Paris is a Bitch (9 page)

Do you have a webcam?
he typed.

Another jitter, this time tougher to ignore. Chatting online was one thing. Letting him see me was riskier.

Yes. But I haven’t showered yet this morning.


Neither have I. You chicken?


I smiled.
I don’t scare easily.


OK. I’ll set up a private webcam chat room and send you the URL. Give me a minute…


Sounds good.


I didn’t rush to the bathroom to check myself in the mirror, but I may have moved a little quicker than normal. My dark hair was shorter than I would have preferred, but it never got in my face and was easy to manage and conceal. I finger combed it, deemed it fine, and wiped a toast crumb from the corner of my mouth. I was wearing what I’d slept in, an old tee and some baggy sweat pants. Since I’d already told him I hadn’t showered, changing into nice clothes and putting on make-up would be disingenuous.

Besides, if a guy couldn’t accept the way a woman looked when she woke up, he wasn’t worth waking up next to.

Not that I was planning any sleepovers.

Sex, on the other hand… it had been too long.

I wandered back to my computer, sat down, and noted my pulse was a tiny bit faster than normal. My webcam was built into the monitor. I switched on the application, and a few seconds later Victor IMed me the address. I typed in the URL, and then there he was, filling my computer screen, smiling boyishly.

He was actually cuter than his jpg. Blond hair. Strong chin, covered in stubble. Broad shoulders. Around my age, early thirties, and his blue eyes were several shades lighter than mine.

He said something, which I lip-read to be,
Good morning, Carmen. Nice to finally see you. Are you wearing a Cubs t-shirt?

I unmuted the picture and adjusted the volume.

“Yes, I am.” I smiled. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Victor stood up, revealing the White Sox logo on his jersey. Behind him I could make out a sofa, but the room details were blurry beyond that. With the sound level up, I heard his cat, a calico named Mozart, meow in the background.

“I’m a season ticket holder.” His voice was deep, rich, pure Chicago south-side. He sat down, grinning. “But I’m willing to work through this if you are.”

I shook my head, feigning disapproval. “I dunno. Season tickets? I’m not sure I could get over something like that.”

“Are you asking me to give up the Sox when we haven’t even had a first date yet?”

“If I did ask, what would you say?”

He rubbed his chin. “On one hand, I don’t want you to think I’m a pushover. On the other hand, if this is what you look like before a shower, giving up the Sox doesn’t seem like that big a sacrifice.”

I granted him a smile for that one. “You should see me juggle.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds.

“This is the first time I’ve ever used a webcam for something other than business.” He leaned forward, like we were talking over a coffee table. “It’s weird. Intimate, but distant at the same time.”

“I agree.” I took a breath and a plunge. “Dinner would be better, I think.”

“Are you free tonight?”

I pretended to consider it. “Yes.”

“I could pick you up. Have we reached a level of trust where you’re willing to tell me where you live?”

“Let’s meet someplace.” Only one person in the world actually knew where I lived, and I wanted to keep it that way.

“You like German food, right?”

I nodded, remembering I’d mentioned that during our very first text chat.

“How about Mirabel’s on Addison?” he said. “Six o’clock?”

“Looking forward to it.”

“Me, too. But now it’s almost nine, and I’m on call. Gotta get ready for work.”

“Off to save some lives?”

“I’m hoping for a slow day. Maybe I’ll get lucky and no one in Chi-town will dial 911 during my shift. But if I do have to heroically spring into action,” he winked at me, “I’ll be ready.”

“See you later, Victor.”

“See you, Carmen.”

He switched off the camera. I initiated my tracking software, locating his IP address. It was the same one he always used. Previously, I’d hacked his ISP and gotten his billing information, and from there it had been easy to run a background check. Victor Cormack, as far as I could research using both public and private records, had been telling me the truth about his job, his education, his past. On the surface, he was a normal, average person.

But anyone checking out my identity would assume the same about me.

I erased my Internet footsteps, deleting cookies, clearing the cache, and reformatting the C drive. A pain in the ass to do every time I went online, but a necessary one. Then I wiped the keyboard clean with a spritz of Windex and began my morning work-out.

Halfway into it, my encrypted cell phone rang. I finished my two-hundred thirty-ninth push-up, slid the sweaty bangs off my eyebrows with my forearm, and padded over to the breakfast bar to answer it. Only one person—the same person who knew my address—had this number. A call meant work. And work couldn’t be refused. The phone was even waterproof so I could take it into the shower.

I hit the connect button on the touch screen and waited, habit making me tune in to my surroundings. I could smell traces of the green pepper omelet and wheat toast I’d had for breakfast, along with a slightly sour odor coming from the sink telling me dishes needed to be done. The ambient sounds were unremarkable; the thermostat kicking on, the hum of the fridge, the ticking of a wall clock hanging over my computer, pigeons warbling outside.

To continue reading FLEE by J. A. Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson, visit your library or favorite ebook retailer and pick up a copy today.

P
art of the appeal of my series about the half-American, half-Japanese assassin John Rain seems to be Rain’s realistic tactics. It’s true that Rain, like his author, has a black belt in judo and is a veteran of certain government firearms and other defensive tactics courses, but these have relatively little to do with Rain’s continued longevity. Rather, Rain’s ultimate expertise, and the key to his survival, lies in his ability to think like the opposition.

