“Could they tell what the hackers wanted?”
“Not entirely. Obviously they wanted to punish Autumn for giving up Gideon’s baby, but what they did to the Find Ariel site was worse. Anyone who logs in with an admin account is going to have their computer so infected with malware that they are going to lose everything.”
Colleen wasn’t sure she could trust herself to drain the pasta without saturating herself with boiling water. She gestured for Ben to do it. “I understand why Autumn wanted to find me, but why do these people? Do they think I have some kind of magic? I had never heard of Gideon Forbes until this morning.”
“They don’t know what they want.” Ben deftly tilted the pasta pot over the colander. The long strands of spaghetti slithered out along with starch-laden water. “That’s what makes them so dangerous.”
* * * *
After dinner Ben said that he would sleep in the house until the security guards arrived. He would take one of the second floor rooms in the front of the house. With the windows open, he would hear a car drive up. Apparently he had been infected with her father’s lifeboat thinking.
He went to the boathouse to get a few things. She took a breath and went to the phone to call Amanda.
Fortunately she remembered her friend’s cell phone number. She started with the easy part. Ben had had his identity compromised. The hackers were very aggressive, so Colleen had had to protect herself. She explained about deleting her identity from the school website.
“Isn’t that a little extreme?” Amanda asked. “This sucks for Ben, and I can understand you’re wanting to be careful about your money, but the school site? Really?”
This was the hard part. “There’s a lot more to it. You know everything that’s been going on with Autumn Chase? It looks like I am Ariel.”
“What? You? How’s that possible? You weren’t adopted.”
“Actually I was. Until this mess, it never occurred to me that you didn’t know.”
“But we watched that show together, and you never said anything?” Amanda sounded bewildered, maybe even betrayed.
Colleen didn’t blame her. “I guess I was thinking that if one of those women had had the right DNA, then it wouldn’t matter, and we could forget all about it.”
“How do you know now? Did you do the DNA?”
“No, but Autumn said that the father was—”
“Oh, my God,” Amanda interrupted, “you’re the child of Autumn Chase and Gideon Forbes. You?”
“I’m going to be a big disappointment, aren’t I?”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Amanda apologized hurriedly. “It’s just that you never expect this to be happening to people you know.”
“It’s happening to me.”
“And that’s behind all this hacking?”
“Apparently. They’re looking for me. I don’t know what they’ll do when they find me. I can’t stay hidden forever, but my dad is hiring security guards.”
“Security guards? Is he worried about people mobbing you? You know what this will mean, don’t you? The school is going to want you to take a leave of absence.”
Oh. That was right. Last year the husband of one of the teachers was a university administrator involved in a major controversy. It made the national papers, and she had taken leave until things had died down. And this would have far more publicity than that had ever had. “I guess it would be distracting to have me there.”
“It would be all anyone talked about, but you should wait until the school asks you,” Amanda said. “Then you can ask for pay. Margaret Whitmore didn’t need the income, but you do.”
“Actually…oh, God, Amanda, that’s another story.”
As briefly as she could, she told Amanda about Grannor’s will.
“That’s huge.” Amanda was having trouble taking all this in. “And you never said a word.”
Clearly Amanda was hurt by Colleen’s secrets, but she was still willing to be loyal. She would call the headmistress in the morning and tell her the story that Colleen couldn’t bear to repeat again.
* * * *
Ben didn’t leave in the morning until the security guards showed up. He showed them around and supervised them posting “No Trespassing” signs around the edge of the property.
“Signs aren’t going to stop anyone, are they?” she asked.
“No, but you need to have them visible if you are going to prosecute.”
Prosecute? That was Southern hospitality?
When Colleen was growing up, she had noticed how boats slowed down in front of Grannor’s property.
“They like the way it looks,” her mother had said. “They’re curious.”
“Why don’t we invite them in?” Colleen had chirped. “We can show them around.”
Now she had a guard standing on the dock.
Genevieve called to check on her, then Patty and Liz. At the end of her call, Patty had said, “Sean and I are running down to Chicago for a couple of days soon. We were hoping to coordinate with you. We’d like to see you too.”
“Oh, God, Patty, I’m sorry. I can’t make plans right now. I can’t even go to the grocery store.”
“Okay. I understand. Really I do. But keep it in mind, will you? We would like you to be there.”
After they hung up, Colleen realized that this trip must be for Sean and Patty to tell everyone about the baby.
That was good news, right? Of course, it was. Colleen remembered the spurt of happiness she had felt when she had first realized that Patty was pregnant. But so much had happened since then. Now she was numb.
It was harder to stay numb during the next call. It was from the headmistress. Amanda had given her Grannor’s landline number.
