“Don’t you trust me?”
He groans. This question comes from Boy Scouts, when I rowed us into rapids he wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t expecting them either, but I was slow to admit it. When you know someone long enough, all your history turns into jokes.
I say, “I just need to know. If you call up a burner, is there a way to trace the location of the person who picks up?”
“If you’re the NSA. Not if you’re you.” He rubs his palms together. “That was easy.”
This gives rise to Plan B.
Calvin runs his hand through his hair. “Six years of El Pueblo, and all you want is to get As, beat Barrons at everything, and leave for Mercer in a blaze of glory. Now you’re gone before graduation. You like cars, but you’re driving Don’s thing. Your mother’s a prosecutor, but you want me to show you how to put illegal spyware in a girl’s computer? And of course this has nothing to do with the mysterious errand for Don. One more time, why do you want this?”
“Maybe I’m stalking a girl.”
Calvin gapes. “Sorry, man. You have to give me more than that.”
“Maybe I’m obsessed with her. Maybe I want to read every e-mail she gets and every word she writes back.”
“Doable but illegal.”
“Like tapping into Courtney Gan’s computer?” Courtney is Monica’s older sister, who has bigger everything but no appreciation of smart guys. Calvin wanted her first, explaining the four days of cyber-intrusion. It took him two years to figure out that Monica was the self-proclaimed nerd of his dreams. “Show me how you did that.”
“That was ninth grade,” Calvin says. “Gerhard found out. I’ve reformed.” Gerhard has a long history of busting us.
“And I need to keep the ID.”
“You need it? It’s about to be summer. I need the ID.”
“Who signed your notes?” Calvin is at war with our second-period math teacher. He won’t turn in the homework, which he claims is a waste of time. He got a string of before-school detentions with parental sign-off notes—hence the forgery by yours truly.
I might be a solid citizen, but I’m loyal.
“You need it for how long?”
“Give me a break. I’m hitting the road in the Thing. What if I need a beer?”
“Maybe you should call off your plan. I hear they have beer at senior night. You should come.”
“I hear your mother thinks you’ve been handing in homework all year. Are you going to help me or what?”
Calvin draws diagrams and demonstrates how to use spyware to get into Olivia’s computer for the next three hours. “You get her to download an attachment,” he says. “Make her think it’s a coupon or an invitation or something.”
Once I infiltrate Olivia’s computer, I’ll see everything that comes in or out, every stroke of her keyboard. If Nicolette contacts her from another computer, I’ll see every word and emoticon and link Nicolette sends.
Getting the IP address of Nicolette’s computer is trickier. I have to get her to click on a dummy website, followed by a series of moves I didn’t know existed. But if I do this right, I can get the physical location of Nicolette’s computer, leading me to the location of the back of Nicolette’s murderous, throat-slashing head.
I flip through my notes, most of which were drafted by Calvin when my speed of comprehension was slower than his speed of explanation.
“Could you go through this again, right here?”
Calvin looks at me as if I were a moron.
“Jesus, were you asleep in comp sci?”
But he explains. It’s all in there, my step-by-step guide to tracking Nicolette with marginally legal technology.
Calvin takes hold of my upper arm. He has a wrestler’s grip. “Why are you doing this? The truth.”
“I have to find this girl. Before she gets hurt.”
“Don?”
“What do you think? I have to get to her before . . . anyone else does.”
I watch the light bulb click on in his head. “You have to find her to warn her?”
This is so plausible and benign. Hell, maybe it’s what I’m doing. Either way, she disappears right after I find her. “Something like that.”
Calvin likes answers. Now that he has one, he’s happy again. He says, “May the force be with you.” He throws in a Vulcan blessing to cover all bases.
It doesn’t work. I haven’t even turned the key in the ignition of the shitmobile when a call comes in with an area code that’s probably Helsinki.
There’s static. Then Don says, “Shut up. This isn’t me.”
My first instinct is to toss the phone and floor the car.
My mother told Don that if he got a contraband phone—like half the other prisoners in Nevada who don’t mind jeopardizing their release dates—it was the end of his cigarettes. But apparently, to torment me, it was worth the risk.
“What do you want?”
“Is that what you say to your brother who’s doing you a favor?”
“What favor?”