“I was just thinking that your brother is lucky to have a sister who’s willing to do something like this for him.”
Jordan brushed her bangs out of her eyes, not having expected an actual compliment from him. And yes, her screwup of a twin was
very
lucky. But the truth of the matter was, she knew he’d do the same for her in a heartbeat. “Kyle deserves a break.” She saw the skeptical look on Nick’s face and sighed. “Go ahead, Agent McCall. Whatever it is you’d like to say about my brother, I’ve heard it all before.”
“I have two brothers myself, Ms. Rhodes. I understand family loyalty.”
She waited for the rest. “But?”
“But your brother did break the law. About ten of them, in fact. He hijacked a global communications network and created widespread panic by causing an outage that affected tens of millions of people.”
Jordan rolled her eyes. “You can cut the dramatic lingo, Mr. FBI. My brother hacked into Twitter and shut down the site after his girlfriend posted a link to a video of her fooling around in a hot tub with another guy.”
“He crashed the entire site for two days. In the most advanced denial-of-service attack anyone has ever seen.”
“It was
Twitter
. Not the Department of Defense’s website, or the NSA’s. That guy who shut down Facebook last year only got a fine and community service. But in this case, the U.S. attorney—sorry, the former U.S. attorney—argued to the judge that a fine wouldn’t be harsh enough for Kyle because of my father’s money. Too bad for Kyle that he and I don’t live off my father’s money.”
Nick pointed. “Your ride’s here.”
Jordan paused midrant and looked through the windows. She saw Huxley’s car out front. Another SUV, although this one was a Range Rover.
She turned back to Nick. “Tell me something. Are you trying to get a rise out of me, or does being this irritating come naturally to you?”
Nick’s eyes flickered over her with amusement. “I suppose I may be trying to annoy you a little.”
“Why?” Jordan asked in exasperation.
He seemed to think about this. “Maybe because I can. Quite easily, apparently.” He took a step closer and studied her face. “I bet you need a few more people in your life who annoy you, Ms. Rhodes.”
Actually, she had a twin brother in prison who handled the job just fine. And as for Nick McCall’s assessment, she’d gotten used to people making quick assumptions about her because of her father’s wealth. Although they weren’t typically so up-front about it. “Seriously, who
are
you?” she asked.
He smiled. “Good question. It changes every six to nine months.”
Those were the last words he said before Jordan walked out of the FBI building and climbed into Huxley’s car. When she looked back, she saw that Nick had already left the lobby.
“Ready to go?” Huxley asked.
Jordan turned toward the road ahead of her. “Definitely.”
Four
JORDAN HURRIED TO
catch the light at Van Buren Street, thinking that if she never again laid eyes on Metropolitan Correctional Center after next week, she’d be just fine. The building was an eyesore: an ugly, gray triangle that shot up over thirty stories high with tiny vertical slats for windows.
She visited Kyle every Wednesday, having worked out a routine with Martin that allowed for that. She’d been extremely appreciative that her assistant had made it to the store on time that morning despite the near foot of snow the Streets and Sanitation Department was still struggling to clear off the roads. Because her car was snowed in and taxis were always a rarity on bad-weather days, she’d had to ride the L train downtown, which took extra time. Since visitors were permitted at the prison on a first-come basis, she liked to arrive promptly at noon, the start of visiting hours.
Jordan checked her watch as she approached the building and saw that she was right on time. She pushed through the doors and entered the lobby. At least it was warmer than the frigid thirteen degrees outside; at a minimum, the prison had that going for it. At the front desk, she filled out a Notification to Visitors form and handed it over to Dominic, the lobby correctional officer, along with her driver’s license. Having visited Kyle every Wednesday for the last four months, she was familiar with the routine.
“So I’m halfway through season two of
Lost
,” Dominic told her. Other than getting to see Kyle, the lobby guard and their chats about television shows were pretty much the only things Jordan liked about MCC.
“Wow, you really flew through that first season,” she said.
“What’s up with the Others?” he asked. “They’re creepy.”
“You’ll find out in about another hundred episodes. Sort of.”
“Aw, don’t tell me that.” Dominic handed back her driver’s license. “Are you and your brother sure you’re not missing a triplet? Because the resemblance is uncanny.”
Jordan smiled. Ever since
Lost
had first aired, people had commented that her brother looked like a certain well-known character on the show—which Kyle
hated
. Probably for that reason, the prison staff and other inmates made sure to tease him about it as much as possible. Personally, she found the whole thing quite amusing.
“I’m pretty sure there’s no relation,” she said. Either that, or her father had some serious ’splaining to do.
Dominic gestured to her neck. “Don’t forget to leave your scarf behind when you check in your things. I’ll see you next week, Jordan.”
Not if all goes as planned.
She felt very covert, having secret knowledge of her deal with the FBI. She realized she needed to be careful not to show that around Kyle. Too often, he could read her like a book.
Per MCC rules, she checked her coat, purse, scarf, and gloves into one of the lockers behind the front desk. A second correctional officer escorted her and several other visitors into one of the elevators and rode with them to the centralized visiting room on the eighth floor. The elevators opened and she and the other visitors were led into a security clearance area. She passed through the metal detectors, waited for a third guard to unlock a heavy set of doors made of steel and bulletproof glass, then stepped into the visiting room.
She’d been surprised the first time she’d visited Kyle at MCC. Perhaps the consequence of too much television, she’d thought they’d be separated by glass and would have to talk through telephones. She’d been pleased to discover that the inmates were allowed to meet their visitors in a large common room. Sure, the entire time they had four armed guards watching over them, but at least she could sit down with her brother face-to-face.
