No Stone Unturned: A Lexi Carmichael Mystery, Book Eleven Page 35

Look for No Questions Asked, the next book in the Lexi Carmichael Mystery series, in the winter of 2019.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from No One Lives Twice, the first book in the Lexi Carmichael Mystery series.

  Get your geek on! Prepare for adventure with

  reformed hacker Lexi Carmichael as she does

  whatever it takes to help the good guys win.

  Read on for the first chapter of

  No One Lives Twice, by Julie Moffett.

  Chapter One

  When I was little, everyone who knew me thought I was odd. I never wanted to play with dolls and I didn’t enroll in ballet or gymnastics. Instead my paramount interest was numbers. For years I carried around math flashcards and liked to entertain my parents’ friends by adding, subtracting and multiplying in my head. As I grew older, I quickly moved on to more mature themes, devouring linear algebra, differential equations, quadratic reciprocity and stochastic processes. Computers were my only friends and the internet, my playground.

  Today, some twenty years later, I’m still fascinated with numbers, computers and code. But this time around, I’m getting paid for it as an information security technologist with the US National Security Agency, or NSA for short. Most of us call it the “No Such Agency” because we are so secret. I heard somewhere that less than five percent of Americans even know we exist.

  Basically, I do a lot of web surfing and looking for bad guys. Using methodical, mathematical and logical techniques—and when that fails, sheer imagination—I’m supposed to stop hackers from compromising America’s national security.

  Although I work for a top-secret agency, I’ve unfortunately never participated in even one exciting car chase, had a sip from a stirred (not shaken) martini, or shot a poison dart from an umbrella. That kind of action belongs to the spooks at the CIA. Some of us at the NSA joke that we are the brains of the nation, while the CIA is the brawn. I don’t imagine CIA employees would be amused to hear that.

  In fact, at this very minute, I was sitting in my cramped, government-issued cubicle checking out a popular chat room. My boss, Jonathan Littleton, hovered behind me, doing what we computer types call shoulder surfing. Jonathan had joined the NSA in the seventies—before computers were commonplace. Although he now officially headed the Information Security Department, better known as InfoSec, he was more a manager than a techie.

  Jonathan whistled under his breath as he perused the data displayed on the twenty-five-inch color flat panel monitor on my desk.

  “Having fun in there?” he asked.

  The there Jonathan referred to was a creepy chat room called Dark Hack where I was currently imping a brash, male teenage hacker. I’m not the type of girl who typically hangs out in the dark and eerie underbelly of the internet in rooms with names like Dark Hack, Mute Slay or CrackHack, but sometimes we do what we have to in the name of national security, and today that meant impersonating a social misfit with a grudge.

  I was pretty sure I was currently chatting with the guy who had hacked into the NSA’s Public Affairs website a couple of weeks ago using some pretty robust and unusual code. Utilizing fairly colorful language he defaced the site, drew a mustache on the president and urged teen hackers to unite to breach the electronic barriers that separated people from the free flow of information.

  Since I’m a fairly junior member of the team, Jonathan thought this particular assignment was right up my alley. So last week he tossed the case file onto my desk with a sticky note on top that read “Lexi Carmichael—Urgent” in bold red pen.

  Lexi Carmichael. That’s me—a computer geek with a name better suited to a bubbly cheerleader. Lexi isn’t even short for something more dignified, like Alexandra or Alexis. And to make matters worse, I look nothing like a Lexi. Imagine a delicate-boned, pink-cheeked girl with long, curly blond hair, blue eyes and an adorable, pert nose...and that’s exactly what I don’t look like. To my mother’s great dismay, I inherited nothing of her remarkable looks except for a pair of exceedingly long legs. By the seventh grade I was five foot eleven—skinny and all legs with a short torso, no boobs and ordinary brown hair like my dad. I’d also been given his facial genes—a thin nose, wide mouth and hazel eyes. At age twenty-four, not much has changed, including the fact that I still have zip in the boob department.

  “Is PhearU the target?” Jonathan asked, leaning closer to the monitor to read what we had been chatting about.

