Surprise meeting

THE MOLE

George, Bess and I surrounded Ned as he sat as his computer.

“So what’s this e-mail?” I asked. “Was it threatening? Did it include any personal information?”

Ned looked perplexed. “Well… kind of.” He opened his Internet browser, then typed in the URL for BetterLife. “And I should have been more clear before. It’s a message I got through BetterLife, not an e-mail.”

The familiar Login screen popped up, and I watched as Ned typed in his avatar — NattyNed145 — and his password, which I politely declined to memorize. Within a few seconds, Ned’s avatar popped up on the Virtual River Heights University campus. I smiled to see Ned’s familiar face and lanky body translated into a computer image. He looked different, of course — being two-dimensional can change a person — but somehow, with his khaki pants, striped button-down, and blue pullover sweater, there was no doubt that NattyNed145 was my boyfriend.

He used the mouse to click on his messages, then scanned his in-box. My insides froze when I spotted a familiar name in the Sender box.

UrNewReality.

Was everyone I knew going to be a victim of UNR’s harassing e-mails?

“It’s not so much threatening as… odd,” Ned explained, highlighting UrNewReality’s message and double-clicking to open it up. “I just don’t understand. George, I think I have a lot of questions for you.” He glanced at George, who just nodded and smiled.

Ned’s e-mail popped up to fill the screen. We all leaned in to read:

FROM: URNEWREALITY

TO: NATTYNED 145

UNR KNOWS ALL ABOUT U. UNR THINKS U SHOULD CHECK OUT THE

ATTACHMENT. UNR NEEDS A FAVOR…. IF U DON’T WANT EVERY 1 TO KNOW

ABOUT THE ATTACHED… U WILL BE READY TO HELP WHEN UNR SENDS DETAILS….

I frowned. If u don’t want every1 to know about the attached… This was a blackmail message. Just like the message Shannon had received. UrNewReality was trying to control the people who knew me, trying to get them to — what? What could UrNewReality believe my boyfriend would do to me?

Then it hit me. “What was attached?” I asked. Ned is the most stand-up guy I know, but I still cringed wondering what UrNewReality might think was embarrassing enough to blackmail him with.

Ned shook his head in a this is ridiculous gesture as he clicked to open the attachment. I leaned in to get a better look at the screen, sucking in my breath. What could it be?

It was…

A receipt?

It appeared to be from an online bookstore.

“ The Caucasian Curse,” Bess read out loud, “by Thornton Reading.”

“Thornton Reading?” George asked, shooting Ned a disbelieving look. “Is that the crackpot who hosts his own podcast? He sits in his basement and spouts a bunch of racist garbage about minorities taking over the country? That guy?”

I frowned. Now the name sounded familiar. I’d read an article about Thornton Reading in one of my father’s news magazines, and the guy sounded completely paranoid and horribly prejudiced. I couldn’t imagine the Ned I knew having any interest in anything Thornton Reading had written.

Ned sighed. “That’s the one,” he agreed. “For my social psychology class, I wrote a paper about people’s behavior on the Internet — and how the Internet makes it easier for people with radical, angry viewpoints to find like-minded people,” he explained. “Thornton Reading’s podcast gets thousands of listeners each week, and his website has active message boards with five thousand unique members.”

Bess made a face. “That’s depressing.”

“It is,” Ned agreed. “Though it’s not clear — are all these people joining because they agree with Thornton Reading? Are they joining out of curiosity? It’s hard to tell.”

“Ned,” I broke in. “Why did you buy the book?”

“For the paper,” Ned replied, turning to me. “Come on, Nance. You know I don’t share any opinions with this guy. I wanted to see what he had to say firsthand.” He wrinkled his nose. “And it was just as bad as you would imagine. I couldn’t even finish the book. I threw it away the minute I was done with my paper.”

I nodded slowly. I believed him; I had never, in our entire relationship, heard Ned make a prejudiced remark. But that led me to wonder….

“How did UrNewReality get this receipt?” I asked, turning to George.

