Predator (14 page)

K
rista had never expected to wind up in a Bass Pro Shop. She pushed through the turnstile at the front of the store, then stood just inside, looking around at the rustic decor and the merchandise that was as foreign to her as an unknown language.

“Can I help you find anything?” the elderly man at the turnstile asked.

“Guns.” The breathiness in her voice embarrassed her. “Where are the guns?”

“Upstairs. Hunting.”

She headed for the stairs. Why did she feel like she was doing something wrong? She’d never planned to own a gun, never wanted to. The thought of all that could go wrong made her heart thud. Things like…forgetting it was loaded and having it go off. Or firing it for target practice, and having it
jam and explode in her hand. What if someone broke in and stole it?

She got to the top of the stairs and looked around. The room was appropriately dark, with rustic walls and low lights. Why did men love having the lights dim? Her father had always loved closing the blinds and watching TV in the dark, while she and her sister loved the light pouring in.

Now she kept the blinds closed too. The killer had snuffed the sunshine out of their home. That was why she needed a gun.

She cut through the hunting clothes and found the area with the rifles and shotguns lined up on the wall. A glass-front counter stood in front of it, with handguns on the glass shelves. She approached it and looked inside, saw dozens of firearms in various shapes, sizes, and prices.

A salesman approached her. “Help you, ma’am?”

“Yes.” She adjusted her purse on her shoulder, then set her hands on the counter. “I’m looking for a pistol. A small one that I could handle. Maybe like this one.” She pointed to one in the glass case.

“So…you want an automatic or a revolver?”

Had he pegged her for an impostor? An ignorant pacifist masquerading as an NRA member? “Oh…sorry. Why don’t you tell me the difference?”

He pulled out a handgun and showed her the cylinder with the holes. So they still had those? She thought they were only in old western movies. He put that one back, and pulled out one with a label that said “Automatic.” He removed the clip and showed her how it was loaded.

“I see.” She stared down at the glass, looking around. “What do you recommend?”

“You’re a beginner,” he said, without a trace of humor in his eyes. Either he’d been trained not to laugh at newbies,
or it was no big deal. “Do you want it for self-defense and target practice?”

No,
she thought,
I want it for hunting down my sister’s killer.
She cleared her throat. “Yes.”

“Some of these have a lot of kick and might not be comfortable for you.”

I don’t care if it’s comfortable,
she thought.
All I need is one shot.

“Clips sometimes jam, unless you clean the gun after you use them. I’d recommend a revolver for you. You’re pretty small.” He pulled another one out. “This is a popular model for women. It’s not very powerful, only a .22, but it’s good for self-defense.”

She took it, hoping he didn’t see the tremor in her hands. It was a little heavier than she expected. But somewhere she’d read that a gun was more stable if it was heavier. She looked at the price. It wouldn’t put her savings account into overdraft. She studied the gun, didn’t even know what to ask. “It says ‘LR.’ What does that mean?”

“Long range. And it’s a six-inch barrel, for more accuracy. Its weight might help you take better aim. And this one here is a double-action. You don’t have to cock it. You just pull the trigger.”

That had to be good, didn’t it? She looked around at the others in the case, glanced at the case next to it, read the tags. There were .357s, .38 Specials, .44 Magnums. She’d heard all those numbers before, but didn’t know what they represented. It overwhelmed her, and she wasn’t in the mood for being overwhelmed.

Quickly, she made a decision. “Okay, I’ll take this one.” She handed it back to him.

“All right. I’ll get the paperwork for you to fill out.”

Dread sank through her. He brought her papers, and
she filled in the blanks. As he called the registration in, she paced in front of the counter. What would the state police know about her? Would they have notations next to her Social Security number, reminding them that her sister was murdered? Would they guess how she planned to use it? What if they turned her down?

But the sales clerk came back and boxed up the gun, shoving the finished paperwork in. Relief flooded through her.

When she finished the purchase, he walked her out, as store policy dictated. She supposed he had to make sure she didn’t snap the bullets in and fire like a maniac.

As if she knew how.

