Page 71 of Defenseless
Sabina took the card and nodded. Larry’s gaze flickered between the two of them one more time then he nodded and strode off. Chad and Sabina remained where they were. Larry ducked down into the Metro station, but Chad continued to wait. Before they resumed their walk to the car, he wanted to be sure the lawyer wasn’t going to come back up and follow them. Finally, when he was comfortable that Larry wasn’t going to reappear, he urged Sabina back into the flow of pedestrian traffic.
“What do you think it is?” she asked, one hand still firmly in his, but the other holding the envelope. She inspected it as they walked, although what she thought the blank envelope would tell her that she hadn’t already deduced, he didn’t know.
“Could be any number of things,” he said, leading her to the stairwell of the parking garage. “Want to call your sister and we can pick them up on our way to the hotel? I know they wanted to stop for a drink, but I’m going to guess that”—he gestured to the envelope—“changes things.”
Without another word, she tucked the envelope in her bag and dug out her phone. Fifteen minutes later, they pulled over and Ethan and Kara climbed in. A few minutes after that, they dropped the car with the valet and headed up to his and Sabina’s room.
Sabina held the envelope out to Kara. “Open it.”
Kara gave a quick shake of her head and stepped back. “No,youopen it.”
Chad glanced at Ethan and they both grinned. It wasn’t a laughing matter, but he liked these glimpses of what they must have been like as kids.
Sabina rolled her eyes then carefully unsealed the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper folded into three. Holding it between two fingers, she took a seat at the desk. Kara sank into a chair next to her, then he and Ethan moved behind them.
Cautiously, as though it might bite her, Sabina unfolded it. And they all stared.
“What the hell is that?” Ethan asked. Kara glanced up then returned her attention to the paper. In the middle of the sheet, perfectly centered, was a series of numbers, twelve in total.
“Phone number with a country code?” Kara suggested.
“Serial number for something?” Chad offered.
“Could be an IP address,” Sabina said.
“It could be any of a thousand things,” Ethan countered. Chad shot his cousin a look. If he wasn’t going to be helpful, he needed to keep his mouth shut. To his credit, Ethan mumbled an apology.
“Why don’t you enter it into your favorite search engine and see what pops up,” Chad suggested.
Sabina set the paper down and reached for her bag. A few minutes later, the search engine on her laptop brought up three possibilities. One was a phone number, one was a tracking number for a package, and the last was a unique identifier from India.
Sabina entered the tracking number only to discover that the associated package had been delivered to a residential location in Ontario four months earlier. To be thorough, she searched the ownership records of the home. The house had been in the same family for over a hundred years. The current occupants were a young couple and their three kids. Not likely to be people Benicio would have known.
The phone number was an elderly woman in Romania. The unique identifier was a college student in Mumbai.
“That’s—” Ethan cut off whatever he was going to say and shifted gears. “Why don’t I place an order for room service while you dig in a little more,” he offered. Everyone nodded and provided their orders. When he stepped away to make the call, Chad turned back to Sabina.
“Would an IP address show up in the search? If not, why don’t you try that,” he said. She was ahead of him and was already typing it in. It wasn’t as straightforward as a URL, but this was second nature to Sabina, and her fingers flew over the keyboard.
He sucked in a breath when a page popped up. Had it not been for the text above the password box he would have thought it was another bust. But the words “Nala and Bela” told him otherwise.
Kara exhaled in surprise, but Sabina went utterly still. “Well, now we know what the numbers are. It would have been nice if he’d given us a hint about the password,” she said, not hiding her irritation.
“Is it possible he set up a virus or something to infect your computer if you manage to get in?” Chad asked. He didn’t think Benicio would go to the trouble of getting information to his estranged daughters only to cause damage, but he had to ask.
“It’s possible, but I don’t think so. And even if he did, he’d never get through my security. There are only a handful of people who could, and I assure you, they are all friends. They would have told me had they been approached to do something like that.”
As usual, her logic was sound. And practical. “What do you think you’ll find when you get through?” he asked.
Sabina hadn’t taken her eyes off the screen, but she shook her head. “I don’t know. Kara?”
“Don’t look at me,” she replied. “By giving us the IP address, he meant this for you. If he’d meant it for me, it would have been something medical.”
Chad wasn’t so sure about that. “If he needed a safe place to store files, electronically is the most obvious and thatdoesfall into Sabina’s wheelhouse. But my guess is the password will be something you’ll know, Kara. Or something you’ll both know.”
Ethan rejoined them but remained silent as the women stared at the screen. “How many tries do you think we’ll get?” Kara asked.
“You think it will disappear if you have too many wrong entries?” Ethan asked.
