Chapter 12
ALEXA
…and waited, and waited, and waited.
I’d just told Nolan that I had his data—surely that warranted a reply? A thank you? Why was he ignoring me? Had I said something to upset him? I read over our last few messages, but nothing jumped out.
So why didn’t he answer? It was daytime in California, and Nolan never slept in the daytime.
No, he slept like the dead at night, and then he got up early, way too early, and made me breakfast. Or at least, he used to.
Now I had Chase, who liked mornings about as much as I did, but he still dragged himself out of bed to hunt me a croissant.
Finally, at two thirty p.m., I did what any other girl in my position would do and tracked Nolan’s phone.
It was true that Ruby had always reminded me about boundaries and how it was important to respect them, and with Nolan I tried, I really did.
But what was the point in having access to all this technology if I didn’t use it?
His phone was sitting in the farmhouse, probably in the kitchen, if I recalled the layout correctly.
Did he not listen to a word I said? I’d told him not to leave his devices unattended.
Wait, what if something had happened to him?
What if he’d fallen in the shower, or tripped and hit his head on one of those marble countertops, or taken a tumble down the stairs?
What if Juno had turned on him? He’d said she was friendly, but I didn’t trust those beasts.
When I was homeless, just minding my own business, scared and trying to get some rest, a psycho thought it would be fun to set his dog on me.
He and his equally demonic buddy laughed the whole time as it ragged on my leg, blood on the sidewalk, me screaming and crying and begging for it to stop.
It didn’t, not until my leg was hamburger.
Eventually, they’d gotten bored and walked off, dragging the fur-coated monster behind them, and I’d taken a cab to the emergency room.
The third cab, actually, because the first two drivers saw the bleeding mess and refused to let me in.
At the hospital, the doctors had treated me, but I’d had to skip out on the bill, and without the money to pay for ongoing care, I’d been left with a hell of a scar.
And I never had managed to find the two psychos, a failing that annoyed me to this day.
Anyhow, dogs were bad news. I brought up the list of satellites I had access to, some legitimately, some in a slightly more roundabout way, and found one that would soon be passing over Northern California.
Come on, come on… I realised I was chewing my hair and spat it out.
It was a habit I’d mostly broken over the years, but when I got stressed, I still did it unconsciously.
I found a fidget toy instead, then sat there pop-pop-popping the plastic until the satellite was in position.
Unfortunately, this particular model didn’t carry CIA-grade imaging equipment, so everything was a little fuzzy.
Those video feeds you saw in the movies?
It was all nonsense. Very few satellites were video-capable, and those that were had nowhere near the clarity you might expect.
A low Earth orbit spy satellite could pick out a licence plate, but not a face.
Facial recognition from that height just wasn’t possible right now.
For the necessary resolution of, say, one millimetre, the Rayleigh equation—that dictated aperture size as a function of wavelength and angular resolution—said the camera aperture would need to be over five thousand feet wide, and nobody was launching a satellite that big.
The science guys who didn’t officially exist were working on a synthetic aperture, but the optical processing wasn’t advanced enough yet, so for now, we were stuck with the blur.
Plus the average LEO satellite was moving at eight thousand miles per hour, so we couldn’t track a person continuously.
You’d need either a whole line of satellites or a high-altitude drone for that, and—
Ah, we were overhead.
The first picture showed the farmhouse, no ambulances outside, thank goodness, but there was a red car that looked suspiciously like Marielle’s Ford compact.
I obtained the title information from the DMV, found a picture of the exact model, and overlaid it.
A match. Dammit. What was she doing there again? How long did decorating even take?
I heard footsteps, then glimpsed a mane of honey-blonde curls.
“Hey, Barbie,” I called. “Could you do me a favour?”
She poked her head around the door to my little basement suite. “Does it involve food or illegal wiretaps?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Then what could you possibly want?”
“I need you to phone this woman”—I jabbed Marielle’s cell number on the screen—“and find out what she’s doing.”
“Like, what she’s doing in general, or right at this moment?”
“Right at this moment.”
“Who is she?”
“Nolan’s ‘interior designer.’” I pulled a face.
“Dare I ask why you’re cyberstalking her? Do you need new drapes? Or are you still head over heels for your ex-roommate and worried he’s having a nooner?”
“I am not head over heels for Nolan de Luca,” I snapped.
“Whatevs.”
“I’m not. I’m just looking out for him, that’s all.”
“Okay, sure.”
“She flits around him like a pesky fly, all pretty and confident and ‘Nolan, let me decorate that for you.’ Ugh.”
“Is decorating a crime?”
“Can you do it or not?”
Barbie sighed and perched on the edge of the desk. “Give me the number.”
Kendall Cummings, aka Barbie, was a top-notch undercover operator. There wasn’t a man, woman, or child she couldn’t bait into falling for her charms. She was also a hotshot sniper, although she rarely combined the two activities. She pasted on a perky smile as she got into character.
“Hey, is this Marielle Marten?”
The phone was on speaker, so I could listen in.
“Yes, yes, forgive me for taking so long to answer—I was in the shower.”
In the shower? At Nolan’s place? And why did she sound out of breath? A chill washed over me.
“Don’t you worry about that. My name’s Kendra, and I was passed your number as the person to call if I needed decorating help.”
“Oh, what an honour, but I’m so much more than just a decorator. I can restyle your entire home from sub-basement to shingle.”
I put two fingers down my throat and gagged.