She hoped she could find a firing range, and someone to teach her what in the world she was doing.

When she got home, she went into the quiet house, feeling a bit more empowered as she set her box on the table. Her father wasn’t home, so she sat down and took the gun out of the box. There was a red lock on it, but the salesman had shown her how to remove it. She found the key, took it off.

Her hands were still trembling as she slipped her hand around the grip, her finger in front of the trigger. What had she been thinking? Why would the clerk sell her something so big?

She pushed the slide with her thumb, making the cylinder pop out. She made sure it wasn’t loaded, then popped it back in. Lifting the gun, she aimed at the wall and squeezed the trigger…and squeezed…and squeezed.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She couldn’t pull the trigger. There was too much resistance. She gripped the gun with both hands and squeezed with two fingers. It still resisted, but finally it clicked, pinching her finger.

This was no good. How had she bought a gun she could barely shoot?

She would have to take it back. She rifled through the bag with the box of .22 bullets, and found the receipt.

All Gun Sales Are Final

Great. She sat back in her chair, wondering if a burst of adrenaline would help her shoot if the time came. Target practice would be miserable. Her fingers just weren’t strong enough.

She should have gone to the gym more often.

The thought of finger-calisthenics pulled her thoughts to a halt, and she smiled. She was an idiot. A complete idiot. She started to laugh—soft, breezy laughter, then it turned into hysterical laughter that lost its way in her head, making her fold over the table and lay her forehead against the wood. Tears rose up in her eyes, as gales of hilarity seized her.

Finally, she rounded over the rise of her laughter and slid the slope back down. When the laughter died, her face was wet.

All humor drained from her heart as she stared at the gun. She was stuck with it, and she couldn’t afford another one. It would have to do. She’d practice, and build up the strength in her fingers. She wondered if they had mini barbells made especially for fingers. Somehow, she didn’t find that thought amusing anymore.

She put the gun back in its box, not sure what else to do with it. Gathering the bag with her boxes of ammunition, she took them into her room and hid them on a shelf in her closet. Her dad would be scared to death to know she had a gun, as if she were an eight-year-old girl breaking into the gun cabinet.

Maybe he was right.

But even knowing how hard it was to shoot, she hoped the gun would give any attacker pause. He wouldn’t know she was a limp-fingered beginner. Maybe it would serve its purpose whether she ever fired it or not.

I
an followed Ryan to the Apple Store, and they stood side by side as they ordered new laptops and iPhones. As they waited for their orders, Ian unloaded.

“There’s something not right about this whole thing, man.”

“No, it isn’t right. It’s downright wrong.”

“I don’t mean in a moral sense. I mean in the sense that something smells in Denmark.”

The reference to Hamlet didn’t quite click. “What do you mean?”

“Do you realize how much information that Data-Gather program is collecting? It’s not just advertising stuff, man. It’s schedules, likes and dislikes, habits, connections, of every person on our site. It’s like they’re looking into people’s homes. Only not into their homes. Into their heads. It’s scary.”

“But that’s no surprise. We knew they were doing this for advertisers.”

“The advertisers need to know what time people go to work? What time they get home? What political affiliations they have? What banks they use? What their kids’ names are?
Pictures
of their kids?”

“Data-Gather collects all that?”

“Yeah, man. They have search strings for all that stuff.” A clerk came near them with a customer, showing her the latest notebook computer. Ian lowered his voice. “I don’t think this is just about advertising. I think it’s something else. If this is legal, it’s sure not ethical. And firing me isn’t going to get me off their scent.”

“Ian, if you hack in again, they’ll know,” Ryan whispered. “They’ll have you arrested.”

“Not if I do it right.”

“What do you think you’re gonna find?”

Ian shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe where all this information is really going. What it’s really gonna be used for. Man, we need to get together and figure this out. I’m telling you, something stinketh.”

“Then let’s do it, Hamlet. My house or thine?”

“How ’bout yours? My garbage is probably festering.”

Armed with their new equipment, they went by Ian’s house to get his backup drive, then headed to Ryan’s house.