She frowned, staring at the screen. “It’s hard to say for certain,” she said finally. “It’s related to what I told you earlier — each computer having a unique IP address, et cetera, et cetera.” She paused. “Somehow — and I don’t know how — it seems that UrNewReality is using BetterLife to get access to the computers of certain players. From there, he — or she — accesses personal files, e-mails, or Internet histories.” She looked at Ned. “In this case, he or she probably browsed your e-mails or Internet history to find this purchase.” She gestured to the receipt onscreen. “It seems salacious, like something that might embarrass you if people found out about it. So UrNewReality decided to try to use it to blackmail you.”

Bess crossed her arms, looking confused. “But George,” she said, “doesn’t that mean that everyone who plays BetterLife is at risk of getting hacked? Isn’t the game supposed to protect its users’ personal information?”

George nodded. “They’re supposed to,” she affirmed. “But clearly we’re dealing with a very sophisticated hacker here. He or she knows a lot about BetterLife, and is manipulating the game to his advantage.” She furrowed her brows. “Actually,” she went on, “someone should alert the owners….”

“There’s something else,” Ned went on, looking at me with concern. “Everyone who’s been hacked — Nancy, Rebecca, Shannon, me — we all have one thing in common.”

I swallowed. “Me,” I said.

Ned nodded. “And when UrNewReality tried to blackmail Shannon, it was to do something that he or she thought would destroy you, Nancy.”

Bess and George looked at me, concern shining in their eyes now. “It’s like somebody,” George began, “is hacking into people’s Internet records to create this army. An army of people who will carry out plots against Nancy.”

Yikes. “I don’t know if it’s that bad yet,” I insisted. “I mean, so far, it’s just one plot….”

“ So far,” Ned agreed, frowning. “But that’s because it’s just getting started. If I go along with this, Nance, I guarantee they will want me to do something related to you.”

Just then, the front door opened, ushering in the sounds of restless footsteps and bookbags being dropped in the hallway.

“And then she said if we go shopping Saturday she’ll show me where she got it,” a familiar, female voice was saying. “And then …”

Ned looked up at me and smiled. “Ibrahim?” he called into the hallway. “Arij?”

Ibrahim and Arij were two of the Nickerson family’s four houseguests. They were the children of Professor Al-Fulani, a guest professor specializing in peace studies who was teaching at the university. After a housing mix-up, Ned and his parents had offered to allow the Al-Fulanis to stay with them. Ibrahim and Arij were charming, enthusiastic, curious — and Ibrahim, I was slowly realizing, had a crush on me, which could make things awkward. Still, he’d been a wonderful friend and a huge help in investigating the BetterLife case over the last few weeks.

The footsteps continued to the door of the study, and Arij and Ibrahim soon stood in the doorway. Arij beamed at the sight of us; Ibrahim looked slightly uncomfortable.

“Nancy!” Arij greeted me. “Bess! George! And Ned! What are you all doing here?”

“I wanted them to come look at something on the computer,” Ned replied with a shrug. “Darn thing confuses me sometimes. Did you have a good day at school?”

“The best!” Arij enthused, her dark eyes widening to the size of walnuts. “Today — in history? We watched a movie about the 1960s. And I was so excited by the fashions! Nancy, do you know what it means to dress ‘mod’?”

I smiled. “Um, maybe you’d better ask Bess,” I replied honestly.

Bess chuckled. “ I know all about mod fashion,” she replied, smiling at Arij. “It’s coming back in style, you know! If you’re free this weekend, I can take you to some stores that carry some mod looks.”

Arij made a little jump of excitement. “Yes! I would love that.”

Bess laughed. “All right, it’s a date, then.”

I looked over at Ibrahim, who seemed to have found something fascinating on the toe of his shoe. “Ibrahim?” I asked. “How was your day at school?”

He sighed, nervously scratching his ear, not quite meeting my eye. “It was fine,” he told his shoe, “but I have lots of homework. Excuse me.”

And then he disappeared from the doorway, never once looking directly at me.

“I should go too,” said Arij. “I’m supposed to IM Megan in five minutes. See you later!”

“Bye,” I called, and George and Bess and Ned echoed me with their own goodbyes. When the teens had left, the four of us met eyes again.

“Ibrahim seemed a little funny to you there,” George said, gesturing at me. “You two were such fast friends.”

I blushed. I had relied on Ibrahim’s help a lot in my early investigations — before I realized that his friendliness was rooted in a little crush. “Maybe he feels a little funny being around Ned and me,” I said with a shrug. “It’s okay. He needs some time to feel normal around me again.”

