Page 51 of Freedom Fighters
Minnie glanced at Duardo. He frowned and shook his head. He couldn’t guess either. He nodded at the private and rapped on the door. “Señora Escobedo?”.
“Please come in,” Calli calledback. She hadn’t used Duardo’s rank.
Duardo held the door open for her and Minnie stepped into the office, her curiosity roused.
Callie was behind her big desk. Another woman sat on one of the chairs in front of it.
Duardo pulled out the second chair for her and Minnie sank into it gratefully. She always felt tired these days. The drain of energy would only be worse before the end.
Duardotook up his post at the corner of the desk, to Minnie’s left.
The woman turned to look at them. She was a young black woman and the way she studied them made Minnie think she was absorbing every little detail, that nothing escaped her notice. Her hair was long and straight, hanging past the back of her shoulder blades. Her eyes were large, almond-shaped and beautiful. Her skin was light, almostcoffee-colored.
“This is Chloe Masters,” Calli said. “She arrived in Acapulco this morning. From San Francisco. Chloe, this is Minerva Benning Peña and Eduardo Peña y Santos.”
Duardo nodded his head and Minnie smiled at her.
Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “You’re Cristián’s brother?”
Duardo glanced at Calli for explanation.
“You don’t have to worry,” Chloe told him. “Your security isn’t breached.I know my way around the Internet. Cristián stopped talking to me three days ago. I had to come down here and make sure he’s okay. Is he?”
Minnie held up her hand. “You might need to back up and explain a few things. Who is Cristián?”
“You have to make sure about me,” Chloe said. “I get it. Really, I’m not interested in the Insurrectos or your war. I just want to check on Cristián. I can’t goto Vistaria myself. I figure that as he’s a Loyalist, then the Loyalists camping in Acapulco—you guys—would tell me if he’s okay.”
Duardo cleared his throat. “This Cristián…he told you he was a Loyalist?”
Chloe smiled. Even her smile was stunning. She was a gorgeous woman. “Of course, he didn’t tell me that. I didn’t know who he was until around eight last night. We never gave any details aboutourselves. Cristián insisted on it and I had already figured out the open code on the IWU Facebook group, so I guessed why he was insisting. When he stopped talking three days ago, I went digging for facts. That’s when I found out who he was.” She hesitated, her full lips pressing together. “I knowwherehe is, too. Pascuallita is crawling with Insurrectos. If you’re his brother, I don’t haveto tell you how risky his position is.”
Duardo and Calli exchanged glances. “How did you dig up the real information?” Calli asked, making it sound like a casual question.
Chloe unzipped a leather briefcase sitting on the chair next to her hip and reached inside.
Minnie saw Duardo stiffen to full alert from the corner of her eye. He wasn’t armed. He was wearing jeans as Calli had suggested.That didn’t mean he wouldn’t do anything if Chloe pulled a weapon out of the briefcase.
What emerged was a memory stick on a black lanyard. Chloe held it up so it swung like a pendulum. “I’m a hacker, like Cristián,” she said. “I’ve been working on this for a year and when Cristián disappeared, I spent twelve hours finishing it, so I could look for him.”
“What is it?” Calli said.
“It’s a….”Chloe shrugged. “I could give you the technical specifications, only I don’t think they’d mean anything to you. No offense.”
Calli gave her a stiff smile. “Try describing it generally.”
Chloe shrugged. “Okay. The Internet is one giant open network. Anyone can get on it and anyone who knows a little bit about hacking can find all sorts of information about people. There’s not much security onthe Internet, although the Facebook group was a good idea. Open code is unbreakable unless you have reference points that let you figure out the rest.”
“You had those reference points?” Minnie asked.
“Not until last night.” She lifted the memory stick again. “This is an application I built. It lets you move around the net and leave no footprints. When you use it, no one knows you’re there unlessyou’re silly enough to say you’re there. That means you can hack into anything you want. It makes you invisible.” She grinned. “I call it Harry’s Cloak.”
Calli smiled.
Minnie held up her hand. “I’ve been learning a lot about computers in the last few weeks. I work with a would-be hacker. Let me ask a dumb question. If you have Harry’s Cloak and someone else had Harry’s Cloak, could you communicatewith each other privately?”
“More than privately,” Chloe said. “You’d both be invisible to anyone else, including the best hackers out there. Harry’s Cloak doesn’t only mask your signature. It stops your signature from even forming. It’s as perfect a disguise as the real cloak was.”
She leaned forward and placed the jump drive in front of Calli. “You can have it,gratis,” she said. “It’s myway of proving I’m not an Insurrecto spy.”