  “Yep, he’s the guy,” I explained. “I’ve been casing him for a while. Today I made contact. We’re instant messaging. I’m Disease2, and I’m running a trace on him.”

  There was a pause and then the words popped up on my screen.

  PhearU: I’ve seen you here a couple of times before. Where ya at, dude?

  I glanced at my other monitor and saw that PhearU was using a major internet service provider in Charlotte, North Carolina.

  “Gotcha,” I murmured under my breath.

  Disease2: Iowa. Told the rents i was too sick to go to school. They bought it. ha, ha. Be right back.

  I quickly tracked down the number of the internet provider in Charlotte and punched it in on my phone. I requested a manager and after providing my security information was told that the number was a public dial-up—meaning Phear probably sat at an internet café somewhere. That meant if I wanted more information, I’d have to provide a court order to the phone company to further trace the exact location in Charlotte.

  “Crap,” I said to Jonathan. “He used a dial-up.”

  “Clever,” Jonathan offered. “A slower connection, but a more secure one.”

  PhearU suddenly started typing.

  PhearU: U still here, Disease?

  Disease2: Right here, man.

  PhearU: Good, cuz I just nailed your ass.

  Disease2: What?!?!?

  PhearU: U aren’t calling from Iowa.

  “Uh, oh,” I murmured under my breath. “What raised his hackles?”

  Disease2: Whatcha mean, dude?

  PhearU: U think I’m an idiot? I know you’re calling from southern Maryland. YFGI!

  “No way!” I uttered, the pencil I held between my fingers snapping in two. “He made me. How did he do that?”

  Phear abruptly logged out of the chat room. I banged my forehead against the monitor.

  “What did I do wrong?” I moaned in disbelief. “Even if he ran a trace back on me, he shouldn’t have been able to make me so easily. I was protected.”

  Instead of being angry, Jonathan seemed amused. “Apparently the protection was inadequate. What’s YFGI stand for?”

  “You fucking government imposter,” I said with a sigh and tried not to be offended when Jonathan stifled a laugh.

  “Better luck next time,” he said and left just as my phone rang. I yanked the receiver out of the cradle and jammed it against my ear.

  “Carmichael,” I said in an irritated voice.

  “Lexi, darling,” my mother said in her soft southern drawl. “I’ve been thinking of you all day. How would you like to come to dinner tonight?”

  My mother, Clarissa Carmichael, is a former first-runner-up in the Miss America contest, and the winner of a slew of other beauty pageants including Miss Teen USA, Miss Virginia and Miss Colonial Blossom. She is gorgeous at age fifty-four, a statuesque natural blonde with a body to die for and a face that stops strangers dead in the street. She’s the kind of woman who can bend men to her will with her looks alone and who makes other females downright catty with envy.

  Her main objective in life after marrying my father, who is now a wealthy corporate lawyer in Washington, DC, was to have a sweet, adorable girl she could mold into a clone of herself. It took her three tries and two rambunctious boys, but I finally popped out one hot summer day. I think Mom liked Lexi because she thought it sounded cute, bubbly and perky—the perfect name for a future Miss Teen USA. Unfortunately
I was a disappointment to my mother the moment I made my appearance in this world. But that didn’t stop her from trying to mold me into a miniature version of herself.

  “Your birthday is coming up and I thought we might discuss your party over dinner,” she continued, her drawl deepening with excitement. That always seemed to happen when she planned social events and the mere sound of it turned my blood to ice. I was turning twenty-five, but my mom still wanted to plan my birthday parties.

  “I’m not going to have a party this year,” I said in the most nonchalant voice I could manage. God forbid that she sensed I was appalled by the idea because then she’d latch on to it like a dog with a bone. “I want to turn twenty-five in a quiet, peaceful, alone sort of way.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, clucking her tongue in that disapproving way. “Turning twenty-five is an important milestone. Come to dinner, sweetie.”

  “I can’t, Mom. I’m busy,” I lied. “I’ve...uh...got a really hot date.”

