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chapter 15: The File of Francesca Williams

Jude poured himself a cup of coffee and yawned. He hated mornings almost as much as he hated working weekends, but in breaking his connections to King, he’d indentured himself to at least another year at the Tech Center. He took a sip, mentally filing through his options. App creation was still a choice, but the field was flooded with teenagers. Silicon Valley was booming, but Jude didn’t feel like packing up his entire life to move to the West Coast. That left either going back to school – out of the question given his financial situation – or finding another job. Jude sighed.

Neither interested him.

A door closed down the hallway and Marq came into the kitchen, phone in hand.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, eyes down on his cell phone. “You’re up early.” He lifted his phone to his ear, listening for a few seconds, then dropped it down again, tapping on the screen. “Gotta leave a message, a*shole,” he muttered.

“Everything okay?” Jude asked.

“Some guy left me a bunch of messages about doing some tech work for him.” Marq said. “Didn’t leave me any name or call back number. Just a bunch of hints and heavy breathing.” He snorted with good humour. “People make me crazy.”

It was total Marq to laugh off a crank call. Jude envied the way he was able to just blow things off. The issues that worried most people were no concern to him; he lived for the day. According to Jude’s mother, Marq Lopez was ‘a slacker’, but it was one of the things Jude most liked about his friend. It made Jude feel a little less like one himself.

“Yeah, me too.” Jude sighed. Much as he liked Marq, he still needed to find a new apartment, like yesterday.

“If he ever gets hold of me,” Marq laughed. “I’m gonna quote him a price that’ll f*cking bankrupt him.” He grinned. “I’m done with this small time shit.”

Jude nodded, taking another sip of coffee just as the phone in his pocket rang. The phone number was private.

“Hello?” he said cautiously. He wondered if this was the call he’d been dreading. The one where Luca told him why he wasn’t going to walk away.

“Jude?” a woman gasped. “Jude, is that you?”

Several things ran through his mind. First, that it wasn’t Indigo or his mother. The woman’s voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

“Yeah, this is Jude. Who’s this?”

“Oh thank God it’s you,” she cried. “This is Carol Baird, Elliot’s mother. Jude, Elliot’s been—”

Her voice broke, the sound of muffled sobs filling his ear. Jude staggered sideways, head swimming. He knew this feeling. The moment between knowing something bad was about to happen, and seeing it unfold before your eyes. He’d had the same experience the day his father had died. That day it had been his mother, Elizabeth, on the phone in the school office.

“Mrs. Baird?” Jude said. “What’s going on?”

“Elliot was attacked,” she cried. “He’s in surgery right now.”

: : : : : : : : : :

Jude sat outside the intensive care unit, his eyes on the tiled floor. They only let two people in at a time, and Elliot’s sister and father were in with him now. Jude would go next, Elliot’s mother assured him. They’d give him time to talk alone. To say what he needed to say.

‘Just in case.’

That caveat was the worst thing about the attack. Though Elliot was getting the utmost in medical care, there was a very real possibility he wasn’t going to survive, and if he did, there’d be a long road to recovery. He hadn’t regained consciousness since the attack and what he’d remember when he woke was anyone’s guess.

For now, progress was being counted in minutes.

Jude ran a hand up the back of his neck, his eyes going to the clock on the wall. It was almost two, and he still hadn’t called work. Hopefully Marq would explain things to Lissa, though knowing him, you never knew. Next to him in the waiting room, Elliot’s mother kept talking, her words intruding into his private thoughts. She was mumbling, half-coherently, her eyes swollen from crying.

“…and they broke all his fingers. Held him down and smashed them one by one. Crushed his trachea too. And cut him up something awful. His tongue, Jude,” she gasped. “My God, his tongue was sliced down the center. He almost bled to death before —”

“Mrs. Baird,” Jude interrupted, stomach tensing. “You don’t have to tell me this.”

Jude’s face flushed, shadows darkening the side of his vision. He couldn’t handle hearing this. Not when it had to do with his best friend.

“Th-They repaired it,” Carol sniffled. “But he’ll have to learn to talk again.” She began to cry. “My poor baby.”

Jude reached out, absently patting her shoulder. He could feel himself sinking, the horror drowning him the way it had when his father had died.

“The police think it’s a warning,” Carol added. “That he did something to anger the mob that—”

“The mob?!?” Jude yelped, pulling his hand away.

“Yes,” she said, wiping her face with a tissue. “They think he got tangled up in some kind of deal that went bad. There were officers in today, interviewing Elliot’s friends.”

Jude bolted from the room before she finished, making it to a washroom down the hall.

“Oh f*ck! Oh f*ck! Oh f*ck!” he groaned.

He leaned against the sink, breathing through his nose until the nausea passed. After a minute, he turned on the cold water, splashing his face. His mind kept replaying one unquestionable truth: he’d caused this.

By the time Jude made it back to the waiting room, Elliot’s mother and sister were sitting at the side, crying, his father nearby. He shook Jude’s hand before leading him back to the hospital room.

