Hidden (Nicole Jones #1)(42)

The portal I used before is closed. I sit back and think, trying to remember how I would circumvent the system and find another portal. An open one. I try to think like Tracker. Soon I am navigating the code, searching for a portal I can slip behind and get inside.

I hear a knock on the door, and it opens slightly. ‘Nicole? Can I come in?’ Jeanine doesn’t wait for an answer, slips in and puts a cup of chai tea on the table next to me. The moment I heard the knock, I closed the laptop cover, and she is staring at it. ‘What are you doing? You’ve been in here two hours already.’

I haven’t paid attention, but I’m not surprised that it’s been so long. I glance at my watch. I want to see if Tracker has left another message in the chat room. Why didn’t I get two laptops from Mike? I don’t want to stop what I’ve already done.

I have no choice.

‘Jeanine, do you have a laptop I can borrow?’

She frowns, clearly confused.

‘I need two. I’ve got some stuff I need to do, and it’s hard with just one.’ I’d had four, back in the day. A couple of desktops and a couple of laptops. Some girls bought shoes; I bought computers.

‘What sort of stuff?’ Jeanine is suspicious. Her mouth has puckered into a thin line.

‘Don’t worry. I’m just trying to get some information.’

‘Is it illegal?’

‘No.’ The lie slips off my tongue easily, as have all the other lies I have told her through the years.

While she has never suspected my other lies, this one she does not believe. But she disappears through the door and, after a few minutes, comes back with a laptop that is a lot older than the one I’m using.

‘Will this do?’ she asks, an edge in her voice.

I nod, taking it from her, putting it next to the other and booting it up. ‘Thanks.’

‘I don’t want to get in trouble,’ she warns.

‘You won’t. I promise.’ I can keep this promise. No one will know what’s been done on this computer when I’m finished with it.

‘Do you want a sandwich?’

‘I’m not hungry. But thanks.’ My fingers are twitching. I have to get back to this. She notices and to her credit leaves and closes the door behind her. I don’t have much time. I can’t stay here much longer. I have already stayed too long.

I use Jeanine’s laptop to get into the chat room. I am not completely surprised to find Tracker is here. I tell him I am having trouble finding an open portal to get the account information.

Don’t worry about it, he writes. I didn’t have trouble. On either front.

My ego is crushed. I wanted so much to get in myself. I remind myself that he has not taken fifteen years off.

I’m sending you the list of account owners and their Socials. You might be interested to know that one of those names you wanted me to check is on that list.

I do a double take. Which one?

Paul Michaels. And I only found him on the FBI site in connection with the theft as a victim. Nothing else.

I sit back, trying to wrap my head around this information. He was a victim? How can that be?

Tiny?

Tracker thinks I have left.

I’m still here.

The other name? Ian Cartwright? He’s dead.





TWENTY-TWO


Dead? But that’s not right. He was in my house. In my bed. He is using a dead man’s name, that’s all. He, himself, is not dead. When I close my eyes, I can still see him over me, whispering to me.

How? I manage to write, my hands trembling as they touch the keys.

Suicide. Paris. Fifteen years ago.

A date?

June the eleventh.

A day after I left him there.

I am not sure what all of this means.

How did you find out? I ask. Was it online?

It was in the FBI file. Newspapers don’t report suicides in private places.

How did he do it?

Blew his head off on a houseboat on the Seine. Police found his passport. Couple who lived on the houseboat next to his identified the body, but it sounds like it was more a generalization.

I can read between the lines. No facial identification. His face was gone.

So they didn’t check fingerprints or anything?

Sounds like they relied on the ID given and the passport. FBI made a note in the file from the theft. Story ends there.

But it doesn’t. The story begins again here, on Block Island.

I guess it’s easy for a dead man to take a dead man’s name. Who’s going to know? But did he just take Zeke’s name here, for my benefit? What name – or names – has he been using all these years?

And then something Tracker has told me hits me hard. I begin typing. The FBI made a note about Ian’s death in the file about the bank theft?

That’s right.

I sit and stare at the screen for a few minutes, trying to digest all of the information Tracker has given me. But then I have another thought, something so simple that I scare myself.

Ian was identified with his passport. The only passport he had, at least that I knew about, was the passport with the name Paul Michaels. What was he doing with a passport with his real name on it?

And why would the FBI have this in their files?

Because one of their own was killed on the same houseboat the day before.