In other words, fuck all.
I’ve been interviewed—again—by everyone. So has Ryan. So has Miranda, who was finally taken away in tears. The entire studio has been shut down. New specialists from every agency are combing through the network and all the data from the phone call between Tabby and S?ren, trying to find anything new.
And I’m losing my fucking mind.
“It’s gonna be okay, brother. We’re gonna figure it out,” says Ryan, watching me with worried eyes as I stalk clockwise around and around Tabby’s computer station like a maniac with a severe case of OCD.
“What are we missing?” I ask for the hundredth time, dragging my hands through my hair. “We have to be missing something! She can’t just be gone!”
Agent Chan, sitting despondently at the next station over, says, “It appears that’s exactly the case.”
I swing around and glare at him. Ryan mutters, “Great job, Chan. Wind him up a little more, why don’t you.”
“I’m sorry, but if there were any clue as to her whereabouts, we’d have it by now.” More quietly, he adds, “He thought of everything.”
“No. I won’t allow it,” I snarl, making another circle around the desk. “I won’t allow him to just take her like this. I won’t allow him to win. I will not allow him to—”
Tabby’s computer emits a soft, electronic ding.
I abruptly stop and stare down at it. All three monitors are dark, but I know I heard a noise.
Ryan says, “I heard it too. Sounded like an incoming email or something.”
Chan suggests, “Toggle the mouse.”
I reach down and poke the wireless mouse. The screen in the middle lights up, turning from black to blue. In the center of the screen is a big 3-D picture of the earth, slowly rotating.
“What the fuck?”
Chan rises, comes over to stand beside me. “There’s a password box.”
The three of us stare at the planet and the box beneath it with the flashing cursor inside like it’s Lazarus, risen from the dead.
“That’s not an email program,” I say. “That’s Google Earth.”
Chan nods. “Modified to remove all the noise of the home page, but yes. That is indeed Google Earth.”
Ding goes the earth, patiently waiting, making its gentle turn.
Ryan says, “Well, the obvious thing is to enter a password, see what happens.”
“But which password?” muses Chan, frowning. “From what I know of Miss West, she’d keep the security extremely tight on her personal computer. I’d bet good money you’ve got only one or two chances to enter the correct password and then the system will self-destruct.”
“Mission Impossible style,” says Ryan. “Cool.”
“Not cool!” I feel like a pallet of bricks has been dropped on my stomach. “There’s no way to know what password she’d choose!”
Ryan eyeballs me. “Well, brother, if anyone would know, it would be you.”
Another cheerful ding sounds. I mutter, “Shit. Chan, didn’t you need her password to extract the data from the traceback?”
Chan shakes his head. “No. Her system was up and set to safe mode when we went in. What about Hello Kitty?”
“Yeah,” I answer immediately, nodding. But then I shake my head. “No. Too obvious.”
Stroking his goatee, Ryan suggests, “Pussy Riot?”
When I send him a sideways glare, he says, “I’m just sayin’.”
Chan cups his chin and taps his fingers on his cheek, staring at the screen in concentration. “Do you know her birthday?”
“She’d never use that. Think outside the box. Think like…like a brilliant, eccentric, independent, sarcastic female.”
Ryan repeats, “Pussy Riot.”
“It’s not fucking Pussy Riot, all right!”
“How do you know?”
“I just know! It would be something more esoteric, something only she’d know, something that was kind of a joke…”
When I trail off into stunned silence, Chan asks, “What?”
Goose bumps erupt on my arms. “An inside joke,” I whisper. I stare at the screen, remembering.
“It should be something no one else would recognize. Our little code word, don’t you think? Something that won’t give it away if you accidentally slip and say it in front of anyone else.”
Hope rises inside me like a phoenix from the ashes.
I lean over, straighten the keyboard, and slowly, with the utmost care, type in the letters L-O-A-T-H-E.
The password box vanishes. The earth gets bigger and starts to move in double-time, spinning from Africa to North America, and then flies northwest of Canada and zooms down onto Alaska, closer and closer until within several swift seconds, we’re staring at a satellite image of…nothing.
“What’re we lookin’ at?” asks Ryan. “It’s all pixelated.”
“Zoom out a little,” suggests Chan.