Down to the Liar

by Mary Elizabeth Summer

  After an interminable length of time, the game finally ends. Which means it’s time for my game to start.

  “Garrett.” I keep my smile amiable as I approach. Amiable like a piranha. “Great game. Good…what do you call it? Hustle? I’m not super into sports.”

  “Thanks.” He looks shifty. And superhumanly attractive, with the artfully mussed black hair and the cheekbones. But mostly just shifty.

  “Bet you’re wondering why I’m here. Or maybe you’re not. Maybe you have a pretty good guess.”

  “I don’t, actually,” he says. But he doesn’t look confused. “Is Skyla okay?”

  “See, that’s the thing, Garrett. I think she could be okay. If she weren’t dating a psychotic, abusive loser like you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Garrett’s expression is a perfect hybrid of pissed off and confused.

  “I’m talking about this.” I hold up the Whois IP address entry I printed out. “Oops. Didn’t think you’d get caught, did you? Well, you did.”

  “You think I posted all that crap about Skyla?” he says, disgusted. “I love her. Why would I do that?”

  “I’m sure we could spend hours delving the deranged depths of your twisted psyche. But let’s jump to the salient point, shall we?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Stop. Just stop. Delete your Facebook accounts. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to take this issue to the dean. Do you really want something so scandalous on your permanent record? I can’t imagine Cornell accepts many pre-med students convicted of harassment.”

  He snatches the paper out of my hands and skims it. “Just because someone used my IP address to post doesn’t mean I did it. Someone could have cracked our wireless account. Someone could be trying to frame me.”

  “Why would someone want to frame you?”

  “To throw suspicion off themselves? I don’t know. But it sure as hell wasn’t me.”

  Much as I hate to admit it, he has a point. I can’t prove it’s him. It could be someone in his family. Or, less likely, somebody trying to frame him. If I get it wrong, the attacks will continue. And even if it is Garrett, as long as he has deniability, he can continue posting as long as he likes without repercussion.

  “Where were you last night when the most recent posts went live?”

  “I was at home.” Aha! “With Skyla.” Damn.

  “All right, fine. You’re off the hook for now. But you’re still on my list. And the best way you can prove it’s not you is by keeping this conversation to yourself. I don’t want you tipping off the real attacker by letting them know we’re on their trail.”

  “What about Skyla?”

  “Not even her. She’s already tied my hands enough with how I go about getting results. I don’t want her micromanaging me on top of that.”

  “I meant is Skyla in danger? If someone’s lurking outside my house using my IP address while she’s inside, does that mean she’s being stalked?”

  I gape at him, stunned. I hadn’t thought of that. If she is being actual-stalker stalked, that’s a whole other ball game. For one thing, it means the mark has a wholly different agenda than I previously ascribed to him. If it’s true, it changes everything.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But it’s worth keeping a closer eye on her. Don’t tell her, though. No point in panicking her over something we don’t know for sure is happening.”

  He looks like he doesn’t agree, but he nods anyway. “You’d better hurry, though. If this isn’t resolved by the end of the week, I’m calling the police.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” I admit. “Just tell me first, so I can get my people out of it. Not that what we’re doing is illegal, but some of them have reasons to avoid the police.”

  “Fair enough. And for what it’s worth, I’m rooting for you. I don’t want to put Sky through a police investigation if I don’t have to. She’s already been through so much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He’s silent for a beat too long, like he’s filtering. “It’s not relevant. Just some awful stuff from her childhood.”

  “Everything is relevant until it isn’t, Garrett. If you know something, you need to tell me.”

  His gaze drops and he shuffles uncomfortably. “I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. But if there’s a chance she’s being stalked…”

  I wait patiently for him to come to terms with his conscience. I’m so glad I don’t really have one of those. Well, I have one, but it’s pretty anemic.

  Finally, he wrestles the words out. “Sky’s parents are always touring without her. When she was younger, they hired a woman to be her caretaker while they were away.”

  I can already see where this is going.

  “She abused Skyla. Horribly. But that was years ago. When her parents found out what was going on, they fired the woman on the spot and reported her to the police. And Sky hasn’t seen or heard from the woman since. So it can’t be related, can it?”

  I would normally think not, if it happened years ago. But if the woman was reported to the police, she might be back for revenge.

  “I wish I could say for sure it’s not. It would be a stretch to assume it was related, since it happened years ago. But this case has been weird from the beginning. I’ll just have to figure out how to get the mark to—” I stop myself from saying reveal himself. Garrett is still a possibility, and I don’t want to scare him off.

  “To what?”

  “To stop posting. Maybe it’s time to get Facebook security to delete the accounts.”

  In reality, I have no intention of going to the authorities with this. We piqued the mark’s interest with the tale of those pictures. It’s time to move on to the shutout portion of the wire game. If only I knew how to translate the honeypot to something more concrete.

  “Thanks, Garrett.” I stuff my hands in my jacket pockets. “Don’t be evil.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I walk back to Murphy, who’s been waiting in the stands this whole time.

  “What did he say?” he asks when I reach him.

