Take One With You (10 page)

It was the NSA that discovered Rodney Oscar Thomas was actually Rodrigo Umberto Espinosa, the man responsible for so many deaths and long assumed to have met his own years before.

The FBI initially thought the murder so strange that it warranted a special investigation, particularly because the killer had familial ties to a known domestic terrorist, but it took a FISA court search warrant, a little old woman in Spain with Alzheimer’s, and a single newspaper clipping over two decades old to complete the final piece of the puzzle, and it made headlines all over the world.

Later on, when the journals of Melissa Williamson were discovered some time after her death, proof of the connection was made to Jesus Two Bears, who became known publicly as the TOWY Pioneer.

It would also be the NSA that eventually connected them all to Charlie and Sarah, but that information was also kept classified until it was leaked by a disgruntled employee who fancied himself an Edward Snowden but ended up more like a tabloid version of Dan Brown.

The person who made all the connections before anyone, however, was Sarah.

***

u did what?

Sarah stared at the pm for a moment. She had to smile. Charlie never abbreviated unless he was really mad.

its good to see u hvnt chngd, chikless

She immediately regretted hitting send in light of what had happened and what she’d done, but there was no taking it back.

sorr
y

Sarah waited. No response.
Fuck.

“Come on, Charlie, I said I was sorry.”

After the online disappearance o
f
clairebea
r
, Sarah had hacked into her login information on one of the message boards, which had led to her email address. From there, Sarah retrieved her private information, address, Facebook, and the like, and that was how she foundout tha
t
clairebea
r
was the same girl who’d been killed in the horrific motorcycle accident with the man who’d killed her sister. It had been a local story, an oddity that had somehow gotten overlooked by national news sites due to a foiled homegrown terrorist bomb plot in Detroit the very same week.

When she looked further, she found the amazing exchange with Jesus Two Bears.

I can’t believe you wrote that.

Looks like he calmed down. Perfect grammar.

call me we need to talk

A moment later, Sarah’s phone rang.

“I can’t believe you hacked her,” Charlie said before she could even say hello, but it was obvious he wanted to know what she’d found out, and Sarah was eager to share. She told him everything, from her private conversations with the girl they now knew to be Melissa to what had happened with her sister to what Jesus Two Bears had apparently done.

“What, you mean you haven’t hacked him yet?” Charlie asked.

Sarah paused. “I thought I should talk to you, first.”

“I’m not your dad,” he answered, and like Sarah and her “chikless” textabout the death and subsequent hacking o
f
clairebea
r
, he immediately regretted his choice of words.

Sarah didn’t wait for him to apologize, but immediately jumped in to save him.

“Dude, this is what we talked about.”

Charlie went silent. They had indeed discussed such things, mostly in the context of his anger towards both his stepfather and his mother, the former for driving her to suicide, and the latter for not taking him along for the ride. It was amazing to them both tha
t
clairebea
r
,
who had seemed so shy and reserved online, had actually done such a thing.

She had not wasted her death.

During the time of his estrangement from Sarah, Charlie had had many heart-to-hearts online wit
h
clairebea
r
and revealed a lot more of his inner thoughts than he had with anyone else since his mother. Even Sarah.

Charlie had considered Sarah a kind of touchstone in his life, one of those people you meet who change you in ways most others don’t. Fundamental ways.

He had been very depressed over his relationship with his mother and what he perceived as her inability to see what Brad had done to their lives, but Sarah had snapped him out of that. She had truly affected him. Changed the course of his life.

That was why, even though he initially lashed out at her after his mother’s death, Charlie could no more divorce Sarah from his life than he could his mom. They were
intertwined,
he confided in Sarah. Connected to each other.

“You’ll find that, too,”
he’d assure
d
clairebea
r
.
“Something or someone that’ll wake you up like a cold slap in the face. Someone that changes everything.”

Neither Charlie nor Sarah said anything for a moment. It was obvious they were both thinking along the same lines, although Charlie’s thoughts were laced with guilt that he had helpe
d
clairebea
r
to her death, somehow. He had discussed his dream where his Mom took Brad with her, but also about being woken up.

It looked like this Jesus guy had woken her up, all right. And they were damn sure connected. Briefly in life, forever in death.

Sarah felt guilty as well, thinking back to her suggestion of the tattoo. She’d gotten the idea from her father’s last text to her, but she regretted that now. He would not have wanted to be connected to what they’d done in any way.

It was something she’d just have to live with.

Finally, Charlie spoke.

“First off, let’s stop calling her Clairebear,” he said, and Sarah agreed. They were both in awe of what she’d done and how she’d done it. Far from being a cowardly act, hers had been one they both felt exhibited great courage.

“Unless it’s an emergency, or something,” Sarah said, more because it popped into her head than from any sort of prescience.

“Agreed,” Charlie said. “Melissa from now on.” He paused. “It’s good to talk to you again, Sarah.”

“You too, Charlie.”

“So tell me again why you haven’t hacked Jesus?”

Sarah smiled and listened as Charlie talked about his idea. She didn’t tell him that she had already been all through the email account of Jesus Two Bears, and was waiting for the media to catch up. The connection to El Culo had either been discovered and kept secret, or had not yet been found. Either way, there was no sense in going off half-cocked.