Ned nodded. “In the meantime,” he said, reaching for the mouse, “I’m going to tell UrNewReality to go suck an egg.”

“No!” I gasped, reaching out to stop him, and to my surprise, Bess and George did exactly the same thing.

“Why?” Ned asked, turning to the three of us with a bemused expression. “I’m not worried about anyone finding out I bought that book. People on campus know me; they know I’m not interested in the ramblings of a racist crackpot. I’m not going to allow some stranger to blackmail me.”

I glanced at my friends. I could see they felt the same way I did: Ned was right, but we were getting so close to the mysterious UrNewReality.

“Ned,” I said, “I know and you know that that receipt is meaningless. But, if you played along…”

Ned sighed. “Played along, Nancy!”

“Just listen. If you played along and found out what UrNewReality wants you to do — maybe we could finally get a clue who he is!”

“Or she, ” George reminded me. “Girls can be hackers too.”

“Or she,” I agreed. “Ned, really — if you’re worried about my safety, doesn’t it make more sense to play along and find out what this person is really up to? If you tell UrNewReality to go suck an egg, then maybe he or she will give whatever task they have for you to someone else — someone who’ll actually go through with it.”

That stopped Ned short. He froze at the computer, dropping the mouse, as he appeared to think this over. “Well,” he said.

George stepped forward and touched his arm. “You can be our mole!” she said excitedly. “You can be working for us on the inside. See what they want you to do, but tell us everything.”

Ned looked at me. He didn’t look thrilled about this; in fact, his expression told me that he was distinctly uncomfortable. But he was concerned enough for my safety that he was willing to go along with it.

“Please, Ned,” I urged, leaning over to rest my hand on his shoulder. “We have to figure out who this person is. If not, who knows how long he can harass me by computer?”

Ned seemed to think this over, then he looked up at me and sighed. “Okay,” he agreed. “But I hope it goes without saying, I’m not carrying out any of UrNewReality’s little missions! I’ll see what he or she has to say, but that’s it. It ends there.”

I gave him a big hug. “Of course, Ned.” I smiled. “Just the information you get is enough for me.”

When I turned around, though, I could see George was still frowning. “We should contact the owners of BetterLife,” she murmured, gesturing at the computer screen. “Those men you saw speak at the university. What were their names?”

I made a face. “Robert Sung and Jack Crilley.” The memory of meeting them was not a pleasant one. They hadn’t reacted very well to the questions I’d asked them, or the implication that their game had security failures that made it easy for users to lie about their true identities.

“Excuse me, Ned,” George said, gently nudging Ned away from the computer. She sat down and started clicking on different BetterLife screens, trying to locate a contact number, I guess. When that didn’t work, she went to a search engine and typed in BetterLife contact number, but none of the results it returned seemed to contain a phone number. In fact, oddly enough, there seemed to be very little information available about how to contact anyone with a BetterLife problem.

Sighing, George typed in the BetterLife URL again. “There’s a FAQ and a message board,” she complained. “And it looks like there’s one general e-mail for all BetterLife-related questions and comments. Who knows how often they check that?”

Bess shrugged. “It looks like our only choice, though,” she said. “Right?”

George shook her head. “Right,” she agreed reluctantly. I watched as she clicked on the E-MAIL US! button and began typing up a quick but urgent message about a hacker using the program to steal users’ private information. She left her e-mail, and home and cell numbers as contact info. She signed the e-mail “Looking forward to hearing from you very soon, George Fayne.”

She clicked Send, pressing down very deliberately on the mouse button. “I guess we’ve done all we can do for right now,” she said.

“Agreed,” I replied, and Bess and Ned nodded.

We were all silent for a minute, then Bess piped up. “While we’re here,” she said slyly, gesturing at the BetterLife screen, “maybe we can quickly take VirtualNancy shopping?”

I groaned.

I was awakened from a deep sleep the next morning. I’d been having a dream where I was playing BetterLife as VirtualNancy, but everyone I was interacting with — Ned, Bess, George, even Ibrahim — was their real, three-dimensional self, and I was my VirtualNancy avatar. Then, suddenly, the setting changed and we were in real River Heights — not virtual River Heights. But I was still VirtualNancy! I kept trying to shout, to use my voice, but whenever I wanted to communicate, I had to type what I wanted to say into a keyboard and everyone else would read it on their PDAs.

