2012
Finch spent more than an hour resetting his security. He didn’t rush; it was unlikely that Miss Fitzgerald would come after his systems at all, and certainly not until she’d gotten some sleep. Still, there was nothing in his nature that would allow him not to take protective
measures.
The library was quiet; Reese had gone home and the city outside was barely grumbling awake. It was good for once to not be in desperate hurry.
When he was done, he browsed through Christine’s background. The woman was, as he’d anticipated, the sole owner of Chaos. The café had a fairly professional website. The front page had a menu; the coffee and tea options were extensive. They also had pastries and bagels, brought in from other nearby businesses. No catering, no delivery. They had after-school homework hours, Friday gaming nights, a loyalty card program. Quarterly computer tune-up clinics, and semi-annual safety classes. Tips on on-line security and computer maintenance. Literally hundreds of links. A smallish note said that they would happily help with VA and SSA benefit applications.
Chaos was highly visible on the social networks, but from the content, Finch doubted Christine was doing most of the posting.
He moved on to the woman herself. He was able to learn that she’d changed her name and acquired her GED in 2002. She’d attended college full time for only one semester before she dropped out, but since then, she’d taken courses all over the city. Not full time, and not in any organized manner; she wasn’t working toward any particular degree. Most were computer classes, various specialties, generally advanced level, but there are also random things. Psychology, history, literature. Acupuncture. It looked like she simply signed up for whatever interested her.
She also traveled extensively. In the past year she’d visited New Zealand, Italy, Toronto, and Austin, Texas. He noted with small relief that she’d been out of the country when Delancy was murdered; it almost certainly ruled her out as Root. Someone could run an operation that complex from a distance, but it was unlikely. Still, Christine had the right skill set; she remained on the possibles list in his mind, but settled toward the bottom.
As with her college classes, there didn’t seem to be any definite purpose to her travels. Finch rather liked the notion that she was going wherever her fancy took her.
She had a public library card. Even in the darkest days of her addiction, Finch remembered, she’d still had a library card. She used the current one extensively. He could have spent half a day just looking over the things she read. Maybe he would, some day.
With some reluctance, because books interested him more than finances. he turned to her tax returns. Fifteen seconds after he hacked into the IRS, a textchat message popped up on his screen:
>SRSLY, RANDOM?
Finch looked at it, surprised. He’d known she was clever. He just hadn’t known she was awake. Finally he typed back:
>SORRY. JUST INQUIRING
She wrote back:
>YOU MISSPELLED STALKING. DON’T YOU EVER SLEEP?
Computer chat could be a tricky thing; it was hard to tell emotion without verbal or visual cues. But she didn’t seem very upset to have caught him rifling through the pages of her virtual life.
>NOT MUCH. YOU?
>HAVE A PRIVATE BARISTA. DON’T EVEN NEED TO BLINK.
Finch sat back for a moment, considering. When she was fourteen years old, Nathan Ingram had considered her one of the brightest young minds in the city. But the world had changed. Nathan was gone, and his future rock star had settled for running a neighborhood coffee shop with WiFi. She could have been anything, Finch thought. She could have had the world. She’d settled for a tiny corner of it.
But on the other hand “ by the time she was seventeen she’d been on the fast track to killing herself with heroin. When he’d caught her hacking into IFT she was severely malnourished, racked with a blood infection, and utterly overwhelmed by her addiction. And yet she was alive, and she was still sharp enough to catch him in mid-hack.
Her life could have gone to either extreme. Instead, she’d landed solidly in the middle. She’d found the truth, the one that Harold had been so long in coming to. There was only one thing that mattered. Before he could think about it enough to stop himself, he typed the question:
>ARE YOU HAPPY?
Judging by the speed of her response, she didn’t have to think about it.
>YES
After a moment, she added,
>BUT WOULD BE HAPPIER IF THE EYE OF SAURON TURNED ELSEWHERE. PLEASE
Finch looked at the screen for a moment, bemused. It wasn’t an unreasonable request. Christine, more than nearly anyone, would be aware of exactly how much information he was able to find if he seriously searched. He had no cause “ and to be honest, no right. But she hadn’t threatened or demanded. She’d simply asked, politely.
Politeness, in Harold’s view, ought to be rewarded.
He sighed, and then he responded,
>AS YOU WISH
He shut down the chat, and then he shut down his search. For the time being, at least, he knew enough. If circumstances changed, he could find out more.
And though Christine Fitzgerald had correctly anticipated his virtual search for information about her, she almost certainly would not be watching for John Reese to stalk her in person, which is precisely what Finch comfortably predicted would happen.
***
The big man had been strapped to the chair for six hours. He was sweating profusely and smelled awful. His skin looked gray. He seemed disoriented.
Kevin Frey crouched in front of him. “One more time. Where is the hard drive? Where are the files?”
“D’know,” the big man muttered. “D’know.”
“I don’t believe you. I know how much those files meant to you. You’d d never let them go.”
“Gone,” the man in the chair muttered. “They were just gone.”
His eyes were glassy, his breath shallow. An hour ago he’d complained of pain in his chest and arm. It was very likely that he’d had a heart attack. Prompt medical attention might have saved his life. But Frey didn’t care about that. “Where are they?” he asked, one last time.
“G “gone.” Tears formed in the big man’s eyes, rolled down his cheeks. “All g-g-gone.”
“Gone where?” Frey screamed. He stood up and loomed over his captive. “Where the hell are they?”
The big man’s breathing changed suddenly. He began to exhale and pause, then to inhale sharply. His eyes rolled back. His skin grew more gray than blue.
Frey ran his hand through his hair, wiped the sweat off his own face. Such a simple thing. Such a simple damn thing, and it had gone so very wrong.
He took out a pocket knife and stripped the ties off the big man. The captive slumped to the floor and grunted. One more breath and he was silent.
So simple, so wrong, Frey thought again. The boss was going to have his ass over this. He had totally screwed the pooch. His cushy job, his beautiful nine-to-five. He was going to be lucky to end up in some backwater desert post after this. Hell, he was going to be lucky to be alive after this.
It wasn’t his fault. It was all set. It should have run perfectly forever. He didn’t even know what had happened. It was …
He shook his head. It didn’t matter. The drive was gone, the files were gone, the site was gone, and the guy who should have had them was dead. But the boss didn’t know any of those things yet. And if he got them back before she found out, he was still golden.
He couldn’t use any of his usual assets. He was on his own. But he could still save his career, if he could pull it off.
He looked at the dead man on the floor one last time. Then he looked around him. The big man had been a horrible housekeeper. There were piles of junk everywhere. Papers, books, files. Why did anyone have this much paper, in this day and age?
He’s already been through the man’s hard drive; the files weren’t on his computer. Which meant they were stored off-site somewhere. And somewhere in this mess was a link to it. A single line of text, a note, an address.
Frey sighed heavily. It was going to take forever. And he still had other places to look, too.
He needed some cheap help.
And he knew where to get it.
***
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