"Pull into the garage," Alan said, when they finally arrived, interrupting the silence between them all as they made their retreat, "We'll have to lock that door and keep the lights off, so it doesn't look like anyone's home. Hopefully you don't have nosy neighbors."
Derek found himself thinking the kid was a little too prepared, but the doubts he had about Alan's intentions had eased up. He might have had his reasons to be the way he was, he supposed, and he hadn't let him down yet. Right?
He winced as the car door banged against something, stepping out to do as Alan directed, moving around the front end of the car, and found Casey in his path.
She looked at him, frozen for a moment. Then she caught herself and tried to get out of his way, mumbling an apology that was cut off as she tripped over a wayward ice skate that had tumbled out of his car at some point, nearly diving headfirst into the edge of the tool cabinet beside her.
She felt his arm around her abdomen, pulling her back, the heat of his touch somehow feeling more welcome than she remembered.
"Careful, Klutzilla," he murmured, pulling away quickly and attending to the door, all the while avoiding her gaze.
"You should stop leaving your hockey gear around," the girl tossed out in response, scowling.
He was not thinking about the way she fit the crook of his arm too well, absolutely not.
They all made their way upstairs into his bedroom, where Alan took the desk chair and began pulling things out of his backpack.
Casey glanced at the bed, briefly considering bringing another chair into the room, but decided she didn't need to attract more attention to the awkwardness she felt.
She was just sitting on the bed next to her stepbrother because she wanted to help. That wasn't weird, she decided, clasping her hands, it was just like the couch, really, it wasn't weird, she kept telling herself.
It was probably nothing, she was just nervous about the whole Amy thing, and felt out of place within the odd rapport Derek and Alan seemed to have, the silent glances, Alan's bemused looks always seeming to accompany Derek's scowls.
Alan held a silver hard drive in his hand, electrical tape in the other, disappearing beneath Derek's desk. The two teens watching him exchanged quizzical glances.
"Out of sight, out of mind," he said, as though it explained everything. He regarded their confusion with a sigh before clarifying, "You don't want anyone finding this because I have it rigged to collect what I need, all right?"
And if anything happens to me, well, it'll find its way to the police, he thought, but chose not to mention it. Derek's trust in him was weak at best; knowing he was basically copying over files and making a hard drive image every few hours through a few different backups wasn't something he was sure he wanted to admit.
Just in case.
"Gimme your phone," he said to Derek, who handed it over and watched him enter in the PIN without asking for it.
"How do you know that?" he asked, alarmed, and Alan regarded him with a derisive look, choosing not to mention that Casey's birthday—something he knew from her social media accounts, linked to his by association—was his first guess.
Alan shrugged and lied, choosing not to reveal what it was while she was in the room, "I saw you enter it in once, you have slow fingers."
Looking back down again, Alan's fingers flicked against the screen, doing something neither teen on the bed, even leaning forward as far as they could, supposedly oblivious to the contact of their arms, couldn't quite see.
"I've set this up to sync some stuff over through your email account, and that should sync to an offline file I've specified already. I might not be able to get the content of the calls, but I can get other things."
He said all this so nonchalantly, as he maneuvered the mouse, began typing at a speed that seemed inhuman, moved to the mouse again, all so effortlessly. Like it wasn't creepy at all that information was so easily accessible. He often forgot how different his…particular skill set was from other people his age.
"Can anyone do that?" Casey breathed, looking pale, "Just…get information like that?"
"It's easier now than it used to be," Alan said honestly, ignoring the pointed look from Derek that told him to shut up while he was ahead, "But there's ways to make it more difficult."
She started thinking about her mother and George, and Lizzie and Ed, all who had their own personal computers, wondering how safe they were.
Wondering how safe her own was.
"How much do you know about what…how this person's doing this?" she asked finally, not even really sure what she was asking.
Derek looked at her and understood.
Her point was valid. Sharing the same network…well, he didn't think Casey or the rest of her family would have been affected when it all seemed like a prank, just to bug Derek, but with a girl missing…
"You want me to look around on your computer?" Alan asked, "See if there's anything?"
She nodded tightly, and he stood, waiting for her to lead the way.
He spied the Swan Lake poster on her door as she pushed it open, not unsurprised to see how neat her room was.
Sitting at her computer, the chair bumping into the corner as he shifted around, he glanced over at her standing near her vanity, watching her pretend to be interested in the order of the books on the shelf beside it. Derek appeared in the doorway and he gave him a look that clearly said do something.
"Hey, Case, I'm sort of hungry," his eyes flickered over to Alan's, "You?"
"A bit," he lied.
He watched as the boy moved to wrap on arm around her shoulder with the smile he'd grown to associate with Venuri charm (his father had it too, he noted, in the family pictures).
"Make us pancakes?"
Alan nodded along, like it was the only thing that sounded good.
She gave him a glare that seemed more playful than venomous. "Fine, but it's for Alan, not you, don't go thinking I'll make them at your beck and call," and disappeared, the sound of her footsteps growing faint.
Derek let out a sigh, slumping on her bed. "This is why I didn't want her to get involved. She freaks out and—"
The boy let out a scoff, "Oh, come on."