  My mom fell silent and I knew she didn’t believe me. Okay, so I didn’t even believe it myself. First of all, it was a Tuesday. What kind of people had hot dates on Tuesday? Second of all, it had been eons since I’d had a hot date. Or a cold date, for that matter. But I didn’t need a man to make my life complete. My life was complete enough as it was, thank you.

  All I really wanted to do was stare at my computer screen for another two hours and then get into my spiffy red Miata convertible and sit in traffic for a half hour on the parkway before arriving home just six miles away. Then I remembered the pile of dirty laundry waiting for me on the floor of my bedroom, and the fact that I had nothing in the refrigerator for dinner. I’d eaten only a pathetic garden salad with fat-free dressing for lunch, so that meant I was ravenous, cranky and vulnerable. Thirty miles away in her upscale Georgetown home, my mother zoned in on my weakness with that annoying secret radar only women with children seem to have.

  “We’re having your favorite...beef stew,” Mom coaxed. “Sasha made fresh bread, too.”

  Sasha Kovalev is my parents’ personal cook. He came to America when Russia was still the Soviet Union. He was a former nuclear scientist or something like that and managed to defect with his wife and two kids. In America he seemed to have found his niche as a personal cook to the rich and didn’t seem to miss his high-profile scientific job. Which is lucky for me because he’s a whiz at physics and I’d often picked his brain for help with my homework while he whipped up Chicken Kiev.

  Just the thought of Chicken Kiev made my stomach gurgle loudly. I sighed, knowing I’d lost the battle. “What time?”

  “Six-fifteen sharp,” my mother said, practically purring. “And, Lexi, wear something nice.”

  “I’m wearing what I have on,” I protested. “I’m coming straight from work.”

  “Okay, darling,” she said, and then hung up before I could question her further. Why did it matter what I was wearing?

  I looked down at myself and then grimaced. I wore a pair of wrinkled black slacks and a purple blouse with flowing sleeves. I guess I’m not much of a fashionista, whatever that means. Any clothes purchased with something other than comfort in mind intimidate me. If I have to buy stuff for work, I buy whatever is on sale in my size. I was pretty sure my outfit wouldn’t be what my mother had in mind when she envisioned something nice, but we all do the best we can.

  On the other hand, image means everything to my parents. They live in a gorgeous redecorated townhouse in colonial Georgetown. Their neighbors are some of the most powerful and richest people in the world—senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices and former Enron executives. You can’t touch real estate in that area for under two million dollars. Since I work for the government, you can well imagine I don’t live anywhere in the vicinity. But I did go to Georgetown University, so I have a fondness for the area in an it’s-a-beautiful-place-to-visit-but-I-could-never-afford-to-live-there sort of way. My parents moved to Georgetown the year I entered the university. It was also the year my dad got a full partnership in his law firm. His new position required new living arrangements. God forbid that they be seen mingling with common folk anymore.

  Don’t get me wrong; I love my parents. My dad worked hard to get where he is today, and my mom was born to the role of rich, gorgeous, slightly bored housewife. But they embraced their new life a bit too enthusiastically for my taste. I could never see myself living out that kind of fantasy even if it’s what my mom obsessively envisions for me. After three years she still talks about my job at the NSA as if it is only temporary. I think she still hasn’t recovered from the fact that I double-majored in mathematics and computer science when I should have been enrolled in the finding-a-suitable-rich-husband program.

  But I had committed to go to dinner at my parents’, so I was stuck whether I liked it or not. Before I knew it, my watch beeped five o’clock. I leapt from my chair, darted out to my car and drove south on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

  Forty-five minutes later, I arrived in Georgetown. I spent another half hour circling around looking for a parking space. I was walking about two blocks away from my parents’ house when a big white guy in a dark blazer suddenly materialized out of nowhere from behind a parked car and strode right up to me. He had a huge, beefy neck, a brown crew-cut and pockmarks on his face. He didn’t look friendly. I smiled brightly even though my heart was doing the tango in my chest.

  “Good evening,” I said politely and tried to walk past him.

