First Born(23)

‘Sure. I’ll take ten minutes and reply to her now.’

‘We’ll see you down in the diner. Want us to order for you?’

‘No, I might need a little more time so don’t wait for me.’

‘Of course we’ll wait for you, Molly,’ says Mum. ‘We’ll have tea until you get there. You take as much time as you need.’

I go into my room. Baseball bat, hornet spray, knife.

Three new emails. Two spam. One from Violet Roseberry asking if we can meet. Giving me her number and Scott’s number in case I need help while I’m in the city. I reply suggesting we meet late this afternoon. She says five p.m. outside the West Side YMCA, next to the park. I say OK, see you there.

And then I search in my folder for old messages from KT.

4,773 emails.

Usually we texted or FaceTimed, but we often forwarded articles and links to each other. Sometimes we didn’t even stop to think if the other twin would want to read the piece; we just automatically forwarded it. We were two sides of the same double helix. I don’t know how many times we emailed the same article to each other at the exact same time. What I find interesting she usually finds interesting. Found interesting.

One message isn’t from her Gmail or her King’s College account or her Columbia account. It’s a single email from [email protected]. The message dates from last year and it’s blank. It doesn’t even say test. I can see I replied to it with, ‘This you, KT?’ and she never responded so I assumed it was spam or phishing. But 999 was her favourite number, so maybe it was a spare account.

I Google FortressMail. Still exists. Operates out of Panama. They talk a lot on the site FAQs about end-to-end encryption and open source and VPN technology and how there are no records or IP logs kept. I try to log in with her username. I use mollyraven as a password and it fails. Apparently I have four more attempts. I try katiemolly and mollykatie but they both fail. Two more attempts. We had a language as kids – not a very sophisticated one, but aged six or seven we used to use opposites or sometimes drop the first letter from each word. KT and I could talk at normal speed, or, eventually, even faster, and our parents could never keep up. I try atie. Incorrect. One attempt remaining. I try olly.

It works.

This inbox has 774 emails, 773 of which have been read.

Her sent items folder has 592 emails.

Her deleted folder is empty.

Her drafts folder has one email.

I open the draft. It’s dated from nine days ago and it’s written to [email protected]. An email from my sister that was never sent. The subject line is Her. The email reads I’m sorry to bother you with this, I know you’re busy with work, but V is driving me batshit crazy. She will not get it. I’m afraid she’ll do something serious to herself. Once she told me her dad has a pistol in his bedside drawer and her mum has enough codeine pills to kill a baseball team. She’s obsessed and I don’t like it xx

V must be Violet Roseberry, KT’s best friend, the woman I’m meeting in just over an hour. But she’s a woman in her early twenties; just how dangerous could she really be? Who did KT think about sending this message to? OPO64. That doesn’t ring any bells. And this person, a he or a she, is busy with work. Why did KT never send the email? I Google OPO64 and I get a bunch of acronyms and technical specifications, and then, on page seventeen of the search results, I find something relevant.

The department of Literature Humanities at Columbia University, New York.

Building OPO.

Room 64.

Professor Eugene Groot.

I take the business card from my pocket and think about forwarding the draft email to Bogart DeLuca. Surely Martinez would be the better choice? But I’d have to admit I hacked my dead sister’s email. Maybe I could say I knew her address. I could tell him I already had the password.

There’s a noise behind my shoulder. I reach for the bat and my door starts to shake on its hinges. Someone’s trying to pick the lock, probing the keyhole with a metal implement. I swallow hard, my heart thumping double-speed, and then I stand up slowly and adopt a defensive stance: one foot forward, knees flexed. I could scream, but a competent attacker would stifle that in a second or less. I raise the Louisville Slugger above my head and the door opens and it’s a little old lady with a hairnet.

‘Oh, God, I’m sorry! Don’t hurt me!’

I lower my bat and say, ‘I thought you were breaking in!’

‘Don’t hit me. Oh, God. Please, lady.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘No, no. I work here. I just checking each room make sure everything OK. I do rounds once every other day. I work here four years.’

‘Everything’s OK,’ I say. ‘Sorry I scared you.’

‘OK, lady.’

She walks away and I vow to improve my security somehow. I need to be protected but I also need to stay legal. One risk is me getting attacked, the other is me getting into trouble with the NYPD. That’s the line I must negotiate.

I pack my small rucksack with the knife and sixty dollars cash and the hornet spray. I lock my door and head outside.

The air is heady with the smell of roasting nuts mixed with petrol fumes. Two men are arguing outside the office building opposite, and a one-legged pigeon is fighting to pull a french fry out of the drainage gulley.

I head over to the food cart on the corner, the guy who helped me find the hardware store.