Dr. Bettler was familiar with the search for Ariel, and she knew who Gideon Forbes was. As Colleen expected, she dreaded the publicity. “With our grounds mingling with the church’s, it is difficult to make our campus secure. And our carpool line is on a public street. We can’t keep strangers from harassing the staff and students. But if all the publicity has died down, we would be happy to have you back in January.”
January seemed so far away. “I assume that you won’t have trouble replacing me.” Charlottesville was a university town, and behind the counter of every coffee bar and bagel shop were foreign language majors who hadn’t wanted to leave town after graduation. “I have my lesson plans.”
Twenty minutes later it occurred to her that she might not have her lesson plans. They had been stored on the cloud, and her account had been scrubbed. She had no idea if she had backup copies on the hard drive of her computer. That wasn’t the sort of thing she paid any attention to. Maybe she should have had a few more trust issues.
* * * *
Ben called around noon. “Nate brought the cash. He also opened a new credit card in his own name and gave me the number.”
“Really? Even I wouldn’t let anyone else use my credit card. He is nicer than me.”
“I would describe him as more oblivious to risk.”
Ben said he was going to be at the resort longer than he had expected, probably most of the day. “I want to add a couple of extra layers of security to their systems if I can.”
“Oh, no,” she sighed. “Have they been hacked too?”
“Not yet because they haven’t put my name up, but Nate and Seth have been opening their big mouths about me giving privates. They are all gung-ho about it. I told them to blame you.”
“I appreciate that.” It couldn’t have been easy for him, telling his friends that she was still living up to the good opinion they had of her.
“Listen, Colleen, I need you to believe something. If I can’t go through with this, it isn’t because I don’t want to. I do. The more I think about it, the more I do, but I might not be able to.”
She didn’t understand
. “Might not be able to do what?”
“These lessons. I am not going to put this resort in jeopardy. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”
Colleen felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach. He was talking about giving up this coaching opportunity, his first chance to get back in the game. He was finally realizing that this was what he wanted, and now he might not be able to. Because of her.
Everything that was happening to him was because he was trying to help her, protect her. And now the one good thing he could have done for himself might blow up in his face.
When was this going to stop? It couldn’t go on. The search for Ariel had become a widening whirlpool doing more and more damage. She had to do something, she had to act.
Chapter 16
She would offer herself up if she thought that would work, but playing the kidnapped child stumbling out of the forest was a path full of too much uncertainty. Autumn had said that she could protect Ariel, but look what had happened to her website. Autumn couldn’t even protect herself.
The Forbes family must have figured this out. They seemed to have normal lives. Zachary had a website for his film work. Jonathan was listed all over the Duke University directories. The parents were frequently mentioned in their church’s online bulletin. They had a lawyer who knew how to issue statements for them.
That statement had made it very clear that the family didn’t want to hear from her. Forcing herself on people was not something that nice girls did. Colleen was going to do it anyway.
I’m sorry. I know you want to be left alone. I understand that, believe me. But I don’t know what else to do.
Colleen couldn’t remember if she had ever called Directory Assistance to get a phone number. She had always used the internet. She dialed zero on the phone. That operator told her to call 411, which she did. The person who answered that line was able to give her the number for the Duke University linguistics department.
Two actual people. Amazing.
The department secretary said she would connect Colleen to Professor Forbes’s office. Colleen secretly hoped that he wouldn’t answer.
But he did. “This is Jonathan Forbes.” His accent was lightly Southern, more North Carolina than Ben’s Georgia one.
“Professor Forbes, my name is Colleen Ridge. I am a Norwegian-to-English, English-to-Norwegian interpreter.” Why had she said that?
“Yes?”
“I’ve studied with Keith Alvord.” That was her most famous professor.
“He is an excellent scholar. How can I help you? I don’t need any interpretive services at the moment.”
No, of course, he didn’t. “Oh, no, that’s not why I am calling.”
“Then again, how can I help you?”
“I’m calling about Autumn Chase and your brother Gideon. I think that I—”
“I have nothing to say about that.” His voice became formal. “Please give my regards to Professor Alvord.”
“Don’t hang up. Please don’t hang up.”
“I have nothing to say. Now I must excuse myself.”
“Wait…wait…” What could she say? How could she prove herself over the phone? I have your mother’s eyes. Anyone could say that. What could she say?
Oh, of course. That was it. She could say anything. “Say something in a foreign language.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“An obscure one. Urdu, Pashto, one I don’t know.”
He paused, then said a string of syllables. She repeated them. And she knew that she had done it perfectly. However fluent he was in this language, that was how fluent she would have sounded.
“You know Portuguese?”
“I didn’t know for sure it was Portuguese. Try me again.”
He did.
“That’s Hebrew, isn’t it?” she asked after parroting the sounds. During seventh grade she had attended several bar mitzvahs. “I don’t know the Afro-Asiatic languages if you want to try one of those.”
“Why are we doing this?” he asked.
