The Doubt Factory

By the time everyone had cleared out, it was dark. The FBI people had gone, along with local police and the Secret Service people Dad had summoned through his secure line.

  When Alix asked him about the Secret Service, he just said that some of the people he worked with had clout. When Alix pressed, he gave her an exasperated look and said that there were certain things he wasn’t legally allowed to discuss, which dead-ended the conversation and left Alix feeling somewhat awestruck at how important Dad’s clients actually were.

  Now the only people left were family. They had all gathered around the granite island in the kitchen. Mom was home. She’d given Alix chamomile tea, and Jonah was eating ice cream because no one was in the mood to make him eat something normal. Dad had gotten a beer from the fridge and was drinking it out of the bottle, which Mom almost never let him do.

  At last, they were the only people left.

  Well, the only people in the house, Alix amended.

  The Williams & Crowe “specialists” had disappeared into the woodwork. Some were in a van across the street. More were in the backyard. Lisa had been relieved by a blond guy named Terek. Terek was outside now, smoking a cigarette and watching the street.

  Alix got the impression that there were other Williams & Crowe people lurking around the area as well. She couldn’t decide if that made her feel safer or more afraid. Like her family was huddled inside the house, afraid of the dark, hoping these “specialists” would protect them from… something. Something big and malicious.

  With fangs.

  Like one of the monsters in Jonah’s Xbox games that would jump out and kill when you were least expecting it.

  Alix sipped her chamomile and stared at her family’s reflection in the kitchen windows. She shivered.

  Normally she liked the kitchen. Mom had redesigned it a few years ago, and Dad had gotten Architectural Digest to cover it. There’d been a lot of fuss about hand-forged fixtures and how she’d blended natural textures like bamboo with industrial textures like steel and concrete to make a space that felt both modern and warmly inviting, but Alix’s favorite change had been how Mom had gotten rid of the eastern wall and turned most of it into glass to let in morning light. Every morning, the kitchen and breakfast nook were bathed in sunshine.

  Now, though, the glass reflected their own tense forms, and it was impossible to know who was standing outside. The glass wall that had once made Alix feel so happy suddenly made her feel vulnerable. What was there to stop someone from just taking a hammer and smashing it?

  “So how long do we have the goons?” Jonah asked, scooping ice cream.

  Dad gave him a sharp look. “They’re not goons, and you’ll speak about them with respect. They aren’t here because they want to be; they’re here because I’ve asked them. They’re here to protect you and Alix, and they’ll be here until we understand who this group is and why they’re targeting Alix.”

  “She should be flattered,” Jonah said. “She scares off all the guys at school.”

  Alix smacked him on the arm. “I do not.”

  “Chad Dennison’s scared witless of you. None of the guys will even go near you now.”

  Mom frowned at Alix. “What did you do to Chad?”

  “Nothing he didn’t deserve.”

  “Alix, I play tennis with his mother.”

  Jonah snorted. “Don’t worry. He won’t ever mention it to her.”

  What a brat. Alix couldn’t believe she’d actually been worried about him a few hours ago.

  “How do you know all these people?” Alix asked her father, waving toward where Terek was posted outside the front door.

  “Williams and Crowe? Some of my clients use them.”

  “Use them…”

  “One of their specialties is executive protection.”

  “And executive protection is…”

  “Bodyguarding,” Jonah said. “They’re mercenaries, Alix. Duh.”

  “Mercenaries?” Alix asked, shocked. “You know mercenaries?”

  Dad snorted laughter. “Jonah’s being melodramatic. Some of my clients have investments in places where there is very little or no law enforcement. They need to protect oil platforms from pirates off the coast of Africa, or else they need to keep their CEOs from being kidnapped in Kazakhstan, or they’ve got factories that need security in places like Mexico. And, yes, I suppose that all sounds exciting, but to be honest, it doesn’t have much to do with me at all. Mostly, I’m just lucky that all those companies need PR expertise as much as they need companies like Williams and Crowe. It means that when my family is threatened, I have experienced people who I can call.”

