Page 96 of Identity Unknown
Standing by the desk petting Merlin, I can’t look into Carrie’s eyes on the monitor without being pulled in. And I won’t go where she is. I won’t let it happen and never have. I keep my attention on the cheetah sitting next to her like a porcelain statue.
“Lucy’s slipping up, hate to tell you,” Carrie goes on. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this tête-á-tête, Kay. So much for her failproof firewalls. Well, here I am. In fact, I’m in a lot of places, in case you’ve not figured that out yet. Your office, for example.”
I envision the exterminator on top of the ladder.
“And, oh dear, the problems your poor niece and her lovesick partner Tron are having with the cloud computer. ‘Lucy in the sky with malware…,’” Carrie sings.
Lucy’s not here right now because of the problem. Meaning, I showed up to feed her cat. Carrie goes on to boast about how clever she is compared to the rest of us. The problem is we let our emotions get in the way of the mission.
“And then one loses focus…,” she explains as I’m thinking how to send a message without Carrie seeing what I’m doing.
She’s in front of a video display somewhere, possibly some expensive house or apartment in Warsaw. She’s sending out electronic signals, and the longer I can keep her talking to me, the more likely it is that law enforcement will locate her.
“What do you want?” I sit down at Lucy’s desk, rolling the chair close.
There won’t be cameras on the floor beneath me, and using one hand I carefully slide my phone out of my slicker pocket. I type in the password, barely looking at what I’m doing while Carrie tells me how sorry she is about Sal Giordano.
“It doesn’t feel good when you lose someone important, someone who goes way back,” she’s saying with saccharine sympathy as if we’re close and share much in common.
“No, it doesn’t,” I reply with forced civility while typing, my phone out of sight in my lap.
“Feels even worse when someone takes them away. And you’ve done it more than once, Kay…”
She’s hacked in,I text Lucy.
We know,she answers right away, and I realize this is what she wanted.
She’s set up an electronic trap that’s giving the Secret Service Carrie’s location even as she talking to me over the internet. It would seem Carrie hasn’t a clue what I’m doing. She’s none the wiser that Lucy has hacked into Carrie hacking into Janet.
Keep talking,Lucy then texts me.
“And when bad things are done, someone has to pay,” Carrie is saying.
“I feel you blame me for many things,” I reply. “Now’s your chance to explain your side of things.”
“From the beginning you involved yourself in matters that were none of your business. In fact, that seems to be your trademark, Kay. And look at the trouble it’s caused you and everyone.”
Her crazy eyes are steady on me, and I look between them, a trick I learned long ago in court. It appears I’m staring someone in the eye but I’m not.
“What do you want?” I again ask.
“It’s obvious you could use some help…”
Suddenly her face vanishes from the monitor as a video begins to play. Within seconds I recognize Luna Briley’s pink bedroom. She’s on top of the bed, eating from a small paper bag of candy-coated peanuts when her mother walks in.
“What do you think you’re doing, you little shit?” Piper Briley screams, and she sounds inebriated.
Snatching away the bag of candy, she shakes Luna by the shoulders. Piper is shrieking and throttling her. Then Ryder Briley appears in the doorway, shirtless and in boxer shorts, his face livid.
“Let go! I told you not to leave marks on her, you fucking bitch!” he snaps at his wife.
“I told you she won’t listen!” She turns around, glaring hatefully at him as I feel myself getting angrier.
“And it’s your fault. You’re the fucking mother. Now do a better job or I’ll find someone who will!”
“You’ll find someone who will?” she screams at him. “I think you already did, you sorry motherfucker…!”
Piper storms off, and is back seconds later, their child sitting up in bed, sobbing and cowering.