Deceptive (5 page)

Sato took the papers and skimmed them as The Kid said, “The ex of Jack Andrews. Zoe Hunter.”

Sato went back to the first page and read through them again. “Zoe Hunter managed to siphon off several million dollars from the scam and then got it into an off-shore account in a roundabout way that took us months to trace? Then she bought something from an art dealer?” He shifted in his chair and his back tweaked, but he barely noticed it. “Interesting. Let’s go see her.”

––––––––

J
ACK parked in front of a modest one-story brown brick rancher. They climbed out and walked up the sidewalk between low boxwood hedges. “This is where your hacker lives?”

“Reformed hacker.” Zoe handed Jack one of the bags of Chinese takeout as her phone chimed, signaling she had a new text. “That’s weird. The message space is blank. There’s only a photo attached.” Zoe opened the link and frowned. “Why would Helen send me a picture of her house? I know what it looks like.”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe she sent it to the wrong number.”

“No, wait. It’s not her number. I don’t know who sent this.” As she spoke another blank text with a picture attached popped up. The next photo was another of Helen, this time standing on her porch, signing for a UPS package. A third photo arrived, Helen walking into the building where she worked at the county offices. The next message didn’t have a photo. It read, “Don’t forget our agreement. We know where your friends live and work.”

Zoe’s stomach flipped. “Oscar. It’s got to be him. That creep is following Helen around. He better not go near her. I have to call her—”

Jack caught her hand as they arrived on the porch. “The less she knows the better.”

“I know that’s how you were trained, but that doesn’t always work out so good. Forewarned is forearmed.”

“What are you going to tell her? That a man is watching her? That’s not going to make her feel better. It will just scare her.”

Zoe fingered the buttons on the phone. She didn’t want to frighten Helen, and she couldn’t order her to stay indoors without telling her everything that was going on.

“Oscar won’t do anything.” Jack’s tone was steady. “He wants your cooperation. Those photos are a reminder, to keep you—us—focused.”

“I can’t let him hurt Helen.”

“Hurting her gains him nothing. If anything, it would distract us from getting the painting. He doesn’t want that. Every move he and Gray make is calculated. They’re not psychopaths attacking women for the thrill of it. Gray wants his painting, and he thinks you can get it. If you get distracted worrying about Helen and get sucked into telling her everything that’s going on, it will only slow us down.”

Jack was right. Sometimes she hated it when he was right. So logical and reasoned. She wanted to do something. “Okay. No call—yet.” Zoe punched the doorbell with more force than was necessary, wishing it was Oscar’s nose.

“Keeping her out of the loop is the best thing you can do for her.”

A slim woman in her twenties with an upturned nose, dark brown eyes, and pale blond hair caught up in a ponytail opened the door. She wore dark jeans, pointy-toed cowboy boots, and a loose, gauzy shirt that floated around her as she stepped back, waving them inside. “Zoe,” she exclaimed, “You didn’t have to bring dinner.”

Zoe forced herself to switch her thoughts away from the photos to Carla. “It’s the least we could do, barging in on you like this at the last minute.”

“And you must be the elusive Jack. Come in. I’m Carla.” As she closed the door, she stepped close to Zoe and murmured, “Nice,” with raised eyebrows.

A girl about five years old in a pink leotard and tights whizzed by. “This is my niece, Emma,” Carla said at normal volume. “Stop running for a minute and say hello to my friends, Emma.”

Emma skidded to a stop on the tile floor, whispered
hello
, and scampered off again, flitting like a hummingbird collecting nectar.

“My sister had a meeting, so I took Emma to dance class tonight,” Carla explained as she led the way through the open plan living room decorated in shades of gray, white, and navy blue to a kitchen painted a sunny yellow with white cabinets. She placed the food on a rectangular wooden dining table positioned along a row of tall windows that looked out onto her patio and fenced backyard.

“Her mom will be along soon, but we should go ahead and eat.” She opened a cabinet and began removing glasses.

While her back was turned, Jack sent Zoe a doubtful look.

“What?” she mouthed at him, and he gave a pointed glance at Carla’s back, then around the room. “Are you sure about Carla?” he asked in an undertone.

