Jill tossed the syringe and ran around to the side of the house, where she found the garden house. Resisting the now desperate temptation to take a breath, she turned the spigot and waited. The half second it took for water to snake all the way through the hose felt like eternity, but she held it together, and even after the water began flowing from the hose, she held it a bit longer. She rinsed off her hands, thinking that even a trace of Addonox on them might put her out. She rinsed and rinsed, waiting until she was on the verge of passing out, until both her hands got a thorough soak from the hose, before she dared take a breath.
The air was clean and she filled her lungs with it. Her body, raging with an adrenalin rush, began to shake all over. She fell to her knees and took three deep, calming breaths.
As she sat hunched over on the grass, pulling herself together, she heard footsteps. Heavy footsteps, the sound of boots banging on the concrete. She looked up to see another scrawny skater, this one short and with a bushy brown beard. He was sprinting across the driveway.
She got up to run. The skater immediately took away the angle she wanted. She couldn’t go to the front door. He would catch her if she did. So she ran around the back side of the house. She turned this into a chase through the grass and hoped she could outrun him.
She wasn’t able to move fast enough. She wasn’t dressed for this. Her ballet flats weren
’t suited for a footrace. As she ran through the acres and acres of grass that surrounded her home, she knew she was going to be caught.
The footsteps behind her got lost in the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. This is it, she thought. I’m toast. Even if I can fend off this guy, there are more coming. There’s a car, probably a black van full of Melissa’s slaves, pulling up to capture me and take me away.
A car door opened and closed. More footsteps joined the pursuit. Jill took a wide angle around the back of her house and headed for the woods, her panicked mind thinking she should get to ground that was familiar to her but not her pursuers.
The feet were gaining on her. They were gaining faster than the treeline was approaching. Faster, she told herself. Run faster.
A hand swiped at her from behind and she lunged away. A second hand reached for her, grabbing her shoulder. She shook it off. A body came soaring through the air, two arms crashing into her legs from behind, wrapping up her knees and tackling her to the ground.
She kicked at him. As his arms crawled up her legs, trying to get hold of her, she kicked at his face, and got a good shot that slowed him down. She struggled to her feet, but he wouldn’t let her up. His arms wrapped around her waist and he threw her back to the ground. She lifted herself back on her elbows, still kicking at him, but he worked up to his feet and jumped on top of her, subduing her body with his. Now he had his legs straddled across her chest. She was helpless, unable to do anything but squirm as the bushy bearded skater reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a syringe.
He held the syringe to his mouth and yanked off the safety cap with his teeth. His knees pinning Jill’s arms to the ground, she tried kicking and kneeing him, but he was strong, and whatever pain he might have felt had surely been hypnotized out of his mind. He was aiming at her with a needle now, looking for the best vein to prick. As Jill closed her eyes and prepared for the worst, something hard and heavy came down from above, sending both Jill and skater tumbling. She opened her eyes to find herself in a sea of arms and legs, her own included, rolling across the grass.
The Festival of the Moon (Girls Wearing Black: Book Two) Page 24
