She seems to be in no hurry to call 911.
And she’s wearing blue latex gloves.
Both of which mean that I’m fucked.
Slipping the pistol into her back pocket and picking up the Taser, she returns to where I’m sitting on the floor. The pain from the electric jolt remains.
The woman is large and formidable. Her gaze is focused and cold.
She looks me over clinically. “First. Anyone else?”
“Here? Tonight?” It’s never occurred to me to make a Visit with a partner. It’s an odd thought. “No.”
“Downstairs, anywhere?”
I repeat the word.
“Who’re you with?”
“With?”
She snaps: “Work for, your employer?”
“Nobody.”
The woman aims the Taser at my groin.
“Wait!”
“Who?”
“No one! Really. I swear.” The pain was astonishing. I don’t want it to happen again.
She considers. And after a moment she seems to decide to believe me.
“The agenda? Burglary? Rape?”
I remain mum.
Her look conveys impatience and I suppose there’s no point in being coy.
“It’s what I do. I break into homes.”
“Obviously. I asked why.”
There’s a question for you. “Because I need to.”
Picking up my brass knife, she studies it. Her unattractive, though magnetic, face is intrigued. She puts the knife down.
“Why here? Why me? Give me answers or you’re dead.”
“Because of who you are: Verum, the conspiracy poster.”
She blinks in utter shock. “You know that?”
I nod.
“And you came here to kill me.”
I debate and, after a moment, tell her the truth. “That’s right.”
Curiously, she smiles. She taps my wallet. “Your name, it’s unusual.”
“I just go by Greg.”
“Nice to meet you, Greg,” she said with a chill, wry smile. “My name’s Joanna Whittaker.”
60
This young man was, it seemed, a content moderator for a video upload platform, one that Joanna used regularly for the Verum posts, ViewNow.
It was a poor man’s YouTube.
“So you’re the one who deletes them, right?”
He winced and gave her a perplexed look. “Your posts’re lies, conspiracy theories, nonsense. The Hidden want to start a new civil war? They’re infiltrating the schools, they’re subverting religion, the voting process. You slander politicians and celebrities and CEOs. ‘Say your prayers and stay prepared’? You don’t think some bad things could come from posting that? They breach our community standards.”
“But deleting them wasn’t enough for you. They offended you and you wanted to kill me.”
Now he laughed. “Those are my company’s standards. Personally? I couldn’t care less what you say.”
“Then why?”
His thin shoulders rise and fall. “The challenge.”
“Explain.”
“You have an EverStrong deadbolt, SPC alarm. I’ve never cracked them before. And then there’s the precaution you took to keep from being recognized. It was like waving a red flag at me. You took down all the pictures from the walls when you posted. The videos are ninety-nine percent pixelated. You use voice distortion. I tracked through one proxy but got stalled in Bulgaria.”
“Then how?”
“You claim you’re in California — to lead people off, I’m sure.”
A nod.
“But in one of your early posts you left the curtain open. I got a screen shot of the view outside the window — the harbor. I could see the New Jersey waterfront. I checked out angles of sight. You had to be in Battery Park. I could also see the brass topper of a flagpole about even with your window. I wandered around the neighborhood and found it — on top of a government building two hundred feet in the air. That meant you were about on the twentieth floor. Only one building near here is that tall and has that view — this one.”
“But—”
“In one of your posts I saw a blue Coach backpack on the floor.”
Joanna glanced to where that very backpack, a present from her fiancé, now sat. She wasn’t happy at her lapse.
“I just waited in the lobby a couple of nights until I saw you with the backpack. Then I followed you up here. I was dressed like a repairman. You looked at me once and didn’t pay any attention.”
She thought back and had a vague recollection of someone — perhaps.
“I saw your locks and the sign: ‘Protected by SPS Security.’ That’s a bad idea, by the way.”
“That explains why you wanted to break in. Why did you want to kill me?”
He considered this for a lengthy moment. “I needed to,” he repeated.
“Where are the police on all of your... activities?”
“I’ve only done it a half-dozen times. I imagine some people’ve called nine one one, when they realize I’ve broken in. But I’m always very, very careful.” He held up his hands, encased in gloves, and Joanna noted the stocking cap.
“Does anyone know you’re here? Anyone on earth?” She asked this sternly, the tone that sent shivers down the spines of the interviewees when she was a reporter and now of her underlings at the Whittaker charity.
“No.”
“There’s a security camera downstairs.”
“Not the service entrance. Stupid in a building like this.”
She told Greg, “I could kill you and nobody would blink. Or I could call the police.”
“You could. Most people would.”
“But I think there’s another way to handle this, Greg. Something that’ll work for both of us. You’ll stay alive and out of prison.” She looked at him levelly. “But listen to me. I own you. If you don’t do what I tell you, exactly, if you say anything about what I’m going to tell you, there will be... consequences.”
For some reason, he blanched at the word.
“I’ve uploaded everything about you to a secure server and sent instructions to a third party.” She nodded to the wallet. “I’m a very wealthy woman and as Verum you know how many followers I have. They’re fiercely loyal and more than a little rabid. If anything were to happen to me, they will find you and kill you...” Her voice faded as she had another thought. “No, not kill.” She smiled coldly. “You live to pick locks? Well, betray me and you won’t be doing any more of that, with both your hands mangled, and a few fingers removed.”
His eyes widened in horror. He nodded.
“But get this thing for me right and you’ll be free to go on with your life.” She tilted her head and brushed the dark hair from her face. “However sick it is.” She considered. “I don’t need to sweeten the pot. But I will. You’ll get a half million dollars in cash. Because you’ll need to move out of the area afterward. Far out of the area.”
“And what is it that you want me to do?”
What indeed? she wondered.
Joanna walked to the bar. She poured a single malt — Lagavulin, very smoky — and taking the weapons in her other hand walked out onto the patio. She swiveled the rocker so she could see both the harbor and her prisoner.
Is it possible? Could this really work?
Joanna had been wrestling with the problem: the old bastard, Averell Whittaker, had been struck by conscience and was going to shut down the entire empire, which her father had worked himself to death building.
Joanna detested her uncle. His treatment of his family ranged from condescending to indifferent to cruel. When it was clear that Mary Whittaker, his wife, had only a day or two to live, he devoted every minute to negotiating the deal for the purchase of the TV station that would become the WMG channel.