I settle down to wait, slipping a clean piece of drywall between me and the garbage. I may not be able to use my phone for much right now, but there’s nothing like some Angry Birds to pass the time. I play for what seems like an hour, but is only fifteen minutes, and am startled by the sound of footsteps. Stealthy footsteps and whispers. Someone knows I’m here … I need to hide.
I look at the garbage and my stomach curdles like the oozing milk. The hushed voices are nearing. Careful not to scuff the metal bottom or sides of the dumpster, I lie down beside the bags and roll one over my feet. I gag and draw the next across my legs. Something wet trickles over my jeans. I cover my chest, and the final bag I pick up and hold just shy of my face. It’s heavy and I turn away so that the cold, slimy plastic presses against the side of my head. The bag muffles the whispers. I try not even to breathe.
Something scratches along the metal. I realize that the sound is coming from inside the bin: claws. I whimper. A rat trundles past, stops, pauses to look me over with pink, beady eyes, and then continues down to my toes and the mess of peels and coffee grinds.
Suddenly, the side of the dumpster rings with a gong. I cry out. Whoever they are run away, yelling. I wait for another minute until their shouts are echoes and then ease the garbage off.
Orange juice, rotten vegetables, and fruit slime, along with other, less identifiable scabs of old food, are oiling my jeans and shirt. I dry heave before regaining control of my stomach. The rat is nowhere to be seen, but its memory sends shudders down my spine. I get to my knees and slowly stand to peer over the edge. One black Honda Civic is still parked. But something’s missing: my bike.
I drop back down and lean against the side of the bin. I could make it back home by four if I left right now. Does sixty minutes of biking make two hours of walking? Maybe more, I guess. And I’m tired. I need to make a decision.
I don’t have the proof I need, only the address of some woman who dropped off a computer. It occurs to me that I still don’t know how she wound up with the computer. Did Jonny sell it? Was it stolen? Not that it matters. Jonny’s going to go to the cops regardless. I look at my jeans. There’s no way my mom will believe I was at the library, not smelling like a landfill. I’ll email her when I’ve solved the mystery, or I’ll take a cab. Until then, I’m on stake out.
Another hour passes, and with it several cars, two door slams, another round of kids—one of whom spits a wad of gum on to me—and it’s starting to rain.
The rain reminds me of crying and crying reminds me of Jonny. The warm press of him when he was wet. The heat of his lips. His artistry and his hands. I search through my camera roll and pull up the pictures from under the bridge. I smile and wish I’d taken a photo of his painting with all the flowers. He’s probably covered over them both since. I feel a pang of loss and clench my eyes shut.
I smile at the image of him I have in my head and then realize I’m confused because Jonny is looking a little more like Karl with every passing second and it’s his lips and hands I feel and this time I let them wander.
The sky breaks open and it starts to pour, flushing the heat of my thoughts away. My clothes are soaked but at least they’re cleaner. The cold shower brings me back to the fact that I need to make another choice. Jonny may have already made the choice for me, but that doesn’t mean I can stop thinking about him. Both Karl and Jonny fulfill parts of me. Jonny’s a bit of a loner though, and I don’t need more loneliness in my life. He’s also artistic and sensitive. Karl, on the other hand, is really social and appreciates the tech-me. I can see myself teaching him how to make apps too.
A car starts and peels out on the wet pavement. Hoping beyond hope, I hold my iPhone over the edge and take a picture of the street. Looking at the image I see a gaping hole where the Civic had been. The street has pulled its rotten tooth, and the rain suddenly seems like a boon. No one will be out to see me. It’s time for me to take action, but now that it’s really happening, I’m paralyzed.
I’ve been here before. When my mom first got sick, and Dad left, I almost gave up. My mom couldn’t run the store. She could barely make it to the washroom. I could have called in the authorities and we would have shut down the business. If I had, I don’t know where we’d be now or how my mom would feel. I’ll never know. I didn’t give up then. I put my head down and learned what I needed to learn to keep the business afloat. I nursed my mom. I finished my homework, and I created Shadownet to keep me company. I struggled. I am not going to waste all of that effort.
