Grace swallowed heavily. “I should have told you, but she said she’d be back. She promised.”
“Honey, who are you talking about?”
“Jessie.” Grace tried to speak but was overcome by another gust of tears.
“What about Jessie, dear?”
“She’s gone. She went to go look for the hackers.”
–
“No answer.”
Phone in hand, Mary stood next to Jessie’s bed, her stomach crawling with the thousand worries of every mother.
“Text her,” said Tank.
Mary typed: “Jess. Call me immediately. You are not in trouble. I need to know you are all right. I love you. Mom.” She added “Please,” then erased it and sent the message.
“Don’t worry,” said Tank. “She’s just with a boy. What’s his name…Gary.”
“Garrett,” said Mary, then to Grace: “Do you remember his last name?”
Grace shook her head.
Mary admired the cleverly arranged pillows, the dark Red Sox cap set atop them to simulate her daughter’s hair. “Jess doesn’t like boys,” she explained, as much to herself as to Potter. “I mean, she likes them, but they don’t like her, so she doesn’t…you know the drill. She likes computers and hacking and watching old episodes of The X-Files.” Mary willed the phone in her hand to buzz, indicating her daughter’s incoming text. “What if they…,” she said, looking at Tank.
“Don’t jump to conclusions. There’s no reason to think that-”
“No reason?” Mary whispered venomously. “Joe’s dead. Your friend was murdered six hours ago. And I was almost-” She bit her tongue, aware of Grace standing in the doorway behind them.
“Is it the hackers, Mommy?”
This was the second time her daughter had mentioned hackers. “Excuse me, sweetie-what do you mean by ‘the hackers’?”
“The people who erased Daddy’s message-the people Jess is looking for. Did they get her?”
The hackers. Latest in a long line of imaginary nightmarish adversaries, following “Injuns” and “Nazis” and “alien abductors.”
“It’s not the hackers. Mr. Potter is right. Jess must be with Garrett.”
“And her TA,” added Grace. “So she’s safe.”
This was the first Grace had mentioned anything about a teaching assistant. “Pardon me? Do you mean Linus?”
“She said she was seeing her TA, too. He was going to help her figure out the clue.”
Mary turned on the reading lamp above Jessie’s desk and looked around for a notebook or a handout from school that might contain the TA’s number. There was a PC Magazine and a copy of Wired. But nothing from the university about Jess’s classes. What had happened to spiral notebooks and black speckled composition books?
She opened the drawer. Complete pandemonium. Pens and pencils and erasers and receipts. She freed a photograph. Jess and Joe at a symposium on the future of the Net that they’d attended last year. Mary replaced the photo and continued to rummage through the mess. Her fingers touched something cool and round pushed against the back corner. “What’s this thing?”
In her hand she held a slim green metallic tube.
“An e-cigarette,” said Tank.
“A what?”
“You put some kind of oil inside and an electric spark vaporizes it. It’s the latest thing.”
“My daughter doesn’t smoke.”
“She doesn’t like boys either.”
Mary dropped the e-cigarette into the drawer. She knew she should feel shocked or disappointed, but all she could muster was a vague sense of surprise. At the moment e-cigarettes ranked low on her list of punishable offenses. She closed the drawer and made a search of the floor and closet. “No backpack,” she said. “She has her laptop.”
Tank stood in the doorway, biting his lip. “We should really go.”
“Not yet.”
Mary pushed past him and went downstairs. She took a seat at her work alcove and double-clicked on the search bar. “Don’t,” said Tank. “They see everything.”
“I don’t care,” said Mary as she logged onto the UT website. “I’ve got to find Jess. I don’t have time to play their games.”
In a few seconds she’d pulled up a course description and syllabus of Jessie’s summer school class. The professor’s name stood at the top, along with his office address and phone numbers. Below was similar information for his teaching assistant, Linus Jankowski, PhD from MIT, with a concentration in artificial intelligence and game theory.
The call to his mobile number went to voicemail. “Mr. Jankowski, this is Mary Grant. I understand that my daughter may have visited you earlier this evening. It’s almost one a.m. and she isn’t home yet. If you’ve seen her or have any idea where she might be, please call me at this number. Don’t worry about the time. I’ll be up. Please consider this an emergency.”
“Mom, where are we going?” asked Grace. “Do I need to get dressed?”
“Where are we going, Mr. Potter?” Mary asked.
“Not sure yet. First let’s get to my car.”
“Just a sec.” Mary pulled up Netflix and selected The Conversation, the movie starring Gene Hackman.
“What’s that for?” asked Grace, mystified by the old movie.
“It’s about someone who secretly listens to people.” Mary looked over her shoulder at Tank. “They should like it.”
“Oh? What happens?”
“The people start secretly listening to him. It drives him crazy.”
71
It was past midnight.
Alone in his office, Ian stood transfixed as Mary Grant came to magnificent three-dimensional holographic life before him. It was not a likeness in the ordinary sense but a rendering of her everyday life as reflected by her online activity, and as such, a far more penetrating portrait of her entire self. In a way it was a new form of art. Da Vinci had mastered perspective. Monet had given them impressionism. Picasso, cubism. Yet no matter the style, the artist was perpetually seeking a glimpse of the subject’s innermost soul. Now Ian had penetrated those secret confines.
He turned in a circle, his face bathed in the eerie glow. He had programmed the malware to log on to each site the Grants visited, in order of frequency. As it did, the tower grew ever taller, while screens appeared behind screens-two, three, four deep-until he stood encircled by a stack of translucent images as tall as himself, extending outward to all corners of the room. It wasn’t science. It was art. He would call it “Cyberrealism.” Accurate to within a digital brushstroke.
Ian sipped from his tea as his eyes ran up and down the screens. He was looking for ways in, seeking his victim’s most vulnerable spot. It was a question not of too few but of too many. Where to start?
Banking? He had unfettered access to her accounts and could do with her money as he pleased. Credit cards? It would take only a few purchases to push her over the limit. Social media? An unsavory message, a wildly offensive post, could destroy her reputation in an hour. His eyes flitted from one screen to the next, but when they stopped, it was not at a website for a bank, a credit card company, or a social media site but on an icon for a photo app.
He raised a hand toward the image, only to lower it a moment later, his fingertips tingling as if shocked. Not yet. Pictures were for dessert.
A turn of the head and he landed on Mary’s e-mail account. He touched the screen and brought up all new mail. Most messages were from friends expressing condolences. He read a few, moved to older messages, skipping back in time, unsure what he was looking for.
He continued scanning past messages from family, friends, banks, schools, until his attention came to a halt at the word Hazelden. The mail was addressed to JS Grant and cc’d to Mary. Ian opened it immediately. It was a personal communication from the world-famous hospital informing its former patient, Joseph S. Grant, that he was delinquent on his payments and asking when he would settle the balance due for his stay three years earlier.