Okay, get out your notepad, because:

All effective personal protection, all effective security, all true self-defense, is based on the ability and willingness to think like the opposition.

I’m writing this article on my laptop in a crowded coffee shop I like. There are a number of other people around me similarly engaged. I think to myself,
If I wanted to steal a laptop, this would be a pretty good place to do it. You come in, order coffee and a muffin, sit, and wait. Eventually, one of these computer users is going to get up and make a quick trip to the bathroom. He’ll be thinking, “Hey, I’ll only be gone for a minute.” He doesn’t know that a minute is all I need to get up and walk out with his $3000 PowerBook.
(Note how criminals are adept at thinking like their victims. You need to treat them with the same respect.)

Okay. I’ve determined where the opposition is planning on carrying out his crime (this coffee shop), and I know how he’s going to do it (snatch and dash). I now have options:

1. avoid the coffee shop entirely (avoid
   where
   the crime will occur);
   

2. secure my laptop to a chair with a twenty dollar Kensington security cable (avoid how the crime will occur — it’s hard to employ bolt cutters unobtrusively in a coffee shop, or to carry away a laptop that has a chair hanging off it); and
   

3. hope to catch the thief in the act, chase him down, engage him with violence.
   

Of these three options, #2 makes the most sense for me. The first is too costly — I like this coffee shop and get a lot of work done here. The third is also too costly, and too uncertain. Why fight when you can avoid the fight in the first place? This is self-
defense
we’re talking about, remember, self-
protection
. Not fighting, not melodrama. As for the second, yes, it’s true these measures won’t render the crime impossible. But what measures ever do? The point is to make the crime difficult enough to carry out that the criminal chooses to pursue his aims elsewhere. Yes, if twenty-seven ninjas have dedicated their lives to stealing your laptop and have managed to track you to the coffee shop, they’ll probably manage to get your laptop while you’re in the bathroom even if you’ve secured it to a chair. But more likely, your opposition will be someone who is as happy stealing your laptop as someone else’s. By making yours the marginally more difficult target, you will encourage him to steal someone else’s.

Which brings us to an unpleasant, but vitally true, parable:

If you and your friend are jogging in the woods, and you get chased by a bear, you don’t have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun your friend.

Except at the level of very high-value executive protection (presidents, high-profile businesspeople, ambassadors and other dignitaries), you are not trying to outrun the bear. You are trying only to outrun your friend.

Let’s combine these two concepts — thinking like the opposition, outrunning your friend — with an example from the realm of home security. And let’s add an additional critical element: that all good security is
layered
.

If you wanted to burglarize a house, what would you look for? And what would you avoid?

Generally speaking, your principal objectives are to get cash and property, and to get away (home invasion is a separate subject, but is addressed, like all self-protection, by reference to the same principles). You’d start by looking at lots of houses. Remember, you’re not trying to rob a certain address; you just want to rob a house. Which ones are dark? Which are set back from the road and neighbors? Are there any cars in the driveway? Lights and noise in the house? Signs of an alarm system? A barking dog?

Thinking like a burglar, you are now ready to implement the outer layer of your home security. By some combination of installing motion-sensor lights, keeping bushes trimmed to avoid concealment opportunities, putting up signs advertising an alarm system, having a dog around, keeping a car or cars in the driveway, leaving on appropriate lights and the television, and making sure there are no newspapers in the driveway or mail left on the porch when you’re away, you help the burglar to decide immediately during his casing or surveillance phase that he should rob someone else’s house.

If the burglar isn’t immediately dissuaded by the outer layer, he receives further discouragement at the next layer in. He takes a closer look, and sees that you have deadbolt locks on all the doors, and that your advertisement was not a bluff — the windows are in fact alarmed. If he takes a crack at the doorjamb, he discovers that it’s reinforced. If he tries breaking a window, he realizes the glass is shatter-resistant. Whoops — time to go somewhere else, somewhere easier.

Okay, the guy is stupid. He keeps trying anyway. Now the second layer of security described above, which failed to
deter
him, works to
delay
him. It’s taking him a long time to get in. He’s making noise. At some point, the time and noise might combine to persuade him to abort (back to deterrence). But if he insists on plunging ahead, the noise has alerted you, and you have bought yourself time to implement further inner layers of security: accessing a firearm; calling the police; retreating to a safe room; most of all, preparing yourself mentally and emotionally for danger and possible violence.

Now another example, relating to personal protection from an overseas kidnapping attempt. Like everything else, this form of protection starts with you thinking like the bad guy. Your objective is to kidnap a foreigner. Not a particular foreigner (high-value targets are a separate problem, although again subject to the same principles), just any old foreigner. So what do you need to do to carry out your plan?

First, you need to pick a target. This part is easy — any foreigner will do. Next, you need to assess the foreigner’s vulnerability. Where will you be able to grab him, and when? To answer these questions, you need to follow the target around. If he’s punctual, a creature of habit, if he likes to travel the same routes to and from work at the same times every day, you will start to feel encouraged.