Vanished

by Karen E. Olson

  When my plane boards, I discover that Elizabeth McKnight is able to afford first class. Spencer does seem to think of everything. Even though I’m still angry with him, I am surprised that I miss him. I miss his company. I’m distracted by the backpack and think about the laptop inside it. For the next several hours, I won’t be able to go online. I’m completely disconnected.

  I settle back in my seat and feel the plane begin to move beneath me.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I haven’t been to Paris in seventeen years. When I was a child, my parents would send me to France every summer to spend time with my grandmother. She was a glamorous woman, with her short hair a la Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and her bright red lipstick. She was tall and slender and had a graceful way of moving that I tried desperately to emulate but couldn’t master. She never wore slacks, preferring dresses that accentuated her figure. We would always spend the first month in Paris; her apartment was in the Marais, in a building that was two hundred years old, with a courtyard and a balcony with a view of the rooftops surrounding us. She let me drink wine with dinner and taught me about art at the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and the Pompidou. We never went to the top of the Eiffel Tower because she thought it was too touristy and gauche. I loved her desperately, because she loved me back, and I was never quite sure that my parents even noticed me. She died when I was thirteen, a heart attack probably due to the number of cigarettes she’d smoked through the years. I felt her loss so palpably.

  It’s not a coincidence that I disappeared online the first summer I wasn’t in Paris.

  I step out of the metro station and drink in the scent of the city, and it’s so familiar that I almost expect to see her standing by her black Rolls-Royce, smiling, waiting for me. The ache that rushes through me as I realize I’ll never see her again is as new as when I was thirteen.

  It’s a relief, actually, that these are the memories that come to mind and not the ones from the last time I was here, when I was with Ian Cartwright.

  It is morning, and the city is still awakening. I spot a café with outside tables and slide into a chair, my backpack tucked securely between my legs. I order a café au lait and a croissant and watch the Parisians stroll by. I have two days here – no, make that one, because of the traveling time – before I’ll see Spencer. I’m not sure when exactly he’ll arrive or what time we’re supposed to meet. He merely said at the Hotel Adele.

  I take the cellphone out of the backpack and wonder if it holds any more secrets. It did have his number in it, but when I call now, it goes to a recording that tells me the number is no longer in service. I look in the notes and in the contacts, but there is no sign of any current information for Spencer.

  I’m certain, though, that he does know where I am. I never did disable the GPS tracking that he’d installed. I could do that now, but I choose to drink my coffee and nibble at the croissant. I’m not even tempted at the moment to take out the laptop.

  I am not exactly sure that I have a reservation at the Hotel Adele, but when I push the door open, approach the desk and give my name, I am greeted with a warm smile and handed a key card. There is no sign that the desk clerk is even remotely curious about my bruise, which is typically Parisian. I resist the urge to ask about Ryan Whittier; I don’t know how I could explain my interest in him or how I even know about him. And in thinking about it, since he doesn’t seem to actually exist, they might think I’m a little bit crazy. That hotel reservation could be as fake as he is, come to think of it. The back door in the reservation system was there for a reason. What if it was to create a fake reservation, especially since it was ‘paid for’ with a fake credit card?

  I squeeze into the small elevator that holds only one person and ride up to the third floor. When I push the door open to my room, I am again assailed by thoughts of how much I’ve missed Paris. French doors open to a small balcony with some potted geraniums and a wrought-iron table and chair. I leave the doors open to hear the street sounds below.

  I take a shower to wash the traveling away, and as I look at myself in the mirror, I put my fingers to the bruise gently, then adjust my glasses. My hair lies in wet ringlets against my head, and I rub a towel against it, the curls springing up. I don’t have any clean clothes, so I again put on the ones I changed into at Joan and Ron’s house. I’m sorry now I didn’t take Joan up on her offer to wash for me.

  I sit cross-legged on the bed and take the laptop out of the backpack. Time to get to work.

  Being here has made me realize that I have to go back to the beginning, because this is where it all started. I can’t concentrate on my stalker, the photographs of me. I have to go back further than that, to four months ago when Zeke was putting the skimmer on the ATM, when he got into Tony DeMarco’s car. If I can find out what happened then, maybe I can find Zeke – and put an end to everything.

  I wish I had Spencer’s computer and the RAT, so I could get inside d4rkn!te’s computer, but I don’t. I have to use my own wits and skills. I know where to find d4rkn!te, and I need to find out about his carding forum and whether there are any clues to where Zeke might be. While it would be best to hang out in the chat room for a while and get to know d4rkn!te, I have to find a way to earn his trust immediately.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. If I can get into his forum, if he actually invites me, I will need bitcoin. Even if I don’t buy a dump, I’ll have to register and possibly pay a fee. The easiest way to get bitcoin is to set up a wallet through an app on my phone and then buy them. The credit card that Spencer left for me is going to come in handy more than I thought.

  The Wifi connection here is spotty, so I take my wireless router out of my backpack. I’m going to have to power it – and the laptop – up, and there’s one thing no one thought of: a power adapter.

