Cyber Genius

CYBER GENIUS

The Family Genius Mysteries

Patricia Rice

www.bookviewcafe.com

Book View Café Edition
September 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61138-539-7
Copyright © 2015 Patricia Rice

Friday, November 11, 2011

“The world is full of evil, and tablet computers are the
right hand of the devil,” I warned, tugging EG—Elizabeth Georgiana, although
Evil Genius works too—away from her admiration of a businessman’s expensive new
device. “That one is worse than cell phones. It tracks your every move. You
might as well have a drone hovering over your head 24/7 and hand out tickets to
your bank account.”

I checked the airport’s overhead signs for international
arrivals and picked up speed.

“Why is it bad if some stupid computer company tracks my
every move? They really want to know I’m in my bedroom? And I don’t have a bank
account.” Fascinated by new tech, EG dragged her feet and strained to see what
the guy was doing. “If we had a system like that, you could use it to find me.”

I continued marching past Dulles baggage claim belts,
forcing her to run to keep up. “You want me to
hack
MacroWare to find out where you are?” I asked, performing my
best incredulous act. “You think I have nothing better to do?”

With no apparent doubt that I could perform miracles, EG
shrugged. “You’d have more fun doing that than sending Mallard to look for me.
Intercoms are so last century.”

“My baby sister, the techno-fashionista.” I knuckled EG’s
shiny black hair and changed the subject. “Are you going to tell me what
inspired Tudor’s visit? Last I heard, he was neck deep in some hacker
competition and couldn’t even meet Magda for dinner when she was in London.”

Magda being the so-called Hungarian princess who had birthed
me and my roving half-siblings—incredibly long story. As an example, I’m
Anastasia Devlin, my next sibling is Nicholas Maximillian. The first names
continue in royal arrogance while the last names change with regularity. Our
mother’s non-maternal instincts would be the reason Tudor was heading this
direction and not toward her.

I wanted to resent that Tudor had sent his itinerary to a
nine-year-old and not to me, but unfortunately, I understood. I’d spent years
raising my younger half-siblings, then years hiding from them.

Sixteen-year-old boys were easily confused. My little
brother hadn’t known if I’d tell him to jump off a cliff or go home where he
belonged—not that he actually had a home other than his boarding school.

Despite his apparent confusion over my frame of mind, Tudor had
bought the tickets and sent EG the info, knowing she couldn’t do anything to
stop him. This rated pretty high on my Here-Comes-Trouble meter.

EG shrugged again. “It was the middle of the night when he emailed
me, and I doubt he had your phone number.”

Which made me even less comfortable—Tudor was our family
communication central. If he wanted to find my number, he’d find it. After all,
he’d been the one to locate my hiding place in Atlanta so EG could visit me
earlier this year.
Best
scenario
—he just didn’t want to talk to
me.

I feared otherwise. As a family, we had essentially been raised
to flee in the middle of the night at a moment’s notice. I feared teenage
rebellion was too easy an excuse for Tudor’s arrival, and buying last minute
plane tickets was a dead give-away. Tudor was on the run.

My phone pinged a text warning. Popping it from the case on
my belt, I scanned Nick’s message and frowned. “Nick says watch CNN. Think
Patra is on the news?”

Our twenty-something half-sister had only recently moved to
Atlanta to take a job with the news station. She was a pretty—emphasis on
pretty—junior reporter. A live shot seemed unlikely, unless she was in
trouble—far more probable given our history.

“We’ve got time,” EG said eagerly, turning around to find a newsstand
with a television.

I’m not tall and willowy like Patra, but I’m well-muscled. I
can move fast. I passed EG, and she had to run to catch up. To see what had set
off usually blasé Nick, I pushed my way through the crowd that had formed
around a TV monitor.

“In breaking news, Stephen Stiles and four of MacroWare’s
top executives have been hospitalized for possible food poisoning after
Wednesday’s conference dinner at a D.C. hotel. MacroWare stock prices are
plummeting over worries that their new product release will be delayed.”

I frowned in puzzlement. Patra wasn’t making the
announcement. Now that we had a nest egg to invest, I’d socked it away in
mutual funds, not something as risky as MacroWare stock. I saw no relevance to
our lives in a bunch of over-fed execs pigging out and getting sick. I’d had
enough food poisoning experience in my childhood to know the routine. They’d spend
the day on the Royal Flush and someone on the catering staff would get fired.

I was about to turn away when I caught the file clip of VIP
attendees at the conference. I froze and gawked. Sauntering into the hotel wearing
a sleek Italian business suit, with his hand in one pocket and looking bored
was our landlord, Amadeus Graham, hermit extraordinaire.

What on earth
? He
couldn’t condescend to leave his lair to have dinner with us, but he could go
to a public dinner with Stephen Stiles and a thousand computer geeks? This was
not normal by any standard I’d learned these last months of living under
Graham’s roof.

Amadeus Graham had been an ascending political god until his
life had gone up in flames with the Pentagon in 9/11. His wife had died in the
tragedy, and he’d emerged from the fire badly scarred in more ways than one.
He’d deliberately incinerated his political career with his crusade against
powerful figures influencing the president—a crusade he carried on to this day.
Only these days he did it in private. He’d painstakingly eradicated his
existence, leaving the world to think him dead.

