Double Bind (6 page)

           
“Ms. Gaul, I really do need you to go back into the hall.
 
We will come to you if we need your help with anything.”

           
Still a little breathless, and feeling confused, Sarah stepped back out into the hall.
 
She simply could not understand what had just happened. Sure, her heart could race when she saw the detective - but that should be from uncontrolled rage, not from this strange heat she felt.
 
Even more than that, she couldn’t understand why he would keep holding her hand like that.
 
She had been almost certain that she had seen desire in his eyes.
 
But, he thought that she was a ruthless serial killer.
 
Why would he be interested in her?
 
Unless he had his doubts.

           
Sarah glanced back into the apartment, hoping to get a glimpse of him to reassure herself that he really was the self-assured asshole she thought he was.
 
Instead, she saw him follow one of the other officers into her bedroom.
 
Her whole body flushed with embarrassment.
 
She hadn’t exactly been very good about cleaning things up over the weekend.
 
Her clothes were strewn all over her bedroom.
 
Her hot dress, her pajamas, even her underwear.

           
No matter how she tried to not think about it, all she could think of was what the detective would think of her silky lace thong.

           
That was why she didn’t notice Angela come out of the elevator, and why she was beet-red when Angela stepped in front of her.
 
“Hey, Sarah, are you okay?”
 
She asked.

           
Sarah blinked, looking up at her friend, and getting redder.
 
She could only hope that her friend would assume it was out of anger, and not out of some insane desire to have the hunky detective sweep her up in his arms.
 
“Oh, yeah.
 
I just can’t believe they are doing this to me.”

           
Angela placed a hand on her friends shoulder reassuringly.
 
“No worries.
 
I’ll go in and make sure that they are treating your stuff well.”

           
Sarah thanked her, and then watched morosely as Angela slipped into the apartment.
 
Again, she could hear voices talking, and then more shuffling. Every now and then she could hear Angela’s voice rise a little, and there would be low discussion.
 
Sarah paced in the hallway, glancing at the open door every now and then.
 
It wasn’t that she was worried they would find something.
 
After all, she knew she was innocent.
 
Everything she did seemed to make them think that she was guilty.

           
After what seemed like an eternity, Angela and the officers all came to the entryway.
 
The officers had a few boxes of things in bags, and they pushed past her toward the elevator.
 
“Those are my things!” Sarah said, following after them.
 
Angela caught her arm.

           
“Hon, we both know you are innocent.
 
They aren’t going to find anything incriminating, right?”

           
“Right.” Sarah said, feeling like pouting.

           
“So if we let them take these things, then they will clear you of all charges.
 
It’s for the best.”

           
Sarah scowled, but nodded, and the officers hurried toward the elevator.
 
The detective was the last out of the apartment, and he held her favorite shirt in a plastic bag.

           
“That’s my favorite shirt!” She cried, following him.

           
The detective looked at her, looking disappointed.
 
Sarah suddenly felt that she had done something wrong.
 
“Yes, it matches the shirt that you were wearing when you accessed the lab at night.
 
It should prove that you were there, and lead us to your accomplices.”
 
He looked at her, long and hard.
 
“Unless you want to tell us something?”

           
“I’m innocent.
 
It’ll just prove that I spilled popcorn on the front the other day.”

           
His eyebrows raised a little.
 
“We’ve got you, on tape, in this shirt.”
 
He looked at her, a slight rage in his eyes.
 
“But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

           
“What?” Sarah said, caught off-guard.
 
Surely they hadn’t looked at her computer.
 
Surely they hadn’t looked there.
 
She turned to see the edge of her laptop poking out of one of the boxes.
 
She looked back at the detective in dismay.
 
“My computer!”

           
The detective nodded.
 
“You should give up your accomplices.
 
Otherwise, things are going to go very bad for you.”

           
Sarah shook her head.
 
“I have no accomplices because I didn’t do anything!”

           
The detective sighed, looking put out and angry.
 
He motioned to the officers, who turned to get into the waiting elevator.
 
“Ms. Gaul, we appreciate your cooperation.
 
We’ll get your things back to you as soon as we can.”

           
He turned to enter the elevator, his eyes catching Sarah’s just before the door closed.
 
He almost looked pained.

           
Sarah slid down right there in the hall, feeling miserable.
 
She looked up at Angela.
 
“They took my computer.”

           
Angela nodded, coming to kneel next to her friend.
 
“They did.”
 
She looked worriedly at Sarah.
 
“What were you doing with the security feed on your computer?”

           
Sarah sighed.
 
“I was trying to find something to prove that I was innocent.”
 
It suddenly occurred to her that she had none of her work files without her computer.
 
She had absolutely nothing.
 
She had no idea what she was going to do now.
 
She looked pleadingly at Angela.
 