“Oh, Nancy,” Ned said sympathetically in my dream, resting a hand on my oddly smooth, oddly glowing arm. “You know why I’m doing this, right? It’s for you….”

“Nancy!” A female, somewhat frustrated voice interrupted my dream. I realized that I was in my bed, and someone was shaking my arm — it was our housekeeper and good friend, Hannah Gruen. “Nancy! Can’t you hear me? It’s for you. The phone is for you.”

I blinked awake. “What time is it?” I asked groggily.

“Eight thirty,” Hannah replied, taking my hand and slipping our cordless phone into it. “I didn’t want to wake you, but George said it was important.”

George? I held the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“Nancy!” George cried. Hannah patted my arm and backed out of my bedroom. I mouthed a silent thank you to her, and she smiled and waved.

“Get up and get some clothes on, Nance. You and I have a hot date at the library.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Huh?” I asked. “George? Slow down. What are we doing at the library?”

George sighed. “Only making the Internet safe for future generations! I was wo- ken up this morning by a phone call from none other than the public relations representative for Mr. Robert Sung and Mr. Jack Crilley.”

I blinked. The BetterLife creators? “They called you back?” I cried, too surprised to hide the disbelief from my voice.

“They did indeed,” George sang, “and thanks for the vote of confidence. Yeah, to be honest, I was surprised too, but this woman said they read my e-mail and were very concerned about BetterLife being used to hack into its users’ lives.”

“Huh,” I muttered. When I’d met Jack Crilley and Robert Sung, they hadn’t exactly seemed very concerned about their users’ privacy or safety.

“It just so happens,” George was going on, “that their security consultant, a Ms. Dorothy Bilowski, lives about twenty minutes away. So the PR rep set up a meeting for us today at 10 a.m. at the River Heights library. Be there or be square!”

I shook my head. This was all falling into place, almost too easily. “She just happens to live here?” I asked.

“I know it’s weird,” George replied, slowing the pace of her words a bit, “but it’s not that crazy in the world of computers. If you’re an expert in something — say, setting up billing systems, or security features — then you can work as a consultant to lots of different companies. They’ll hire you just to set up their system, then you move on. Consultants live all over the country. So it’s a coincidence, sure, but definitely possible.”

I took a breath, considering all of this. “How are we going to show her what’s been going on?” I asked.

“That’s the thing,” George said. “I’ve got my work cut out for me, actually. She wants me to track down all the evidence I can and put it on my laptop. We’ll bring that to the meeting so she can have a look, and hopefully figure out what’s going on.”

George went on to ask me for Shannon’s phone number, so she could get her password as Blondie86. She’d already called Ned for his.

“Did you know his BetterLife password is blueeyedgirl?” George asked. I could hear the smirk in her voice. And I immediately felt myself blushing.

“That’s sweet,” I murmured.

George went back to her earlier gruff tone. “Well, get up, Nance,” she insisted. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us. And Bess is working today, so it’s just you and me, kid.”

“Roger that,” I replied.

After saying good-bye, I quickly showered, dressed, and ran downstairs for some oatmeal, courtesy of Hannah. By the time George came to pick me up, I was settled at the kitchen table, reading the paper.

BETTERLIFE SUBSCRIPTION PLAN DEBUTS SATURDAY, a headline in the business section screamed. In smaller letters below, it said: Co-founders Predicted to Make Millions. That meant Robert Sung and Jack Crilley. BetterLife was currently and always had been a free program, but it was amazingly popular, and as Shannon Fitzgerald showed, many of its frequent users were like addicts — they depended on their BetterLife life to keep them sane. On Saturday, a new subscription plan would become available that would allow users to pay $19.99 a month in order to become an “enhanced” user. Enhanced users would get various advantages in the game; for example, it would be easier for them to secure high-paying jobs, and their characters would get more information about the other players in the game. But also, enhanced users would be able to further personalize their avatars, uploading their favorite music, using their favorite brands, and even making custom “skins” of actual clothes from their wardrobes for their avatars to wear.