At his bewilderment Alan rolled his eyes and continued, "She's stronger than you think. Smarter, too. She made the connection between your computer and everyone else's, didn't she? I was going to ask but, face it, you would have thrown a fit about protecting her."
That cued Derek's eye roll, something he figured he used as a replacement for a witty retort.
"If she asks me a question, I'm damn well going to answer it. Her knowing nothing would cause her to take risks she doesn't know exist," Alan muttered, marveling at the stubbornness he displayed, "It isn't about protecting Casey. It's about protecting you and that ridiculous farce you call being her brother."
"Step," Derek corrected automatically, and scowled at the pleased look he received in response, "What would you know, anyway," he muttered, "You act like everyone is so far off your radar, like it's better that all you do is hang out with a bunch of screens all day. Your idea of social interaction is so weirdly straightforward and deadpan that I swear I think you are a computer sometimes. You couldn't possibly understand what it's like to…"
He trailed off, swallowing the rest of his words.
"Care about someone I shouldn't?" the boy at the computer finished, "Hm. Go figure," and then backtracked, "Besides, you're right, I don't do beating-around-the-bush, I don't do bonding, I don't stick around because I don't want to. I do think most people don't give a shit about me, because I don't care about them, nor do I really understand most of them or their incessant need to take bathroom selfies and small talk. I make friends my own way,"
Derek wonders where these friends are but doesn't ask, watching him as he continues, "So that really just brings us back to the main point."
"Which is?"
"You and Casey are so damned obvious, even I can pick up on it."
Derek gapes like a fish and Alan just grins, returning his focus back to the computer again.
o-o-o
The smell of pancakes makes Derek rise to his feet and say to Alan, "I'm going to go check on the pancakes," and there wasn't a response to that. He glanced over, seeing Alan's intense stare on the screen, fixated on something, but didn't appear to be concerned, just in that weird work-mode that vaguely reminded him of Casey.
Heading down the stairs, he saw her at the stove, a neat pile of pancakes on the counter beside the pan, smelling the scent of chocolate and blueberries and peanut butter.
"Jeez, Case," he said, looking at her work, "I ought to have Alan over more if—are those vanilla-blueberry?"
"I'm blaming you if Mom and George complain about the missing creamer," Casey responded with a shrug, a small grin working across her face.
"You are a pancake genius," he said, grabbing one of them and stuffing it in his mouth, ignoring the faint look of disgust on her face, "and I'm hungry," he managed around the food.
"It would be much more polite if you would just wait for others before taking it all for yourself," she sighed, watching him take another two off the plate.
"Dive in, Case, I'm not stopping you. Besides, Alan's in his weird working-magic-mode," he said, waving his hands in a sarcastic display of a magic trick, "I don't think even your pancakes could snap him out of it."
Casey stared at the pile and shrugged, "I'm not that hungry. Did he say anything?"
Derek shrugged. "Not really," he lied.
She stared at him for a moment, as though she was considering saying something, and he wondered if he had suddenly forgotten how to lie, if it was somehow written across his face.
"What?" he asked abruptly, and Casey told him he needed etiquette classes before moving toward the oven to turn it off. She breezed past him, mumbling something about asking Alan if he wanted something to eat before he inhaled it all.
"Har-har," Derek responded sarcastically, watching her ascend up the stairs.
He does not think her legs look good in those jeans.
Alan glanced up at the girl who knocked quietly against the doorframe, smiling hesitantly, as though she was unsure if she was interrupting, "I was just wondering if you wanted something to eat, before the human machine down there eats it all,"
The blonde shrugged, his eyes piercing hers, "No, I'm good, I just agreed so you wouldn't start pacing in panic."
"Oh," responded the girl, taken aback slightly, "Sorry."
He looked at her like she'd asked him a riddle, confounded by the response. "Nothing to be sorry about."
A pause followed, and then he said, "Casey, why is there a one-gigabyte file of dog pictures on your computer that was transferred from Derek's?"
She rolled her eyes. "It was…a project, Derek and I had. Well, more of a situation he roped me into like he does with everything else and…anyway, we had to pretend we had a dog and he collected the cute pictures for me because Derek's…nice, sometimes."
"Did you share this file with anyone else? Any of the pictures?"
It was Casey's turn to look puzzled and she crossed her arms, shaking her head. "No. Why?"
He frowned, looking at the folder on the screen again, mentally adding up the sizes, realizing that the thirty-odd pictures of fluffy puppies and lazy dogs did not, to the closest extent, add up to one gigabyte.
It was kind of genius, really, he thought, hiding something there. She wasn't going to get rid of it because Derek had informed him on more than one occasion that she was sentimental to a "sappy" point, and she didn't access the file regularly. A rootkit could be hidden anywhere, but the location of this one was about making a point.
He found himself feeling remarkably irritated for not considering Casey's computer as the way to get to Derek, rather than the other way around. She left everything so neatly detailed from their daily routine to her annual check-up that it simply made sense.
She had emails archived spanning over at least two years, many that mentioned Derek and her latest war with him, and more.
This game hadn't started with phone calls, Alan realized. This had started before they even knew there was one.
o-o-o
This story has now changed more and probably will continue to do so from here on out compared to the original. I think it's for the better so I'm happy with it.
Thanks for reading this far, and review please!
R.