Ignoring the bitter sludge they called coffee—a mistake from her first visit never again to be repeated—Jordan opted for bottled water from one of the vending machines. She chose a table in front of a window encased by metal bars and took a seat. As she did every week, she tried to mind her own business and avoided paying too much attention to the other visitors waiting at the surrounding tables, assuming they preferred some modicum of privacy as much as she did. Her mind wandered, knowing she had several minutes to wait while Kyle made it past his various security checks before he could be processed through to the visiting room.
Jordo—I fucked up.
Those had been the first words out of Kyle’s mouth when he’d called her that fateful night five months ago. She’d had no clue what he’d done, but in the end it came down to one thing.
“Can you fix it?” she’d asked.
“I dunno,” he’d groaned worriedly. There was a hard thumping sound, which she’d guessed was his head hitting the wall.
“Where are you? I’ll come get you and we’ll figure it out.”
His words were slurred. “Tijuana. Gettin’ verryyy drunk.”
Oh boy.
“Kyle. What did you do?”
His voice rose in anger. “I juz shut down Twitter, thaz what I did. The ho damn thing. The
hell
with Dani.”
Jordan hadn’t caught all of that, but she’d grasped enough to understand that her computer geek of a brother had done something very, very bad because of Daniela, his girlfriend.
Kyle had a knack for attracting the wrong kind of girl—meaning vapid, money-seeking, skanky ones—and, as Jordan ultimately came to find out through her brother’s inebriated ramblings that night, Daniela the Brazilian Victoria’s Secret model ultimately was no exception. They’d met in New York at a gallery exhibition for an artist who was a mutual friend. They dated long distance for six months, a record for Kyle. Then Daniela flew out to LA to shoot a music video—a great opportunity, she’d said, because she wanted to become an actress. Of course she did.
On the second day of the trip, she stopped calling Kyle. Worried, he left messages on her cell phone and at her hotel, with no response. Late on the fourth night, he finally got a reply.
Via Twitter.
@KyleRhodes Sorry not going 2 work out 4 us. Going 2 chill in LA with someone I met. I think U R sweet but U talk too much about computers.
Twenty minutes later, in her next tweet, Daniela posted a link to a video of her in Hollywood making out with movie star Scott Casey in a hot tub.
It was tough to say which bothered Kyle more, the fact that he’d been dumped over Twitter, or the fact that Daniela had no qualms about publicly cuckolding him. Given his wealth and her minor celebrity status, their relationship had been talked about in gossip columns in both New York and Chicago, and had been mentioned several times on
TMZ.com
.
Kyle worked in technology; he knew it would only be a matter of time before the video of Daniela and the A-list actor went viral and spread everywhere. So he did what any pissed-off, red-blooded computer geek would do after catching his girlfriend giving an underwater blowjob to another man: he hacked into Twitter and deleted both the video and her earlier tweet from the site. Then, raging at the world that had devolved so much in civility that 140-character breakups had become acceptable, he shut down the entire network in a denial-of-service attack that lasted two days.
And so began the Great Twitter Outage of 2011.
The Earth nearly stopped on its axis.
Panic and mayhem ensued as Twitter unsuccessfully attempted to counteract what it deemed the most sophisticated hijacking they’d ever experienced. Meanwhile, the FBI waited for either a ransom demand or political statement from the so-called “Twitter Terrorist.” But neither was forthcoming, as the Twitter Terrorist had no political agenda, already was worth millions, and had most inconveniently taken off to Tijuana, Mexico to get shit-faced drunk on cheap tequila being served by an eight-fingered bartender named Esteban.
Late the second night, after an unpleasant encounter with a cactus to the forehead while bending over to throw up outside Esteban’s bar, Kyle had a moment of semi-clarity. He stumbled to his hotel room and called Jordan, then, realizing the error of his ways, powered up his laptop computer. Determined to right his wrongs, he hacked into Twitter a second time and put a halt to his earlier attack.
Only this time, Kyle wasn’t as careful. Drinking cheap tequila served by an eight-fingered bartender came with its price. And the next day, when a sober and chagrined Kyle flew back to Chicago, he found the FBI waiting on his doorstep.
Despite all the attempts by his lawyers to dissuade him, Kyle steadfastly insisted upon pleading guilty. He’d done the crime, so he would do the time, he said. Jordan had found this to be an admirable sentiment, albeit one that would essentially cost him a year and a half of his life.
The heavy double doors swung open, jolting Jordan back to reality. The very
real
reality of bulletproof glass, barred windows, and armed guards.
The inmates entered the visiting room single file. Jordan watched as the first two men spotted their families and headed over to nearby tables. Kyle, her computer geek of a brother, was third in line.
His grin was the same every time she came to visit: part embarrassed to see her given the circumstances, and part happy just to see her. He walked over in his orange jumpsuit and blue tennis shoes as she stood up.
“Jordo,” he said, his nickname for her ever since they’d been kids. Having obviously stolen all the tall genes from her upon conception, something she still hadn’t forgiven him for, he leaned down to pull her into a hug. This and another brief embrace at the end of the visit were the only contact permitted.
“I’ve decided that orange becomes you,” Jordan said teasingly.
He chucked her under the chin. “I missed you, too, sis.”
As they took a seat at the table, Jordan saw some of the female visitors not-so-subtly checking Kyle out. In fifth grade, her girlfriends had begun handing her notes to give her brother after school, and the attention hadn’t waned since. Frankly, the whole thing flabbergasted her. It was
Kyle
.
“Is it as bad out there as they say it is?” he asked. “From my six-inch window, it looks like we got hit with one hell of a storm.”