Until the Day I Die(31)

“I know. But our recruiting lists are just educated guesses about who might be interested. I didn’t know which category you fell into. If you fell into any of them.” His eyes meet mine. “You seemed like somebody who really liked school.”

I move closer to the monitors, studying the columns. There are scores of names, reams of student ID numbers, phone numbers, class locations, and teachers. And there’s a final column labeled Tiger Card. So the guy has to provide fake student ID cards or apps or however he does it, on top of everything else. This operation makes the Russian mob look like kindergarten.

But, honestly? In an odd way, it kind of excites me. The same way downloading that spyware on the anonymous Jax user excited me. This is not the kind of person I used to be—sneaking and conniving—but, I don’t know, things change, I guess. I mean look at how everything’s changed since Dad died. Why shouldn’t I change too?

“How much do you charge?” I ask.

“That’s not why I asked you over here, Shorie. For real.”

“But you were planning to, eventually. Run into me at lunch somewhere, or a party. Right?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

I think of Mom, stretched out on a chaise on the beach, drinking some kind of health smoothie. Rhys is definitely the kind of person she’d be intrigued by. And, putting aside the illegal aspect of what he’s doing, she’d definitely want to hear about his business. She never passes up opportunities to hear about innovative ideas.

I take a deep breath and lock eyes with him, Mom style. “So pitch me the deal.”

Then my phone chimes, alerting me of a notification from the spyware I installed. I’ve received my first screenshot from Mr. or Mrs. 323a456-a97e-12d3-b654-829625410000’s Jax account. Holy smokes.

“One second,” I say to Rhys, and click on the alert, holding my breath. In the time I’ve been here, I’ve gotten three of them. The first is a private message, sent to the monitored account from a user who’s named his profile “Yours.”

I miss you. Thinking of you naked.

And the reply from my anonymous friend, Don’t message me here.

Ew. I make a face then turn away from Rhys so I can think. Yours has to be a guy; a girl wouldn’t send a message like that, would she? Naked messages typically originate from guys, I think. Which leads me to believe my anonymous user is probably a female.

On the other hand, I could be basing this on a false assumption—a stereotype I’ve derived from my own prejudices. What if girls text guys that they’re picturing them naked all the time, and I’m the weirdo who’s never heard about it? It wouldn’t surprise me. Half the time, I feel like a runtime error in human form.

I check out the second screenshot, the allotment balances, which include categories like housing, insurance, and debt reduction. So, she’s older. An adult, with monthly budget categories that total roughly fifteen thousand dollars. Pretty well-off individual, this Ms. X. In the top 5 percent, easy. Everything else looks pretty normal.

I move on to the next picture, another screenshot of the allotments.

“Holy shit,” I croak.

“What?” Rhys asks.

I’d almost forgotten that I was standing in a cute guy’s room. “Uh, just an unexpected email. Hold on.”

I study the shot again. From a mere thirty minutes earlier, the allotments have all gone up, each category’s balance having risen substantially. I do the math. Roughly $162,000 just got dumped into this person’s account.

My brain is clicking away, moving the facts around, considering alternatives. Ms. X doesn’t want her sext buddy to contact her over Jax. Probably because she’s meddling in Jax’s servers anonymously without an admin identifier, fixing a weird-looking deadlock that I’ve never encountered in all my years of shadowing Dad. There’s something going on with this account, that’s for damn sure. Something illegal, maybe.

A brand-new thought occurs to me, something I’ve never considered, not once in my whole hardworking, straight-arrow, do-what-you’re-told life: Sometimes breaking the rules isn’t just for fun. Sometimes it’s an absolutely, utterly essential move so you can find other rule breakers.

And that’s my responsibility, isn’t it, while my mother’s gone? One greater than going to class or making good grades or meeting cute guys. To find out who’s messing around with Jax?

I click off my phone and turn back to Rhys, who’s fiddling with his keyboard. “So how much?” I say.

“What?”

“How much would you charge me if I wanted a surrogate to take all five of my fall semester classes?” I’m thinking fast here. It’s going to take time to track down the journal and to monitor the activity on this Ms. X’s account. Time to figure out how all these elements fit together, if they fit together at all. And Rhys happens to be someone who can give me that time.

“All five?” he says. “Even Intro to Engineering?”

“Yes.”

“Six hundred and fifty per class, plus five hundred for the new Tiger Card, that’s—”

“Thirty-seven fifty. How do you take payment?”

“Cash. But classes start in three days—”

“What? Is it too late?”

“No,” he says slowly. “No. I have a lot of people on call.” He hesitates. “Do you want to get out of here?”