Nothing.
Nora hadn’t noticed it before, but there were no convenient wedges of thick wood or hefty vases or weapons of any sort masquerading as ornaments in Fisher’s penthouse. Nora’s mother used to keep a short lead pipe hidden under her bed. She told her daughter it was a fallen-off piece from the bed frame. Nora had figured out early on what it was really for, but still couldn’t picture her mother actually swinging it at some burglar’s head.
Still frozen in place, Nora craned her neck toward the hall that led to the front door and elevator. Nothing looked disturbed. Then she took a breath and charged into the kitchen, her fists balled. More blood drops, a smashed water pitcher, and no one else.
“Fisher?” Nora called out. She shook her head at the horror movie cliché of it and called out again, louder.
“Out here,” Fisher yelled back from the terrace.
Nora rushed over. “What are you doing out—”
He was on a call, his left hand wrapped in a bloody tea towel and raised above his head. Fisher looked at the sloppy tourniquet, then back at Nora, and rolled his eyes at her before mouthing the word fuck and shaking his head. Though she couldn’t figure out the how, Nora was able to interpret the what: Fisher had broken the glass pitcher and cut himself while trying to clean it up with one hand—the other was pressing the phone to his ear.
“Exactly, Colin,” he said, turning his attention back to his call. “This is now top priority. Don’t worry about the extra hours, just fix it.”
Nora hurried back inside and went straight to the hall closet near the guest bathroom. It was where she had put the first-aid kit when she moved into the penthouse. The plain white box was filled with the usual bandages, gauze, dressing pads, and ointments, but also contained bottles of generic prescription painkillers that Fisher sometimes brought home from meetings with pharmaceutical reps and forgot about. Nora had stashed the pills in the box deep in the closet after one particularly reckless night out with Jenna. That they didn’t land in a gurney or the back of a patrol car that Sunday remained, for Nora, a testament to the power of blondness, breasts, and privilege. Out of sight, out of mind, she told herself when she transferred the drugs from the medicine cabinet in their bathroom to the closet way down the hall. It’s also what she told herself when she slid the old, flat box with the last vestiges of home under a low shelf in that same closet. And it worked, too. Nora hadn’t thought of Montreal or the items in the box for years. Not until nine days ago when she was reading about a new menswear designer in the Montreal Gazette online and spotted his face first, then the name—Dr. Pascal Bourdain—in the obituaries.
She heard Fisher’s voice closer now, inside the house. He was still on the phone, but his tone had changed. It wasn’t as clipped or stern as a moment ago on the terrace. He was probably talking to his brother, she thought, and pulled out some gauze and adhesive tape from the box and a gray washcloth from the tall stack on the shelf. She met Fisher in the kitchen.
“Rock, it’s some kind of worm virus. That’s not going to fix it,” he said. His face was red and his jaw clenched. It wasn’t his typical comportment, especially when talking to one of his brothers. Even if they were going over business issues, there was always a sense of ease around it. “IT says that this thing basically encrypts itself. Finding it is going to take some time. Hackers. Jesus. I don’t know why we’re getting targeted.” Nora sidled over to him with the first-aid tools. She smiled up at him and reached for his wounded hand tucked under his armpit, carefully rolling it out and unspooling the bloody towel. He winced, but tried to cover it with a tight smile and continued talking. “Right. They like to leave signatures. Exactly. Colin said they’re often tucked away deep into shit, but this one—” He winced again.
“Sorry,” Nora whispered. She didn’t realize the grip she had on his hand while trying to disinfect it. The cut wasn’t as bad as it looked once the blood was cleaned away. Nora peeled off some of the tape and bandaged up the hand, taking care to be easy with her touch. When she was done, she brought his hand up to her lips and kissed it.
He moved the phone from his mouth. “I love you, babe. Off in two seconds,” he said. “Yeah, I’m here, Rock. Thanking Mack for . . . being a saint.” Fisher winked at her.
Nora made a gesture wiggling her fingers, flitting about, miming cleaning up the smashed pitcher. Fisher dipped his head at her and put his bandaged hand to his heart; then he moved off to the side to pace.