“Angie, what am I going to do?
 
Without my computer, I’ll never be able to prove that I’m innocent.”

           
Angela scowled and stood.
 
“Sarah Gaul, that is not what you are supposed to be doing.
 
I told you, let the police do the work.
 
You stay out of it, and they’ll catch the right guy.”

           
Sarah sighed.
 
“Alright.
 
At least the shirt will prove it’s not me.
 
I haven’t worn that shirt into work since Roberto spilled the
Acetyline
.”

           
Angela grinned.
 
“Exactly what I mean.
 
Now come on, get up.
 
You ruined my dinner, so now you have to take me out.”

           
Sarah rolled her eyes, but let Angela help her up.
 
“Alright, since you insist.”
 
She shook her finger at her friend.
 
“But this time, I get to pick the restaurant.”

           
Angela shrugged, seeming relieved as they went in Sarah’s apartment to get ready.
 
Sarah did her best to pull on her unconcerned face and go with the flow.
 
She needed Angela to believe her.
 
She needed space so that she could get to the bottom of things.
 
She knew there was something, she just had to find it.

Chapter 5

           
Sarah woke up Monday morning feeling even worse than the day before.
 
She had drunk a little more the night before, but she knew that wasn’t the reason that she felt lousy.
 
The simple honest truth was that she was starting to despair about proving her innocence.
 
She didn’t even know where to start.
 
She couldn’t go back to the office to find clues there; she didn’t have her computer; and she definitely wasn’t going to try going down to the actual scene of the crime.
 
She was positive that if she did that she would both wind up in jail, and that Angela would kill her.

           
She needed another way.
 
It was after her second cup of coffee when it came to her.
 
She didn’t have her computer, but she knew how she could find out what was going on anyway.
 
Not only that, but this way she would have an even better chance.

           
She was going to go visit her hacker brother, David.

           
She dressed quickly.
 
After all, it wasn’t like her brother cared what she looked like.
 
Then, grabbing a box of his favorite frozen pizza bites she headed across town to her brother’s loft apartment.

           
Despite the fact that her brother was completely oblivious to the fact that Sarah was a human being, he was nothing like the stereotypical hacker.
 
It helped that he had a bad habit of hacking into things that made him a lot of money.
 
Sarah was positive that one of these days he was going to get himself in trouble by crashing the stock market, but until then he was living high.

           
All that didn’t stop him from living like a bachelor though.
 
She found herself wishing that she had called to tell him she was coming when he opened the door in nothing but his boxers.
 
He blinked twice when he spotted Sarah on his doorstep and then a big smile spread across his face.

           
“Twinkles!” he cried, before pulling Sarah into a big hug.
 
Sarah rolled her eyes as her brother squeezed all the breath out of her.
 
David wasn’t exactly built like a geek.
  
He was short like Sarah, but he had enough muscles to make up for it.
 
When he finally let go of Sarah, she gasped for air, staggering a little.

           
“Someday we’re going to find a better nickname, I swear.”

           
David moved to let her into his loft.
 
“Deep inside you love it. You don’t need to pretend.”

           
As usual the fine furniture and classy decor was littered with empty pizza boxes and dirty clothes.
 
Sarah put her hand on her hip to glare at her brother.
 
“I love what you’ve done with the place.”

           
He shrugged, kicking at a pizza box with a bare foot.
 
“You know me, always struggling to keep up with the new fad.”

           
Sarah rolled her eyes and shoved a pile of clothes off the couch so that she could sit down.
 
Then she proffered her brother the box of frozen pizzas.
 
He grinned as he took it.
 
“Hallelujah, today we eat!”

           
She rolled her eyes again, suddenly very glad that she had come to visit her brother.
 
There was no one else that could make her feel that good, that fast.
 
Suddenly all her worrying seemed silly.
 
David would make everything alright, and then the world would be good.

           
He pulled on a pair of jeans as he hopped toward the kitchen.
 
“So, tell me,” he said, as he poured the little pizza pockets onto a tray and shoved them into the oven.
 
“What brings my workaholic sister over on this unholy Monday morning.”
 
He picked up a shirt out of one of the piles on the counter and pulled it on over his head.

           
Sarah decided not to point out that it was well past noon.
 
Her brother would only scoff about normal work hours.
 
“Dude, I got myself in big trouble.”

           
He laughed a little crashing down sideways onto the floppy armchair across from Sarah.
 
“Since when are you ever not in trouble?”

           
Sarah sighed and buried her face in her hands.
 
“No, not the funny kind of trouble this time.
 
I’m in big real trouble.”

           
He shifted, sitting up a little to look curiously at her.
 
“What do you mean?
 
Did you get fired?”

           
Sarah sighed, letting her hands fall.
 
“Getting fired is the least of my worries right now.
 
