Double trouble

The van skidded to a stop with a squeal of brakes, almost sideswiping a couple of trees in the process. “Come on!” I shouted to my friends, jumping out from my hiding place.

Bess, George, and Ibrahim did the same. That’s right — Ibrahim. See, that wasn’t him standing at the edge of the road. It was a life-size cardboard cutout we’d mocked up quickly in the university art department. We’d counted on the fact that the light would be bad enough to trick Agnes into thinking it was a real person — the same way she’d probably been counting on that same poor lighting to claim that ramming into Ibrahim was an accident in case she got caught.

When Agnes climbed out of her van and hurried back to look at what she’d just run over, she got a big surprise. Not only were my friends and I waiting for her, but so were several members of River Heights’s finest. Even though Chief McGinnis had been extremely skeptical when I’d called him, he’d agreed to send a couple of men out with us just in case. Hey, what can I say — he’s learning!

“No!” Agnes blurted out in surprise as the uniformed officers emerged. “What’s going on? It was an accident, I swear!” Then she turned her head and spotted me. “You!” she spat out, practically snarling with rage. “Why, you little…” There was more after that, but nothing I’d care to repeat.

“That’s enough, ma’am.” The senior officer, a burly man named Franklin, reached for his handcuffs. “I think we’d better take a little trip downtown for questioning.”

I stepped forward and peered into the passenger-side window of her van. “Don’t forget to grab that laptop when you take her in, guys,” I advised the officers. “I suspect there will be some evidence we need on there.”

“Wow. I can’t believe we’re finally alone.” Ned smiled and glanced around River Heights’s nicest Italian restaurant. The two of us were in a cozy booth in the corner, the faint sounds of soft music and the clink of silverware serving as background to our conversation. “I keep expecting you to have to rush off to investigate something else.”

“Me too. Sorry about that.” I lifted my water glass and touched it to his. “But don’t worry, this case is definitely over now.”

He shook his head, his eyes twinkling. “And you did it again. Another bad guy is off the streets — and the Web — thanks to our own intrepid investigator, Nancy Drew.”

I took a sip of water. “Yeah, the Web part still feels weird to me,” I admitted. “I wasn’t sure we had enough evidence against Agnes in the real, three-D world — after all, you can’t exactly throw someone in jail for running over a piece of cardboard.”

Ned smiled. “Good point. But what about all those online threats?”

“I wasn’t sure we could get that stuff to stick,” I said. “At least not without cooperation from the creators of BetterLife, and we already know they’re probably not willing to invade their users’ privacy for silly stuff like, you know, solving a criminal case.”

We’d both attended a lecture by the creators of BetterLife back when I was investigating Shannon’s bullying problems. The two men had practically had a heart attack when I’d suggested it might be a good idea to run background checks on their users to avoid situations like the one Shannon had found herself in.

“Good thing Agnes cracked under pressure, then,” Ned commented.

“I know. She started confessing even before they got to the police station last night,” I said. “She even voluntarily ratted out her friend LuAnn Carter for making that threatening call to Professor al-Fulani’s office, hoping it would buy her some leniency on her own crimes.” I shook my head, glad that that part of the case was closed, too, but still amazed that even one of our town cranks would do such a thing. “Anyway, Agnes admitted she started harassing me on BetterLife as soon as she heard about what had happened with Shannon, hacking my avatar and my e-mail account, faking that video, and using a bunch of her own avatars to spy on me — ParteeGrl21, NedNick02, and even KrazeeBiker.”

“What about that Guitar Lover guy and UNR?” Ned asked.

I shook my head. “She wouldn’t ’fess up to either of those.” Indeed, Agnes had insisted she had no idea who Guitarlvr15 or UrNewReality were, but that she’d noticed Guitarlvr15 hanging around a lot.

“Well, maybe it was Rebecca sneaking around to get online despite her grounding, like Agnes said.”

“Maybe.” I picked up my fork and poked at my food, feeling vaguely troubled. Clearly Shannon had filled her aunt in on that detail as well — Agnes had all but admitted she’d been planning to make some trouble for the avatar she’d assumed was Rebecca once she was done with me.

“So what about Shannon?” Ned asked. “Do you think she was involved?”

“No, I’m pretty sure she had no idea what Agnes was up to.” I thought back to when the police and I had gone to tell the Fitzgeralds that Agnes was in custody. “She seemed pretty shocked, actually. Kind of turned white and kept muttering ‘I knew she was nuts, but this is nuts. ’”

Ned chuckled. “Very eloquent.”

“Yeah. Accurate, too. As you’ve probably already guessed, Agnes overheard you and Lyle talking about our picnic at the overlook that day in the cafeteria.”

“I didn’t even notice her listening,” he admitted.

