Theaella

31

Dog sat, wagging his tail, staring up at her. She tugged off her sweatshirt and coiled it in the corner beneath a pull-up bar bolted to the wall. A makeshift bed. “Here. Come over here, Dog. Dog, come!”

The dog furrowed his brow, regarding her intently.

She glared at Matthew. “Why’s it tilting its head at me?”

“Dogs are incredibly attuned to their owners. They want to know your mood at all times.”

“I’m not its owner.”

“They watch their owners’ mouths—their teeth—to see if they’re bared. Or smiling. His muzzle blocks his view of the lower half of your face so he’s c*****g his head to clear his field of vision.”

For the first time, she didn’t have a ready answer. “It cares that much how I’m feeling?”

“He does.”

She crouched and patted the sweatshirt. The dog padded over, circled the puddled fabric a few times, and lay down, licking at the raw skin where the duct tape had stripped off his fur.

Theaella rose, cracked her knuckles. “Okay. Did you need something, or were you just dropping by to complicate my life?”

“Without complications life is sterile.”

“Who said that?”

“Confucius.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Who then?”

“Me.”

She rolled her eyes, transforming from a striking young woman to a stubborn kid. A sixteen-year-old could be either, Matthew had learned. Or both at the same time.

“I need you to track an unidentified caller who dialed this phone.” He produced Vincent’s cell phone. “Which will be challenging, given the encryption.”

“Look at you, getting all tech-porny over a Turing.” She snatched it off his palm and disappeared into the circular desk, only the top of her head visible behind the monitors. “It’s built like a tank, sure, and waterproof—cool, I know—but there’s no micro USB, which is their fancypants ultra-secure move—lame, right?—and no headphone jack, like if you’re doing super-encrypted s**t, you don’t wanna jam to—what do people like you listen to? Josh Groban? Michael Bolton?”

“I don’t know who they are, but I sense that’s below the belt.”

From behind the row of monitors, she leaned into sight, shot him a winning smile, then swooped back offstage. More amphetamized typing.

“It sucks for mobile gaming, too—not that you’ve ever played a game in your whole life—I know, I know, ‘Chess is a game’—and it barely achieved a twenty-five hundred rating on Geekbench 3, if you can call that ‘achieved.’” She snorted. “I get that it’s for security, not performance, so whatevs, but still, can’t these people walk and chew gum at the same time?”

Matthew circled to the opening in the desk. “Look, I doubt you’ll be able to uncloak—”

“‘Uncloak’? What is this, Middle Earth? Easy, Gandalf, I just need to grab the IMEI—that’s international mobile equipment identifier for you mouth-breathers in the room.” At this, she directed a pointed look at Matthew and then at the dog, snoozing in the corner. “It’s the fifteen-digit number burned into each phone they use to authenticate you to the network, charge you for minutes, all that. Then I’ll just jump into the maintenance channel of the telco switch and use their SS7 hacks to look up which number texted this IMEI at…” Scrolling through the Turing’s text messages, she c****d her head, not unlike the dog. “Wow. Kama Sutra, huh? Here we go—9:37 last night—and wham. Call detail record, bitches!”

He stared blankly at the wall of numbers on the screen. “So how do I…?”

“Subscriber data’s in another part of the database, dummy.” She tucked back in, fingers blurring. “Lookee here. Your caller’s account is registered to … Three Monkeys Café in Glendale.”

She spun around in her chair, pulling in her knees, a full 360 ending with her bare feet stomped down and jazz hands.

“I’d express admiration for what you just did,” Matthew said. “But your ego doesn’t need any shoring up.”

“Who is this guy anyways?”

“Looks like I’ll have to head to Glendale to find out.”

“No, I mean, who is he, like, contextually?”

“Seems like he’s the boss who unleashed Vincent,” Matthew said, plucking the phone from the desk and backpedaling out of the cockpit-like enclosure. “Which means the money-laundering operation’s bigger than I thought.”

“Why don’t you bring me the thumb drive, let me take a spin through the spreadsheets?”

“I already analyzed them.”

She stripped a Red Vine from a plastic tub and flopped one end into her mouth. “I’d think by now you’d have learned to extrapolate what my insulting reply to that might be.”

He held up his hands. “Okay. Uncle. I’ll bring you the thumb drive when I can.”

As he started out, she called after him, “Take the dog with you.”

“Can’t hear you over the music.”

The ridgeback lifted his head from his paws, his forehead wrinkled in a show of intense interest. Or concern.

“Take the dog with you!”

“Sorry, still can’t hear you.”

Matthew winked at the dog and closed the door behind him.

An Unusually Painful Slip

At the third hour, things got interesting.

Matthew had parked himself across Brand Boulevard, Glendale’s commercial thoroughfare, on the second-floor terrace of a career college. Flopped open before him were several dog-eared study guides he’d bought used downstairs. To blend in with the denizens, he’d picked up an abomination of an iced-coffee drink with whipped cream and caramel streaking the insides of the clear plastic. It reminded him of the cheapo peanut-butter-and-jelly combo jars they used to get at the foster home around Thanksgiving when the churches donated baskets. The drink was the size of a fire hydrant and contained enough caffeine to make a racehorse’s heart explode. Or to fuel Theaella for fifteen minutes.