Read Online Deceptive by Sara Rosett - Free Book Online Page B

I’ve come back from—the dark side, let’s say—but I didn’t do it because I was afraid I’d get caught. I decided I wanted to do something more significant with my life than try to create a virus that made millions of people curse at their monitors.”
    “There you go. I can’t ask you to bend your standards. It’s been great seeing you. We’ll get out of your hair. Forget I ever asked.”
    Carla dumped the leftover sauce packets into the trash and let the lid clang shut. “I stopped hacking because I decided to use my powers for good, not evil, as the cliché goes. It sounds like you could use my help. You said you can’t go to the police, right?”
    “No, not now.” Zoe hadn’t told her the details of what had happened, only that she was in trouble and needed information that she couldn’t find herself.
    “Okay, then. Let me work my magic and worry about my conscience. Sometimes you have to bend the rules a bit to get at the truth. That’s the old hacker in me talking, but there is some truth there. Come on, you like to live on the edge, don’t you understand?”
    “Of course, I understand taking risks. That’s practically my motto, but I don’t want to put anyone else at risk.”
    “Zoe, I’m not going to get caught. What you need is easy-peasy. Child’s play. I’m not going to take any chances that would put me in a bad position. But I’m not going to stand by and let things get worse for you either, not when I can take a teeny, tiny peek and—possibly—give you some answers.”
    “I don’t know...” Emma had left the table, and Jack was gathering up the last of the food boxes and chopsticks while Emma jumped on the couch like it was a diving board.
    Carla crossed her arms. “Zoe, you already told me what you need to know.”
    Zoe sighed. “And you’re curious now, so you’re going to look it up anyway whether or not I try and talk you out of it.”
    “Yep. That’s about the size of it.”
    Zoe thought of the photos of Helen going about her day, completely unaware that Oscar was shadowing her. “Okay, you win. You can hack for me.”
    ***
    E MMA'S mom arrived shortly after dinner. After waving good-bye to them, Carla motioned for Zoe and Jack to follow her into a spare bedroom she’d made into an office. She bypassed the large glass desk with its sleek computer and opened the folding closet doors, revealing a second work area with several monitors, CPUs, and a tangle of cords. “My special work space,” she explained.
    Zoe took a seat in the rolling office chair at the glass desk and Jack leaned against the room’s doorframe with his arms crossed. Carla swiveled her chair side-to-side, fingers poised on the keyboard. “Let’s see what we can do. Okay, so we’ve got the name Anna Whitmore and a physical description. No phone number, address, friends, family, or business ties.”
    A gloomy sense of the impossibility of the task she’d asked Carla to accomplish settled on Zoe. “It’s a pathetically small amount of info, I know.” It was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. This was like looking for a needle in Montana.
    “She said something once that made me think she was from the Pacific Northwest. What was it?” Jack frowned at the floor. “It was snowing—really coming down.” His head popped up. “She said at least it wasn’t rain. After four years in Seattle, she’d take snow over rain any day.”
    “That’s good,” Carla said, and then went quiet as she typed away for a bit. Eventually, she pushed back so they could both see the monitor. “Any of these people look like her?”
    Zoe and Jack both moved closer to the monitor. “Facebook?” Zoe asked, skimming the list of faces.
    “Yep. It’s a good place to start. So many people have profiles—even if they’re not active on the site. It’s a gold mine of information,” Carla said. “The name Anna Whitmore isn’t that common, and I narrowed the results by region. Nothing here? Okay, next