“I can repeat any sound that you make. And surely someone else in your family can.”
“My older sister, but she isn’t as good as you,” he admitted. “So what is it that you are suggesting?”
“All I can be sure of is that I was adopted, I have an October birthday, and I look like your mother and sisters.”
It was a moment before he said anything. “My mother still thinks about Gideon every day. For all the pain he caused her, she thinks about him every day. Every time someone says that he might have had a child, it’s really hard on her. You do understand that we have to be suspicious.”
“Of course, and I don’t want money. Really. I’m a teacher; I have a job. My father is a dentist, and he is from a family of means. Are you online now?” She gave him her school’s URL. “Go to the foreign language department. There are pictures of all the teachers. My name is Colleen Ridge.”
He was silent, and then—“Ah…no, Ms. Ridge. There is no listing for anyone by that name.”
Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. Ben had wiped her off the faculty rolls. How suspicious this must look. “Oh, please, don’t hang up. I can explain that. Search for a picture of the Latin club. The teacher…there’s no name, but that’s me.”
She forced herself to wait silently, praying that he wouldn’t hang up.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “The eyes…the mouth…” Then speaking in Italian, he asked, “Are you my brother’s child?”
It was easier for her to answer in French. “Yes, I think that I am.” Then she switched to English. “But please believe me, I am not after money.” She knew that she had already said that, but she needed to say it again.
“I talked to my younger brother yesterday,” he said, “after Autumn named Gideon. He did say that Gideon came to Canada for a few days while he was shooting Cards. He didn’t have a clue about anything happening between him and Autumn, but I’ve always suspected that Zachary hadn’t liked working with her, so he probably didn’t spend much time with her.”
“Oh.” Colleen had never heard about anyone not liking to work with Autumn. It hardly fit with her public image.
“I hope you won’t be offended,” he continued, “if we ask for a DNA test.”
“Oh, no, not at all. I already sent mine in, although I haven’t compared it to Autumn yet.” She asked him to hold while she got the information about the lab and her specific code number. “You should probably see if you can get them to tell you about the results. I’m sure that they just have my email and cell phone, and both of those are down.”
“I’m not going to bother my parents yet. Can I do it, or should I ask one of my sisters?”
“The sex doesn’t matter, and they trace connections through aunts and uncles all the time.”
Aunts and uncles. How strange that sounded. This man might be her biological uncle.
“Then I will take care of it right away, but—and maybe this isn’t my business—why can’t you use your phone or email? Is it related to this?”
“Oh, yes. That’s why I called.” What a ditz she was being. “I don’t need money, but I do need help. Gideon’s fans have hacked a friend’s identity. Neither one of us can use our phones or the internet. That’s why I’m not on the faculty list at school. We’ve had to cancel our credit cards. I’m hoping that your family has some way to manage things like this, although I can’t imagine what it would be.”
“Ah, yes”—there was the slightest laugh in his voice—“being related to Gideon Forbes is an acquired skill. We do have people who keep tabs on the craziest of fans. We have to. Zachary oversees everything for the rest of us. I will speak to him and call you back.”
“Oh, I would appreciate that. Really I would.” She gave him the phone number. “But it’s a landline without an answering machine. So you may have to keep trying,�
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“I will do that. In the meantime, I hope you will refrain from calling our parents. Mother used to get her hopes up so much, and then we would find out that the person was crazy or after money. Now that she has the other grandchildren, she seems to have accepted how completely Gideon is gone. We hope you can respect that.”
“Oh, yes, of course, anything.”
“There is one more thing. You don’t sound as if you grew up in the South. Is that correct?”
“I am from a Chicago suburb, but my father is from Georgia.”
“Then you might understand. This was years ago, but the first time the possibility of Gideon having a child came up, my mother asked us to promise that if it turned out to be true, we were to assure that person that there was room for him or her in the family burial plot.”
* * * *
Colleen exhaled as she hung up the phone. Ever since she had seen Ben crossing the lawn from the boathouse, things had been getting steadily worse: Grannor’s will, the search for Ariel, Gideon and his fans, leaving her job, being cut off from her friends. For the first time she felt hopeful. This man was what uncles were supposed to be like.
Which was more than she could ever say for her uncle Norton.
She needed to call her father. “Is there any way I can catch him between patients?” she asked the receptionist. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
She first had to reassure her father that the security firm was here, one man on the dock, another in a car angled across the base of the driveway. Then she told him that she had contacted Gideon Forbes’s brother.
“Oh.” His voice was heavy. “I thought you weren’t going to do that.”
“We needed help, Dad.” She explained her reasoning. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Oh.”
Almost everything on Autumn’s message board and the Find Ariel website had been about the mothers. There was some talk about the “bio dads,” but little about the man who had raised the children, who had given them his name, who had loved them every bit as much as his wife did.
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