She looked down at the blood and the shards of glass, unsure of which to tackle first, and glanced back at her man, Fisher. The winks and smiles and softness—she was forgiven for yelling him out of the bathroom. It’s like it never even happened. Nora stooped down and dragged the dirty tea towel through the blood, smearing it a little before actively wiping up the mess. She listened to Fisher talking in the background and felt a calm wash over her.
“Colin’s looking into it. He said he didn’t recognize that name or handle or whatever,” Fisher said to his brother. “And it was different than other hacker handles, he said. More basic, like a regular name.” Fisher chuckled. “Yeah, exactly, like a John Smith, but this was just a last name: Bourdain.”
Nora gasped and dropped the large pieces of glass that she had collected, shattering them into even smaller bits. She hopped up and turned to face Fisher, who was quickly stepping toward her.
“Hey, I gotta call you back,” Fisher said in one breath, and was by Nora’s side in seconds. “Babe, you all right? Did you cut yourself?”
“No, I . . . I just . . . it slipped.”
“Mack, you’re trembling.” He took her hands in his. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Yeah, totally. I must’ve nicked or pinched my finger or something, but see”—she fanned her hand by him—“no blood. It’s totally fine.” She went back to the glass on the kitchen floor mainly to get a few seconds to pull herself together without Fisher staring at her, frowning. She returned to picking up what few large pieces of the broken pitcher she could gather from the floor.
Fix your face.
The trembling in her hands was still there, but she was able to steady her voice just enough. After a beat, Fisher bent down to help.
“Sorry about this mess,” he said, grabbing the soggy tea towel. “I’m going to toss this.” He walked over to the sink and dropped the rag in it. Nora was tempted to say something about it not being the garbage, but swallowed the comment. She needed to focus on how to start this conversation as if everything were regular.
“So, what all happened?” Nora kept her head down, eyes fixed on the glass and the wet floor.
“Other than me not knowing how to work a water pitcher?” he said, sighing. Nora could hear the irritation resting at the base of his voice. “Rock called to tell me about our system getting hacked just as I was reading the red-flag email about it. I was getting some water for you—or at least that was the attempt—and it slipped or, shit, maybe I smashed it on purpose. I’m so annoyed. I mean, Jesus. We’re about medical research, helping people get healthy, why hack into us?”
“It’s fucked up, for sure. I’m sorry, honey.” Nora kept her back turned to Fisher, but could hear his footsteps pacing, coming close to her, then moving away again. “Can your team fix it?”
“Yeah, it’s going to mean some late nights for a couple guys, but it’s not a complete shit show.”
“And did I overhear you say something about the hackers leaving a name or something?” Nora knew she had to make eye contact soon, to stand soon, to actually clean up the floor soon; she needed to act like her heart was not trying to climb up her throat. But her entire brain ached. Dawn was everywhere. She had burrowed into Nora’s life and was now scratching her paws at the Beaumonts’ door.
“Yeah, there was handle in the code,” Fisher said. Nora finally looked over at him. “Colin said it was left behind on purpose. Bourdain.” He shrugged. “But who knows what that even means or if it’s useful. My only focus is patching things up
and securing the walls against something similar happening down the line. These guys can become a total pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, they can be,” Nora said, her voice trailing off.
“All right, that’s it,” Fisher said. He walked over to the mess pile on the floor and hovered by Nora’s shoulder. “I can’t watch this anymore, not in good conscience. You’ve been picking around the same four pieces of broken glass for the last twenty hours.” He held out a hand to help Nora stand up. “I’ll take care of this mess; it’s my fault anyway. You go get out of that robe, finish getting dressed.”
“You sure?” Nora said. “I mean, you only have one hand.”
“Sometimes that’s all it takes, babe.”
She smiled. “And we’re good—you and me?”
“We’re good, always.”