Jude stepped inside, eyes on the figure on the bed. Elliot was intubated, the hiss of a respirator filling the room with sound. His eyes were shut, innumerable wires and tubes emerging from various places on his body. Eyes prickling, Jude reached out, his fingers brushing over Elliot’s arm. Elliot’s skin felt waxy, unreal, and the urge to vomit rose again.

“I’m so f*cking sorry, Elliot.”

There was no response.

After a few minutes, Jude stumbled out of the ward, taking the long way around so that he didn’t have to face Elliot’s family. Reaching the main floor of the hospital, he headed out the exit doors, his eyes on the grey afternoon sky. His footsteps crunched on the sidewalk. A thin layer of snow covered the ground; more was falling.

Unexpectedly a voice appeared next to his shoulder.

“You should choose your friends more carefully,” Patel growled.

Jude jumped, but the man had him by the arm, the muzzle of a gun jammed against his ribs. “Now let’s do this the nice way,” Patel snarled, the gun pushing harder. “I’d rather not have to start checking into your other friends.”

“F*ck you!” Jude barked.

He walked stiffly, panic sharpening the details around him. He could see that the shadows in the snow were blue, not grey, as the light from the hospital cut sharp bands down from the windowsills. His breath came in gulps, mind screaming in terror.

“You need to listen, Jude. I don’t want you doing anything stupid,” Patel continued calmly. “Mr. Fischer would like to talk to you. He’s waiting in the car over there.”

Jude glanced around the street, catching sight of Luca waiting next to a black limousine, smirking. Jude turned his attention the other direction, desperate for escape. The alley was too far, the hospital parking lot too empty, not enough people on the sidewalk to make an effective distraction. He felt as if a noose was closing around his neck, tightening until he couldn’t breathe. He tugged slightly, and Patel’s fingers tightened into a claw.

“Be smart, kid, and you might just live to talk about this.”

They reached the car and the back door opened. King sat inside, his coat folded across his lap. The gun jabbed Jude in the ribs again and he stumbled forward, half-climbing, half-crawling into the vehicle. Luca came in behind him, Patel heading up to the front, joining the driver. Jude’s eyes darted this way and that, fear slowing time down until it passed in milliseconds. Luca slid in next to Jude, his arm slung over the back of the seat as if they were good friends. Jude made a whimpering sound, terror a physical force within him.

‘Oh God, Elliot! I’m so f*cking sorry!’

“Luca,” King said. “Could you pass me the folder?”

Luca nodded, reaching for a briefcase on the floor and pulling it onto his lap. He snapped open the buckles, retrieving a large manila folder marked with a red tab. He offered it to King, but he shook his head.

“To Mr. Alden here,” King said, his ringed hand gesturing loosely to Jude.

Luca swivelled, dropping the folder onto Jude’s lap. He stared at it, unmoving.

“This is your next project,” King said tersely. There was no option for refusal.

Jude lifted the cover with one finger, looking inside. Seeing the contents, he felt gravity shift, vertigo threatening to topple him where he sat. There were pictures of people – some taken with long-distance lenses, others pulled from online sites – and on each page were their addresses, and their names.

Claudia Hernandez

Dominic Abrina

Blaine Shands

William Perry

Chan-sook Choi

Lorelei Stokell

Jude’s eyes paused on the last name, blood rushing in his ears. The accompanying photograph showed a petite, dark haired woman in a sharply cut suit. She was posed next to her husband and two teenage sons, a Corgi at her feet.

Francesca Williams

Jude recognized her.

Ms. Williams was the new Police Commissioner. She’d been on the news only days earlier, speaking about the need to crack down on criminal activities in the city, holding the Mayor to his pre-election offers of support. Jude looked back to King, the screaming in his mind incoherent. Random flashes of memory kept intruding in the present: his father with his elbows on the dinner table… Elliot sitting next to Jude on the front steps of the brownstone… Jude sitting in the Dean’s office, his mother sobbing… He blinked, refocusing on the image of Fran Williams.

“W-what is this?”

“You’ve proven you can hack your way into even the most protected computers,” King began. “And I want into these people’s lives.” He smiled coldly. “I want access to all of their private files and documents. I want every secret, every lie, every detail you can find on them.”

“Why?” The question was barely a whisper.

King’s expression flickered with dark humor.

“Oh Jude,” he chuckled. “In light of the recent events with Mr. Baird, I’m not sure you really want me to answer that.”

Jude swallowed convulsively, Elliot’s body, covered in tubes, in his mind’s eye.

“I… I…” Jude wanted to deny him, but he couldn’t make the words come out.

King leaned forward, elbows on knees. This close and Jude could see his face was pockmarked from acne, the olive skin speckled with darker splotches.

“Luca tells me you are having second thoughts,” King grumbled. “That you said ‘no’ the first time he invited you to start this project. Is that true?”

Jude’s eyes darted to Luca. He was smirking. There was no way out of this lie.