  “He denied it, as you’d expect.” I shiver, thinking about what else he revealed. “But I think we may have bigger problems.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like trying to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who’s responsible. We can’t prove anything with just an IP address. We need more. Otherwise, we’re dead in the water.”

  Murphy sighs. “Unfortunately, ‘dead’ is starting to look like a literal possibility.”

  He hands me his phone with Facebook pulled up. It’s one of the accounts attacking Skyla, the most recent post of which went live a minute ago:

  Skyla-a-a-a, if you won’t kill yourself, then I just might do it for you.

  —

  After a lengthy, and annoying, brainstorming session with Tog and his team via video chat, we’ve come up with exactly nothing. Several ideas, each more elaborate and less likely to work than the last, streamed through the Internet ether, clogging network connections with bytes of worthless junk.

  Tog finally signs off, flipping me the bird for my parting snarky comment about his ridiculous bling leeching all the juice out of his brain.

  Murphy sighs. “You really ought to stop pissing off our best hacker.”

  “He’s not our best hacker.”

  “No, he’s our only hacker, thanks to your lame fight with Sam.”

  “It’s not a fight,” I snap back. “I’m not angry at him, and as far as I know he’s not angry with me.”

  “Then why don’t you call him?”

  “Why don’t you call him?”

  “So we’re in middle school now? I’m not playing go-between for you and Sam. Work it out, Julep. We need him.”

  I end the video chat with Murphy and lean back in my chair. I’m glad I have the office to myself right now. I still haven’t heard from Dani, and it’s making me angsty. I was probably too harsh on Tog. I was definitely too harsh on Murphy.

 
I’m sick to death of all my damage. I’m angry all the time, and whenever something irritates me even slightly, I snap. I used to have a sense of humor. I used to have a sense of self-preservation. Hell, Dani’s probably right. Ever since the night I lost Tyler, and Sam, as well as my dad, my home, and my credibility, I’ve had this giant chip on my shoulder. Like wrapping myself in anger at the unfairness of it might somehow convince the universe to send them back to me.

  I look over at Murphy’s empty desk chair, imagining Sam sitting there instead of Murphy. I can see him so clearly in my mind, even from the back. He’s slouched over the keyboard, rubbing his ear while he’s working out some obscure technical problem I wouldn’t even know how to express, much less solve. I blink to cut off the mental image. But the guilt polluting my chest is harder to alleviate.

  It takes less than a second to dial his number. I hold my breath while it rings.

  “Hey,” he says.

  Holy crap. He actually answered.

  “Hey yourself.” I am nothing if not articulate.

  “I was just picking up the phone to call you.”

  I roll my eyes. “That’s what they all say.”

  “No, really. I need your help. With a—” He pauses. “With a job.”

  Ouch. He’s working without me? I guess I thought he just existed in limbo, doing military things while waiting for me to sort myself out. I didn’t think he’d actually move on. Now I feel like dirt. And like an idiot. And like I need to get my act together if I’m going to salvage this conversation.

  “What a coincidence. I need your help with a job, too.”

  “Oh.”

  What the hell am I doing? Why did I call him? About a job, no less. This is not how I wanted our first conversation post-cataclysm to go.

  “Are you busy? If you’re busy, I can call back,” I say. Lame. I am so lame.

  “No, no. This is a good time. What do you need?”

  So I explain about Skyla’s problem. I even tell him about the abusive childhood caretaker. But mostly I talk about the shutout. About how I need to get the attacker to pop his head out of his hole so I can chop it off.

  Sam listens with his usual attentiveness, asking all the right questions. And for a minute, it’s like the last five months never happened. It’s like he’s my Sam and I’m his Julep and everything is as it was. And in that minute, my heart soars and burns to ash at the same time, though I absolutely lock my voice down to as measured and normal as I can make it.

  “What about St. Agatha’s computer lab?” he says when I’m done.

  “What about it?”

  “You have to log on to the computers to use them, right? It’s easy enough to get those logs from the tech team if you can get the attacker there. Then just cross-check the log-in log with the site link you’re using as the honeypot.”

  “But what would make them use a school computer instead of their own? It’s not like we can disable all the computers in Chicago and force them to use the school’s.”

  “Just change the error message on Tog’s web page to something like ‘This site is only accessible from the computer science lab at St. Agatha Preparatory School.’ Maybe add a random string of numbers and letters to make it look more legit.”

  I stare at my desk, floored by his brilliance. “That’s—that’s diabolical, Sam. And I mean that with the utmost respect.”

  He laughs. “I know.”

  I’m still reeling, my brain already spinning the details of the shutout. But something clicks over in my new-Julep psyche, reminding me other people have needs, too.

  “What about you?” I say. “You said you needed help?”

  He tells me about his job. It’s another wire game. I almost comment on the strangeness of both of us running a wire game at the same time, when neither of us has ever successfully pulled one off before. But I don’t. It’s his turn to talk.

  When he’s done with his story, I sigh. “You can’t con a selfless person, Sam.”

  “I know. But I have to do something. I can’t just let her lose all her hard work. She’d be devastated.”