Nora nodded, beaming as she backed away from him and continued out of the kitchen. The minute she cleared the corner, Nora spun around and shuffled to her dressing room, grabbing her phone from the nightstand on her way there. The closed door didn’t seem to be enough; Nora poured herself into the deepest corner of the closet beneath the shelf with her color-coordinated, perfectly folded sweaters. She needed to make sure no one could possibly overhear her, even though she didn’t yet know who to call or even what she’d say to them. Nora held the phone in both hands for a breath, drumming her fingers along the sleek back of it. She took another deep breath and tried to let it out slowly. It was all weighing heavy on her. She could feel it in the line between her shoulder blades, the very back of her neck, and the arches in her feet. Even her nails suffered; they were peeling and brittle.
She couldn’t understand how Dawn was doing it. For as many lines as Nora had drawn in the sand, Ghetto Dawn kept crossing them. The special set of skills that she had mentioned to Nora seemed to run deeper than simply meddling and fooling a credit card customer service rep on the phone. Nora knew this now. Dawn’s reach went far and she was capable of digging her dirty claws into anyone.
But it can’t be Fisher. It can’t be the Beaumonts. Nora needed to make sure Fisher and his family stayed in the bubble, protected.
She opened up her email and started typing a note to Oli, but stopped after a handful of words and stared at the slow-blinking cursor. The gears in Nora’s brain picked up speed.
“She’s hacking into my email,” Nora said in the quietest whisper. “She’s hacking into everything.”
Nora rested the phone on the floor next to her. It was starting to come together: the Facebook request, finding her home address, the credit card charges—it all fit. She remembered reading a tech post years back about how hackers would get into a person’s iCloud and use the Find My iPhone app to watch folks move around, track where they are and where they go. Nora swallowed hard and looked over at her phone with her eyes cut and angry. That’s how Dawn keeps popping up everywhere. A new thought crashed into Nora’s brain and she sat up as if shot in the back. “Mateo,” she said, and snatched up her phone again. She dialed his number instead of emailing or texting.
“Boss-lady! A phone call, though?”
“Hey, yeah, I know. I can’t trust email right now. It’s kind of why I’m reaching out.”
“Can’t trust email? Not dubious at all,” he said, snickering. “What’s going on?”
“Remember a couple months ago, you were telling me and Oli about this girl on Twitter who was, like, reverse-trolling people by posting their personal information on there.”
“Pettysburg Address, yeah, yeah. She is so dope. That woman has those assholes begging her to stop putting them on blast, pleading with her to delete the shit she posts about them.” Mateo laughed. “That chick is hilarious.”
“Okay, her. What did you call it again, what she’s doing?”
“What, doxing?”
“Yeah, that. How do you do it? I mean, how does someone get into your personal stuff like that?”
“Because people in general are dummies and don’t know how to lock their shit up on the interwebs. They use the same easy-to-crack passwords for, like, everything from their bank accounts to their wack-ass Instagram. Listen, the most basic of basic web searches can land you right in the middle of anyone’s private bidniss—their cell number, where they live, their email, their IP address, their SSN, credit card info, all their social media bullshit, even their work internal memos. It’s all out there. And if someone’s really good, they can dig even deeper. And what’s really fucked up is, since all of that information is public, dropping dox is technically legal.”
“Shit.” The twitch in her brow doubled its intensity and she felt a tingling in her right foot. She flexed and wiggled it around on the floor and spotted three large drops of blood left behind, where her big toe was. Nora pulled the leg up to check. There was a cut on the bottom of the foot from the broken glass. “Goddammit.”
“For real. Hold up—someone doxed you?”
Nora let the question linger for a half second, then blurted out an answer, “Yeah.” She nodded and a gust of relief settled over her, making the sting of her cut toe fall away. “Yes, someone is definitely doxing me.”
“Man, that fucking sucks. Do you know who’s trying to come for you?”
She paused again, trying in haste to calculate the risks of speaking too freely. “Might have an idea. Someone from long ago.”
“Like Canada long ago? Damn, I thought you guys were basically cold-weather hippies—peace and love and all sore-ry everything.”
Nora rolled her eyes. “Oh, my God, don’t start. Please.”
“All right, all right. But, seriously, is this person, like, harassing you, trying to blackmail you or something? I mean, the wedding is coming up. You’re going to be a target for this kind of shit. I’m surprised it took this long, to be honest with you.”