“Y-yes, sir,” Jude gasped. “I did.”

“You realize, Mr. Alden, you’ve seen things… found things, no one else has. Now, I’m giving you a business opportunity. You’d better speak up if you can’t do this.” King’s black eyes were bright and angry, ready to attack.

“I… I can do it.”

Luca chuckled, his hand dropping down and slapping Jude, just a little too hard, on his shoulder. Luca reached back into the briefcase, dropping a wrinkled envelope onto Jude’s lap. There was a coffee ring on one side. It was, he realized, the cash he’d refused to take in the Starbucks.

“Good choice, Mr. Alden,” King chuckled. “Because if you’d said no, we would be having a very different kind of conversation right about now.”

: : : : : : : : : :

When Jude disappeared from her life again, Indigo was glad. It gave her time to get her head together. To decide what the hell she wanted to do with him.

Jude being gone gave her perspective.

For the first few days, she sulked and pouted, glad she didn’t have to face him. He had had no right to search for her mother, her mind argued. And even though she’d told him he could, didn’t mean that he should have done it. If Jude had actually showed up for coffee, she would have told him so herself.

One week passed, and then a weekend, and Indigo’s annoyance began to fade. Now she began to wonder why he wasn’t coming to see her. She was indignant that one stupid argument with him was keeping him away. She spent hours playing the conversation with Jude over and over in her mind. Her reaction, Indigo decided, made perfect sense. It didn’t mean she hadn’t looked at her mother’s address on the jump drive. She had. It just meant she’d been surprised.

She would have said that to his face, given a chance.

She saw Marq at the university twice. He waved at her both times, but she ignored him. Jude wasn’t with him. On Friday, she hung around the Student Union, hoping to run into Jude. On Saturday, drunk and reckless, she texted him.

Where’ve you been, J? Keep this up and I’ll be back to saying maybe again.

Jude never texted back.

The next week began. With the semester coming to a close, Indigo began spending all of her free hours in the campus computer lab, finishing up her video project, hoping Jude would come by. But Jude seemed determined to avoid her, driving Indigo’s impatience into infatuation. She lingered near the Tech Department, hoping to run into him, then stopped by O’Reilly’s twice, wondering if he might be there. He wasn’t.

It was like Jude had packed up his life and disappeared.

The next Wednesday, Indigo was sitting in the Student Union having coffee by herself when Cal Woodrow unexpectedly appeared, pausing next to her table, a pile of books in hand. The two of them made awkward small talk as Indigo searched the crowd for Jude.

She did not want him to see her with Cal again.

“I ran into Cal today,” Indigo told Shireese later that night. “It was a little weird, after what happened, but he was… nice.”

Shireese lifted an eyebrow, not commenting, her eyes on the television

“Cal told me I have an old soul,” Indigo said, half to herself.

Shireese made a choking sound.

“What?” Indigo asked.

“I don’t even want to hear,” Shireese snarled. “Keep your life to yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m sick to death of picking up the pieces for you.”

Indigo was on her feet in seconds, her frustration with Jude’s disappearance, with Cal, and with the f*cked-up mess of her life pouring out in anger at her friend.

“I can handle this!” she shouted. “Trust me!”

Shireese glared at her, but didn’t get off the couch.

“You can’t handle shit! Lookit what you’re doing with Cal. Just ‘cause the paper for the invite’s prettier,” she snarled, “don’t mean it’s a better choice.” Her face was pugnacious, anger in her dark eyes. “Go on! Screw it all up again! But don’t you dare tell me about it!”

“F*ck you!” Indigo bellowed.

Shireese turned back to the television, lifting the remote and increasing the volume to an ear-splitting level as Indigo stormed around the apartment, grabbing items and throwing them into her backpack. She had no idea what she was going to do, but she couldn’t stay here any longer. She pulled on her winter jacket, adding mittens and a hat, slamming the door behind her as she left.

Out on the street, Indigo stood in the ankle-deep snow, her breath rising around her like mist, bits of it freezing in her hair. With a blast of foul language, she started walking toward the subway. She lifted the phone from her pocket, fiddling with the university directory until she located Marq Lopez. The listing didn’t give his apartment number, just the street address. Indigo let out an angry huff, switching to text, and typing out a message with numbed fingertips.

I’m walking to your apartment. Tell me which number it is, or I’m going to start ringing each buzzer until you answer. Not f*cking kidding.

She was almost to the subway station when her pocket buzzed.

Jesus, Indigo! It’s FREEZING out! Where are you? I’ll pick you up.

She let out a sobbing laugh, grinning down at the phone. Suddenly everything felt better.

I’m almost at the subway station. Where are you?

There was a pause.

I’m coming to get you. Wait!

Indigo smirked, sending one last text.

Maybe.

Around her the snow was falling again, the whole city swathed in white. She lifted her face to the sky, closing her eyes as it sifted down onto her skin. For once, she wasn’t going to wait for the guy to come after her; she was going to go and get what she wanted.