Carla turned from the cabinet, carrying several glasses. She had one in her right hand and pointed it at Jack. “I know that look.” She plunked the glasses down on the table and turned to Zoe. “I swear I should go back to the Goth look. No one takes me seriously. I think it’s the hair.” She swiped a hand down her blond ponytail. She switched her attention back to Jack. “You think I’m some suburbanite who spends half her days in yoga pants at the gym and the other half on Pinterest, right?”

“Ah—no. I, um...”

“You don’t think I could hack into my own email account, much less a high-tech website with layers of security protocols. Am I right?”

Jack cleared his throat and put his hands out, palms up. “Sorry. I apologize. I made assumptions based on your surroundings. I have to admit that I didn’t expect a hacker to have such a...homey place.” He gestured at a potted orange Gerbera daisy in the center of the table.

“Don’t worry. I won’t hold it against you.” She gave him a stack of napkins—white polka dots on yellow—and opened a drawer for silverware. “And technically, I’m an information technology and security consultant.” She cocked her head to one side. “Do you think if I lived in a grungy, dark studio apartment strewn with empty pizza boxes, I’d have more clients?”

Zoe looked around. “Definitely.”

Carla crunched up her shoulders. “I could never do it. I love this house.”

“You could always rent office space. You could use it only to meet clients. Make it nice and dreary. Paint the walls a dark gray, keep the blinds closed, and scatter around lots of computer equipment and extension cords. I bet your client list would double. I’d let you try it for free for a few weeks next time someone moves out of one of my office suites.”

“Maybe.”

Emma climbed into a chair, and they sat down to eat. By the time they had the boxes open, Emma was deep into an interrogation of Jack. “What’s your favorite color?”

Jack paused with his chopsticks poised over his fried rice. “I’d have to say blue.”

“Like your eyes,” Emma said. “Mine is purple.”

“Not pink?” Jack asked.

“No. Pink is for babies. I
have
to wear it for ballet.”

“I see.”

Carla cleared her throat. “Don’t forget to eat your shrimp, Emma.”

Jack turned to Carla. “So Goth?”

Zoe looked pointedly at the daffodil yellow kitchen. “It is hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“I
was
. Get Zoe to show you my picture junior year. I look like something out of a bad horror movie. Jet-black hair, thick eyeliner, and I already had the pallor because I was so fair-skinned. I hung out with the stoners behind the Quick-Mart.” She looped a noodle around her chopsticks. “Senior year I took a programming class and that was it for the Goth thing. I’d found myself. Turns out I’m a geek.”

Emma said, “I have a turtle.”

“What’s your turtle’s name?” Zoe asked.

“Speedy. Daddy says it’s moronic.”

“I think you mean
ironic
, sweetie,” Carla corrected, hiding a smile behind her glass.

Emma shrugged. She focused her attention on Jack. “We did have a parrot, but we had to find him a new home because he said bad words.”

“I wonder where the parrot learned those words?” Zoe said, widening her eyes as she looked at Carla.

“It’s a mystery.” Carla stood and began closing the food containers.

“We don’t say bad words,” Emma informed them in a grave tone.

“That’s right. We don’t say bad words.” In an undertone, Carla added, “Not anymore.”

Zoe watched Emma out of the corner of her eye, struggling to break open a plastic fortune cookie wrapper. Jack offered to help. Emma put it in his hand, and he ripped it open. Zoe grabbed the empty container of fried rice and followed Carla into the kitchen.

“That stuff I told you about on the phone, the favor I need, forget it.”

Carla closed the refrigerator door and turned to her. “What are you talking about?

“Of course I’ll help you.”

“I know, but I don’t want to put you in a bad position.” Zoe looked to the table where Jack was reading Emma’s fortune to her. “I can’t ask you to take a risk for me. You’re not a hacker anymore. I can’t ask you to break the law for me.”

“It’s true that I’ve come back from—the dark side, let’s say—but I didn’t do it because I was afraid I’d get caught. I decided I wanted to do something more significant with my life than try to create a virus that made millions of people curse at their monitors.”

“There you go. I can’t ask you to bend your standards. It’s been great seeing you. We’ll get out of your hair. Forget I ever asked.”

Carla dumped the leftover sauce packets into the trash and let the lid clang shut. “I stopped hacking because I decided to use my powers for good, not evil, as the cliché goes. It sounds like you could use my help. You said you can’t go to the police, right?”

“No, not now.” Zoe hadn’t told her the details of what had happened, only that she was in trouble and needed information that she couldn’t find herself.

