“I understand. I’m prepared to turn it over.”
“You are? You said it would take week or more.”
“I can start uploading packets to show good faith. I believe I can have a complete version uploaded by Wednesday morning. In return, I need to talk to Jian and Anjali to make sure they’re okay.”
“You don’t need to talk to anybody. You just need to upload program that hides us from surveillance cameras.”
“Proof of life is standard in these situations, Sergey.”
“You can have picture.”
“Fine. Jian makes the okay sign. Anjali has both arms raised.”
“You don’t trust that we just wouldn’t do all numbers. I’m hurt by lack of trust.”
“I know how valuable my program is to you. Every day that you don’t have it puts your people in jeopardy. Showing me Jian and Anjali would encourage me to work harder and get it to you faster.”
“Fine. I show you picture. I will send in one minute. I have to untie them.”
They hung up, and Tristan looked at his phone.
The screen showed a wildly swinging video, so much so that Tristan blinked and looked at the white popcorn ceiling to regain his equilibrium. When he looked down again, the screen was white with a diagonal shadow, probably the seam of the ceiling, which meant the phone had been laid face-up on something.
He turned up the volume and held it to his ear. “Yeah, I’m untying you. Tristan King wants photo. Now sit on bed or I beat you again.”
Simultaneous relief and rage swept through Tristan’s flesh, a softening and a cold smack. They were alive. That’s what he needed to concentrate on. They were alive.
He went back to the bed and showed Colleen his phone. “I have video and audio inside Jian’s hotel room.”
Colleen looked up at him, startled, and grabbed the phone.
Half of Sergey’s face showed on the screen.
She dropped it on the white sheets. “He can’t see us, right?”
“Nope. I turned on the camera and microphone on Jian’s phone when I called, but our camera and mic are off. And it’s through an app, not the voice call function, so they can make other calls on the phone without dropping the line to us.”
She squinted and tilted her head. “Why is he just holding the phone and yelling, ‘Make OK’?”
“The front selfie camera is on, not the back cam. He’s taking a picture of Anjali and Jian with the back camera, so we’re seeing him. I told him to have Jian make the okay sign. Anjali is supposed to have both arms up.”
His phone buzzed, and he took it back.
Sergey had sent the picture of his hostages.
Both of them looked more roughed up than before. Jian was holding his ribs, and Anjali might have had a fat lip.
Tristan’s heart thumped in his chest, and anger flared like throwing dry leaves on red-glowing coals.
32
Rogue Security
Tristan
While Tristan simmered and damped down his utter rage at Jian’s and Anjali’s injuries, Colleen gaped at the picture on the screen. “Tristan, we have to get them out. We can’t wait anymore. We have to do something. We know where they are. I’m serious when I say that I can find a damn gun show and have us armed in an hour. It’s Sunday, so it’s a weekend. Any gun show will open at noon, right after church.”
“We’ll get them out. We have an agreement now. I need to work on the Anonymity program a little before we hand it over because everything in it is hand-coded.”
“You can’t give them Anonymity Plus.”
“Well, no. They don’t know the new and improved version exists, so I’m not handing that over to them. If anything, I’m going to tweak it to screw it up, make it crash at the least possible provocation. I’m going to call this one Anonymity Minus.”
She sighed. “I still hate them having access to your program at all. Can’t we just kill them?”
“You and I aren’t subject matter experts in hostage rescuing. We can’t.”
“But we can call the police. They have a hostage rescue team. It’s pretty good, too. The TV had footage of their female sniper taking out a guy with a shotgun duct-taped to the back of a hostage’s neck from the rooftop of the next building over. She dropped him straight down with one shot.”
“Sergey said they’d shoot them if they saw police, and at least some of the police here are on Butorins’ payroll. I don’t want to risk it, not when we know that they want the computer program. This is straightforward. We got them into this, and we can get them out.”
“I hate this.”
“So do I, but as soon as I get Anonymity Minus ready, they’ll be released. It doesn’t have a user dashboard or anything so that laypeople can use it. That’s why uploading your pictures to make your version was such a pain in the butt. I need to put in some sort of graphic user interface functionality so they can use it.”
“Do you want them to use it?” she asked.
“Well, no. I want Jian and Anjali back, so I have to make the program look like they can use it.”
“Right. Okay, let’s do it. Do you think you can have it done any sooner than Wednesday?” she asked. “That’s a long time for Anjali. And for Jian, too, of course. I wish I could help to make the time go faster.”
“You can test and debug the code,” he told her. “You did a great job with Anonymity Plus, Colleen’s Version. It’s a lot of help to have another set of eyes on it.”
“But we only have one computer,” she said.
He stretched his face into a grin that he didn’t feel. “Two-hour delivery saves the day. I’m going to get my usual shampoo, too. This hotel stuff is acid-stripping my hair.”
Colleen’s phone shivered on the bed and beeped, as it had been doing several times a minute for the past hour.
Tristan asked, “Is someone trying to get ahold of you?”
“Oh, no. That’s the Sherwood Forest forum. I put up a post telling them that I wasn’t dead or kidnapped by aliens because the rumors were flying. I mean, jeez, I hadn’t logged on for a few days. The conspiracy theories had gotten out of control.”
The phone buzzed again. “So they’re still direct-messaging you?”
“Oh, no. It’s just people commenting on my post. There are a lot of replies.”
A few hours later, a text pinged Tristan’s phone that read, You will receive a phone call from Rogue Security within the next fifteen minutes.
He had to get Colleen out of the room.
Or, he could leave.
She would want to come with him, or she would rightfully get upset that he wasn’t working as hard as he could on finishing the Anonymity program and thus freeing Jian and Anjali.
So Tristan stretched and scratched his stomach. “Do you know what I could go for, for lunch?”
Colleen gestured to the still heavily laden breakfast tray by the front door. “Sausage and eggs? Pastries and hash browns?”
“A burrito,” Tristan said. “Where’s the best place around here to get a burrito?”