Chapter 49

 

 

Punch his pretty face. Mary’s statement was the last thing Amber heard before Gracie dropped her off at her condo. Face. That was the answer.

Within five minutes after unlocking her door, she was on the computer—the borrowed one. Facial recognition software was available, although the highly rated ones weren’t cheap. They were designed for retail stores and governments that needed to catch flickering shots and identify criminals. Her needs weren’t quite that tricky. She had good photos. The challenge would be to get a program that would interface with official databases. She needed his real name.

It was nearing midnight when she found what she wanted. She did a gulp as she entered a credit card for the purchase, and then began the download to install the new software. Partway through she wondered if this would have been easier if she’d just turned over her pictures to the cops and let them do the searching. But it was a done deal now.

Plus, she didn’t know what would turn up. Until she cleared her name, she had no way of knowing if the police wouldn’t just believe she and Cody were in this embezzlement thing together. Especially considering how happy she and Cody looked in these photos.

While the software installed and the computer updated, she seriously considered, for the first time, exactly how she was going to match his picture to something that would officially identify him. She’d already searched for him on social media and found Cody Brennan to be exactly who he’d said he was. And that made sense if he were building a false identity to scam people.

She needed the truth.

She started with an online forum, a place where hackers hung out, a somewhat dark place she had only visited once. To get in she had created a fictitious user name—badkitty. Everyone else on the site was using similar pseudonyms, and she pictured them as those loser guys you saw in the movies, the ones with a man-cave in their mother’s basement. Badkitty had only remained on the forum fifteen minutes on that visit. Scary stuff was being discussed.

But she knew it was where she could find a lead for what she needed now—a way to hack a government database.

It was nearly two a.m. and the room was crowded. She watched silently for a half hour, getting a feel for the topics and the characters. She had a hard time thinking of drdoom or madmax4 or whatsurgame as real people. At last she spotted a thread where someone was asking about getting into the FBI. Another user posted a link.

Seriously, guys? You think the FBI isn’t going to have a way to watch you?

But then there was another, less threatening one. The Department of Motor Vehicles for the state of Texas. That could be useful—not Texas, in particular, but a driver’s license photo would be a great way to match a person’s picture. She hoped.

Whatsurgame posted an answer. It seemed a little complicated, but Amber read the lines of code and figured where she could insert the name of any other state. She copied the code and sat back.

Now, in which state would Cody have likely gotten his driver’s license? He had claimed to work for Omni, a company in New York. But lots of New Yorkers didn’t drive—public transportation was everywhere. Still, it was likely he’d gotten a license at some point.

She went into the computer’s operating system and inserted the code she’d copied, gave a few other commands, and eventually came to a website. It required a password. Great.

Back on the forum, the other user had obviously run up against the same thing, and had come back to whatsurgame for the answer. He gave what he claimed was a generic default entry name. Amber took her chances with it. It worked.

From there it was a matter of figuring out how to get her new software to search for matches with photos. Dawn was showing at the edges of her drapes by the time she’d set up the thing to run automatically. Far cry from the way they show it on TV, she thought, rubbing at her burning eyes.

Pictures were flicking across the screen at a dizzying rate, and she decided it was time for a break. She stood and stretched, checked the screen again, and knew there would be time for a shower and clean clothes. When she emerged from the bathroom, the program was still merrily whizzing through photos. Okay, then, coffee.

She toasted a bagel and spread it with cream cheese, walked around the condo as she ate it, drank a second cup of coffee, debated whether the floors needed vacuuming. Each time she looked in on the computer, the same thing was happening—nothing.

Finally, two hours later, from the kitchen she heard a ping.

“Yay,” she said to the houseplant. “Answers!”

Her optimism was unfounded. A box in the center of her screen said No Matches Found. Well, rats.

“Okay.” She paced the width of her little office, muttering. “Where else? Just because he worked in New York doesn’t mean he lives there. So—neighboring states. Maybe he’s from Connecticut or New Jersey or Delaware … or even Pennsylvania.”

This could take a very long time.

At least her movements were quicker this time. She repeated the steps of revising the code, entering the parameters, and starting a new search. Connecticut took slightly less time, but the disappointing answer was the same. No matches. She retried, setting it up for New Jersey and thinking she should have gone back to the forum and asked if there was a way to do this for the entire country at once.

But there was a nagging little something in her mind, the worry that if badkitty spoke up she would be noticed and could be caught. She was in enough deep doo-doo with the law already.

She went into the living room and picked up a novel Pen had loaned her, stretching out on the long sofa in the half-hearted belief that she might actually be able to concentrate on it. At least it was a way to pass the time. Three paragraphs into the first page, she fell asleep.

When she woke up the angle of the sun told her it was midafternoon. Feeling draggy, she rolled off the couch and stood up to stretch. Her computer search! She hurried into her office and woke up the darkened computer screen.

There was a match.

Her hand shook as she picked up her phone to call a meeting of the Heist Ladies.