“Okay, then. Let me work my magic and worry about my conscience. Sometimes you have to bend the rules a bit to get at the truth. That’s the old hacker in me talking, but there is some truth there. Come on, you like to live on the edge, don’t you understand?”

“Of course, I understand taking risks. That’s practically my motto, but I don’t want to put anyone else at risk.”

“Zoe, I’m not going to get caught. What you need is easy-peasy. Child’s play. I’m not going to take any chances that would put me in a bad position. But I’m not going to stand by and let things get worse for you either, not when I can take a teeny, tiny peek and—possibly—give you some answers.”

“I don’t know...” Emma had left the table, and Jack was gathering up the last of the food boxes and chopsticks while Emma jumped on the couch like it was a diving board.

Carla crossed her arms. “Zoe, you already told me what you need to know.”

Zoe sighed. “And you’re curious now, so you’re going to look it up anyway whether or not I try and talk you out of it.”

“Yep. That’s about the size of it.”

Zoe thought of the photos of Helen going about her day, completely unaware that Oscar was shadowing her. “Okay, you win. You can hack for me.”

***

E
MMA'S mom arrived shortly after dinner. After waving good-bye to them, Carla motioned for Zoe and Jack to follow her into a spare bedroom she’d made into an office. She bypassed the large glass desk with its sleek computer and opened the folding closet doors, revealing a second work area with several monitors, CPUs, and a tangle of cords. “My special work space,” she explained.

Zoe took a seat in the rolling office chair at the glass desk and Jack leaned against the room’s doorframe with his arms crossed. Carla swiveled her chair side-to-side, fingers poised on the keyboard. “Let’s see what we can do. Okay, so we’ve got the name Anna Whitmore and a physical description. No phone number, address, friends, family, or business ties.”

A gloomy sense of the impossibility of the task she’d asked Carla to accomplish settled on Zoe. “It’s a pathetically small amount of info, I know.” It was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. This was like looking for a needle in Montana.

“She said something once that made me think she was from the Pacific Northwest. What was it?” Jack frowned at the floor. “It was snowing—really coming down.” His head popped up. “She said at least it wasn’t rain. After four years in Seattle, she’d take snow over rain any day.”

“That’s good,” Carla said, and then went quiet as she typed away for a bit. Eventually, she pushed back so they could both see the monitor. “Any of these people look like her?”

Zoe and Jack both moved closer to the monitor. “Facebook?” Zoe asked, skimming the list of faces.

“Yep. It’s a good place to start. So many people have profiles—even if they’re not active on the site. It’s a gold mine of information,” Carla said. “The name Anna Whitmore isn’t that common, and I narrowed the results by region. Nothing here? Okay, next page.”

Zoe shook her head as Carla scrolled through two more pages.

“Wait.” Zoe pointed at a photo of an attractive woman with dark hair. “I think that’s her. Her hair is longer than when I saw her, but the face is the same.”

“Looks like her profile is private. Let me see what I can do.” Carla hummed a few bars of
Smoke on the Water
as she typed. Zoe eased back a few steps so she wouldn’t be looming over Carla, but she was completely focused on the computer, her fingers tapping away at the keys. Jack sent Zoe a raised eyebrow look. Zoe shrugged.

After a few minutes, Carla leaned back. “We’re in.” Zoe and Jack closed the distance and looked over Carla’s shoulder as she read, “Hometown, Chicago. College at the University of Washington,” she said with a nod at Jack. “Her last employer is listed as ComTech in San Bernardino, California.”

“Must have wanted some sun after all that rain,” Zoe said. “What else?”

“Nothing recent. She hasn’t posted a status update since she went on a vacation almost three years ago. The last updates are photos of her on a beach in Saint-Tropez.” Carla switched to the contact information page. “Excellent.” A smile spread across her face. “Email addresses, just what we need.”

“The Facebook.com address probably doesn’t have much,” she said, her fingers already tapping the keyboard. “I don’t know anyone who actually uses their Facebook email address. I’ll concentrate on the Yahoo address.” She typed a few strokes, paused, then said under her breath, “Okay, let’s try it another way.”

Finally, she hit ENTER like a concert pianist striking the final key during a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth and spun toward them, eyes shining. “What did I tell you? Easy-peasy. You’re in luck. Looks like she still uses this email account.”

“What are her most recent emails?” Jack asked.