  I don’t feel like going out again, but if I’m going to get anything done, I will need to find an electronics store. The BHV, or le Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville, is a huge department store that’s only a few metro stops away and will likely have what I need. I can get the metro at Concorde.

  I don’t want to leave my laptop in the room, but the backpack is a little heavy. I unpack my clothes and toiletries, which makes it a little lighter. I’ve still got cash, and I exchanged some at the airport for euros. I don’t have a debit card, so an ATM isn’t an option. I need to make the cash last. I can use the credit card, I suppose, although I’m a little skittish about it, worried that when I use it, some cashier will be tipped off that it’s fake. I wonder who’s going to pay off that credit card bill. When I get the laptop powered up properly and I can get online, I’ll check out the bank information, like I did with the one ‘Spencer Cross’ used here at the hotel. Granted, I’ll probably hit a wall on this card, too, but it’s worth trying.

  This reminds me of something else. I use some data on my phone and call up the article about Ryan Whittier. I save his photograph, and I also have a picture of Zeke. Once downstairs in the lobby, I approach the desk. The clerk, a young woman in her twenties, smiles at me. Her brown hair is pulled back in a tousled ponytail and she wears no makeup. In the States, she might look sloppy, but with the scarf around her neck and the blue suit that hugs her figure perfectly, she is the ultimate in chic. I regret having to leave the new clothes on the train back in South Carolina, since my jeans, T-shirts and sneakers will mark me as an American, even though I’m speaking French.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say, happy that my year in Quebec kept my language skills intact, despite the difference between Québécois and Parisian French. I hold up my phone with the photograph of Ryan Whittier on it. ‘Do you recognize this man?’

  The woman squints at the screen, then looks back up at me, a quizzical look on her face. ‘Are you the police?’

  It’s a logical question, and one I did not anticipate because I’m shooting from the hip. I think quickly to give a convincing answer and decide on the truth. Or at least the truth as it’s known on the Internet.

  ‘No. He
’s a friend and he went missing here in Paris four months ago. He stayed here, so I thought maybe you might have seen him.’ The only untruth here is that he was a friend, although it is merely a little white lie.

  She shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  It’s not an unequivocal ‘no,’ which is interesting. I decide to press further.

  ‘Were you working here then?’ I ask, more than aware that I’m prying, that the French are not nearly as direct as Americans.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you don’t remember seeing him?’

  Her eyes dart around the lobby, as though she is looking for someone. I can’t pinpoint why, but I begin to get a bad feeling about this. And not because she doesn’t remember him and is becoming suspicious of my questions.

  ‘I am sorry, I don’t remember him,’ she says carefully, her tone guarded.

  It’s possible she’s telling the truth. I’m sure a lot of people have stayed here in the last months, although probably not as many as would be here during high season. But something in her tone tells me that he might not be as much a stranger as she’d like me to think.

  I’ve got some time, so I’m not going to push her on it. At least not now. I remember the photograph of Zeke, and I pull it up on my phone. ‘Have you ever seen this man?’

  She has resumed looking at her computer, and I hold it out so she can’t pretend she doesn’t see it. Her eyes meet mine. ‘No, I’m sorry. Is there anything else I can do for you today?’ Her words are polite, but I sense something beneath them, in her tone. And when I glance down at her hands on her keyboard, I see that they are shaking. She’s scared.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Something has happened here at the Hotel Adele. I can’t tell if she recognizes Ryan Whittier or Zeke or both, but I don’t think I’m going to get anything out of her.

  Instead of pressing the issue, I merely ask her if she can recommend a restaurant for lunch, and she directs me to one a few blocks away. ‘No tourists,’ she assures me, her expression clearly communicating that she’s relieved I’ve stopped my questioning.

  I smile, attempting to reassure her, then thank her even though she was lying about the tourists. This neighborhood is all about tourists. I head out, although when I get to rue de Rivoli, I get distracted when I realize where I am. The ATM is just to my left, the one that Zeke compromised with the skimmer. I find myself standing in front of it. I reach out and touch it, my fingers circling the area where you’d insert your card. Instinctively, I tighten my grip around the card reader and give it a yank, but it doesn’t move. There’s no skimmer on this machine. If there were, it would have been placed over the card reader. I peer closely and don’t see any telltale glue.

  I stand back when I notice an older man who thinks I’m using the machine. He begins to go to the machine’s twin right next to it, but I haven’t checked that one and I don’t want him to use it if it’s got a skimmer on it. I move in front of it and wave my hand to indicate that he should use the one I’ve already inspected. He hesitates, but since I’m now in his way, he doesn’t have any choice but to use the other machine. I don’t have an ATM card, and he might wonder why I’m here if I am not getting cash, so I make a show of rummaging around in my backpack as though I’m searching for my wallet.

  The older man takes his money and scurries past me without making eye contact. He probably thinks that I’m going to steal his ATM pin code. I wouldn’t have to stand behind him to get that. As it is, the camera just over his head probably captured every keystroke.

  As soon as he’s gone, I grab the card reader and twist.

  The skimmer comes off easily in my hand. I turn it over to see the small motherboard and wires. If someone puts his card into it, it will read the magnetic strip and copy it. I run my fingers across the keypad and pause for a second. It doesn’t feel quite right. It most likely is an overlay, one that will log the number entered and presses the real key underneath. It will definitely capture the pin number.

