by Kathi Daley
“Theoretically, entering the code will open the crate and deactivate the bomb, assuming there even is a bomb,” Zak said. “But we can’t know what will happen for certain once the number is entered. Not really. I want you to head outside.”
I started to argue when Alex came back in. She climbed the ladder even though Zak was yelling at her to wait outside.
“I spoke to Salinger,” she said. “He’s on his way. He said not to touch anything.”
“I’m not sure we can wait,” I said. “Apparently, we activated something, and now there’s a blinking blue light, which might be a timer. There’s a four-digit combination beneath the pan of the crate. We have the code, but there’s always the chance the code is wrong, or the code will actually detonate the bomb if there is one. Entering it will be taking a chance, but not entering it will be taking a chance as well.”
“That little light is blinking so fast, it’s almost constant,” Alex said, her eyes locked on the light.
“We need to get Marlow out of there now,” I insisted.
Zak looked back toward the crate. “Take Alex outside, and close the door.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I said.
“Take Alex and get outside or I’m not entering the code,” Zak insisted.
“Okay.” I took Alex’s hand and headed toward the ladder. I turned as Zak found a board to help steady the crate while he got down on his knees once again. I knew I should say something. I knew I should stop him. I couldn’t remember the last time I was so agonizingly torn over what to do. The little light was blinking faster still. I couldn’t let Marlow die without trying to save him, but I also couldn’t risk losing Zak. Once Alex was clear of the ladder, I began to climb down as Zak had instructed but then paused.
This was crazy.
I climbed back up, planning to tell Zak to come with me to safety, but he was already entering the code. I held my breath as the light stopped blinking, and the door to the crate popped open. Marlow darted out of the crate and rushed toward me. I tried to grab him, but he was so freaked out that he just jumped from the loft onto the dirt floor beneath and ran out the open door. I scrambled down the ladder and out the door after him, hoping that he wouldn’t end up lost after all we’d been through. When I emerged from the barn, I found Alex holding the frightened cat in her arms. By the time Salinger arrived, the danger had passed, but the questions had just begun. Who on earth would do such a thing, and why?
Chapter 5
After we filled Salinger in on everything that had happened, we dropped Alex and Marlow off at the house, and then Zak and I headed toward the bank. When we arrived at the bank, the assistant manager met with us since the manager wasn’t working that day. She told us that Zoe had come in with the passcode and ID and had accessed the box.
“What do you mean Zoe came in and accessed the box?” Zak asked. “She’s been with me all morning.”
“I’m sorry, but a woman who looks exactly like your wife was in to access the box less than an hour ago.” She looked at me. “Do you have a twin?”
“No, I don’t,” I answered.
I looked at Zak. For the Zoe look-alike to have accessed the box so soon after Zak sent her the passcode, she must have been waiting at the bank for Zak’s text to come through.
“We need to get into the box,” Zak said.
She escorted us to the room where the safety deposit boxes were located. Zak opened the box to find that it was empty except for a single envelope. He slipped the envelope into his pocket, returned to the assistant manager’s office, and asked to look at the security tape. Initially, the assistant manager balked at the request, but after Zak explained that whoever had accessed our box hadn’t been me and hadn’t been authorized to access the box, she finally agreed to have the tape pulled. She informed us that she would have to send the request to the main branch, which would take a few hours. She promised to call when the information we were looking for was available.
“What about the tape we already requested from earlier in the week?” I asked.
“I’m afraid I don’t know anything about an earlier request,” the assistant manager said. “You’ll need to check with the manager when he returns.”
Zak and I decided that there wasn’t much more we could do at that point, so we left. Salinger had taken the crate back to his office and had it examined. As it turned out, there hadn’t been a bomb attached to the light, which meant that Marlow was never in any real danger. That made me feel marginally better, but if truth be told, I was still shaking to my core. The thing that was probably bothering me the most about this whole thing was that someone had managed to get their hands on Marlow in the first place.
Salinger and his men planned to canvas the scene of the crime, looking for prints and physical evidence. I doubted they’d find any, but I was happy they were putting forth the effort. After we arrived home from the bank, I made lunch. Alex had decided to head on to school, but Zak and my plans for the morning had obviously been completely disrupted.
“What do you think the person who did all this was after?” I asked Zak after we settled in with grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and tomato soup from a can.
Zak frowned. “I’m not sure. I have originals of some of our important papers, such as birth certificates, our wedding certificate, will, and trust papers in a safety deposit box, but not that particular box. The box that was broken into held work related-items, such as copies of patents and copyrights, a few thumb drives with client information from past clients who are no longer active with the company. There were a few drives with partially coded software we started to develop but abandoned for one reason or another. I kept what we had in case we ever wanted to take it out and work on it again, perhaps with modifications. You never know when an old idea that didn’t pan out at the time will come around again.”
“Maybe someone wanted one of those. Even if discarded, a partially coded Zak Zimmerman original would probably be worth something to someone.”
“Perhaps.”
