Wherever She Goes(11)

Liar, liar . . .

It hasn’t been easy, pretending I barely know how to operate a computer. That’s part of the price I pay, though, for my choices straight from the How to Disappear handbook. Distance yourself from all aspects of your former life, particularly those you excelled in.

The first thing I ever hacked was a radio. It started with my dad bringing home a couple of walkie-talkies. Surplus from base.

“They don’t work that well, but I know a guy who can fix them up, give you and your friends something to play with.”

Which was great, except that Dad wasn’t always quick to fulfill promises. He got busy and remembering to get the radios fixed wasn’t a high priority.

So I did it myself. I wrangled schematics from an indulgent engineer on base, and I opened up the radios. At first, Dad was as amused as that engineer. Sure, let the kid take a shot at it—curiosity is good. Then I not only fixed them, but made them as good as new. As for using them to hack into a secure military frequency, well, that came later.

Once Dad realized I had a talent for electronics, he brought me things to fix, things to take apart. And the guy who wouldn’t stop working long enough to play cards with me would watch me tinker for hours. He’d give me a look, like he couldn’t quite figure out where this little girl came from. For the first time in my life, I was a revelation to him. The more fascinated he was by my talent, the harder I worked to improve it.

I still remember the day he brought me my first computer. I came home from school, and it was there, and he waved at it, much like one might wave at a troll crouching in the corner.

“You know how to use these things?” he asks.

I laugh. “It’s a computer, Dad. We have them in school.”

Let’s just say that my father is the reason I’m able to impersonate a technophobe so well.

Computers, as I discovered, were for much more than just typing up an assignment. I could control them. Bend them to my will in a way I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—with people. I could open them up, like a radio, and manipulate them there. Or I could go in through code and use them to achieve my goal that way. Which sometimes meant hacking.

When I was young, hacking was a challenge. Nothing more. I didn’t do anything with my skills. Not until my world fell apart, and a tech career in the army was the absolute last thing I wanted, and I was angry, so damned angry, and it was just the right time in my life for someone to suggest I use those skills in a very different way.

I don’t get access to the police email system over my lunch break. My skills are far too rusty for that. Instead, I accomplish step one: finding the server and poking at it a bit, seeing how hard it’ll be to hack.

Hack in and find out what’s going on with my case. What Officer Cooper really thinks of my story.

Find out whether that boy has a hope of ever being found.

And if the answer is no?

I’m not sure what I’ll do about that. Not sure what I can do.

No, that’s a lie. I know what I can do. I’m just not sure that I will.





Chapter Eight





I get an early start the next morning . . . and my car does not. It won’t start at all. I open the hood to find a broken fan belt. An easy fix, and I mentally calculate the time it’ll take me to jog to the hardware store.

No, I can’t risk showing up at work late again. So I catch a cab. Not really in my budget, but if I lose my job, I won’t have an income to budget.

I arrive at the library twenty minutes early. Not that it does any good—my coworker Nancy doesn’t show up with the keys until mere seconds before her shift begins.

I put my things away, head straight to the book-return bin, and focus on my task. I’m still distracted, fretting about yesterday, and I cannot afford to make any mistakes.

I like my job. Being a librarian isn’t just shelving and checking out books. There’s so much else—from helping a senior citizen send an email to helping a student find research material. A combination of public service and problem-solving that I love.

I’d love it even more if I could throw my tech skills into the mix, but that would lead to questions I can’t answer. Like how I got those skills when there’s no postsecondary education or tech job on my résumé.

I do use those skills on my break. I try hacking into the police system. It’s been thirty-six hours since Officer Cooper came to my apartment, and I haven’t heard a peep from him since. Nor have I found any mention of the case online. So I’m determined to get into the departmental email and see what they’re doing about it.

That takes both coffee breaks and my lunch hour, which would have been embarrassing five years ago. This isn’t the Chicago Police Department. It’s a suburban force with outdated cybersecurity. I’ve been out of the game so long, though, that even “outdated” means it’s newer than most systems I’ve hacked. By the time I succeed, my last break is over. I’ll need to postpone actually searching emails until tomorrow.

There’s something bugging me, too—a growing sense that I’m forgetting something. I keep running through the scenario in the park, both when I first met the boy with his mom, and later, when I saw the boy taken. Am I missing something?

The more I fret, the harder I need to concentrate on work. I count the minutes until my shift ends. Then Ingrid asks me to stay an extra hour—to make up for my double tardiness yesterday—and that sense that I’m forgetting something surges.