Being Nikki

Chapter 17
FELIX DIDN’T WASTE ANY TIME. HE TURNED around and headed straight for his computer chair in the center of all his mismatched monitors.   “And her password,” I said, remembering the way Dr. Higgins’s fingers had flown over her keyboard, “is Miss Kitty, one word, all lowercase. ”   “Sweet,” Felix said, typing.   “What,” Steven said, taking a few steps forward so he could see what was coming up on the computer screens flicking before us, “does any of this have to do with my missing mother?”   “It’s just,” I said, “what I had to do in order to get them to look for her. ”   “And we’re men of our word,” Felix said. “Behold. ” He reached for a bunch of papers that had been spitting out of one of his many printers while we’d been standing there, then waved them in the air. “The last known whereabouts of Dolores Howard, also known as Dee Dee, also known as your mom. ”   Steven snatched the pages from Felix’s hand as Christopher came over to watch Felix, who, completely uninterested in any of us anymore, entered the information I’d given him.   “Does it work?” Christopher asked his cousin. “Are we in?”   “Oh, yeah,” Felix said, sounding pleased. “We’re in. ”   “Wait a minute. ” Steven was looking down at the papers in his hands, shuffling through one after another, peering at each one. “This doesn’t say where she is. This just says her Social Security number hasn’t been used to register for any new jobs or credit cards or places to live since she disappeared. ”   “That’s right, buddy. ” Felix’s fingers flew over the keyboards in front of him, while the various monitors flickered with information that, to me, just looked like jumbles of numbers and incomprehensible data.   “But. ” I felt my blood run cold on Steven’s behalf. “Christopher, you said Felix could find her. ”   “Unless she’s dead. ” Christopher didn’t even bother looking over at me. He pointed at one of the computer monitors and said to Felix, “Look. Look at that. ”   “I know,” Felix said.   Lulu crossed the room, her high heels clacking on the cement floor, and came to stand very close beside Steven. Then she reached for his hand, the one that wasn’t holding the pages of information about his mother. She didn’t say anything. She just reached for his hand, then squeezed it.   He didn’t seem to notice.   “So you think his mother is dead?” I demanded. I didn’t mean to sound harsh, but I was angry. Not so much at Felix, because for all his brains, he was just a kid who thought he was a gangster, and didn’t know better. But Christopher. I knew he knew better—he should have been showing more concern for Steven.   But all his attention was completely glued to those stupid slapped-together computer screens. I hadn’t any doubt he was eager to get started on his diabolical scheme to bring down Stark Enterprises and avenge the wrongful death of Em Watts…a girl he had never even bothered to kiss while she was legally alive.   But he could at least have looked over at us. He could at least have said he was sorry. A man’s mother was dead!   “What?” Christopher must have felt the intensity of my gaze, since he finally glanced over. “What are you talking about?”   Felix looked over at us, too.   “Dead?” he echoed. “I didn’t say she was dead. Did I say she was dead? No. No unidentified bodies fitting Dee Dee Howard’s age, description, or dental records have turned up anywhere in the past few weeks in any of the databases I tapped…which was all of them, by the way. ” Felix shrugged as he turned back toward one of his keyboards and started typing again with lightning speed. “It’s possible, of course, that someone corked her and then threw her in a lake somewhere. Floaters don’t usually pop up to the surface until spring when the temperatures rise and the gases in the bodies start the decomposing process—”   “Hey, man,” Christopher said, prodding his cousin in the shoulder. “That’s not cool. ”   Felix shook his head. “Sorry. We know that’s not what happened. ”   I stared at him, not sure if I could start feeling relieved. “We do?”   “We do,” Felix said. “Take a look at page four. ”   Steven quickly flipped through the pages he was holding, until he found the fourth page. “These are my mom’s bank records,” he said, sounding a little incredulous. “How did you—?”   But Felix cut him off before Steven could finish his question. “Check out the withdrawal she made shortly before her last few cell phone calls. ”   “Her cell phone records are here? How…” Steven’s voice trailed off. Then, his eyes widening while he was reading the page in front of him, he looked up at Felix and asked, in a shocked voice, “Nine thousand dollars? She withdrew nine thousand dollars from her savings account before she disappeared? And the police didn’t bother to mention this to me before?”   Felix had already turned back to his keyboard, however.   “When there’s no sign of foul play,” Christopher said, his gaze as riveted to the computer monitors as his cousin’s, “there isn’t exactly a reason for the cops to do a thorough forensic accounting investigation, even if they have the manpower for it, which they don’t, usually. ”   “And it’s pretty common behavior,” Felix added, “for someone heading underground to make large cash withdrawals. You want to go off the grid, you can’t be flashing your Visa around, or using the ATM. They’ll find you in a red-hot second. Whoever your mom’s running from, she doesn’t want to be traced. She’s paying cash for everything. ”   Steven glanced back down at the pages he was holding. “She owns a dog grooming kennel, for God’s sake. She’s never been in trouble with the police—or even the IRS, for that matter—in her life. Who would she be running from?”   “Stark,” Christopher said. He said the word as bleakly as someone else would say the word death.   “Stark?” Steven flung him an incredulous look. “But why?”   “Give us twenty-four hours. ” Christopher nodded at the mishmash of computer screens in front of him. “We’ll find out. ”   “And we’ll bring ’em down!” Felix let out a whoop, not unlike the kind a kid his age would release upon plummeting over the particularly steep summit of a roller coaster.   Only this wasn’t a roller coaster. I doubted Felix had ever been on an actual roller coaster in his life. He just didn’t seem like a roller coaster kind of kid.   Felix raised his left hand for Christopher to high-five. Christopher, however, ignored him. Felix lowered his hand sheepishly.   “So this is what this is all about,” Steven said. He didn’t sound pleased. In fact, he sounded disgusted. “You two are going to hack into their computer system and ‘bring down’ Stark Enterprises?” He looked at me. “You knew about this?”   “That’s what they wanted,” I said. Why was he trying to make me feel bad about my decision? I was helping him. Wasn’t that what he wanted? “In exchange for the information about your mom. A Stark administrative employee user name and password. ”   “Great,” Steven said. He looked down at the papers in his hand. “And we still don’t have the slightest idea where my mom is. ” He looked over at Christopher and Felix. “How can they be so sure she’s even alive? Someone could have held a gun to her head and made her withdraw that nine grand, then dumped her body at the bottom of the lake, like the kid said. ”   “No. ” My voice was soft. “You said she took her dogs with her. If someone took her by force, they would have left the dogs. Christopher’s right. She’s on the run. She has to be. ”   I glanced over at Christopher and Felix, who were not paying even the slightest bit of attention to us anymore, they were so caught up in their world of destruction and—in Christopher’s case, at least—revenge. We didn’t exist to them anymore. Maybe we never had, except for what they could get out of us.   “Let’s just go now,” I said. “Come on. ”   We started toward the staircase, only to see a Stark brand imitation Ugg appear on it. A second later, Aunt Jackie’s voice was calling, as she came down the stairs, “Yoo-hoo! I’ve got those brownies for you! Fresh from the oven! And look who I found outside. Your little friend. She said you all ran off so fast, you left her behind. ”   Following right behind Aunt Jackie, holding a tray full of mugs containing steaming hot chocolate, was my little sister, Frida.