It’s unusual for people to pay for something they can get for free, but still, millions of users were expected to sign up for the subscription plan in the first couple weeks. Sung and Crilley were already making money from advertising in the BetterLife world, but now that they’d be making money directly from their players, they would become very rich men.

In a way, I thought, it was particularly impressive that they’d reacted so quickly during this week of all weeks. I supposed it was a good sign that they were so concerned about the security problems, even as they prepared to unleash this new, lucrative service.

“Hey,” I greeted George, climbing into the passenger seat of her car. “Did you get everything you needed onto your laptop?”

“Sure did,” George replied with a smile. “I can’t wait to show it all to Ms. Bilowski. It’s nice to think we might be able to nip this whole cyberharassment thing in the bud through technology.”

I smiled. It would be nice, I thought, but something tells me it’s not going to be that simple. George pulled back into the street, and we made our way to the library.

“Where is the computer section?” George asked at the front desk of the River Heights library. That’s where our meeting with Dorothy Bilowski was supposed to take place.

“You don’t know?” I asked George, nudging her teasingly. “You’re such a computer buff, I would think you’d have a trail worn into the carpet.”

George made a face. “It’s all computer manuals, Nance,” she replied. “Novice stuff. When I need a copy of Windows XP for Dummies, maybe I’ll pay it a visit.”

The volunteer at the front desk was looking from me to her with an amused expression. “It’s in the basement,” she told George. “Straight behind you, first door on your right, down one flight and to the left.”

“Thanks,” George said with a smile. We turned around and made our way downstairs.

“I don’t think I’ve spent much time in the library basement,” I murmured, lowering my voice when I heard how it echoed in the stairway.

“Me neither,” George replied softly, matching my tone. “It’s so quiet down here on a weekday morning! It’s kind of creeping me out.”

The basement level of the library was quiet, and a little dark, lit by small windows at the very tops of the walls. Every section we passed was completely empty. I wondered if George and I were the only people down there.

“Here we go,” George said, gesturing to a rectangular wooden table in front of a few shelves’ worth of old computer manuals. “I think this is where Ms. Bilowski wanted to meet. I guess we can just settle down here.”

We each pulled out a chair and made ourselves comfortable at the table. It was overwhelmingly quiet, and for a few minutes we just sat there, silent and awkward.

“What time is it?” I whispered finally.

George held up her watch. It was 10:06.

“She may have had trouble finding the library,” George whispered with a shrug.

I shrugged back. “I’m not worried,” I replied. “I’m sure she’ll show up.”

We lapsed back into silence.

And I was sure she’d show up. Sure when I asked George for the time again at 10:09, and again at 10:13. At 10:18, though, I was starting to have my doubts.

I glanced pointedly at George’s PDA, which she’d placed on the table next to her laptop. “Did you give her your cell phone number?” I asked.

“Of course I did,” George replied, picking up the PDA to examine it. “It’s on silent mode. And I don’t get great reception down here. But it looks like she hasn’t called.”

I sighed. On the PDA, I saw the clock tick to 10:19.

“Maybe you should go upstairs and check it where you have better reception?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not like —”

But I never got to finish. Right at that moment, the near-silence was cut by a terrified female scream. “Aaaauuuuuuugh!”

And there was a clunk, like something falling.

George and I exchanged a glance. Neither one of us said anything, but we both sprang up from our seats and darted toward the source of the scream. It seemed to be coming from a section of books three rows down and two aisles over. As we got closer, I heard moaning. And soon we came upon a blond girl — she couldn’t have been more than fifteen — sprawled out on the library floor. Above her, a rolling ladder loomed malevolently.

“Ohhhh,” she moaned, clutching her ankle. “Oh, ouch… I can’t believe I did that….”

“Are you okay?” George asked, kneeling by her side. “Did you fall?”

The girl moaned again. “Ohhh…yeah.” She glanced up at George gratefully. “I must have been up near the top, and my foot just totally missed the next rung. The next thing I knew…” She gestured around her, at the floor.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, kneeling on her other side. “Can you move your arms and legs okay? Is anything broken?”

The girl looked up at me, then bit her lip, as if considering. “My ankle hurts a lot,” she replied.