I clamber over the side of the dumpster and dash across the road. It’s raining so hard that the drops are striking the puddles and bouncing back a foot. I’m sopping. My fist slams against the door to the house. It’s better to figure out now if anyone remains home. A thrill runs through me as I realize I’m about to break and enter. That’s another felony today. Karl was right. Maybe I am a bad girl, a Black Hat Hacker. Maybe Karl and I are more alike than Jonny and I could ever be.
There’s no answer to my banging. No one home, or at least no one answering.
I try the handle. Locked.
Am I taking this too far? The sheeting rain needles my head with cold heavy drops. I look back to the empty road and then to the house. With a sharp nod, I hurdle the short porch railing and sidle through the windowless alleyway between the houses. The eaves keep the rain off and it feels like I’m exploring a cave until I break into the backyard. It’s little bigger than a postage stamp of weeds, enclosed in a green chain-link fence.
A small porch overhangs the yard from the second floor. The second-story porch door might be open, but I’m not a great climber. I test the two window wells into the basement and then the sliding door on the ground floor. They’re all locked.
I contemplate the cave-like alley. It’s now or never. No one knows I’m here, so no one will know it was me. Other yards surround this one, but they are all dark and veiled by the driving rain. Rain like this doesn’t last long, and for now it’s loud.
I search the weeds and my fingers close about a fist-sized rock. Hefting it once, I take three steps back and launch the stone at the sheet of plate glass. I miss. It hits the brick and rolls back down the steps.
I try again, and this time the sliding door breaks into a million cracks and the rock leaves a small hole where it struck. I gulp and listen for evidence that someone heard, or a house alarm. But there’s only rain.
I jog to the door and kick more of the glass inside. It’s all stuck together on a film and it takes a full minute of kicking before I have a hole large enough to duck through. Inside, the walls feel close until my eyes adjust. The only light is the dull gray of the storm through the other side of the sliding door. My shoes crunch over broken glass. My chest hurts. My head aches and I want to vomit like my Frannie Mouthwater doll.
I have entered the lair of my worst enemy.
Chapter 19
The smell hits me first. A sweet fragrance fills the air as if tendrils of the woman’s perfume have formed a sticky web. My stomach churns. Outside, thunder rumbles across the sky.
Once I had to check on the Shadownet server in the middle of a thunderstorm. I crept down the basement steps, the rain rattling off the roof high above and wind moaning through whatever crevice it could find. My having spent half my life on the Internet seemed to make real-world weather and noises even scarier. Every shadow menaced. Every cranny held a black and sinister creature. Every sound was the whisk of a knife. I never made it to the bottom of the steps. I knocked the flashlight against the stair railing and it went out. I ran back upstairs screaming so my mom would know when they caught me. Would know to get out.
I’m a total wimp.
As I move deeper into the house, rain hammers the roof in waves. Glass is scattered over a brown linoleum floor. The rock I threw has shattered a pitcher of milk, drenching a newspaper and the table it resided on. A
n island with a stove looks out on the disaster area, but there is nothing for me here except to learn that she drinks skim milk, reads The Sun, and sucks at crosswords. I start to shiver from my soaked clothing and leave puddles with every step.
Once out of the kitchen I stand in a bare hallway. To my right and left are doors. I peek inside the one on my right. It leads to the basement. Steps disappear into darkness. No chance I’m going down there. When I open the left-hand door, I fall back and slam into the wall. Beady marble eyes stare back at me, and it takes a moment for me to recognize the dead foxes. I toe the closet door shut and draw a shuddering breath.
The closet is beneath the stairway leading up from the front door. Near the entry is an opening into a living area. Floorboards creak with every step I take. A red corduroy couch occupies half the room, its ribbing so worn it’s pink where you’d sit. Beside the couch looms a lamp, out of kilter from its base. The only things decorating scuffed burgundy walls are the unlikely poster of the band Clash and another of Chris Isaak. The only song I know from Chris Isaak cycles through my skull: Baby did a bad, bad thing. A lounge chair and an IKEA shelf chock full of books complete the rather transient and masculine feel.
