The Hunt (26 page)

I was sure my colleagues at Winslow, Brown would be less than thrilled to learn how easy it was to breach our corporate firewalls, but right now I had to answer Leo’s question. “I wish I could, but that’s not what investment bankers do. It’s not like we’re all morally bereft or anything, but you don’t make partner by playing Robin Hood. Legally, the company and any money to be made off it belong to its shareholders.”

“Well, I used to be a shareholder in the first company, before Iggy reincorporated it as Igobe.

But it would probably be a real production to stake any claim now everyone thinks I’m dead, and by the time I prove that I’m not dead and get everything straightened out, it will be too late, won’t it?”

“Probably,” I admitted. “You’d need to get a lot of lawyers involved, and you’d be looking at a pretty lengthy legal battle. Especially since we still have no way of proving that Alex tried to kill you, or that Iggie was involved in any way—it’s not as if we can charge them with anything criminal that would throw a wrench into the IPO process.”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to go to Plan B.”

“What’s Plan B? What are you going to do?” asked Luisa.

“Are you going to hack Igobe’s technology?” asked Peter.

“If you hack it, there won’t be any money to be made for anyone or for any cause, however good,” I pointed out. “Security software is worthless if it’s not secure.”

“No worries,” said Leo. “I’ve got it all figured out.”

“Will you tell me about it?” said Hilary. “So I can put it in my article?”

“Sure. But you might want to think about publishing your article online, and you might want to do it quick. Because twenty-four hours from now it will be old news.”

28

T uesday morning dawned cool and cloudy, except for my skin, which dawned fluorescent with sunburn. My lip hadn’t been the only casualty of yesterday’s tennis game. My face and arms were now a startling shade of magenta, as were my legs from where the tennis dress I’d been wearing had ended down to where the tennis socks began. I was almost tempted to put on my new pink outfit rather than introduce a color outside of the cranberry family into the day’s look.

We’d spent the better part of the previous night with Leo, watching as he prepared to put Plan B

into motion and helping out as best we could. Fortunately, Peter’s parents hadn’t been expecting us for dinner, nor had they been waiting up when we’d returned home a little after three in the morning, too tired to do anything but fall directly into bed. This was also fortunate because while we hadn’t discussed my suspicions of Caro any further, and while Peter slept wrapped around me in his usual way, I still felt as if the tension between us was almost palpable.

Our flight home was scheduled for early that afternoon, and we packed quickly upon waking. I spent a few extra minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, experimenting with powder and concealer as Peter carried our bags downstairs, but the cosmetics just made everything worse, so I rinsed my face clean again before joining him in the kitchen.

He must have warned his parents about my appearance, because they showed only concern rather than shock, and Susan pressed a tube of aloe vera cream on me. “We’ll have to make sure you’re more careful the next time you’re here,” she said, apparently unaware that the odds of there being a next time were slim.

They both had early appointments at their respective offices, so the goodbyes were hurried.

“Are you sure we can’t take you to the airport later?” asked Charles.

“That’s all right,” Peter told him. “We’ve got a ride lined up.” Susan hugged us both, and Charles shook his son’s hand and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder.

I felt a pang of sadness as they left. They would have made nice in-laws, at least as far as in-laws
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went, but it seemed unlikely that I’d ever know for sure.

Abigail picked us up in her car, and then we stopped at the hotel to collect everyone else. Hilary and Ben added their bags to Peter’s and mine in the trunk, filling it to capacity, but Luisa was carrying nothing but her purse. The look on her face silently dared any of us to comment, but we were too preoccupied with the morning’s agenda to give her the teasing the situation would have demanded under other circumstances.

I was beginning to feel as if I knew every leg of the journey south to Silicon Valley better than I knew the two blocks from my Manhattan apartment to the nearest subway stop, but familiarity didn’t make the miles pass any more quickly. We reached Igobe’s headquarters right on schedule, just before ten, and Abigail slid the car into the same visitor’s spot we’d used the previous day.