I took a bite of my sandwich. “I get that someone can easily get a fake ID saying they are me, and we gave them the passcode to the box, but I can’t imagine anyone looking enough like me to fool the bank manager.”
“Assistant manager,” Zak reminded me. “The bank manager wasn’t in.”
“True, but it was the bank manager who called you earlier in the week. It seems whoever went after the contents of the box must look enough like me to fool people we know on a casual basis without raising suspicion.”
Zak leaned back in his chair. “You make a good point. When I spoke to the bank manager, he didn’t seem suspicious as to your identity; he was just worried about the fact that you didn’t have the passcode and about overriding the passcode system without checking with me first. Whoever pulled this off must look an awful lot like you.”
“Enough like me to fool Alex?” I asked.
Zak raised a brow. “Why would you ask that?”
“When I first talked to Alex about the fact that Marlow was missing, she said that she wondered if he’d gotten into your office when I came out since she hadn’t seen him since then. I didn’t access your office even once while you were gone, but I was on my way out when Alex brought it up and didn’t grill her at the time about what she meant by him getting in when I came out.”
“So are you saying,” Zak asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table in front of him, “that our Zoe look-alike might have been in my office?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. We should talk to Alex when she gets home from school. But if this Zoe look-alike was in the house, I guess that explains how she got her hands on Marlow.”
“I’ll text Alex and tell her to come right home after school. We’ll find out exactly what she saw, which might give us an idea of how big a problem we really have,” Zak said.
As it turned out, we didn’t just have a big problem, we had a huge problem. Not only did Zak figure out that someone had hacked his priv
ate and secure computer network, but he found out the hacker had planted a virus from the terminal in his home office, which was threatening to destroy his security and expose his entire network. He called Pi, and between them, they applied a patch, but the fix was temporary, and if they couldn’t find a permanent solution, the private network information relating to all their current clients was in danger of being compromised.
Shortly after Zak discovered that bit of news, he was sent a link to the security tapes from the bank showing my look-alike’s visit earlier in the week and her visit today. I had to admit that the woman in the video did look exactly like me. Even I couldn’t tell the difference, and I was looking closely.
“How is this even possible?” I asked.
Zak’s brows were furrowed so intently as to create a crater in the middle of his forehead. He seemed to be looking for something specific as he played and rewound the tape again and again. Personally, I was too freaked out to watch the tape more than one time, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave the room.
“What should we do?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Zak said. “It seems that if someone is walking around town with your face, we should be able to track her down. We know she was at the bank, and we know she was at the house. I wonder if she might have shown up anywhere else.”
“The Zoo,” I said. “Jeremy made a comment the other day when I arrived. He said, ‘I’m glad you’re back.’ I hadn’t been there earlier, so found his comment odd, but I didn’t really think much of it at the time, and I didn’t ask him about it.”
“Ask him about it,” Zak suggested. “He knows you well. Maybe he remembers something that will help us figure this out.”
“Okay. I think I’ll just drive over to the Zoo and talk to him in person. Explain what’s going on and get his feedback. Maybe even show him the video from the bank. Can you forward the link to my email?”
“I can,” Zak answered. “Be careful. At this point, we can’t know for certain if whoever compromised my computer system and stole the items in our safety deposit box is dangerous or not.”
“I’ll be careful.” I looked down at Charlie, who was sitting anxiously at my feet. “I’ll take Charlie with me. He seems to sense that something is wrong, and it’s making him tense.” I glanced at the clock. “I’ll pick Catherine up from preschool after I talk to Jeremy. I’ll be home after that.”
The drive to the Zoo was accomplished in short order. Charlie seemed to have relaxed a bit once he was able to confirm that he’d been invited to go along with me. Charlie and I had been best buddies for a long time, and he knew my moods well. He could sense when I was tense or upset even when I tried to hide my emotions and reacted accordingly. I supposed he hadn’t been thrilled about being left at home this morning after witnessing the fact that Zak, Alex, and I had all been upset. If I knew Charlie, and I did, he was probably going to be my shadow for the next few days.
“Hey, Zoe,” Jeremy greeted when Charlie and I walked into the Zoo through the front door. “I wasn’t expecting you today.” He bent down to greet Charlie.
“I hadn’t planned to come in, but I need to speak to you. Is anyone here to cover the front so we can chat in my office?”
Jeremy frowned. I could see that my obvious concern over whatever I was here to talk with him about had him concerned as well.
“Aspen is in the back. I’ll let her know what we’re doing and ask her to keep an eye on the front.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you in my office.” I called Charlie and then headed down the hall. After I entered my office, I hung my purse on the peg I’d attached to the wall near the doorway and then crossed to my desk. I logged onto my computer, so I could show Jeremy the video once he arrived. Once the computer booted up, I logged onto my email and found the link Zak had sent. I pulled it up and waited.
“What’s going on?” Jeremy asked as he stood just inside my office.
“Come over to the desk and take a look at this,” I instructed. I motioned for him to have a seat across the desk from me. I then clicked the link and turned the computer monitor so he could see the video. “What do you see?”
