passenger seat. As he wormed up from the back, he was a lanky tangle of arms, legs, and torso, but I figured that if he had gotten himself in there, he could get himself out.
He did. Then he just sat, waiting to go.
I cleared my throat. When he looked at me, I looked at his lap. We had been through this before. I didn’t care what his mother did, but this was my vehicle, and I didn’t take chances. When I had to drive, seat belts were non-negotiable.
As soon as I heard the click, I checked the side-view mirror and returned to the road.
We drove in silence, actually were of like minds in this, Chris and I. Whenever I drove him places—like the times Grace had been stuck at the Spa and he had a hockey game or a dentist appointment—we didn’t need noise. I didn’t like his music; he didn’t like mine. He didn’t like sharing personal thoughts; I didn’t like prying. Had Lily survived to fifteen, I would have wanted to know her music and, yes, would have pried if I felt she had something on her mind. But Chris wasn’t my child, which freed me of responsibility. I was maybe an aunt, maybe a friend, in either of which cases, we drove in peace.
Tonight, though, peace was scant. Grace’s absence was nearly as disturbing as the specter of tomorrow’s arraignment. Chris had been released into her care at the court hearing, but his being alone now didn’t feel like care to me. It felt like abandonment in a time of need. The tension in him was palpable. He didn’t have much of a beard yet, but even if he had, I doubt it would have hidden the stiffness of his jaw, clearly visible despite the waning light. And then there was the jiggling of his leg.
Signaling at the obelisk, I turned left on Cedar. Once on the straightaway again, I said, “Want to talk?”
He didn’t reply, just stared at the houses we passed. After we crossed the Blue and the space between houses increased, he shifted his legs in the foot well. It was only seconds before the jiggling resumed.
We were approaching the pretty yellow farmhouse, when, sounding brash, he said, “It isn’t hard, y’know. Anyone can do it.”
Hacking, I thought. Here we go.
“It’s about tricking a person into giving up personal information,” he said. His voice didn’t crack as much as before. Nor did he push it deeper. I wanted to think he trusted me enough to just be who he was, but I suspected defiance was at play. Whatever, he seemed more focused on content than style. “Once you have that, you’re in.”
“But how do you get it?” I asked, treating it like a hypothetical discussion. We weren’t talking about a crime Christopher Emory was accused of committing, simply what hacking was about, and I was curious.
We passed the farmhouse. Several weak lamps appeared in the windows, along with the vivid color of a flat-screen. For a split second, I wondered whether Devon was in the news again tonight, but the colors were quickly gone. As we drove on, the landscape was increasingly shadowed.
“First, you make a mock-up of a Twitter log-in,” he said and snorted. “Takes maybe an hour to do that.”
“Seriously? And it looks like the real thing?”
“The URL is different, but just a little, so most people don’t notice. They’re annoyed, they’re in a rush, they see the little blue bird.” He retreated to the side window again.
“Then what?”
He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a minute, like he was suddenly not sure he should be telling me this. But I sensed he couldn’t hold it in anymore. Knee going up and down, up and down with the jiggle of his leg, he faced me again. “You write something that looks like an official message from Twitter. It could read, ‘Maggie Reid just asked to follow you. Log in to approve.’ You send it to the target.”
“So you need either an email address or a phone number,” I said. Grace would have both for Ben Zwick. “But if a person has a public account”—which I was sure Ben did—“wouldn’t he question why he’s being asked to approve a follower?”
“He’d think it’s just a security precaution. Or maybe he recognizes the name of the person who wants to follow him. You can get names like that in a few clicks.”
I bet. High school classmates, work colleagues, relatives—Google had it all. Someone