Chaos on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer (detective books to read TXT) 📕

Nell says, “I mean, three years ago, my mother and I were going to a different church. The pastor there was insisting that the Tribulation had already started, and then one day, he just sort of reset to any day now it’s coming. Mom didn’t like that. She said if something was truly coming from God, it ought to be reliable. She moved us to the Abiding Remnant because of the Elder.”

“Did she get a message?”

“Yes. She got three messages, actually. The first was that she should stop worrying about what my father was doing and get on with her life. The second was that she should see an allergist because she was probably allergic to bees and should carry meds for bee stings. And the third was that she should get her car’s brakes fixed immediately because she was going to need good brakes soon.”

“She thought those were messages from God? They all sound kind of mundane.”

“They were right, is the thing. And specific.”

“A hacker with access to her internet search history could have very definitely told her those first two,” CheshireCat says. “At least if she’d searched something like ‘lots of swelling bee sting’ or ‘bee sting metal taste.’”

“She almost had a car accident the next week, though. The Elder was right about her brakes. A hacker couldn’t have caused that to happen.”

I think about how CheshireCat hacked a self-driving car and decide I can’t tell Nell about it.

“A hacker still could have known that she needed new brakes from an internet search,” CheshireCat said. “And if you’ve been told that you’re going to need brakes that work perfectly, it’s easy to think, Oh, that was it! if you slammed on your brakes for any reason. Humans tend to find patterns like that very readily. Human people like you and me are very good at that.”

“Do you think the Elder is a hacker?”

“Maybe,” I say. “I mean, he’s got a whole church full of people believing everything he says. And doing things he sends them to do.”

“Multiple churches,” Nell says.

“Have you or your mother ever met the Elder?” CheshireCat asks.

“No,” Nell says. “I don’t know anyone who has.”

If CheshireCat were a person, they would definitely have shot me a significant look at that point. Instead, they send me a text that’s just a single exclamation point.

I recognize Rachel’s car outside the diner when we arrive. “Do we need to bring the robot inside?” Nell asks. “Are you worried someone will steal it?”

“Anyone who tries to steal me will be in for a surprise,” CheshireCat says.

“Better lock the car,” I say.

Nell follows me inside, and Rachel waves from a booth. There are three menus and glasses of water on the table, and Rachel’s sketchbook is open, the glasses of water moved safely out of the way. I slide in next to Rachel, and Nell sits across from us, her eyes going from my face to Rachel’s and back. “Nell, this is Rachel. Rachel, Nell.”

Nell looks at Rachel’s sketch pad and her zippered pencil case, which I got her for Christmas and has a whole lot of cats on it, and says, “It’s nice to meet you.”

“I love your hair,” Rachel says. “How long have you been growing it?”

“I think my mother stopped cutting it when I was eleven,” Nell says, and touches it a little self-consciously. “It was already pretty long, she just stopped cutting it at all, because … anyway, it’s kind of annoying when it’s not braided, but the braids keep it out of my way.”

We all order pancakes with a side of bacon. Nell retells her story about summer camp. Rachel carefully tears out a page from the back of her sketchbook and sharpens one of her pencils and then passes both the page and the pencil to Nell. “Can you draw a map of the property, as much as you remember?”

Now that is a good idea. I pull out my phone and load the satellite image, and Nell draws in the long driveway leading back off the main road, the big rambling house, and then the other landmarks she remembers from her previous trip—the fire ring, the area where they pitched their tents, the lake, the hill she hiked up with Glenys.

“Do you know where the sheds are?” I ask.

“There are five out behind the barn,” Nell says. “They use the barn as a garage.” She draws them, a big rectangle and then five smaller rectangles.

I take a picture of the map and say, “Sending this to my hacker friend, Cat,” and shoot Rachel a look as Nell excitedly tells Rachel about the robot in the car.

Rachel looks at Nell and then back at me and says, “Let me get this straight. Cat—this is the Cat I know?—Cat bought a robot, shipped it to your house, and is coming along to help us out. Sending a robot along to help us out.”

“Yes,” I say.

“And your mom didn’t freak out?”

“She actually doesn’t know about the robot,” I say. “All she knows is that I’m visiting you in Wisconsin and Nell drove me here.”

“Okay,” Rachel says to Nell. “Do you have a plan? Or any thoughts?”

Nell points to a spot near the house. “When Glenys and I ran from the fake terrorists, once the sun came up, we could see the big house from the top of this hill. That’ll let me—let us—watch. It might be better to break her out at night, but we’ll be able to see if people are outside, or if they leave.”

“The thing about night is that it’s dark,” I say. “That’s both an advantage because they can’t see us and a disadvantage because we can’t see where we’re going. The moon’s almost new, which makes it really hard to see.”

“I have a flashlight,” Nell says.

“Flashlights make you really easy to see,” I say.

“You don’t happen to have night-vision equipment, do you?” Rachel asks.

We wind up adjourning to Nell’s car to look through what supplies and equipment we’ve got between the three