Anyway, she wanted to let Charlie vent a little. He seemed to need it. Plus, he was on a roll with this idea. She even liked the acronym. T.O.W.Y.

Had a nice ring to it.

***

Speaking of acronyms, while Charlie and Sarah batted around their idea for a movement to help rid their community of people like El Culo and Big Max, a low level NSA employee in Utah at the newly opened ICCNCIDC, or
Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, had found some recent activity connected to a murder-suicide with an interesting domestic terrorism angle.

He walked it down to his supervisor on his bi-hourly fifteen. Fred Dean liked to see his boss’ face when he solo’d because he never knew when he was getting an eye roll, otherwise.

“What’s up, Freddie?”

“Got something to run by you,” he grinned. “On the QT.”

His supervisor rolled his eyes. Freddie was always using phrases like that.
Twenty-three and he sounds like some bad 50’s detective show.
“Go ahead,” he said. Freddy annoyed him, to be honest.

Freddie hated when his supervisor rolled his eyes at him, which he did quite often, which was why Freddie always bothered him in person if he was able, which only further increased the likelihood of an eye-roll, which only further led to the annoyance of them both.

Such was American bureaucracy, even at the NSA.

When Freddie was through explaining what he’d found, his supervisor rolled his eyes and asked him a few questions.

“How’d we get the woman in Spain?”

“FISA, sir.”

“And that got this…Asshole character?”

“The Asshole of Arica, yes sir.”

“Who’s dead.”

“Yes sir.”

“But you think someone may be…what?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” Freddie said excitedly, and sat down in the chair across his supervisor’s desk, completely missing the expression on his boss’ face as he did so. “But I think I should keep an eye on things in case there’s any funny business.”

Jesus. Funny business.
The supervisor rolled his eyes again. “How much time we got on the warrant?”

“Another ninety days, renewable, sir.”

The supervisor leaned back in his chair and looked at Freddie.
What a load. No wonder we’re getting bum-fucked by Congress, our interns are dumber’n theirs.

But if he told Freddie to “keep an eye on it,” what did that even mean? And if it kept him out of his office for three months, it would be well worth the trouble if he was questioned about it.
No, sir, he had an interesting idea and I just told him to keep an eye on it for the duration of our access. Nothing more.

“Keep an eye on it, Freddie,” he said, and damned if the kid didn’t almost leap right out of his chair.
I transfer in two months anyway.

“You won’t be sorry, sir!” Freddie said, and was out the door even before his supervisor could even roll his eyes.
Kid almost saluted me.

***

Charlie and Sarah decided to start with a small website, very unobtrusive, and put out some anonymous feelers in places likely to be frequented, either virtually or personally, by people who were terminally ill. That seemed like a good place to start, with people who were going to die anyway. Before soliciting anyone suicidal.

In spite of his hatred for his stepfather, Charlie’s mother had not been sick, only depressed, and Charlie wanted to be very careful with people like her. He knew, in spite of everything, that had his mother been able to kick the prescription drugs, she might have found the strength to divorce his stepfather and change her life for the better, and he would never want to deny someone like that their possible happiness.

That was the reason he had considered suicide himself, because he felt like he failed her. He didn’t want to fail anyone else.

But his hatred for Brad was a powerful motivator. Hatred always was.

Sarah wanted to move more quickly, and she made her views known with typical aplomb. “Shit or get off the pot, dude.”

“I see why everyone thinks you’re such a pain in the ass,” Charlie said, and Sarah laughed until she cried. Her father had always called her that, his little pain in the keister, cleaning it up when she was a child and using the unexpurgated version as a term of endearment as she grew older. Charlie could hear her sniffling over the phone.

“You miss him, huh?”

“Don’t you?”

They were both quiet again.

“I want to see you,” Charlie said.

“I…wasn’t sure if you ever would again,” she said, leaving unspoken what happened the last time they had met in person, a meeting she had insisted on.

“Are you kidding?” he asked, incredulous. “We’re like, connected, dude.” Charlie thought Sarah was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and added shyly, “Plus you’re totally out of my league.”

There was silence on the line and Charlie wasn’t sure if he’d made a mistake. In spite of everything they’d shared, he was still very much a typical teenage boy, awkward and unsure about almost every word around a pretty girl.

Please say something, say anything, just say something.

“What, you thought you were gonna get some?”

They both laughed, Charlie not quite as heartily as she, and Sarah told him she’d come by the following week. She didn’t tell Charlie, but she’d already had idle thoughts of renting an apartment near him. There was a small portion of her inheritance available to her, and she was nineteen now, so why the hell not? Her mother was grieving by spending time with her father’s former chief of staff, so they were getting along even worse than before. Charlie was just about the only person she knew who could make her smile anymore.

“It’ll be really good to see you, C,” she said, and hung up.

Charlie sat looking at his phone. She shortened his name, which was a very familiar thing to do. A tiny little thing, but he thought it could mean something. And she joked about having sex with him, too.
I think.

“Fuckin’ A!” he shouted, and flopped backwards on his bed.

The door opened, and Brad stepped in. “How you doing, Sport?” he asked, in that typically fake, obsequious, used-car salesman type way he had.

“Why?”

“I heard you yelling.”