I’m about a week away from going to jail forever.”

           
That caught his attention.
 
“What do you mean?
 
What did you do?”

           
“Nothing!” Sarah said, then slouched back over.
 
“It’s just that the police think I did some terrible things.”

           
“How terrible?” He asked.

           
“Oh, just that I stole some chemicals from my employer and tried to poison the whole city with it.”

           
“What?!” David said, jumping up to a stand. “They think you’re the Water Terrorist?”

           
Sarah nodded miserably.
 
David leaned in, his face serious.
 
“You’re not the Water Terrorist, right?”

           
Sarah glared at her brother.
 
“Of course not!” She punched him in the arm.
 
“Don’t be a complete idiot.”

           
“Okay, okay.” he said, throwing his hands up. “I just had to make sure.”

           
She rolled her eyes.
 
“You really think that if I did something like that I would get myself caught?”

           
He looked at her, grinning a little.
 
“Well, I had hoped that I had taught you better than that, but -” he shrugged.
 
“You never know.”

           
She punched him again.
 
“Thank you for assuming that I’m an idiot.”

           
He shrugged, heading over to the far wall which hid his secret hacking room.
 
“Hey, what are brothers for?”

           
Sarah stood to follow him.
 
“So, as you probably guessed, I need your help.”

           
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, triggering the wall.
 
It swung open revealing his little tech grotto.
 
“Heaven forbid my sister visit me when she doesn’t need my help hacking the world.”

           
Sarah raised an eyebrow, slipping in after him so that he could turn on the weird defenses he had set up.
 
“I brought you pizza pockets.”

           
“Oh!” he said, darting back into the other room.
 
“I almost forgot.”

           
Sarah tucked herself into his guest chair, fiddling with one of his headsets while she waited for him.
 
She would have liked to experiment with some of his custom computers, but if she even touched a keypad, he would have her head.
 
She knew better than that.
 
He returned with the entire box worth of pizzas piled high on a plate. Then he plunked himself in front of the computer screen ready to hack.

           
It took Sarah a few minutes to convince him that he shouldn’t hack straight into the police files to find out what they had.
 
She knew what they had.
 
They were positive that she was guilty, so they had a whole bunch of evidence that pointed to her.

           
She needed something that pointed away from her.
 
She even knew how.
 
David reluctantly agreed to log onto her
ebay
account, pulling up the files of her recent purchases.
 
Beaming, she found exactly what she was looking for - a shoe purchase made at 8:51 the night of the incident.
 
David got excited then, hacking the webpage to reveal her IP at the time of the purchase.

           
They were both giggling and hugging each other when David suddenly paused, clicking a different area on his screens, his face suddenly going serious.
 
Sarah ignored him, too giddy to care.

           
“This is it!
 
A foolproof alibi!
 
I’m saved!”

           
“
Shhh
!” David suddenly hissed.
 
Sarah looked at him, a little put out.

           
“Well fine, don’t be excited for me.”

           
“It’s not that,” he said, flipping through pages and screens in a blur that amazed Sarah.
 
“Sarah, I’ve picked up a tracer.”

           
“What?” Sarah asked.

           
“A tracer,” he said, his voice getting tight.
 
“Someone tagged me back when we were looking at your purchases.”
 
He turned to look at her, his eyes wide.
 
“I can’t shake them.
 
Any minute now the person on the other end is going to know exactly where we are.”

           
“What!” Sarah cried, her voice cracking shrilly.
 
“Who is -”

           
“Police!
 
Open up!”

           
They both paled, looking to each other.
 
“Davey,” Sarah said, her voice getting soft and quiet.
 
“What do we do?”

           
“Just stay here!” He hissed back, sprinting from the chair for the door.
 
“Coming!” He yelled, darting out into the room as the wall swung back shut.

           
Sarah closed her eyes, her breath coming too fast for her to hear the sounds from the other room.
 
Then she heard a voice that she knew all too well.
 
Detective Snyder was talking to her brother.
 
She held her breath, wishing that her heart would pound quieter.

           
“-must have the wrong address,” David was saying.
 
“I’m just getting ready to head out.”

           
“I’m sure you won’t mind me having a look around then,” the detective replied.
 
Sarah could hear boots and footsteps wandering all through David’s loft.
 
Then, suddenly she heard shoes come close to the wall.
 
She pushed her hands over her mouth, desperate to keep her breathing under control.

           
“This is an odd spot to have pizza sauce,” the detective said, and Sarah almost squeaked in panic.
 
David started to speak, but neither was fast enough.
 
The detective triggered the door and it swung open, revealing Sarah and the computer lounge to the world.

           
Sarah’s eyes met the detectives, and for one moment he actually looked surprised.
 
Then he glowered.
 
“Ms. Gaul, interesting to find you here.”