I look back toward the basement and then up the stairs. Maybe the woman went for groceries and she’s already on her way back. I have to hurry. I need an office. An office will have a computer and a computer will have evidence.
The first step groans, and I swallow the lump in my throat. Without lights, the dreariness shrouds me like a cold blanket. My teeth chatter uncontrollably. At the top, I pause with my hand on the light switch. I’m eager to dispel the shadows, but light would be visible from anyone watching, or coming home.
At the hall closet, I open the doors to find a mismatched set of sheets and a bag of toilet paper.
Besides the closet, two bedrooms and a bathroom are on the upper level. One is filled with boxes. I check their sides and find they’re mostly from wine stores, but one of them has Cyrillic writing on it. Russian, Ukrainian, Czech? I can’t know, but it makes me think about the Russian Frannie skyped, the one with the shark eyes. Not for the first time today, I realize I’m in over my head.
I skip the bathroom and head into the master. The covers of a barren double bed are tangled. A side table has a box of tissue paper and a novel, again in Cyrillic. Twin doors lead out onto the porch I’d seen from the yard. In the corner are two black iron balls and a small desk with a laptop computer whose screen saver repeats a psychedelic design. Bingo. But before I head to the computer, I stop and stare.
Several medals hang on the walls, a few indecipherable university degrees, and two photos. My fingers slide down the side of a picture frame, forcing it crooked. It’s a photo of Foxy, and she’s beautiful. She has noble features and carefully applied, but dramatic makeup. Today she’s a shadow of her former self. It’s the second photo that restarts my teeth chattering. I draw back a step and clench my hands into fists.
In the frame, a man lifts twin iron balls above his head, holding on to black grips with meaty fists. His arms are thick with muscle, tendons arrow up his neck, and his legs bulge. Even with the Cyrillic below I know what I’m seeing. This is Fenwick, National Kettlebell Champion.
A door slams.
For a moment I wonder if it was the neighbor’s. Then I hear a voice. I run to the porch door and throw it open. The height hits me with a wave of vertigo and my vision tunnels. I turn back inside; my heart is wedged in my esophagus. My options are to leap off the railing or to risk the stairs and confrontation. The computer screen whirls.
I race to it and tap the keyboard to bring up a browser. A woman yells in what I guess to be Russian or Estonian. No one speaks back to her, so she’s either crazy or on her phone, probably with Fenwick. In ten seconds I have Heckleena’s Twitter account up. I could have emailed my mom, but she’s crippled, or Jonny, but he hates me. Besides, neither checks their email regularly. Given how many crimes I’ve committed, telling anyone who would go to the police doesn’t seem like a good idea. I suppose I’m not really thinking straight. So for better or for worse, I tweet this:
Help me! Use Canvas app.
In the hall below, the language grows harsh with anger; she’s returning from the kitchen. The only weapon are the two kettlebells. I grip the handles on one and strain, lifting it slowly to my knee. It’s too heavy. I go to set it down, but drop it. The kettlebell slams into floor. The steps creak and creak.
I could hide in the closet or under the bed, but then I’d be entirely trapped and who wouldn’t look there? I flip the laptop closed and pause. On the back of the lid is a giant happy face. The laptop from the medical clinic! All roads lead to Fenwick.
I jump back on the porch and shut the door. Rain sluices over me. The doors have big windows, but if I climb over the side of the railing, someone might miss me. I swing my foot up and over and hang in mid air with my feet braced on the bottom, hands holding the spindles. The rain continues to fall. As I hang it occurs to me that I’ve left a trail of wet right outside to my hiding place.
If I drop, I’ll break my spine on the fence. Could I have fashioned a rope from the sheets and swung down? Perhaps in my next life I’ll be smart.
I hear a sound. But it’s not the door opening. It’s a click, like the sound of a lock snapping home. Why would she lock the door? I debate climbing back up, but it’s no good now, not if the door is locked. I’d have to break in, which she’d hear and she’d catch me. Suddenly I understand what has happened. The only escape I have is down. She eliminated one escape route and left me with just one choice.