  “Dial-a-Merc,” Jonah enthused. “Cool.”

  Dad shared a look of affectionate exasperation with Alix. “In any case, we’re lucky that we know them, because I don’t know what we’d do if we had to rely just on local law enforcement.”

  Alix couldn’t help but think of the slow response of the rent-a-cops on Seitz’s campus. “So how long will they be with us?” she asked.

  “I doubt it will be too long,” Dad said. “We’re following up leads from the school. Now that we know there’s a connection between that event and you and a couple of other vandalism attempts, the police are more likely to make progress. With the FBI helping, I’m sure a pattern will turn up.”

  “So they’ve done other things that you know about?”

  Dad and Mom exchanged glances, looking pained. “We didn’t want to worry you,” she said. “The boy who was stalking you has done things to some of your father’s clients as well.”

  “I didn’t think it had anything to do with us,” Dad said, looking embarrassed. “I was wrong.”

  “So what does it have to do with us?”

  Dad shook his head, looking both baffled and angry. “I wish I knew. They stole the rats from a lab that specializes in human-safety testing. The most likely explanation is that they’re animal rights activists of some kind.”

  “Fur kills,” Jonah intoned seriously as he reached for the container of Coconut Almond Fudge Chip. “Also, PETA girls are hot.”

  “Jonah,” Mom said warningly.

  “What? I’m just saying that adult-content filters don’t work if you search on PETA.”

  “Don’t antagonize your mother,” Dad said, but Alix could see a slight smile on his face. It made the night suddenly feel normal again: Jonah being a pain, and Mom and Dad trying to get him to settle down. Alix was surprised how much of a relief it was. If she didn’t look at her reflection in the kitchen window, and think about the dark outside that she couldn’t see, she could almost pretend the last couple of days hadn’t happened.

  Jonah finished scraping out the ice-cream container. “So are these bodyguards going to, like, come to school with us and stuff?” he asked.

  Alix smirked, suddenly seeing the upside. “You’ll never be able to cut school now.”

  Jonah glared. “Shut up, Alix. I’ll bet you can’t drive, either.”

  “Dad?” Alix looked over at him, suddenly feeling her freedom and privacy being stripped away. “I can’t drive? Seriously?”

  “It’s just for a little while. You’ll be taken to school and picked up, and we’ll have a specialist in the school as well.”

  “You mean they’re going to be with us every minute of the day?”

  “This isn’t a game, Alix.”

  “How do we know that?” Alix protested. “Maybe it’s nothing. Jonah came home just fine. If they’d wanted him, they could have grabbed him for sure. Maybe this is all nothing!”

  But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. Whoever 2.0 was, and whatever he wanted, he was serious. And he was still out there. As Cynthia had pointed out, he’d gone to a whole lot of trouble if it was for no reason at all.

  So what was the reason?

  Ask your father, 2.0 had said, but Dad seemed almost as confused as everyone else. Dad was supposed to know, and he didn’t.

  Alix stared at her reflection in the glass, hat
ing that somewhere out there 2.0 was plotting and that she couldn’t see what was coming.

  7

  “SHOULDN’T YOU BE ASLEEP?” TANK asked.

  Moses looked up from the video feed at the skinny brown boy standing next to him. Black ringlets framed the kid’s face, and a welding mask was perched atop his head. In one hand he was holding an acetylene torch, and in the other he had a tangle of soldering wire. The boy was so slight that the nickname he’d given himself always felt like a sick joke to Moses, but if the kid wanted to be a Tank, then Moses would make him a Tank.

  “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Moses said. “I had you working all night.”

  “Still too much adrenaline,” Tank said. He pulled out his ever-present inhaler, took a puff, held his breath, and then let it out slowly.

  “You doing okay?” Moses asked.

  “Better than some days, anyway.”

  “You should rest.”

  Tank nodded in agreement but still didn’t move. He eyed the high-def video streaming in.

  “Is that her?”