  I’m silent for several seconds, thinking. I know what I’d do, but it’s nothing short of a nuclear option. I hate even suggesting he put himself at so much risk. I hate not being there to keep him safe. And yes, I realize what a hypocrite that makes me. But even if I ignore my own arguments, I can’t help him. He left. He left me, and he’s successfully moving on without me. I have to let him, if that’s what he wants. It’s what you do for someone you love, right? You let them be happy no matter how miserable it makes you.

  I take a deep breath. “There is one thing you can do. But it’s a big risk.”

  “Tell me.”

  So I do. I give him the only way out with any chance of him salvaging the situation. And as I do, I’m praying to every god I’ve ever heard of that my dicey solution doesn’t take him down in the process.

  “Are you sure?” he asks. And no wonder. It goes against everything I’ve ever told him. But I am sure it’s his best shot, so…

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think my chances of success are?”

  “It depends on how you define ‘success,’ ” I say, trying to be both positive and honest. “But if you mean everything working out to your benefit, I’d say fifty to one.”

  “Those are pretty crappy odds.”

  I choke back the words I want to say. I’m coming. I’ll fix it. Don’t do anything without me.

  “Don’t hate the player…,” I say instead. Because at heart, I’m a jerk.

  “Yeah, I know.” He pauses, and I can practically hear him thinking. “Julep?”

  “Yeah?” I say, my heart tangling in my vocal cords.

  “I—” He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t have to. I know what he’s feeling.

  “Me too,” I say. Then I end the call before I start crying again.

  I set my phone down on the coffee-ringed desk, my thoughts whirling like desert-hot dust devils laced with jagged glass. Each gust nicks and burns me. So I still myself, ignoring the wind until my mind eventually empties. Then I pull my grifter grit from the deepest recesses of my soul, strapping it on like armor. And in the space of another breath, I’m ready to crush a villain.

  The Sting

  It’s D-day, and the only ones who know it are me, Tog, and the mark. I contacted Tog last night after my talk with Sam about changing the error message. I also sent another Facebook message to the mark saying that the web link I’d sent before was broken, that I’d fixed it and it was set to expire by noon today. The classic shutout: a ticking clock. The bait is ten times more tempting if it’s a limited-time offer. But it’s risky. I won’t be able to use the same trick on the mark twice. Hopefully, I won’t have to.

  I’m not concerned about the mark at the moment, though. I’m standing outside a nondescript apartment building in Chicago’s March drizzle, waiting for a chance to make amends. The rain complements my mood, so I don’t mind it. And this time I’ve got an umbrella.

  “What are you doing here?” Dani asks as she walks up to me.

  It’s a fair question. I’ve been loitering outside her apartment for twenty minutes now waiting for her to come out, and I’m skipping school to do it.

  “It’s raining,” I say.

  “Is it.”

  I hand her the umbrella, and she takes it without moving her gaze from mine.

  “I’m not really any good at this,” I say, hating how awkward I feel.

  She’s not smiling, but she’s not scowling, either. She seems curious to see where I’m headed with this. Well, so am I. I didn’t exactly come with a speech prepared.

  “I need you. I mean, I know that you already know I need you. But the part you don’t know is that I know that I need you. I know it. I don’t say it. And I keep myself from asking for your help because I—because I’m afraid of needing you. Or rather, of admitting I need you and then losing you, too. So I don’t say it. But I do know it.”


  Dani’s expression turns completely unreadable. Her guard is so good that I feel like I’m always knocking at the door with her, when, with most other people, I just open the door and waltz right in.

  “Dani…” I feel like I should kneel or something, which is just weird. “Will you help me?” Pretty sure there should be a please in there somewhere. “Please?”

  She doesn’t answer right away, so I keep going like an idiot. “I—I mean, obviously you’ve been helping me all along, and I’m grateful. I’m just officially, you know, asking—for myself. Ugh, damn it, I’m messing it all up.”

  She smiles, shaking her head, and hands me the umbrella. “Get in the car. I will drive you to school.”

  —

  By 11:54, I’m tapping my foot and checking my phone every two seconds. Ms. Shirley knows something’s up. For one thing, I’m actually sitting in my chair instead of meandering the halls like I usually do during study hall. For another, my eyes are permanently glued to the clock above her desk.

  Promptly at 11:55, the bell rings for fourth period. Everyone files out except for me and Ms. Shirley. There’s no fourth-period class in the computer lab, so I slip into the back and wait. If anything’s going to happen, it’ll be in the next five minutes.

  Students do trickle in to check their email and such in between periods, so there’s enough cover for Skyla’s attacker to risk exposure if the lure of the pictures is tempting enough. I’m not sure what I’ll do if this doesn’t work. And it’s not out of the realm of possibility for it to fail miserably. The wire game is a difficult con under the best of circumstances, and these circumstances are more like a sack of fireworks than circumstances.

  Murphy strolls in and finds me in the back. He nods when he sits in the chair next to me, but he doesn’t say anything. We’re both strung as tight as piano wire.

  The door opens whisper soft. I see Ms. Shirley look up and down again. A student, then. Someone she’s used to seeing. But I can’t tell who it is right away. The monitors are blocking my view.

  Then I see her. And it’s like taking a wrecking ball between the eyes.

  Skyla.