  He blocked the way, crossing his thick arms against his chest and saying nothing. I glanced up the street and watched as a couple of cars whizzed by, but no one gave us a second glance. It was just my luck that the narrow sidewalk was empty of other pedestrians.

  Sighing, I held out my purse. “I’ve got thirty-two dollars, an over-maxed credit card and four tampons. If it’s not too much trouble, can I keep the car keys? That way I’m spared the double humiliation of being robbed and then driven home by my parents.”

  His mouth fell open as he stared at me. Then his mouth slowly curved into a grin.

  “I’m not here to rob you, little girl.”

  I took a shaky step back. Little girl? Oh God, I was being accosted by a pervert who probably intended to rape, maim and torture me. I saw the exact same scenarios week after week on the television show America’s Most Wanted, hosted by John Walsh. I tried to remember what I was supposed to do and wondered if I could outrun him in my pumps on these damn cobblestones.

  “Look, buster, you can’t assault me right here in the middle of Georgetown,” I said, my pulse jumping faster than a ping-pong game at the Olympics. “It’s still daylight. Besides I’ll scream bloody murder and someone will call the cops.”

  The grin remained plastered to his face. “I’m not going to hurt you.” I noticed he had a gold front tooth that sparkled. “As long as you cooperate.”

  “Cooperate? With what?” I asked, now pathetically clutching my purse to my chest as if it were some kind of protection. I glanced up the street again. My new plan was to scream the next time I saw a car and hope for the best.

  “You’ve got something I want. Your roommate sent you some papers,” he said. “I need them.”

  That threw me for a loop. “Roommate?” I hadn’t had a roommate since college, and that was four years ago. I laughed in relief. “Oh, thank God. I don’t have a roommate. Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person. I’ll just be on my way now.”

  Beefy didn’t look amused. “Your former roommate,” he corrected. “Does the name Basia Kowalski mean anything to you?”

  He’d mispronounced both Basia and Kowalski, but I knew whom he meant. She had indeed been my roommate at Georgetown University and also happened to be my best friend. My stomach knotted up again.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I lied. “I’ve never heard that name before. So, can I go already?”

  He frowned and a red flush crept
from his neck up his chin, cheeks and forehead. “Don’t play me for a fool,” he growled.

  I heard a noise behind me and glanced over my shoulder. Someone was walking a dog in our direction. Before I could do anything, Beefy grabbed me by the arm, yanking me off the sidewalk and into a patch of grass beneath a nearby tree. He poked me beneath one of my ribs with something hard, then lifted his jacket and showed me it was a gun.

  “The papers,” he repeated ominously.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I protested. “Really.”

  He poked at me with the gun again and this time it really hurt.

  “Ouch! I mean it,” I said, trying to shift away from the gun. “Okay, I do know who Basia is, but I haven’t heard from her since last week. She didn’t give me any papers. Is she in some kind of trouble?” A rather dumb question, actually, given the fact that some guy was upset enough to poke a gun at me while asking questions about her. God, I really hoped she wasn’t considering him as boyfriend material. We’d have to have some serious girl talk.

  The guy walking the dog came closer and Beefy leaned his head down near mine. “Scream and I’ll pop you both,” he whispered. “Then I’ll finish off the dog for dessert.”

  I swallowed hard. I had a gut feeling that this guy was fully capable of popping us and eating the dog. And I always trust my gut feelings.

  The guy strolled up to us, carrying a plastic bag full of poop and tightening his hold on the leash. The dog, a cute cocker spaniel, lunged toward us, wagging his tail. You could see he was disappointed we were blocking his access to the tree.

  “Nice evening,” the guy said, dipping his head at us. The pooch woofed in agreement.

  “It’s too humid for me,” Beefy replied with a casual nod, putting an arm around my shoulder. The gun dug into my side and I had to swallow hard to keep from yelping. At the same time, I was morbidly fascinated by the fact that the Beefster actually had some sort of conversational skills.

  “Believe it or not, Miami is more humid,” the guy said with a smile. “I’m transplanted here.”