“Not even you?” Sandra asked.
Ruskin hesitated. “I was... one of the few that she trusted with that, yes.”
“So would she have done those new protocols for today — would she have done them here?”
“Yes. She’d have had to. She had her computer with her. In that pitiful green room you set up.”
“Really?” Sandra sneered. “You want to complain about the green room now?”
Ruskin looked away again.
“There must be some way these ransomware hackers could get into the system, from Russia or wherever.”
Ruskin slowly shook his head. “I don’t see how.”
Sandra sighed with exasperation. “Except someone did do it.” An idea occurred to her. “What if someone didn’t hack in?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if it wasn’t from the outside? What if it was someone here? Someone who had access to her computer?”
Ruskin blinked. “I... I don’t see how that could be accomplished.”
Sandra frowned. “Are you just pretending to be dumb?”
He did a silent harrumph. “Excuse me?”
“All these media types here today. What if it was one of them? How long would someone need to be at her computer to get or steal or download this protocol shit? Like with one of those sticks? Plug it in, download everything really fast. How long would that take?”
“Not long,” Ruskin said. “But I didn’t see anyone sneaking around back in there who shouldn’t have been.”
“What happened when she got sick?”
Ruskin blinked again. “What?”
“She blamed the coffee. She got sick. She ran to the bathroom. Was that after she’d started up her computer, entered the password for the day?”
“It... it might have been.”
Sandra thought about that. “Someone could have done it then. If they’d put something in the coffee.”
Ruskin nodded slowly. “I suppose it’s... remotely possible.”
“So that’s how it could have happened. Who would have wanted to do it?”
“It’s a long list,” Ruskin said. “Lisa Carver didn’t make a lot of friends on her way up.”
“Who would you put at the top of it?”
“Brandon Kyle,” Ruskin said. “Gandalf’s CEO. But all the major car companies are developing autonomous vehicles. Any one of them would benefit from Arrival’s collapse.”
“Maybe he was here,” Sandra said.
“Kyle? He wouldn’t be caught dead here.”
“If not him, maybe someone working for him.”
Ruskin gave that some thought. “I... I suppose that could be possible.”
Sandra was busy trying to remember something. “I wish I had my damned phone. I could call up the invitation list. You gave me a list of media you wanted to be here. So I got in touch with all of them, and asked them to let me know who they’d be sending today.”
Ruskin nodded impatiently. “So?”
“I had a request from someone. Someone who wasn’t on your list.”
Ruskin sighed. “Not a surprise. There’s always a few like that, who want to be included.”
“But it was just one. I’m trying to think of his name... Stapleton. Something Stapleton. Benjamin, I think. Said he was with... shit, who was it?”
“I don’t see where this is getting us,” Ruskin said.
“Just shut up for a minute,” she said, raising a silencing finger in the air. “I’m trying to remember who he was with.” A pause, then, “Wheel Base. Two words. Wheel Base Trends or Wheel Base dot com. A website.”
She opened up the browser on Lisa Carver’s phone and typed out the company name.
“There isn’t one,” she said. “It doesn’t exist.” She did some more searching, tapping away on the phone’s pop-up keypad. “No website, and no automotive writer named Ben, or Benjamin, Stapleton.” She looked up from the screen. “Shit.”
Ruskin said, “Just because someone snuck in here under a fake name doesn’t mean it was Brandon Kyle, or even someone working on his behalf. Or it could have just been a car nut who wanted to see what was happening. You ever see those spy shots online, photographers who camp out near automotive test facilities, hoping to get pictures of the new models?”
Sandra wasn’t listening. Her thoughts were elsewhere.
“Let’s say that’s what happened, that Brandon Kyle, or someone working for him, pretending to be someone else, crashed the event and found a way to deliver that virus into the Arrival system.”
“Jesus, that’s crazy. I mean, to pull that off, he’d still probably need help. Someone already here. Someone to — if you’re right — make Lisa sick enough to leave her computer unattended.”
Sandra snapped, “Okay, what’s your theory?”
Ruskin said nothing.
“If I’m right, and if we could find that person, and if we scared the shit out of him, wouldn’t he be able to reverse this?”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Ruskin said. “Anyway, help is bound to arrive long before you could find that person and get him to undo this.”
“You believe help’s coming soon? Really? We’re on an island, Ruskin. Nothing gets here in a hurry, and a team with enough hardware to stop a thousand possessed cars is going to take even longer. And just pray the fog doesn’t roll in.” She rolled her eyes. “Maybe you think we should just call Triple-A.”
She turned and strode out of the men’s room, Ruskin in pursuit. In the community center’s main entrance area were several members of the media, phones out, talking and texting to get their stories out. And it also stood to reason they were in here because it was safer than being outside.
“Ben Stapleton!” Sandra shouted. “Is Ben here?”
Several journalists glanced her way, shook their heads.
“I saw him,” someone said.
Sandra turned. A woman wearing a REBECCA GEARY nametag was off in one corner, a phone pressed to her ear.
As Sandra approached, Rebecca said into the phone, “I’ll call you back, honey. Don’t worry, I’m okay, honestly. They haven’t tried to get into the building, at least not yet. I love you, too.”
She lowered the phone and said to Sandra, “My boyfriend. He’s glued to CNN. He’s freaked out.”
Ruskin, standing next to Sandra, asked, “Did he say if help is coming?”
Rebecca nodded. “He mentioned something about Joint Base? Does that make sense?”
“Joint Base Cape Cod,” Sandra said. “Coast guard, National Guard, army, they’re all there. You saw Stapleton?”
The woman nodded. “On the ferry coming over, and just a little while ago I saw him running down toward the road, like he was headed into town. Pretty dumb thing to do if you ask me. So long as those things can’t drive through cinder-block walls, we should be okay in here.”
Sandra said, “Shit.”
That struck her as suspicious behavior. Geary was right. This was a safer place to ride things out. If Stapleton, whoever he really was, had anything to do with this, it made sense that he would try to get away. If she couldn’t find him, she needed someone else with some computer smarts. Ruskin didn’t strike her as up to the challenge.
Then it hit her.
“Joe,” she said.
“What?” Ruskin said.
“Joe Bridgeman,” she said. “The chief of police.”
“Him?” Ruskin said. “The Inspector Clouseau of Garrett Island? I wasn’t exactly impressed. I say we wait for the Joint Base team.”
The Clouseau comment didn’t sit well with Sandra, but she let it go. Hadn’t Joe told her he’d turned his back on high-tech when he decided it would be more fun to wear a badge and catch bad guys?