“How about not being honest with me,” Nora said, letting her annoyance ooze out. “I don’t need to hear that I should just expect this invasion of my privacy all because I’m marrying someone with a name in this fucking city.”
“Chill, chill. I hear you. My bad. Not what I meant, okay?” Mateo said. Nora grunted—a half response to his limp apology. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
Nora chewed at her lips. “Something,” she said. “That’s all I know right now. Something.”
“Well, I know this dude—yo, I shouldn’t be saying anything. I don’t want NSA adding me to their files, man.” Mateo sighed. “But since it’s you . . . All right, look, this dude from back in my skate park days, he does this kind of stuff, only he’s working for the right side of things, know what I’m sayin’? He’s an infosec engineer.”
“Infosec?”
“Information security engineer,” he said. Nora didn’t like how exasperated Mateo sounded, as if he were the kid showing up his obtuse mom for the hundredth time that day.
“I’m sorry that we’re not all up on the hacking glossary of terms, Mateo.”
“I wasn’t—Nora, obviously this has got you on edge. I don’t blame you. This shit is ridiculous. But, come on. I might not rock a cape, but I be on the Justice League. I’m with the good guys. Only trying to help you, okay?”
Nora let the silence ride out for a minute and tried to smooth the sharp edge in her voice. “I know. I know you are, Matts.”
“All right. So, here’s what: You need to go and change up your whole shit. New passwords for everything. Make sure they’re long and crazy, because those are the ones that work like a brick wall; trust. Throw in that two-factor authentication for your log-ins, too. Call all the credit cards—anywhere that you used your social or any personal info, call and let them know that there’s been a breach.”
“Crap. The wedding planner. Her office left a message. Something about the seating plan. I thought it was to confirm for the fifth time that, no, we will not be having a separate groom and bride side at the ceremony. But maybe it’s about my credit card or a declined charge.”
“Exactly. Call that planner b
ack, like, yesterday. I’ll talk to Dylan and Ravi about securing the email at work, if that’s been affected. For now, you should stay off of email. I’ll tell Oli and crew the same. You can still text, but only use iMessage. That’s encrypted end to end, so you’re pretty safe there. Overall, just watch what you’re putting out there. I know you don’t get down with the selfies and shit, so that’s good. And if you want, I’ll send the smoke signals out to my Mr. Robot for an assist, if needed.”
“Jesus. How do you know all of this? Aren’t you a fashion guy?”
“Yeah, I’m that,” he snickered, “but you can’t just be one thing. Not in this wild world, you know?”
“Right.” The sting had returned to Nora’s cut foot and brought with it some throbbing. “Thanks for all of this, Matts. I should go.”
“Don’t mention it. It’s how we do. And don’t worry about any of this, Nor. Ninety percent of these hacker assholes is just that: assholes. Secure your shit and they’ll go away, off to find the next fool with password123 for a password. Anyway, catch you later, all right?”
“Later.”
Nora hung up and folded her legs in close so that the injured toe faced up. The thoughts of what to do next rolled in like a rough tide, leaving her dizzy and nauseated. She pressed her finger into the wound on her foot; she wanted to feel something distinct, recognizable. Pain made sense. Everything else that swirled around inside did not.
There was a light knock. “Mack,” Fisher said through the side of the dressing room door. “You all right in there?”
Nora ran the back of her hand under her wet nose and stretched an intense, fake grin across her face. She took her voice out of her nose, but made sure to keep it as pleasant as possible. “Oh, yeah. Totally, honey,” she sang. “Getting ready to meet Jenna. Trying to decide which shoes I want to go with: Ancient Greek Sandals or my Lanvin cap toe sneakers. The gun-metal color of the Lanvins is kind of speaking to me, you know?” Talking to Fisher about fashion beyond the broadest strokes was the surest way to send him racing in the other direction. Though Nora didn’t pull out this piece of kryptonite often, it felt necessary right now. She needed more time to get her mind on the right track.
Have You Met Nora? Page 19
