So Yesterday

Chapter 9

LEXA HANDED ME THE PHONE. THE SWEDISH TUNE KEPT PLAYING, insistent and diabolical.

The readout glowed in the darkness. Incoming call: Hunter.

"It really is me," I said to Jen. "It's my phone calling."

"Maybe you should answer."

"Oh, yeah." I swallowed and lifted the phone to my ear. "Hello?"

"Hi, uh, I'm just calling because I found this phone. And I wanted to return it to the owner."

"Really?" My foolish heart lifted.

"Yeah, and this number was in the incoming call memory, so I figured the phone must belong to a friend of yours. Maybe you could give me the guy's name. Or his address?"

"Yeah, actually that's…"

My voice trailed off as I came to my senses: why did this person assume the phone's owner was a he?

"Uh, actually…" I looked up at the face on the screen, at arm's length now. The voice on the phone was male and sounded like a big guy

Maybe that guy.

I cleared my throat. "Actually, I don't recognize this number."

"Are you sure? You just called it an hour ago. Like four times in a row."

"Uh, yeah, that was a wrong number," I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. "I have no idea whose number this is."

"Oh, okay. Well, sorry to bother you… Shoe Girl."

The phone went dead.

Shoe Girl, he'd said. That was the name in my phone for Mandy: shugrrl, her instant-message handle. He knew I'd been lying.

"It was him, wasn't it?" Jen said.

I nodded, looking at the grim face on the screen. "He's calling the numbers in my memory, saying he wants to return a lost phone. He's trying to find someone who'll give him my address."

"Oh, crap," said Jen. "But no one would do that, would they?"

"I've got about a hundred numbers in that phone. Eventually someone will give him what he wants. Probably my aunt Macy in Minnesota."

"You could call your aunt," Jen said, "and all your close friends, the ones who know your address, and tell them what's going on."

"That might work if I could call them." I shook my head. "I don't actually keep anyone's number in my head. Without that phone, I'm toast."

"You don't back up?" asked Lexa, scandalized.

"Sure, at home." I tried to remember the last time I'd actually backed up the phone onto my computer. A boring day during Christmas vacation? "But by the time I get there and call everyone…"

"Okay, guys, I was just trying to help with this and not be too nosy. But this is getting weird." Lexa pointed at the screen. "How did that guy get your phone? And why does he care what your address is?"

"Well, after Mandy didn't show up, he did. You see, we were in this old building, and there were these… shoes."

"Shoes." Lexa sighed. "Why is it always shoes with you guys?"

"They were amazing," Jen said softly.

"Amazing? Define."

"Can you keep a secret?" I said.

"Sure."

"I mean, really keep a secret."

"Hunter, I got the script for…" (she named the third movie of a franchise in which a certain weight-lifting governor plays an unsmiling robot who shoots things)"… a year before it came out. And I didn't leak a single plot point."

"That's because there weren't any," I said. "Just don't tell anyone about this, okay? Go one picture back."

She clicked, and Mandy's picture of the shoe filled the screen, Lexa blinked, uncrossed her arms, and took a drink of her coffee. Stoking the machine.

It was grainy, jagged, the colors blotchy, but it was still the shoe.

"Wow, the client did that? Didn't know they had it in them."

"We're not sure," Jen said. "It's either a bootleg or some radical new marketing concept. You can't tell from this picture, but the logo has a bar sinister through it."

"It's the anti-client," I said.

Lexa smiled and gave a slow nod. The Nod. "Cool."

"Cool enough to kidnap someone over?" I asked.

"Sure, Hunter." Lexa stepped back, squinting now, blurring the jagged picture with her eyelashes. "Cool is money, and money can be worth anything. That's money's job."

It was a way that only computer geeks talked, but it made sense. Jen gave Lexa the Nod.

We sucked the memory out of Mandy's phone and made some calls.

Her office phone went to a machine, and we left the obvious "Where are you?" message. Cassandra's cell phone did likewise, and I explained that Mandy had missed a meeting and could Cassandra please call Lexa. When Mandy's home machine answered, I just hung up, not wanting to leave multiple messages all smelling of fear. Until we had something more solid, I didn't see the point in worrying Cassandra about her missing roommate/girlfriend.

Then we looked at Mandy's outgoing numbers. The last place Mandy had called was a car service, which was how she traveled since going full-time. The other outgoing calls led to the client's massive switchboards, nonspecific numbers that ended in three zeros—probably Mandy conferring with her bosses about "Don't Walk." The only other call in memory was one to her home the night before. There were no clues that she had arranged to meet anyone else besides us this morning.

But someone had told Mandy about the building and its mysterious contents. At least one of the client's countless execs knew more than we did.

I looked at the phone. Having just had my cell phone ripped from my life, I knew how much information was trapped inside in the tiny plastic wafer of circuitry, but there was no easy way to get it out. Machines don't give up their secrets easily.

Human beings, on the other hand, love to spill the beans. One by one, I went through the client's numbers that Mandy had stored, skipping straight past phone trees to human receptionists. Eventually one made the connection for me.

"Hello, I'm making a call on behalf of Mandy Wilkins."

"Oh, do you want Mr. Harper?"

"Uh, yes. Please."

"I'll connect you."

I waited for a moment on hold, listening to custom rap-Muzak exalting the latest big sports name who'd signed on the client's dotted line. It sucked me in just far enough that my brain got a jolt when the exec came on.

"Greg Harper. Who is this?"

"My name is Hunter Braque. I work with Mandy Wilkins. I was supposed to meet her this morning at Lispenard and Church… about the shoes."

"The shoes, yeah." His voice was slow, cautious. "I think she told me about bringing you in. Outside consultant, right?"

"Exactly."

"Right, I remember now. Hunter." His voice changed, sharpened by recognition. "You focused on 'Don't Walk, didn't you? Caused all that trouble?"

"Uh, I guess that was me. Anyway, she didn't make the meeting—"

"Maybe she had second thoughts."

"Actually, I'm a bit worried. She didn't show for our meeting, but we found her phone. She's missing, sort of, and we were wondering what this was all about. The shoes, I mean."

"I can't comment about the shoes. We do a lot of shoes. This is a shoe company. I don't even know what shoes you mean."

"Listen, Mr. Harper, I saw them—"

"Saw what? You should have Mandy call me."

"But I don't know where she—"

"Have Mandy call me."

The line went dead. No Muzak, nothing. Somewhere during the call Jen and Lexa had stopped playing with the photo of the shoe to listen.

When I dropped the phone from my ear, Jen said, "What was that about?"

I'd heard many forms of corporate desperation before, the frantic tones of lost market share, crumbling stock prices, multimillion-dollar contracts with college hoop stars who weren't cutting it in the pros, the horrifying realization of not knowing what those damn kids wanted anymore. But nothing quite as panicked as Greg Harper's last words.

"I think the client is in a state of denial," I said. "But one thing's for certain: The shoes didn't come from them."

"So where did they come from?" Lexa asked.

I looked at Jen; she looked at me.

We shrugged.