And there she is. Ten feet beneath me, my last exit gone. She’s smirking, but her eyes are cold and professional, those of a killer.
So I jump. And for a second I have the satisfaction of wiping that smile right off of her face. I could see myself as trapped, but instead I prefer to see her as a mattress. I push away from the porch with a sharp cry and twist midair. I watch her eyes widen as I fall. I’m sure my eyes are like saucers until I clench them shut for impact.
But Foxy isn’t a mattress. She’s bony and the bones stick out at angles, and her muscles are ribbons of steel. Only her lungs have any give and they collapse as I land on them with my knees, ankle twisting beneath with a sickening snap. Pain races up my leg. I roll over her, get up, the adrenaline covering the worst of my injury. I don’t dare look back. I’m at the fence when a hand grabs my collar. My ankle feels aglow. The shirt tears, but something hard presses into my kidney.
It’s chill. A gun.
That someone has a gun pressed into my side is difficult to grasp. It’s surreal. I break into someone’s home, discover my mom’s employee wants me out of the way for some reason I can’t fathom, and now his partner in crime jabs a gun barrel in me?
It’s a lot to take in. I might have kept going too, and maybe she wouldn’t have shot me, but my ankle catches on the fence top and I see something very wrong.
My ankle is bent so that with my leg up, instead of the toe pointing out to the left where it should, it points down where it shouldn’t. As if seeing it makes it real, pain surges into my stomach and I begin to vomit.
Dark corners crowd out the light and my vision blurs. I wobble, catch my already broken ankle on the fence, and collapse.
Chapter 20
Pain shoots through my leg, and with each throb of my heart, pulses of agony surge to my brain. I’ve never broken anything before; the torture is paralyzing. If I move, I’ll black out. I can’t see a thing, but at least I’m conscious, shaking with cold, but alive.
A thick paste fills my mouth. I might have been out for hours. My head feels woolly and I try to remember everything that has happened. The only thing seared into the hard drive of my mind is the image of my foot, dangling. My stomach heaves, but produces nothing. Just then I realize that it’s not dark; my eyes are clenche
d against the pounding in my ankle.
I open my eyes.
I’m in the basement. The two windows to the backyard filter gray light through their grime. A furnace clicks on and roars to life, the gas flames flickering blue like tiny demons dancing in a ring. I listen for voices or footsteps but hear none. Another hum rises above the furnace. It’s familiar. I’d know it anywhere. It’s the purr of computer servers.
My arms stretch behind my neck, the hands tied to a metal desk. My foot thumps with anguish. I’m still wearing my shoes, and it’s causing part of the problem by constricting blood flow. With the toe of my good sneaker I touch the heel of my bad foot. I cry out and bite my lip from the pain. It’s too late to take the shoe off. I can only hope the shoe won’t cut off blood flow and make it a gangrenous foot. But I have bigger things to worry about. Survival.
I don’t wear a watch and my iPhone is nowhere to be seen, so I can’t tell how late it is. My mom might not even know I’m missing yet, and as for Heckleena’s tweet? I don’t watch my own feed, so how can I expect anyone else to? Not to mention that tweets disappear in about a minute off most people’s feeds and anyone who did catch it probably thought it was a joke or lives a million miles away. If no one has saved me yet, they’re not coming. I’d even take the police. The only others who know I’m here are Foxy and Fenwick—Fenwick, who could be holding my mom hostage too.
I have to help her.
I roll to my right so that I can see the area nearest the front of the house. More boxes are piled there, most of them unopened. A ladder leans against a concrete wall with several large bottles of cleaning solvents and paint cans. The water heater is tucked under the stairs, which descend into the middle of the single room. It looks like a regular basement. On the wall opposite me I see the alarm system—which is evidently a silent alarm and likely what brought Foxy home early. It’s all the stuff on the far right that’s out of place. Alien to any normal home, definitely weird for this neighborhood, and just about the last thing I’d expect to see here: a rack of servers.
Assured Destruction Page 12
