Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

One day, Nicky had tried to enlist the help of one of the housekeepers when she came to drop off sheets. The woman, named Teresa, was in her fifties, and Nicky had asked her one time where she was from — Hidalgo, in Mexico — and whether she had kids.

“Girl and a boy,” Teresa had said after she had kicked off her heels. When there was no chance they could be seen by the master of the house, the help went around in stocking feet.

Nicky asked, “How old are they? Are they in New York?”

Teresa’s daughter, who was twenty, worked in a dry cleaner’s in California. Her son was twenty-three and worked in construction in Arizona and New Mexico. Nicky had the sense no one in Teresa’s family was in America legally.

“If somebody was holding your daughter prisoner,” Nicky said, “wouldn’t you want someone to help her?”

Teresa pretended not to hear the question.

“All I’m asking you to do,” Nicky said, “is tell the police I’m here. Tell them I’m being held here against my will. Make an anonymous call.”

Teresa was putting fresh towels in the bathroom and would not look at Nicky.

“Please? I’m begging you.”

Teresa finished her duties and left without saying another word. Later that day, Roberta came and had a little chat with Nicky.

“Never put the staff in that kind of position again,” Roberta said. “Anyway, the people who work for Mr. Pritkin are very loyal.”

Not loyal, Nicky thought. More like scared shitless.

That was when Nicky upped her strategizing about how she could, on her own, draw the police or the fire department to the Pritkin brownstone. She considered starting a fire in her room, but she didn’t have any matches or a lighter or even two sticks to rub together. There was a hair dryer in the bathroom, and one day Nicky tried to heat up some shredded toilet paper to the point that it would burst into flame, but had no success. Then she thought about stuffing towels into the drains of the tub or sink and opening up the taps. But what good would a flood do, beyond pissing off Jeremy and Roberta about all the water damage she’d cause?

The room had only that one window, about two feet square, that looked out to a brick wall across the narrow alley. Some view. And this was no cheap pane of glass, either. It was thick, and embedded with what looked like chicken wire, the kind of glass they used in doors in schools. So, breaking it wasn’t an option. And even if she could smash it, what then? Could she even fit through it? And if she could, did she think she was Spider-Man? Was she going to scale the wall down to street level?

One day, while standing by the glass and straining to get a glimpse of Seventieth Street, she happened to glance down at the iPad in her hand.

She was getting a weak Wi-Fi signal.

It had to be coming from behind the brick wall on the other side of the alley.

Oh my God, she thought. If I can piggyback onto that Wi-Fi I can get a message to someone.

The Wi-Fi was tagged LOLITASPLACE. Someone named Lolita, Nicky guessed — duh — was right across the way there, behind that wall. The only problem was, Nicky needed a password to get onto Lolita’s network.

Well, gee, how hard could that be?

She tried the obvious passwords that people too stupid to remember them used. Like PASSWORD, or ABCDEFG, or 123456789, or, given that this was Lolita’s Wi-Fi, LOLITASWIFI, and LOLITASPAD. Nicky must have tried more than a hundred variations over the next couple of hours.

No joy.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she said to herself. She was about to give up when she decided to give it one more shot.

She typed in ATILOL. The name of the presumed occupant, spelled backward.

The password was accepted.

“Yes!” Nicky shrieked under her breath.

She immediately opened up Safari, Googled the home page for the New York Police Department. There was an email address! But was this iPad set up for email? Not a problem. All Nicky had to do now was set one up. Gmail, or Hotmail. She could do that in seconds, then send an email to the NYPD and help would be on the—

The door to her room burst open.

Roberta strode in, her face aflame. She ripped the iPad from Nicky’s hands, tossed it onto the carpeted floor, then drove her four-inch heel into the screen — not once but three times — shattering it.

Nicky babbled, “I wasn’t doing anything! I was just—”

And that was when Roberta slapped her across the face. No, this was more than a slap. This was an open-handed punch, and it sent Nicky reeling. She threw out a hand to brace herself as she hit the floor.

“You think we don’t know?” Roberta shrieked. “You little fucking slut!”

Nicky was on her knees, struggling to stand, when Roberta hit her again. Not across the face, but the side of her head. Harder this time. Nicky saw stars as she landed on the carpet. She burst into tears, repeatedly shouted that she was sorry, begged Roberta to stop.

That was when she realized there had to be a camera somewhere in the room. They’d been watching her all this time. Seen her excitement when she piggybacked onto someone else’s Wi-Fi.

Through her tears, Nicky saw the door was still open, and standing there was Jeremy Pritkin.

Watching.

His face was blank. Not smiling, not laughing. No indication he enjoyed watching Roberta beat Nicky, but no expression of disapproval or disappointment, either. He watched impassively, the way someone might watch another person in an act as uneventful as vacuuming or reading a book.

Pritkin looked at Nicky as though she were nothing.

Finally, he spoke.

“Roberta,” he said.

Roberta gave Nicky one last withering look, then turned and left. Nicky could hear, above her own whimpering, the sound of the door’s lock being driven home.

She could hear them talking in the hall.

Nicky crawled across the carpet until she reached the door, then leaned up against it. Maybe, if Roberta was in the hall, she wasn’t, at that moment, watching Nicky on some surveillance feed.

Roberta was saying, “... indefinitely... have to do something...”

And then Pritkin replying, “... limited number of people I trust do this kind of work... currently in the field.”

“... much longer?”

“... hope not... first thing as soon as they return.”

Their voices faded away as they walked down the hall.

So, Nicky thought, there really was only one way this could end. She found little comfort in the fact that she had called it right.

Fort Wayne, IN

It was pretty unbelievable.

Travis Roben had a girlfriend. Travis Roben had a goddamn girlfriend, and her name was Sandy, and she was a real, honest-to-God female of the human species. Not a picture in a magazine, not some blow-up doll, not a video on some pornographic website, but a living, breathing person.

They’d gone for that coffee after their initial meeting in the comic book store, where Sandy had sought advice about what to get for her twelve-year-old nephew. Sandy ordered a decaf cappuccino and a biscotti while Travis went for a plain old coffee with a ton of cream and half a dozen spoonfuls of sugar because he really had no idea what the difference was between what Sandy was getting and a latte and an Americano and all those fancy coffee drinks. The truth was, Travis mostly drank Mountain Dew, and his idea of a sophisticated snack was a Hostess Sno Ball.

And he’d made a huge social blunder right from the get-go — letting Sandy pay for her own drink. Stupid stupid stupid, he told himself once they’d sat down. Smooth move, idiot.

But if Sandy had been offended, she didn’t show it. She sat right down and started talking.