“Well, that’s how she got away with this — she wasn’t all that noticeable. I mean, who’d ever guess that someone like her would even know one end of a computer from the other, let alone be some amazing super-hacker? I think George was actually a little jealous when she realized.” I set down my water glass. “Actually, that was one way I was so sure I was right even before we proved it. I remembered the first time I met Agnes, when Shannon’s mom knew what my BetterLife avatar had been up to even though Shannon was banned from the computer and couldn’t have told her. Agnes must have filled her in right before I got there.”

Ned looked impressed. “Good catch.”

“I only wish I’d caught on sooner.” I sighed. “It also took me a while to realize that Shannon told me her aunt had helped her with her avatar. Another real-life clue that slipped past me for a while.”

“Hey, cut yourself some slack. It’s hard to solve a mystery in two worlds at once.” Ned grinned and reached across the table, squeezing my hand in his. “Anyway, I’m just glad it’s all over.”

“Me too.” I squeezed back, feeling a flutter of happiness. The first thing Ned and I had done that evening was talk out everything that had come between us lately. As it turned out, he’d known all along that I had no romantic interest in Ibrahim. How- ever, he still wasn’t sure the opposite was true. At first he’d found Ibrahim’s alleged crush on me amusing, but then he’d become concerned that Ibrahim might get hurt. That was why he’d advised me against spending so much time with him.

Obviously Ned had also known that the e-mail complaining about him was a fake. Still, I was actually kind of glad that Agnes had done that. It had reminded me not to take my wonderful, amazing boyfriend for granted. Mystery or no mystery, I was definitely going to remember to make time for him from now on.

I smiled blissfully across the table at him, wishing this evening never had to end. After all, we’d waited a long time for it…. I was trying to figure out exactly how long it had been since that picnic by the overlook when the ring of a cell phone interrupted.

“Is that yours?” I asked, reaching for my purse. A quick glance told me I must have forgotten my own phone at home.

Ned was already pulling his out of his jacket pocket. “Hello?” Then he handed it across the table. “It’s for you — George.”

“Oh. Thanks.” I took the phone, wondering why George would be calling at a time like this. She knew about this date, and how long it had been in coming. “What’s up?” I asked her.

“Sorry for interrupting, Nance!” George exclaimed. “But this is important. You need to get to a computer — stat!”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it,” George urged. “Check out BetterLife. Seriously.”

She hung up before I could respond. I handed the phone back to Ned, feeling a flash of annoyance. “Well, that was mysterious,” I commented. Then I told him what George had said.

“Guess we’d better find a computer and check it out,” Ned said, already pushing back his chair. Did I mention he’s a good sport?

The restaurant’s owner was a friend of Ned’s father, so when Ned asked if he had a computer we could borrow, we were immediately ushered into a private office behind the kitchen. I sat down at the desk and logged on to BetterLife.

There was a message waiting for me from a familiar name — Guitarlvr15. “Weird,” I murmured, clicking to open it.

There was no subject line, and the text was short and sweet:

MYOB — OR ELSE.

“There’s a link.” Ned was leaning over my shoulder, and he bent closer to point to the screen. “There at the bottom.”

I saw that he was right. Hoping it wasn’t some kind of computer virus that would infect the restaurant owner’s computer, I clicked on it. A new page loaded, this one packed with text in a small, tidy font — columns of text, pages of it.

“What is that?” Ned asked, sounding perplexed as we both scanned it. “Just looks like a bunch of mumbo jumbo.”

I started to nod agreement, then suddenly gasped as I spotted a familiar name among the sea of words. “Not just mumbo jumbo,” I said, staring at the name: CARSON DREW. “ Legal mumbo jumbo. And there’s my dad’s name in the middle of it, see?”

My heart started beating double-time as I read more, not wanting to accept what I already knew it was. My father’s legal files. All the confidential, super-important information relating to that big drug case he’d been working on for the past week.

Just then there was a beep. Clicking back to BetterLife, I saw that a new message from Guitarlvr15 had just appeared in Dancin4Evah’s in-box.

GET THE PICTURE? it read. ONE CLICK, AND THE WHOLE WORLD WILL GET IT, TOO.

“It’s blackmail!” Ned said grimly as he read the message. “Someone’s threatening to put these files online for all to see. Could it be Agnes again?”

But a quick phone call to the police station answered that question in the negative, confirming that Agnes was still safely in custody. She hadn’t been near a computer since she was captured.

“So she really wasn’t Guitarlvr15,” I said, staring at the screen, with all my dad’s sensitive information still blinking out at me. “She isn’t behind this. And somehow, I can’t imagine some tween girl like Rebecca doing it, either, even if she somehow managed to figure out I was Dancin4Evah.”

“So that means…?” Ned turned to look at me.

I stared back at him. “It means the case continues,” I replied. “And the stakes are higher than ever before!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Текст подготовлен эксклюзивно для группы ВК

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14