Appearing in public was very much not Graham’s style.

The clip was only a brief glimpse. I couldn’t be
positive
that was our reclusive spy in
the attic striding into the hotel as if he owned it.

Who was I kidding? We’d sucked each other’s faces not that
long ago. He was the irritant under my skin, the hindrance to my every desire—except
lust—and just watching him cross a TV screen escalated my pulse rate.

Graham was so bloody reclusive that I was pretty certain
Nick had never seen him. In his position at the Brit embassy, our budding
diplomat brother must have heard more pertinent news than I was seeing. I
texted him a
YEAH, AND?

What had been so important that Graham had come out of
hiding to attend a geek business conference—one in which five extremely
important, powerful men had turned up sick? Men who could affect stock markets!

My gut roiled as if I’d been the one poisoned. No good came
of surprises like this. Or maybe it was just worry over Tudor that had my
paranoia alarm turned on.

The news moved on to the latest yawn about a crooked
mortgage lender and a banking oversight committee’s ruling. I tugged EG back
toward baggage claim.

“We must have missed the story Nick wanted us to see,” EG
said in disappointment. “If I had one of those new tablets, I could go online
and look for it.”

“Only if I had a hot spot on my phone or you pay for the
public Wi-Fi here and risk getting all your game coins sucked out.” Her school
tablet didn’t have accessible Wi-Fi, thank all the heavens. But I lied about
the hot spot. I didn’t go anywhere without access to the internet—which was why
I knew how dangerous it would be in EG’s hands. “And I’m not footing the bill
for either. I keep telling you, MacroHell wants to drain every penny from your
pocket.”

Which had me wondering if they really were run by demons,
and the heavens had struck the demons down with diarrhea. Justice would be
served.

“We have money now,” EG protested, still on the tablet kick.
“You shouldn’t be so tight-fisted.”

Old argument, not one I intended to indulge as I hunted the
dumping ground for international passengers coming through customs. The area was
a colorful bazaar swarming with chatter, luggage, and exotic garb. Given my
world-traveling youth, I felt right at home.

“There he is,” EG shouted excitedly.

She was running before I could see what she’d seen. I took
time to scan faces. I almost missed Tudor’s.

He’d probably been ten the last time I’d seen him. Once I
quit the thankless job of being my mother’s doormat, I’d left my half-siblings in
the care of their parents, where they should have been all along. Tudor’s
Aussie father had deposited Tudor in an English boarding school for tech
geniuses—a far better choice than my care.

Judging by the grungy clothes on the tall, lanky kid EG was
chattering to, geniuses didn’t do laundry. His wavy red hair hadn’t been cut in
months, so I didn’t have high expectations for his personal hygiene either. But
behind the teenage lankiness I could still see the red-headed tot who used to
cling to my leg and beg for ice cream.

We didn’t hug. Our family is high on drama, pretty stingy on
affection. He’d be shocked if I hugged him, especially since he was now almost
six inches taller than me, drat him—but I took the handle of his heavy wheeled
bag. He almost managed a smile in return, revealing his crooked tooth. No braces
for our boy, no sir. Even his thick black-rimmed glasses looked nerd-stylish.

Our glamorous mother had left her mark on all of us,
sometimes in very strange ways. In Tudor’s case, rebellion against perfection
was the result.

“Sleep any?” I asked as I steered him toward public
transportation.

“Not much,” he admitted wearily. “Look Ana, I’m sorry for
popping in on you like this—”

I cut him off as I aimed for the bus counter. “Let’s save it
until we’re home. It’s good to see you. Next time, call, okay?” That was as
close to affection as I dared offer.

He seemed to melt with relief and actually nodded. “Okay.” That
lasted until he saw my goal. “Bus, Ana? We’ve got all this money now and you
still take the bus?”

“I’m not wasting what could be college funds on taxis. The
bus will take us to the Metro,” I explained. “We live way downtown.”

He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t move. The grinding in
my stomach grew sharper. He examined the transportation signs, then wordlessly took
back his suitcase, and made a beeline for the taxi stand.

He opened the door of a cab at the end of the line.

My fear kicked up another notch. Magda had taught us how to
avoid long taxi lines if we were on the run. EG and I looked at each other,
then dashed after him.

While the taxi stand supervisor jogged over and tried to
explain that we were breaking the rules, we performed Magda’s Dumb and Dumber
act. Gabbling in French, Russian, and Tagalog, we played ignorant tourist and
piled into the back seat. Ultimately, both driver and authority surrendered and
let us go on our way.

I gave the address for the train station. Tudor didn’t
blink. Well trained in caution by our international journalist/spy mother, we
didn’t speak until the cab let us out at the Metro.

I marched them both down the platform on the line that would
take us to our neighborhood and EG to her school.

She gave me the evil eye. “I shouldn’t have to go to school
today,” she informed me.

“I’ll give you a note excusing you for being late. Tudor
needs sleep. You’ll be home by the time he’s awake.”

“How long will this take?” Tudor asked anxiously, scanning arrival
screens as if he had a clue as to which line was which.

“No longer than a taxi, given the traffic in the area at
this hour, and anonymity is safer. I take back what I said earlier about
waiting until we’re home. At what point do we get explanations?” I demanded as
the train rolled in.