Sprinklers were busily irrigating the Igobe logo in front of the entrance, and we took a moment to review our plan before stepping through the sliding-glass doors. Phyllis seemed no more pleased to see us than she had yesterday, and she flinched when she got a good look at me, but at least today I was officially on Iggie’s calendar and had arrived at the appropriate time.

“But why did you bring Biggie and these other people again?” she asked from beneath her Igobe visor. “Where are your colleagues from Winslow, Brown?”

My colleagues from Winslow, Brown were safely going about their business in New York, as I’d made the executive decision to disinvite them shortly before they were due to get on their San Francisco-bound flight last night. There was no reason for anyone to rack up additional travel expenses in pursuit of a deal that was never going to happen. I only hoped the partners would remember more about how I’d saved the firm from involving itself in a business disaster than about how I’d been the one pushing to get involved in the first place. I told Phyllis I’d be representing Winslow, Brown on my own this morning but that my companions would be sitting in on the meeting.

“That’s highly unorthodox,” she said with a sniff.

I couldn’t disagree, so I simply nodded and attempted a smile, knowing full well that between the state of my lip and the boiled crimson of my skin, this was the visual equivalent of poking her in the eye.

She flinched again. “Igor’s running a few minutes late—he had to take another meeting unexpectedly—but why don’t you all wait in the conference room?” she suggested, making no effort to hide her eagerness to have me out of her line of sight. “You know how to get there, don’t you?”

We assured her we did and headed for the glass-walled room where we’d spoken to Iggie the previous day, glad to have the chance to get everything set up beforehand. Peter fiddled around with the equipment we’d brought, and in a few minutes he’d hooked up a Webcam to face us down the length of the conference table. Behind the Webcam, he projected the display from his laptop, complete with a live Internet connection, onto the large white screen that hung on the far wall. “We’re all set,” he said.

“Now we just need them to show up,” said Hilary.

“I wonder what Iggie’s ‘unexpected meeting’ was,” mused Luisa, her tone dry.

“I think we could all hazard a pretty good guess,” I said.

And a few minutes later we knew for sure. Through the glass and across the floor, Iggie appeared around a far corner, and he was accompanied by Alex Cutler. They had their heads close together, talking as they walked, and even from the distance it was evident neither was terribly happy. If everything went as planned, they would soon be even less happy.

“Do you think Alex told Iggie everything?” asked Abigail.

“Just because his little kidnapping plot backfired doesn’t mean he’s going to give up on keeping the whole mess from getting out,” said Hilary. “He might have been trying to limit Iggie’s role before, but now he needs all the help he can get, and Iggie’s got a lot at stake here, too.”

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As we watched, the two men paused and turned as if they’d heard their names being called, and Iggie waved at someone. Caro was making her way through the maze of cubicles to join them, dressed in a neat navy pantsuit. With her attaché case and her blond hair pulled back into a chignon, she looked every bit as much the public-relations expert as she had the tennis star the day before. Accomplice or not, I’d had a feeling Iggie and Alex would call on her—they would need her to spin any bad news that might leak. Of course, they had no way of knowing that they were facing a deluge, not a leak.

The three of them huddled together out on the floor, and their discussion appeared heated.

“We need to get things moving,” I said, glancing at my watch. Our timeline had only limited flexibility.

“Leave it to me,” said Hilary. She pushed open the door of the conference room and gave a yell.

This got the attention of everyone in a ten-mile radius, but she crooked her finger in the direction of our targeted threesome. “Come join us!” she called, a broad smile on her face.

“There’s something in here you’re going to want to see.”

Alex’s face went pale beneath its tan, and Iggie looked like he might throw up. They might have already discovered Hilary had escaped from Caro’s boat, but that didn’t mean they’d expected her to show up here. Caro, however, answered Hilary’s broad smile with one of her own.

“Hi, there!” she called brightly. She headed our way, with Iggie and Alex following reluctantly in her wake.

“What a nice surprise,” Caro said, still smiling as she entered the conference room. “What brings you all here?”

“Iggie and I had scheduled a meeting to talk about Igobe’s public offering,” I said, which was the truth, if not the whole truth.