“It looks like you’re at the bank.”
“Look at the woman on the screen carefully. Would you swear that was me if you were asked to confirm the identity of the woman you’re looking at?”
“Yeah. The woman is obviously you.” He looked up from the screen. “What’s going on?”
I turned the screen back around and logged off. I folded my hands on the desk and paused before answering Jeremy’s question. I eventually began to speak. “The woman in the video is not me. I haven’t been to the bank in months, and this video was taken this morning.”
“Not you? What do you mean, not you? The woman looks exactly like you.”
“I don’t disagree, but I can assure you that the woman is not me. A woman who looked like me was also in our home earlier in the week, and I suspect she may have been here at the Zoo.”
“Here?” Jeremy screeched. “When?”
“Remember the other day when I was here, and you wanted to tell me about the land for sale next to the shelter?”
“Sure. I remember.”
“When I came in, you said something about being happy that I was back. I didn’t make an issue of it at the time, but when we spoke that afternoon, it was the first time I’d been in all day.”
Jeremy frowned. “Are you saying that the woman who came in earlier that morning wasn’t you?”
I nodded. “That’s precisely what I’m saying. Do you remember exactly what happened?”
Jeremy paused, I assumed to gather his thoughts. “I was at the front desk, talking to a woman who expressed interest in adopting that little black and white terrier who was surrendered a couple weeks ago. You came in through the front door and headed toward your office. You waved when you came in, but you didn’t say anything. I figured you’d track me down before you left, but you didn’t. I checked your office later, and you were already gone, but then you showed up that afternoon.”
“The woman who came in that morning wasn’t me. I was at the event committee meeting, and then I had lunch with Ellie. That afternoon was the first time I’d been in all week.”
Jeremy paled. “If that wasn’t you, who was it?”
“I don’t know. Zak and I are trying to figure that out. Do you remember anything at all about the woman? Did she say or do anything to give you pause?”
He slowly shook his head. “No. Like I said, I was busy when this woman arrived. She waved but didn’t speak. She walked past me and went directly into your office. As I’ve already said, she was gone by the time I sought you out.”
It was unfortunate that the woman didn’t speak to Jeremy. She might have my face, but she probably didn’t have my voice. “Is there anything at all about this woman that stood out or that you felt was off somehow?”
Jeremy paused. He appeared to be in shock, so I let him sit a minute and process everything before continuing with my questions. I supposed I could understand the fact that his mind probably needed some time to reconcile everything I was telling him with what he thought he’d seen.
He eventually spoke. “I’m sorry, Zoe. It all happened so fast. I really wasn’t paying close attention to you when you came in. I can say that I don’t remember feeling doubt about the identity of the woman who breezed by, but that really is all she did, breeze by.”
“Did she have anything in her hands when she came in? A purse? A bag? Perhaps a box?”
He slowly nodded. “A shoulder bag. I remember thinking that the bag was larger than the sort you usually carry.”
“And you didn’t see this woman leave?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I went into the back to talk to Tiffany after the woman inquiring about the dog left. The door to your office was closed. When I returned from speaking to Tiffany, I poked my head in your office, but you were gone. I guess the woman left while I was in the back.”
&nb
sp; I looked around my office and wondered if anything was missing. The place was cluttered and not all that organized. If something was missing, I doubted I’d even notice.
“Why would anyone want to break into your office?” Jeremy asked the question I’d been asking myself.
“I don’t know. This woman also broke into Zak’s home office. She infected his computer system with a virus. I guess it’s the sort of virus that has to be physically planted in a terminal, so simply uploading it via the internet wouldn’t have worked. I suppose that the woman thought it might be easier to get into my office than Zak’s, so she started here hoping our networks were connected, which they aren’t.”
“Maybe, but someone smart enough to design and plant a virus that would affect a security system designed by Zak Zimmerman is probably smart enough to realize that he wouldn’t have his secure network connected to a public terminal such as the one in this office.”
Jeremy made a good point. The woman who planted the virus did seem to be intelligent, and an intelligent adversary would know it would be impossible to gain access to Zak’s secure system through a publically used computer. If the woman broke into my office, she had another objective in mind. I just needed to figure out what that objective was.
“This whole thing is just so strange,” Jeremy said. “I feel like I can’t trust what I see with my own eyes.” He put both hands on his face and rubbed. “How will I know if you are you? How will I know if I can trust anyone who comes in looking like you from this point forward?”
“I suppose if Charlie is with me, you’ll know it’s really me,” I suggested.
“I guess, but you don’t always have Charlie with you.”
“How about we have a code word,” I suggested. “If there is ever any doubt in your mind as to my identity, you can ask me for the code word, and if I don’t know it, don’t trust me.”
“Okay, like what?”
I tried to think of something that would be easy to remember. “Ask me about Lambda,” I said. “You ask ‘How’s Lambda today?’ and I’ll say ‘Happy in heaven.’ If Fake Zoe shows up, and you ask about Lambda, she’ll probably just say he’s fine, since I doubt Fake Zoe ever heard of Lambda.”