Though Ryan had the resources to buy much bigger digs when he’d moved to Houston, he’d bought a 1500-square-foot home in a subdivision. The realtor, who’d hoped for a huge commission, had asked him for a wish list for the house of his dreams. At twenty-three, he really didn’t have a dream for a house, so his list included a bedroom, a toilet that flushed, and a microwave oven.

She did better than that, but he rejected all of the mansions before going in. Finally, she humored him with a
new house in a neighborhood close to work. He’d walked through it once before deciding to buy it.

The place was still not furnished, except for his living room and bedroom. The dining room and other two bedrooms sat empty. But he was doing better than Ian, who’d bought one of those mansions but still slept on a mattress on his bedroom floor.

When they unloaded their new laptops, they transferred their files from their backup drives. Because Ian was a backup fanatic, he had backups of his backups. He’d even backed up the code he’d gotten from Willow’s computer on a small external drive he’d kept in his briefcase. While their computers worked on transferring their files, they sent out emails to all of their contacts, letting them know their new phone numbers.

When they finished with that, Ian showed Ryan the code and search strings he’d gotten from Willow’s computers. His friend was right. The amount of data they were gathering about GrapeVyne clients was unwarranted, even for advertising purposes. If something illegal was going on, it might explain their reaction to the breach.

“Do you think they acquired GrapeVyne to help them collect all that data about millions of people?” Ian asked.

Ryan couldn’t believe that was true. “They acquired us because we were worth a lot, and they knew the sky was the limit.”

“I don’t know. There we were, this break-even company, and they swooped in with millions of dollars. For what? Our business model wasn’t that profitable.”

“They saw our potential. And we’ve fulfilled it. We’ve made them a good profit for the last few years, and our membership is growing by twenty-five thousand people a day.”

Ian looked at Ryan. “So tell me again what you saw when you went over there?”

Ryan leaned back and messed up his hair. “An entire floor of servers.”

“So why would they need that? They need it because they’re collecting all this data on millions and millions of people. Don’t you get it?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, just imagine what all that information in the hands of the wrong group could do. It could be given to terrorists, rogue nations, political groups…”

“Where do you get this stuff?”

“I’m telling you, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that this is too much. They fired us over it, Ryan. They weren’t just mad because I overstepped my bounds. They fired us because we were getting too close to the truth.”

Ryan tried to process that. “So what if that’s it? What can we do about it?”

“I’m going to start by finding out everything I can about the board members. What their interests are, where they invest their money, political affiliations, other companies they have interest in.”

“Ian, please don’t be reckless. Don’t hack into any accounts—”

The doorbell rang. What now? Ryan went to the door, looked out through the peephole. Krista Carmichael stood there.

He turned back, saw the laundry on his couch, the shoes on the floor, books and papers everywhere.

“Hold on a minute!” he called as he ran back and scooped up the laundry. “Get your shoes, man. It’s Krista.”

Ian slipped his feet back into his shoes. “What is up with you?”

“I don’t want her to think I’m a pig. She’s never been here before.” He ran into his bedroom and dropped the clothes on his bed. There wasn’t time to clean off his coffee table or straighten papers.

He tried to steady his breathing and opened the door. “Krista!”

She looked distraught. “Ryan, I’m so sorry. I just heard on the news you were fired.”

“It’s on the news?” He motioned her in, then turned on his TV. FOX News had a crawl about him at the bottom of the screen. “Good grief.” He turned to Ian. “Look at this.”

Ian shook his head. “You didn’t think this would go unnoticed, did you?”

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” Krista asked.

“No, it’s not your fault. Krista, this is Ian.”

“You were fired too,” she said in greeting. “This is horrible. If you hadn’t had me come and talk to the board of directors, they wouldn’t have gotten so mad. I never meant for you to lose your jobs. That’s the last thing I wanted.”

“I appreciate that,” Ryan said, “but that’s not really the reason we were fired.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re still trying to regroup,” he said. “It’s not like either of us will go hungry. But since they’re reporting this on cable news, I’m going to be getting interview requests. I just sent the media an email with my updated contact info, and I should be hearing from them soon. The problem is, I’ve been threatened with a hefty lawsuit if I talk to the press about GrapeVyne or Willow, so I can’t. But you can.”