  Moses glanced over at the video streams. Tiled views of a hypermodern house. Curved rooflines and iron struts and high balconies.

  Alix Banks and her friends were lying out beside a pool in the backyard.

  “I wanted to see how she reacted,” Moses said.

  “And?”

  “They bitched a lot about their cars being searched.”

  Tank shook his head mournfully. “Nothing shakes these people, does it?”

  Moses grinned. “We’re just getting started.”

  “The prank went good, though, right? It did what you wanted?”

  “Yeah, it was tight. You did good.” Moses patted Tank’s shoulder. “You wired that up. You’re like Michelangelo, except with squirt guns and electric pumps.”

  A smile ghosted across Tank’s features at the compliment. “So now what?”

  “I don’t already got you doing enough?” Moses laughed.

  “Metalwork.” Tank shrugged. “It’s not complicated.”

  Moses leaned back and stretched. “Well, right now I’m going to watch and see how they all adjust. See how our old friend Simon Banks reacts. Maybe poke at our girl Alix a little more and see if she does something interesting. I kind of want to see how that father-daughter relationship holds up now that our girl’s got some questions in her head. Once we see how everyone reacts, then we’ll pick our next play.”

  Moses went back to watching the feed. Tank didn’t move.

  Moses looked up. “What?”

  Tank shrugged. “You watch her a lot.”

  “That’s the job,” Moses said.

  “Long as you’re watching her for biz, and not ’cause you’re getting all wrapped up in the target.”

  Moses made a face of irritation. “I’m the one who picked the target.”

  “I’m just sayin’, you’re spending a lot of time looking at a girl.”

  Moses glanced back to the video feeds and the girls beside the pool. The one called Sophie had left, but Alix and Cynthia were still there. “I’m detail-oriented.”

  “Detail-oriented on tight blouses,” Tank said.

  Moses glared. Tank was smart enough to back off. “Sorry,” he muttered, and dropped his welding mask over his face.

  Instant defense. The kid clamming up, putting up his walls. Moses almost felt bad that he’d made Tank close up like that.

  You’re better than what he had before, Moses reminded himself.

  Tank said something else, muffled by the mask. Moses assumed it was another apology.

  Kook wandered into the computer lab. She was drinking something the color of luminescent slime and loaded with stimulants as she got ready for another coding session. Her electric-blue hair stuck out in wild directions, tousled from sleep. As she passed, a wave of sweet herb, seemingly embedded in her skin, wafted over Moses and Tank.

  “Morning,” she mumbled as she stepped over power cables and plug splitters.

  “It’s afternoon.”

  “It’s morning in the Philippines,” Kook said. “That’s all I care about.” She plopped down in front of the computer gear they’d set up for her work.

  Tank said something else from behind his mask.

  “What’s that?” Moses asked.

  Tank pushed up his defense. “I said I’m going to need more money.” He gestured vaguely toward where they’d set up his workshop, waving his wire and torch. “I’m almost out of iron.”

  Moses nodded sourly. They were starting to burn through money now, all of it going faster as pieces fell into place. He needed to plan another cash run soon. Someplace nice and far away that wouldn’t cause any disruptions in the surveillance that they knew was always there, circling overhead, gazing down from cameras in streets, peering over the shoulders of convenience store clerks, and watching from traffic cams, evaluating them all as they moved under suspicious eyes.

  First Rule: You’re always watched.

  Second Rule: See rule one.

  “How’s the coding going?” he called to Kook.

  “Fuckers think they’re smarter than me,” she answered. She was bringing flatscreens to life, twenty-nine-inch monsters casting an ethereal glow across her features, blue and green and red glitter on her eyebrow and nose piercings. A solid wall of monitors ringed her, four huge workstations, filled with tiny windows, strings of code, rotating street views from security cams, the pulsing equalizer beat of her music. Below her desk, open motherboards and fans hummed and glowed, a spiderweb of chips and backup hard drives.

