by Liv Spector
But then, Lila found a curious file labeled Nautilus. Maybe, she hoped, this was it. But the moment she opened it up and saw screen after screen of Java source code, her heart sank. It might as well have been Greek. If this was what Jack had been tirelessly working on night after night, she didn’t have the tools to decipher it. She went online to see if she could translate it herself, but after an hour of moving from the code to the encoder, she hadn’t made it past the first line.
She couldn’t shake that feeling that this was important, that somewhere in this code lay a clue that could help her solve the case. If Sam was right, and Jack had been devoting all his spare time to working on this piece of source code, it was essential that she at least have some idea of what it was.
What she needed was a brilliant mind, someone who could shed some light on what this endless stream of code actually meant. She knew plenty of hackers from her days as a detective, but they weren’t right for this. Jack Warren was the most revolutionary intelligence working in tech today. Whoever could decipher this code needed to be able to match wits with him. What Lila needed was someone of unquestionable genius, and someone she could trust absolutely.
The problem was, she only knew one trustworthy genius: Teddy Hawkins.
If only she could ask Teddy, then all her problems would be solved. Wait, she thought. Teddy! Why not?
She wasn’t even taking the idea half-seriously when she put his name into a search engine and discovered that, in 2008, Teddy was running a small tech consulting firm in Miami, where The Rising Tide was set to dock in just a few short hours. But the more she turned the idea around in her mind, the more she thought it was the perfect solution to her problem. All she needed to do was find some excuse to get off the boat, and then she’d stop by his office.
Lila knew that future Teddy wouldn’t just say this was a risky and dangerous idea. He’d say it was bat shit insane. She’d met Teddy in the past once before, and future Teddy had insisted that she never let it happen again. But it hadn’t hindered her investigation back then and it certainly hadn’t changed the present day, so why would it be different this time?
As she clicked through the indecipherable code she tried to think of any possible way to tackle this without Teddy. But no better idea came to her.
Lila decided that she wouldn’t tell Teddy who she was, and she certainly wouldn’t tell him where the code had come from. If she kept their encounter short and vague, what harm could she possibly do? She knew it was a plan that was a little more fraught with danger than she would’ve liked, but so was traveling back in time.
AT ONE O’CLOCK the next day, Lila knocked on young Teddy Hawkins’s office door. There were butterflies in her stomach, and the hand that clutched the thumb drive was slightly damp with perspiration. At least it had been easy to get there. She hadn’t even had to sneak off the boat. It was September 8, the day Ava was set to board the yacht, and just two days away from Jack’s birthday, leaving countless things to prepare before they set sail again later that evening. Which meant Edna Slaughter was running around on the verge of a nervous breakdown, shouting more orders than a deranged drill sergeant.
Lila had come up with a perfect excuse to leave the boat by volunteering to go to the Bal Harbour Shops to pick up a few things Elise had ordered. Even in the middle of the ocean, it seemed that Elise Warren could find multiple ways to spend obscene amounts of money. But before heading to the mall, Lila was swinging by Teddy’s office.
When the taxi dropped her off at the location she’d written down, she assumed there’d been a mistake.
“Wait here,” she told the driver as she slowly walked up to a run-down Cuban sandwich shop near the corner of Biscayne Boulevard and NE Twenty-ninth Street. It was the type of mom-and-pop operation where the old signs above the door and in the window were crudely hand-painted. Then Lila noticed, around the back of the sandwich shop, there was a blue door with a laser-engraved plaque that read ARGONAUT ENTERPRISES. After waving the taxi driver away, she went back to the door, pushed the bell, and was immediately buzzed in.
Lila climbed up a steep flight of stairs, covered in stained, gray industrial carpet, toward Teddy’s office. She almost couldn’t believe that Teddy Hawkins, the aesthete, the billionaire genius whom she knew so well, had started out in a shit hole like this.
Before she reached the top of the stairs, the door opened—and Teddy stood there looking at her. Lila was surprised to feel her heart leap, her pulse quicken, and an irrepressible smile break out at the sight of him. Only days ago, she’d been in his presence. But now here he was, ten years younger, standing in his dingy office with a puzzled look on his face. He had a boyish roundness to his cheeks and a brightness to his eyes that a decade’s worth of struggles and disappointments had long since worn away.
“Nicky Collins,” she said, reaching out to shake his hand. The feel of his skin on hers was like drinking a sip of water after a long thirst. Only at that very moment did Lila realize the toll that being undercover had taken on her; the accumulated strain that weeks of isolation and deception had caused. It was so nice, she thought, just to be with somebody she knew. Even if he didn’t technically know her—yet.
“SO,” TEDDY SAID, keeping his eyes on the floor. “What brings you here today?” Young Teddy is shy, Lila realized with surprise.
“I’ve come across a strange file,” she said, trying to contain her excitement at being in his presence again. She felt like she could finally exhale, that for the first time in weeks she wasn’t completely on edge.
“What is it?” Teddy prompted.