  I’m a little surprised that the skimmer is on this machine, especially since Zeke was caught in the act of installing one here four months ago. Maybe he – or someone else – decided that the authorities might not check these machines again since they’d already discovered they were compromised.

  I tuck the skimmer into my backpack. It will be harder for the hacker if he only has to rely on the keypad overlay.

  I am trying to picture Zeke here, trying to understand exactly what he was doing. As a hacker, I find it odd that he would be putting skimmers on machines at all. He’d be behind the scenes.

  My thoughts wander to Tony DeMarco. He’s had his hands in a lot of different illegal activities through the years: kiddie porn sites on the dark net being only one of them. Why wouldn’t he be tempted by the possibility of gleaning information from hundreds, thousands, of credit cards?

  Spencer said Zeke was undercover with Tony DeMarco two years ago and working these carding forums. But again it strikes me that Tony knows he’s FBI after Miami. Why would Zeke risk getting involved with him again?

  I can’t shake the feeling that Zeke’s in trouble, that he’s not quite as undercover as he was the last time.

  My head hurts, although it’s probably more that I’m tired from everything that’s gone on in the last couple of days, the fact that I spent the night on an airplane and didn’t get much sleep.

  I cross the street, so completely engrossed in my own thoughts that I almost miss the metro entrance. I blink a few times and mentally slap myself. I go down the stairs and head to the kiosk where I buy a five-day metro pass. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, but a five-day pass seems reasonable. I find my way to the metro line that ends at Chateau de Vincennes, although I won’t be going nearly that far. I’m only going a couple of stops to the Hotel de Ville.

  The train pulls up, and the doors open. I step inside and find a seat that’s facing the open doors. They begin to close, and that’s when I see him.

  Zeke. Outside on the platform.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I stand just as the train starts to move, and I lose my footing, falling back into the seat. I have looked away only for a second, and when I look back, all I see is darkness. I cross the car to the window, straining to see the platform we’ve left behind, but we’re going too fast and are deep in the tunnel.

  Could it really have been him? Or is it merely my exhaustion playing with my imagination? I’ve been thinking about him almost constantly since I arrived; it wouldn’t be a surprise if I’d conjured him only because I want desperately to find him, to know that he’s OK.

  I close my eyes, and again I can see him standing outside the train. But now I begin to doubt; my eyes must have been playing tricks on me. The man on the platform was too thin, his hair a shade lighter. No, it wasn’t him. It can’t have been him.

  I recall how I’d seen him in a casino in upstate New York after thinking he’d been long dead. I thought I’d seen a ghost.

  The train rumbles beneath me as it speeds along the tracks. I am momentarily discombobulated. Why have I come here? Even though Madeline Whittier discovered me, I could have disappeared somewhere else; I could have continued my life as I knew it.

  Except that the moment I saw Zeke’s picture online, I wanted to find him. I have missed him, but I’d had no idea just how much until then. To be honest, it wasn’t just about finding him. It was about the skimmer and what he might be doing here in Paris. It intrigued me and, after another long Internet absence, I craved the thrill that I get when I hack.

  I had to do it again. And if it meant I could be reunited with Zeke, all the better.

  But as I sit here, I am suddenly overwhelmed by sadness, by a premonition that I might never actually see him again. He might truly be that ghost I thought I saw not so long ago.

  The train stops, and we are at the Louvre. I can’t stay, trapped in this car, so I step out onto the platform and make my way above ground again, where the sun beats down on the pave
ment and I might have more hope.

  I came out today with a mission to find a plug adapter and then go back to hotel where I could begin my online search for d4rkn!te and Tracker, but the glass pyramid of the Louvre beckons. It’s been so long since I’ve been here; it’s like a magnet drawing me toward it.

  It’s here that I saw the Mona Lisa for the first time with my grandmother. The painting is small, much smaller than I’d expected from the photographs in the books. Her face holds secrets; her smile teases, but she’ll never tell. When I saw her, I understood her. I lived with secrets, too.

  I wander the cobblestoned courtyard outside the museum, holding my backpack close to my side. I want to go in, get distracted, pretend for a little while that I’m just another tourist.

  But I’m not.

  I turn and go back down into the metro station. I need a plug adapter. Maybe two. I focus on that; it will keep me occupied.

  I come back to the hotel from the department store with more than I expected. I have four plug adapters – something tells me Spencer will have forgotten about this tiny necessity, just like I did – as well as another pair of jeans and four tops. I also bought a couple of fashion scarves. Walking around the store reminded me that women in this city look chic without even trying, and even though they will most likely pinpoint me as an American right away, I can at least try to fit in a little.

  I’ve tossed one of the scarves around my neck, and when I push through the door of the hotel, the woman at the desk looks up and gives me a smile. I have no idea if it’s the scarf or the fact that I’m not grilling her anymore, but either way, she doesn’t seem to be holding our previous conversation against me. While I still have questions, it might be best to hold off for now. I return the smile as I go toward the elevator and my room.