“Which one?” I asked. “This one?” I touched her left ankle, but got no response. I touched her right, too, but still the girl made no outward signs that she was in pain. A few seconds after I touched her right ankle, she said clearly, “Yeah — that one.” But it was long enough after I’d been squeezing her ankle, that it seemed odd to me that she didn’t make a peep until then.

“Can you move it?” asked George. She didn’t seem to notice the girl’s hesitation.

The girl bit her lip again. “Um… yeah,” she replied, rotating the ankle in what seemed like a lot of movement for an injured person. “I think it might be sprained, though. It hurts so much….”

George looked sympathetically at the girl, then down at me, by her feet. “Maybe we’d better take you to the emergency room,” she suggested. “If it hurts that much, you should really get an X-ray.”

The girl swallowed and sat up a little bit. “Noooo,” she insisted. “Don’t be silly. I’m sure it’s fine.”

I tried to catch her eye, but she was looking down now. “You were just saying you were in a lot of pain,” I reminded her. “It’s really better to be safe than sorry.”

“Oh, no,” the girl insisted, looking up and shooting me a forced smile. “It actually — it feels a lot better now. Look, I think I can even stand on it.”

Oddly quickly for someone who had just fallen from a good height, the girl pulled her legs under her and slowly stood. She made a big show of testing her weight on the “bad” leg, then smiled. “It feels fine now,” she insisted. “Good as new. Thanks for your help, but I should get going….” She began backing away in the opposite direction from where George and I had come.

“Wait, are you sure?” George called, taking a few steps after her. “You didn’t seem okay a few seconds ago!”

“I’m fine!” the girl cried, waving behind her without turning around. “Thanks for your help!” And she disappeared around a corner, and was gone.

George turned and caught my eye. “That was odd,” she murmured.

“Very,” I agreed. “But maybe in the time it took to help her, our mystery guest showed up. Come on, let’s get back.”

We walked slowly back to the computer section. As we reached our aisle and looked toward the table where we’d been sitting, it was clear that no one had come to join us. The section was as silent and deserted as ever. But as we stepped clos- er, we noticed that something had changed…

“My laptop!” George cried, breaking into a run. She quickly reached the table, pulling out our chairs, looking all around. But the computer was gone.

Just then, in the silence, I heard footfalls running to our left. I turned around. “George!” I cried.

A figure — just a blur, really, in a trench coat and baseball cap — was running away with George’s laptop clutched in his or her hands! As soon as she saw it, George took off at a fast clip toward the figure. I followed, and together, we trailed the trench-coated thief up the stairs and through a side exit.

“Stop him!” George cried, getting closer and closer to the figure. “Thief!”

The security guard at the front desk turned around and looked as though he was deciding whether to believe us, but George and I were already way ahead of him. We darted out of the library and stood on the steps, shielding our eyes from the sun as we searched the street for the mysterious thief.

“There!” George cried, pointing at the sidewalk across the street, where our trench-coated villain was running north, toward downtown River Heights.

Without another word, we both barreled down the steps after the thief, pausing only briefly to look for oncoming cars before we darted across the street. The thief was already a block ahead of us, entering River Heights’ congested main thoroughfare where shoppers and late-breakfast-eaters crowded the stores and sidewalk cafes.

“We need to speed up!” George cried between gasps of breath. “He’s going to lose us in the crowd!”

I struggled to pick up my pace, my lungs burning as we raced down the next block and into the main drag. George paused for just a second to survey the scene. The thief had run by several clumps of slow-moving pedestrians, and it seemed, for the moment anyway, we’d lost sight of our target.

I skidded to a stop behind George as she frowned, shielding her eyes again to scan the sidewalk. “We have to catch him,” she muttered under her breath. “If I lose that laptop, you don’t understand, Nancy — my life will be a shambles!”

“What do you have on there?” I asked, honestly curious. If someone stole my ancient-but-beloved desktop, I would be sad, but not completely ruined. I’d be out a few e-mails and Internet passwords, sure, but I was pretty sure I’d be able to start over.

“All of my finances,” George began listing, “my calendar, my contacts… my Christmas card list… my goals for the week and month… every e-mail, letter, or paper I’ve ever written…” Suddenly her eyes lit up. “There!” she cried, pointing to our local pharmacy. Sure enough, our thief was just darting through the automatic front doors.