“Actually,” Lila admitted, “I was hoping you could tell me. I think it’s code, but I’m not sure for what. I don’t speak computer, so I need you to be my translator. And I’m happy to pay you handsomely for any insight you can give me.” She tossed the thumb drive over to Teddy, who caught it. And then she pulled a ten-grand stack of hundred-dollar bills and threw it on the desk, too. The money arced into the air and landed with a satisfying thud. Teddy’s eyes widened at the money, and he sat back in his chair with a stunned look on his face. Lila tried not to dwell on the strangeness of paying Teddy with money that his future self had given her.
She glanced around at the small, humble office, which was incredibly well organized. Always an obsessive reader, Teddy had a stack of books ranging in subject matter from Le Corbusier to Zen Buddhism. A postcard was taped to the wall over his spare and modern Eames desk. Lila recognized it.
“You like de Kooning?” she asked, pointing to the postcard, which showed an abstract painting made up of a jumble of wide and wild brushstrokes in peachy reds, sky blues, smeared whites, and jade greens.
“I love him. He’s my favorite painter by far,” Teddy said. He seemed pleased that she recognized the artist, but still confused about what this strange woman was doing in his office.
Lila couldn’t help grinning. She knew something that at this very moment in time, Teddy could never imagine. Ten years from now he would own the very painting that was on that postcard taped to an otherwise bare wall. It would become the crown jewel of his art collection: a grand, seven-foot-wide Abstract Expressionist masterpiece that he purchased for $85 million. After he bought it at auction, he would confess to Lila that owning that painting was the realization of one of his lifelong dreams.
“Well,” he said, plugging the device into his computer. “How’d you find me, exactly?”
Lila had known he would have lots of questions and had also known she wouldn’t be able to answer any of them honestly. “Let’s just say we’ve got a good friend in common.”
“Who?” Teddy asked.
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked him directly in the eyes. “Listen, it’s complicated and I don’t have time to go into it. All I can tell you is that everything is aboveboard. So please, can you just take a look at this file and tell me what I’v
e got here?”
After a moment of contemplative silence, Teddy nodded. “I’ll be honest. You’ve got me pretty intrigued.”
“The file is called ‘Nautilus.’ ”
Lila stood behind Teddy as he clicked it open and scrolled through the text for a minute or two.
“Do you know what it is?”
“Just a minute,” he said impatiently. Whatever was there on the screen seemed very interesting to Teddy. More time passed, and he was still hunched over his desk, mesmerized. Lila looked at her watch, horrified at the time. She should’ve been back at the boat by now, and she still had to drop by Neiman Marcus to pick up Elise’s packages, then rush back to begin tackling her long list of chores in preparation for Jack’s fiftieth birthday celebration.
“Listen,” she said, after about almost ten minutes of silence had passed. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I’ve got to go soon. Is there any way you can tell me what this is right now?”
Teddy pushed himself away from his desk and looked up at Lila, blinking himself back into the nondigital world. She couldn’t help smiling at him once again.
“At first it seemed rather simple. This is the source code for all of Warren Software’s applications translated into machine language. It’s cool to see because this code is completely guarded—nobody outside the programmers at Warren has access to it. I feel like I’m in the land of Oz and someone let me peek behind the curtain.”
“Okay,” Lila said, trying to make sure she understood clearly. “So, these are instructions for how the software works?”
“Kind of. But not really. This is the program, but translated so that the computer can understand it. That’s what machine language means. But there’s something here that I’ve never seen before.” He scrolled down and pointed to a bit of gibberish on the screen. Lila had no idea what she was looking at. “Right there,” Teddy said. “That’s very unusual. How’d you get this, anyway?”
Lila stayed silent.
“Fine. Not one for answering questions. I get it. I get it,” Teddy said. He returned his attention to the computer screen. “At its most basic, this looks like a pretty standard software update.”
“An update?”
“You know. Those annoying messages you get telling you to update your software? Well, that’s what this is. Once this update is put out into the world, everyone who has any of Warren Software’s programs on their computers will get a message telling them to install this newer version. But, still . . .” He kept clicking through the file, reading through the strange symbols on the screen. “I just don’t quite know what I’m looking at. What I need to do is actually run this update on my computer, then I’ll have a better idea about what this mysterious bit of code does. Do you have a couple minutes?”
Lila said she did. Teddy even suggested she go grab a Cubano downstairs while he installed the update. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but they really are the best sandwiches in the city. Can you get me one, too?” he asked as he slid the top hundred-dollar bill off the stack that Lila gave him. “Hopefully they accept big bills,” he added with a smile, handing her the money.
Five minutes later, Lila was back with two steaming sandwiches. Teddy told her that he was almost ready. They both sat hunched over the sandwiches that were balanced on their legs, Teddy at his desk chair and Lila on a rickety chair she pulled up next to him.
“Okay. I’ve got it all loaded in. Now I just have to run the update . . . here,” he said as he pushed the return button on his keyboard.
Almost instantly the screen went pitch-black.
“What the . . .” Teddy said, tapping at his keys, but the computer was unresponsive.
Suddenly white vertical lines took over the screen, then the lines went horizontal. The computer began to whir noisily. “Fuck me!” Teddy said, banging on the keys. Then he tried to turn the computer off, but it was frozen.
