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

smartphone completely and leave it in the kitchen before going into my bedroom, where I open my desk drawer and dig out the pencil case with my burner phone zipped up inside it. The phone hasn’t been on in months, but it powers up without a hitch and tells me I have three hundred minutes. I use it to dial Rachel’s number as I wake my laptop and log in.

“What’s going on?” CheshireCat asks as soon as I’m in the Clowder.

“Have you not been listening in?” I ask.

“You shut off RideAlong,” CheshireCat says. “I assumed you wanted privacy.”

“When?” I ask. “What’s the last thing you overheard?”

“You told your mother about the tracking device the Catacombs people gave you, and she got very upset.”

“Someone’s been talking to me,” I say. “And they said they were you. Even though they were not.”

CheshireCat uses the robot to make me a cup of tea, which is a very nice thought, although a combination of not really understanding “tea” and the limited motor skills of the robot means it’s a cup of hot water with a cherry-flavored tea bag, a mint tea bag, and an apple-cinnamon tea bag all in the mug together.

Meanwhile, I call Xochitl. However, it’s the middle of the night in Boston, and she doesn’t pick up. CheshireCat looks at ways to get her attention but has no luck. “I mean, she worked with my parents and Rajiv,” I say. “She’s probably the last person in the world who’d have an internet-enabled house.”

I call Rachel back and try to bring her up to date. “So do you think your mom is okay?” Rachel asks. “Do you think she just went to ground, like she told you to do?”

I think about this.

“No,” I say. “Because she’s told me to leave her. But she’s never left me.”

“Do you think she was lured out?”

“Yes. Or—actually, I should ask the real CheshireCat where her phone is.”

CheshireCat agrees with the other AI that my mother’s phone is in the parking garage where we left the van. “I do not recommend going there,” CheshireCat adds. “Given the other AI’s interest in directing you there, the possibility that an ambush is waiting seems very high.”

“If someone kidnapped her with, like, a gun,” Rachel says, “maybe she dropped her phone? Or maybe they made her drop it?”

If there is one thing my mother is terrified of, it’s being kidnapped again. “She could not have been quietly abducted. She’d have screamed and made a scene.”

“What if Rajiv just straight up approached her?” Rachel asks. “Were they friends? Would she maybe have just gone with him?”

“I don’t think so. She really doesn’t trust him.”

I don’t know how CheshireCat is waking people, but one by one, people are logging on: Bryony, Icosahedron, Firestar, Hermione. “I thought you might need some backup,” they say when I send them a private message consisting solely of question marks.

“Even Rachel and Bryony are 150 miles away,” I say.

“Distance isn’t everything,” CheshireCat says. “We’re your friends, and we all want to help you if we can.”

“Easy for the person who doesn’t need sleep to say,” I say, but Hermione and Firestar are asking me what’s wrong, am I okay, what’s going on…? So I leave the private chat, and tell everyone what’s been going on.

32•  Clowder  •

Icosahedron: So the first thing you’re going to want to do is restore your phone to factory settings. That should wipe whatever malware the other AI used to impersonate CheshireCat.

LittleBrownBat: Do you think I can still use CheshireCat’s app

CheshireCat: It should be okay. All the app did was give me permission to listen in.

LittleBrownBat: Why don’t I just give you verbal permission and NOT install the app, just in case

Marvin: I’m torn between defending my future reenactor friends and thinking you’re probably right

LittleBrownBat: I’m not saying your friends are bad, anyway, I’m saying they’re being used by bad people! Like the people who tried to plant a tracker on me!

Hermione: Correction—the people who successfully planted a tracker on you. Where are you right now?

LittleBrownBat: Home

Firestar: OH COME ON LBB, you went HOME when you knew they’d tracked you?

LittleBrownBat: I climbed in through the window and you have no idea how COLD it is here right now, where else am I going to go?

Georgia: Deep breaths everybody.

CheshireCat: If anyone comes to LBB’s apartment, I’ll use the robot to distract them while she escapes back out the balcony.

Icosahedron: Robot? What robot?

LittleBrownBat: CheshireCat bought me a robot.

Icosahedron: Can you buy me a robot? I would LOVE to have a robot.

CheshireCat: How would you explain the robot to your parents?

Icosahedron: I wouldn’t.

Hermione: How would you explain the robot to your parents when they FOUND the robot while looking for your laptop?

Icosahedron: Fair point.

LittleBrownBat: What I really want right now is to find my mom.

Orlando: LBB, your mom wants you to be safe. When she was in the hospital after her surgery she stole a nurse’s phone to tell you to keep running.

Firestar: Orlando, can you and Georgia head to Minneapolis?

Georgia: 2 hrs 24 minutes. That is TOO LONG for LBB to sit in her apartment.

Boom Storm: Maybe try another taxi?

Firestar: Could you call Nell’s family and see if they’ll help you?

LittleBrownBat: I just thought of something.

My GRANDMOTHER is in town. And she gave me her number …

33•  Steph  •

I wipe my smartphone and start reinstalling the stuff I trust, like the CatNet app, and the stuff I need, like the taxi app. I’m briefly convinced I dropped my grandmother’s card in the hotel room, but then I find it in a different pocket. Rose Packet, Master Gardener, it says, and gives a phone number. I dial it, trying not to get my hopes up. It’s 4:00 a.m.

On the third ring, my grandmother picks up. “Hello?” she says, her voice thick from sleep but with the alert edge of someone who is already sitting up and preparing for whatever the emergency is. “Laura?”

“It’s Steph,” I say. “Mimi, there’s … a lot I need to explain, but … Mom and I are