  Kook stuffed in her earbuds and started typing. More task windows opened. Dozens of windows now, long cascades of computer code flowing past under Kook’s command. Her pausing and reading and then going on, comparing chunks, some of it regular computer code—C++, Java, and ancient COBOL—other parts in compiled binary. Kook read it all, immersed in the language of machines. The four blazing monitors around her cast a glow like the flare of a nuclear explosion on her features. She sucked the green slime drink through a straw and rubbed her eyes and stared into the rivers of code. “Fuckers think they know shit,” she muttered.

  “You think you can be ready in time?” Moses pressed.

  “What?” She pulled her earbuds out.

  “Are you going to be ready?”

  “Just got to surf the wave.” She toasted Moses with her toxic drink. “It’ll take me right to shore.”

  Tank snorted. “Yeah, Kook, you keep on surfing, girl. Let us know when you ride that wave in from crazy.”

  “Beat it, Tank. I’m not stoned enough to ignore you, and that’s all that’s keeping me from feeding you to Adam’s rats.”

  Unlike with Moses, Tank didn’t seem to be bothered at all by Kook’s threats. With Moses, a wrong word turned Tank cautious. With Kook, he never flinched.

  “That reminds me,” Tank said. “We’re going to need more rat food. Adam’s complaining about it.”

  “So Adam can put it on the list,” Moses said absently. “He can get it when he’s getting the party supplies.”

  Tank shook his head vigorously. “If you let Adam do it, he’ll buy them gourmet cheese. I thought you said we were supposed to be watching money. Adam will buy them some big wheel of English aged cheddar, and he’ll have us all eating dog food.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll talk to him.” He tried to turn back to the streaming video, but Tank still wasn’t leaving.

  “Is there something else?”

  “I just think you should stop looking at her all the time,” Tank said.

  “I think you should mind your own business,” Moses said, but to his surprise, Tank didn’t back down. The boy’s brow furrowed. He hunched in on himself, but he pressed on anyway.

  “You almost screwed up when you cloned the key card.”

  “How was I supposed to know the headmaster was just going to come after me like that?”

  “How were you supposed to know?” Kook glanced over. “Your uncle woul
d have called that sloppy.”

  “You didn’t hear what that man said to me,” Moses protested.

  “Still put the wrong kind of heat on us,” Kook said.

  “I got the man’s keys cloned, didn’t I?”

  Kook was looking at him now, more seriously. “Sure you did. In the most public and obvious way. It made you stand out. It probably put your face on some camera. And it made you look like a thug. You’re not a thug, and you made yourself look like one.”

  “It’s the target,” Tank said stubbornly. “She’s got him all screwed up.”

  Moses shot him another look. “She does not.”

  Before the argument could continue, Adam came into the computer lab. He was wearing a sports coat and slacks, his hair still wet from the shower. “Do I look rich or what?” He turned in a circle, looking pleased with himself, then stopped when he saw the expressions on everyone else’s faces.

  “What did I do?”

  “What makes you think everything’s about you?” Kook asked.

  “Because I’m a narcissist?”

  Kook snorted. “I’ll give you that.” She jerked her head toward Moses. “We’re talking about Wonderboy getting wrapped up in the target.”

  Adam blew out his breath. “Yeah. That was sloppy with the headmaster.”

  “He let her bite him, too,” Tank said glumly.

  “Are you serious?” Kook looked interested. “You should probably get a rabies shot.”

  “Don’t be nasty,” Moses said. “She doesn’t have rabies.”

  Kook snorted and went back to her coding. “And there you have it. He’s wrapped up in her.”

  “Girls are trouble,” Adam warned. “I try to tell you that.”

  “I’m fine,” Moses said.

  “If you say so. Now, do I look okay to go out in public or not?” He stood straight, grinning, waiting for the approving inspection.

  “You really are a narcissist,” Kook said.

  “I’m a good-looking narcissist,” Adam shot back.

  “You look perfect,” Moses said. “No one will notice you—” He broke off. A white rat was poking its nose out from the pocket of Adam’s jacket. “Uh…” Moses pointed. “Are you planning on taking that with you?”