She frowned. “What?”

“You can go to the interviews with me. I’ll say a few things about Internet safety and then turn it over to you. You can say the things I’m legally not allowed to say.”

Ian chuckled. “Way to get revenge. I like it.”

Ryan sighed. “I’m not out for revenge. I just want to make a difference. If I have contract prohibitions, then we have to find another way to alert the public.” He looked at her. “What do you say?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. Television makes me nervous.”

“Krista, people need to hear from you right now. Between the two of us we could really raise awareness. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted?”

She thought about that for a minute, dropped her head down, and looked at her feet. Her silky hair fell over her face, and he fought the urge to sweep it back behind her ear.

“What program would we go on?”

He shrugged. “Take your pick. Probably got my choice here.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow?” he asked. “That would give us enough time to decide what we want to say. We could send those statistics you have ahead for them to put on the screen while we’re talking.”

He saw the conflict on her face, the wheels turning behind her eyes. “I guess I can’t really say no, can I? It’s what I’ve wanted. To educate the public. You’d give me a forum that I would never have by myself.”

“So I’ll get the forum, and you’ll give them the one-two punch.”

Ian cleared his throat. “Are you gonna tell the press what Willow’s doing?”

“I don’t know. I have to think about it.” Ryan gave Krista a self-conscious glance. “So let’s get together tonight and prep for the interviews.”

Ian looked up from his computer, grinning. Ryan wanted to kill him.

“I can’t,” she said. “I have church tonight.”

“On Wednesday night?”

“Yes, it’s our mid-week service. I need to go.”

“You can’t skip just this once?”

She shook her head. “I don’t like to miss. Some of the girls at the teen center come, and I need to be there. It’s only an hour. You could come with me, though, and we could work on the interview afterward.”

Again, Ian shot him a look. Ryan ignored him this time. “Yeah, I can come with you. It’s been a long time since I’ve done church, but I guess it’s like riding a bicycle.”

“What about you, Ian?” Krista said. “Why don’t you come too?”

Ian shook his head. “Can’t. I’m Jewish.”

Ryan grunted. “You are not Jewish! You’re Italian.”

Ian grinned. “I was thinking of converting.”

Krista smiled. “Okay, maybe another time. Ryan, do you want me to pick you up?”

“How about I pick
you
up?”

She looked troubled. “I don’t know. I don’t really want to show up for church in a Jaguar. It would call a lot of attention to us.”

He laughed. “You’re disparaging my car? Ian, did you hear that? She’s disparaging my car.”

Ian grinned. “I knew I liked her.”

Her laugh was like music. “So it starts at six. Why don’t you come to my house at five thirty, and we’ll go in my car?”

“Okay, I’ll be there.”

She started back to the door. “Shalom, Ian.”

Ian laughed as she closed the door behind her. “She’s a doll. You better not blow this date.”

“It’s not a date. It’s church.”

“Church with
her.
It’s a date, man.”

“It’s not a date.” Ryan went to the window and looked out at Krista as she pulled out of the driveway. “She probably sees me as a project. Her latest mission field. Once she gets me in church, she won’t give me the time of day.”

“Do you hear yourself? You’re a millionaire, and you’re worried that this girl won’t like you. Don’t you know we both got better looking the minute we started depositing those checks? She’s probably giddy.”

“She’s not like that. You heard her. She doesn’t even want to be seen in my car.”

Ian chuckled. “Anyway…wish I had some hot chick to get my mind off my unemployment. If you don’t think of her that way, mind if I ask her out?”

“You’d have to give up your dream of converting to Judaism.”

“Can do. So that’s a yes?”

“No,” Ryan said. “That’s a no.”

Ian grinned like a fifth-grader as he went back to his computer. “I don’t blame you, man.”

Ryan wondered what they wore to mid-week services these days. The last thing he wanted to do was embarrass his date.