“Amazing! Well, I moved to Jackson recently, and I’d love to talk over my ideas. Are you free to meet for coffee this afternoon?”
“I’m sorry, I’m busy with a client today, the rest of this week in fact. He’s a prominent local businessman,” she added, just in case an un-prominent local businessman’s money was somehow substandard. “But I’d love to grab lunch with you next week.”
“How about this evening? I’m heading out of town tomorrow morning, and I won’t be back for at least two weeks.”
“I have a dinner date tonight, but the week after next sounds great! I know a lovely little place in Jackson, serves the best sushi you’ll ever eat.”
Doubtful. Had she never heard of Japan? Barbie arranged a meeting she’d never attend and hung up while I paced and popped.
Pop-pop-pop.
“Well, that wasn’t a straight answer,” Barbie said. “But the shower thing…”
“I know.”
“Do we need to have another talk about who makes a legitimate target and who doesn’t? Because dating the hot wine guy is hardly a felony.”
“Spare me the lecture. I do have some morals.”
“Really?”
“Look, I’m sure she’s guilty of something, and I’m going to find out what.”
“You can’t fry her with a curling iron just because she’s dating the man you like.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I snorted for good measure. “Of course I’m not going to fry her with a curling iron.”
Marielle’s hair was poker straight—she probably didn’t even own a curling iron. But a toaster oven might work. Or an air purifier. She seemed like the type of woman who’d have an air purifier.
“Good. Men aren’t worth it, honey. They fuck you, and then they fuck you over. Straight men,” she clarified. “Chase and Marcel are okay.”
“What about Priest?”
“Priest is an asshole with women.”
“How many times has he been married now?”
“Like, six? The Mrs. who hurled the frying pan at him had the right idea.”
“Was she the one who got the car?”
“At least two of them got cars. I actually kind of liked her.”
Priest had a pattern. He got depressed, and then he got drunk, and then he got married.
The marriages never lasted long—anything from a few days to a few months—and then when guilt set in, he gave the girl a generous settlement.
Oh, and he lied about everything. Background, occupation, even his name.
He had a whole-ass fake apartment set up, just in case he felt the need to get hitched again.
Why did he do it? Nobody knew for sure, possibly not even him. Dice said he’d been engaged once, but it didn’t work out, so obviously I’d dug back as far as I could, and I found another rumour. One about Priest and a woman he couldn’t save. And if that was true? Whew, it explained a lot.
But for the moment, he was single, which was a good thing. Unfortunately, Nolan wasn’t.
“Well, I can’t stand Marielle. Bad vibes, you know?”
“What do you know about bad vibes? You sound like my mom.”
“I know plenty. Chase made me go to some weird meditation workshop a couple of months ago, and it was all vibes and chakras and energy flow. And I’ve lost count of the number of times Jez has told me to trust my gut. Are you saying she’s wrong?”
“No, she’s absolutely right. So, you and your gut are going to stay here in Vegas and take cyber shots at Marielle from three hundred and fifty miles away?”
“No, I’m going to Oregon.”
“Oregon?”
“I do have a regular job, you know.”
“Yeah, because regular people accidentally start a billion-dollar tech company as a side hustle.”
“What did you expect me to do? Use someone else’s data centre? What if they accessed my stuff?”
“Judging people by your own standards now?”
“Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘keep your friends close but your enemies closer’?”
Of course I had back doors into everything, but at least I made sure nobody else did.
“Yes, but it seems like you forget that when it’s convenient.”
“Huh?”
“For a genius, you can be really dense sometimes. Marielle is in California. You are not in California.”
I stiffened. “You think I should go back there?”
“Duh.”
“But I’m no good at dealing with that type of stuff in person. That’s why we make a great team, right? I do the coding and you do the social engineering.”
“So you…want me to hook up with Nolan?”
“No!”
“Pack your bags; we leave at eight a.m.”
“But—”
“Trust me, you’ll regret it if you get an invite for the Marten-de Luca wedding.”
Dammit, Barbie knew exactly how to get under my skin, and I hated that.
But I hated the idea of picking out a wedding gift more.
“Fine. I’ll go, okay?”
“Good. Get some sleep.”
* * *
It was almost midnight when Nolan finally replied. By then, I had a dozen suitcases lined up in the hallway at Casa del Gato, Chase was getting his beauty sleep, and one of the Choir’s helicopters was sitting in the backyard, ready to leave in the morning.
Nolan
You managed to unlock it? That’s great! So how does this work? Should I courier your laptop back to you, and you’ll send mine?
Me
Nice of you to finally join the conversation.
Nolan
Sorry, I lost my phone.
He should have asked me. I could have told him exactly where it was.
Me
You realize this app is also installed on your laptop?
Nolan
It is?
Oh yeah. Never noticed that before.
He really didn’t know? Or was it just an excuse for leaving me hanging all afternoon?
Nolan
There’s way more apps on here than I’m used to, and I haven’t worked out what half of them do.
Huh. At least he’d never find the tracking software.
Me
I’ll show you tomorrow.
Nolan
***
Me
We’ll be there mid-morning. Sweet dreams.
When I saw the three dots that meant he was typing a reply, I turned my phone onto silent and placed it face down on the nightstand. See how he liked shouting into the void. Plus he might try to talk me out of coming, and I didn’t need an argument when I was tired.
My mind was made up.
I was going to California, and Marielle could start showering in her own damn house.