We ran after him, pausing briefly to cross the street. By the time we ran headlong into the store — startling a few elderly customers who stood up front, waiting to pay — our thief was nowhere to be seen.

“He has to be in here,” I said, stating the obvious. “There’s only the one door.”

George nodded grimly. “You run to the back,” she instructed, “and I’ll stay up front. We’ll search every aisle. When you find him, yell!”

I did as George instructed, running to the back of the store, where the pharmacist shot me an annoyed look. She probably thought we were a couple of bored teenagers playing chase in their nice quiet store, so I decided not to take offense. Moving quickly, I scanned every aisle, but I saw nothing — nothing, that is, that resembled a trench-coated mystery man holding a stolen laptop. I did see lots of confused elderly people. (Mental note: It seems the elderly really like to pick up their pills on weekday mornings.)

Suddenly the soft Muzak playing over the store’s sound system was cut by a loud, crazy “HAAAAH!” that I instantly recognized as George. “NANCY! AISLE NINE!” she shouted. I then heard rapid, thumping footfalls as George (I presumed) barreled after our mystery thief (I presumed). By the time I got my wits about me and started charging to aisle nine, George shrieked.

“ Nancy! Front of the store! He’s getting away!”

Changing course as fast as I could, I dodged a frightened-looking lady holding a gray-haired wiener dog and charged to the front of the store. There, I saw our mystery man (closer now, I could see it was a male) emerge from an aisle to my left. Darting forward with all the strength I had, I somehow managed to get ahead of him, cutting him off from the front door and forcing him back toward the aisle. Just then, an almost-out-of-breath George came charging out of the aisle he came from. Our thief hesitated for a second, then ran down an aisle on the far right side of the store.

George looked at me wearily. “Me,” she said simply, gesturing to the aisle behind her. “You,” she went on, pointing down the aisle where the thief had disappeared. “We…” She gestured to imply that we would both run down the aisles, meeting at the back of the store — and trapping the thief.

I nodded. “Gotcha.” And just like that, we both ran off to trap the thief.

The aisle he had run down was the cosmetics and perfume aisle, and I spotted our thief trying to hide behind a display for some young pop star’s (I’m sure Bess would be able to identify her) new signature scent. This close, I could see more clearly that he had disguised himself with a trench coat, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, dark sunglasses, and a muffler knotted high across his jaw. He was only feet away, and yet I still couldn’t see any of his identifying features. When he spotted me, he turned and tried to run to the back of the store, but George was already jogging up the aisle from that direction. “Freeze!” she shouted at him.

Desperate, the thief picked up the tester from the perfume display and brandished it at us like a weapon. “Stop!” he said in a muffled voice.

George sighed. “I’m sure that smells terrible,” she said, “but still, you have got to be kidding me.” She held out her hand. “My laptop, please.”

Defeated, the thief put the perfume back on the display and handed over the laptop. “I’m sorry,” he said in the same muffled voice.

George accepted her laptop and glanced at the thief warily, settling down cross-legged on the pharmacy’s floor. “Stay right there,” she instructed the thief as she powered up her computer. He stood, clearly uncomfortable, fiddling with the gloves he wore. After a moment, a chime implied that the computer was powering up, and George frowned as she scanned the desktop and clicked on a few files. After a minute or two, she closed the laptop and turned back to our thief.

“Okay,” she said. “Everything appears to be in order. Now, do you want to tell me just what the heck you think you were doing?”

The thief didn’t say anything. Even though I couldn’t see his expression, his body language was pure deer-in-the-headlights. After a few seconds, he shook his head.

“All right,” I said, growing weary of the game. “Come on. Let’s see who you are.” I reached over to grab his cap and sunglasses. He shifted away, but I was too fast; I grabbed the brim of his hat and then knocked the sunglasses off his face. “Voila!” I shouted, gesturing toward George. “Our —”

But before I could say “thief,” I caught sight of our culprit and was too stunned to continue. I gasped, and heard George do the same.

Our thief looked miserable, like he would have done anything to get out of there. After a moment, I got my breath back and turned to George.

She was clearly just as surprised as I was.

“Ibrahim!”

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14