“Great!” she said. “You know, I have a few shares myself, and I’ve been looking forward to cashing in. There are a couple of local charities that could really use more financial support, and I’d love to send some extra funds their way.”

She really had the whole sweetness-and-light act down to a science, I thought, incredulous.

Hilary, meanwhile, ushered first Iggie and then Alex into the room. “Whoops,” she said, as Alex let out a yelp of pain. “How clumsy of me. I didn’t mean to step on your foot. By the way, have you met my friend, Ben? Ben’s an FBI agent. And he has a gun. Will you show them, Ben?”

Ben obligingly pulled open his jacket and displayed his weapon, cased in its shoulder holster, as Hilary closed the door and flipped the switch to make the glass walls opaque.

“Hey, Rachel,” said Iggie, apparently too stressed to use anything but my real name. “Could we postpone our meeting? Some stuff has—uh—come up, and I really need to spend some time with Alex and Caro.”

“This will only take a minute,” I assured him. “And Alex and Caro are welcome to join in. In fact, we’d prefer that they did.”

With Hilary and Ben blocking the way out, they had little choice but to sit down.

“Ready?” Peter asked, poised before his laptop.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Here goes,” he said, and he pressed a few buttons. On the screen, the Web browser loaded a new page in which a square of video played. It displayed an empty seat in a room filled with technical equipment: computers, servers, scanners and cables. In one corner of the room, a Great Dane could be seen, dozing on a cushioned dogbed of plaid flannel.

“What is this?” asked Iggie. “Rachel, are you sure we need to do this now?”

“Shh,” I said, as a man walked into the frame and took a seat on the chair. He leaned over, typed something into the keyboard on a table next to him, and then he leaned back and looked up directly into the lens of the Webcam on his end.

“Hello,” he said.

Iggie gasped. “Leo?”

“That’s right,” said Leo.

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“But—how?” asked Alex.

“It turns out I’m not dead. I know, man, it’s a real shocker. But we can catch up on old times later. Right now there’s something I want you to watch.”

We could see his hands moving in toward the camera, and then the images on the screen blurred as he rotated the camera to face his own computer screen. “This is all live, by the way. Just in case you were wondering,” Leo said over the tapping of his fingertips on a keyboard. “Now, I’m pulling up a Web site I set up myself. It’s called www.leolovesyou.org. Catchy, don’t you think?”

“What is this?” asked Alex, his surprise giving way to impatience.

“You’ll see,” said Leo. The image on the screen in front of us blurred again as he adjusted his camera, and then it settled into focus, revealing a snapshot of Scat alongside a short message: Welcome to LeoLovesYou.

The security software available from this site is free to all users, but contributions are welcome and will be used to support a range of worthy causes, from eliminating poverty to eradicating disease.

This software is superior to anything on the market today, including Igobe’s. In fact, it was created by the same developer who developed their software. But it’s better. And unlike Igobe, it’s absolutely free.

So download it and contribute what you can. And spread the word.

Peace out and power to the people.

29

“W hat have you done?” cried Alex, jumping up from his seat. He rushed to stand before the screen, rereading the words in disbelief.

“This can’t be happening,” moaned Iggie. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

Leo ignored them. “I’ve put in a counter, right there,” he said as his finger swam onto the screen and pointed at a box in the corner. “To track how many people download the software. The word should be starting to get out—I announced the launch on my blog a few minutes ago. Let’s watch, shall we?”

Eleven, read the number in the box. But then it turned to twelve, and then to thirteen. Then, right before our eyes, it jumped to eighteen, and from there to thirty-five. A moment later, the count had passed two hundred, and a moment after that it topped a thousand. The digits began moving so quickly they were barely legible.

“Make it stop,” said Iggie. He’d pulled his knees up to his chest and was rocking back and forth in his chair. “Somebody make it stop.”

“Have I mentioned this is live?” Leo said with a chuckle. “I bet we’ll be at a million before the day is over, and ten million in a week.”

“Are you insane?” shouted Alex Cutler, at Leo presumably.