“What?” Lila said, her mouth full of sandwich.
“Something is very, very wrong.”
All the horizontal lines began to move into a kind of whirlpool, growing tighter and tighter, smaller and smaller, until they formed into something resembling a seashell in the center of the screen. Then, with a flicker, the seashell disappeared and the computer went black. The whirring stopped, leaving Teddy and Lila staring at a blank screen.
“What just happened?” Lila asked.
Teddy put the sandwich on his desk and jumped up out of his chair. He tried to turn his computer on, then off, then on again. But nothing happened. He held several keys down at once for more than a few seconds. Still unresponsive. Then he sat back in his chair, stunned.
“I’ll tell you what just happened,” he said. “Total data erasure.”
“What?”
“Whatever that was just completely obliterated my hard drive.” Lila looked at him, a bit confused. “To put it in simple terms, whatever was on that thumb drive of yours just murdered my computer.”
“Oh my God! I’m sorry!” Lila exclaimed as she realized what that might mean for a man like Teddy. He probably had his whole life on that machine.
“Oh, no!” he said. “I’m fine. I’ve got all my stuff backed up in a million different ways. Trust me, I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. But now it makes sense. The code I didn’t recognize must be what’s responsible for frying the computer.”
“Why would anyone want that?” Lila wondered aloud.
“I don’t know. All I do know is this is an incredibly damaging bit of code you’ve got there,” he said as he removed the thumb drive from his destroyed computer. “This could single-handedly wipe out all the data of everyone who has Warren software on their computers, which is, basically, everybody. So, let’s do humanity a favor and . . .”
Without saying another word, Teddy put the thumb drive on the floor and stomped on it with the heel of his shoe until it was destroyed.
“Hey!” Lila said in protest.
“Sorry about that,” Teddy said, with absolutely zero trace of regret in his voice. “But I really don’t know you, and I don’t want a stranger walking out of my door with something so dangerous in her pocket. Not worth the risk. But feel free to take back your money.”
“No,” Lila said. “It’s fine. I didn’t need it anyway. Keep the money. Use it to buy yourself a new computer.”
“With this much, I can buy a lot more than that,” Teddy replied.
Lila got up to go, but before she left, she turned back for one more look at her friend. “And, Teddy,” she said before closing the door behind her, “see you very soon.”
Just as she was about to rush down the stairs, Teddy called out after her. “Hey!”
She turned back to him. “What?”
He stood there awkwardly, not saying anything, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, as if he’d called after her without knowing what he planned to say.
“Teddy, I’m in a real rush,” Lila said impatiently.
“Of course. Of course. It’s only just . . . I was wondering if . . .” His words were sputtering out of his mouth slowly, tripping him up. He paused. Then he took in a big, fortifying breath. “It’s just, it’s not every day that a beautiful woman walks into my office carrying a mysterious computer code like someone out of a spy movie. I think I’ve just had my mind blown. But not by that code, even though it’s the most astounding technology I’ve ever seen. What’s really mind-blowing is you. And I know I’d never forgive myself if I let you go without at least asking when I can see you again.”
Lila felt her heart skip a beat as she looked at Teddy.
“We’ll see each other again, I promise,” Lila said.
“But how? I don’t have any way to contact you.”
“Trust me,” Lila said. Then, on impulse, she ran up to him and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Before he could react, she turned down t
he stairs, and walked out of the building, leaving him standing there in a mild state of shock.
With a growing number of questions swirling around her mind, Lila hopped into a cab, heading first to the mall and then to the yacht. But all she could think about for the duration of the car ride was Teddy.
CHAPTER 22
BURDENED WITH MANY oversize bags from Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, Lila trudged toward The Rising Tide. When she looked up, her breath caught in her throat.
A local TV reporter was, at that very moment, shooting the segment about the yacht that Lila had watched over and over again for ten years, because of Ava’s brief appearance.
This meant that her sister was finally on board. Lila’s feet flew under her as she began to run to the ship. But as she tried to board, she was waylaid by flurry of activity. Several women, all carrying large floral centerpieces, were walking up the gangway in front of Lila as the rest of the boat was swarmed with a cameraman, a TV producer, and the reporter, as well as the marina workers refueling the boat and deliverymen restocking its supplies.
As she pushed her way onto the main deck, Lila kept her eyes on the balcony where Ava made her appearance on the video. Lila heard the rapid click of a camera’s shutter and turned to see a photographer taking hundreds of pictures of all the buzz. Then she noticed the TV camera was focused on her.
“Hi. I’m Christianne Gomez from 7News. We’re here to do a piece on this spectacular yacht,” the reporter said as she went to shake Lila’s hand, which was impossible to do because of all the bags Lila was carrying. Instead, she awkwardly shook one of Lila’s bent elbows. “Do you mind if I ask you some quick questions?”
Before Lila could answer, she heard Edna Slaughter call out from across the deck, “No, no. No, no! That’s not necessary.” Edna swiftly crossed the floor, with a tight smile on her face. Lila could tell that she was overwhelmed by the presence of so many strangers on the boat, and irritated that she had to pretend to be pleasant in front of the reporter.
