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

that are designed to get people to rile each other up. I tell her specifically about the Mischief Elves and the Catacombs, mentioning my friend Nell but not the part where we broke Nell’s friend out of a cult compound on Saturday.

I am leaving out a lot. It’s still enough to worry my grandmother.

“I think the best solution is just to take you to Texas,” she says. “You’ll be safe with me, and your mother will know where to find you once she surfaces.”

“I’m not leaving without my mother.”

“Your mother wants you to be safe. And no one who’s looking for the two of you will expect you to be in Texas.”

“Don’t I need an ID or something to fly?”

“We can drive there. It’ll take about two days.” When I open my mouth to object, she adds, “In a rental car. I’m sure something’s open by now.” We’ve been sitting in the diner for a while. It won’t be properly light out until almost 8:00 a.m., but the darkness outside is a little less dark.

“How did you steal it, anyway?” I ask.

“This type of car is entirely keyless and vulnerable to hacking.”

I blink at her. Somehow I had not expected that my grandmother the master gardener was also a car hacker.

She turns her hands palms up like she can guess what I’m thinking. “Darling, I’ve been working on car computer systems since the 1990s. I actually built the car-hacking device because I lost my own car fob and they charge a completely absurd fee to replace them. Also, when you get to be my age, you’ll find that your friends are constantly locking their keys in their cars. It’s nice to be of service. I just keep it in my purse.”

I cannot wait to tell Ico about this.

Mimi leans forward. “Anyway, going to Texas will also get you out of this utterly inhumane cold. This would be a perfectly lovely time to visit Texas even if you weren’t fretting about some sort of gang war based around online games. It’s probably sixty degrees in Houston right now. Above zero.”

I pull out my phone and look up the weather in Houston. “It’s thirty-nine.”

She looks disappointed, then rallies and says, “That is sixty degrees warmer than it is here.”

My phone offers up news results for Houston along with weather results, and something catches my eye: some sort of incident at a church in a former basketball stadium. Some group broke in to commit vandalism; another group—not affiliated with the church—showed up before the police and attacked the vandals. There was a brawl. Also, the vandalism apparently involved an attempt to TP the entire interior, which sounds like quite a project unless this is a very small basketball stadium. Regardless, this screams Mischief Elves to me, or something similar. I read the news story to my grandmother, and her eyes go wide. “That doesn’t sound normal.”

“It’s the same thing that’s happening here, just it’s Houston groups attacking each other.”

A blast of cold air from the door makes me look behind me. Like most businesses in Minneapolis, this restaurant has a double set of doors, providing sort of an airlock for heat, but there’s a big group coming in and they have both doors open at the same time. Everyone has the same alert, wary smile that I saw in the sandwich shop, and I am absolutely positive that they are here to make trouble.

“We have to go,” I say. “Right now.”

Mimi glances in the direction I’m looking, drops a wad of cash on the table, and says, “Back exit,” with a jerk of her head toward the kitchen. I follow her as she sails through the kitchen with an apologetic wave at the cook and out the back door.

Outside, Mimi heads toward the car, but I catch her arm. “The tires are all flat,” I say.

We look back toward Lake Street; I’m wondering how quickly CheshireCat can get a taxi to us, but I see a bus pulling up. “This,” I say, and pull my grandmother on board.

“Where are we going?” Mimi asks.

I look at the route number. “Abbott Northwestern Hospital.”

“Are you not feeling well?” she says, looking alarmed.

“No,” I say. “Someone I trust works there.”

Siobhan has just gotten to work when we arrive—I know because her cheeks and nose are still bright pink from the cold. “Have you heard from Nell?” she asks immediately. Glancing at Mimi, she adds, “Are you Steph’s mom?”

“This is my grandmother,” I say.

“Rose Packet,” my grandmother says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, and I’m afraid Steph’s reason for bringing me here is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.”

“We need somewhere safe,” I say. “The hospital has both security and Wi-Fi. Siobhan, I don’t know where Nell is, but I’m working on it. Did she tell you she had another girl with her?”

“She what?” Siobhan looks simultaneously alarmed and frazzled. “She did? Who?”

“Her girlfriend, Glenys.”

“She has a girlfriend?” Siobhan asks, looking poleaxed. “Do you mean a girlfriend girlfriend or a girl friend or…”

“Romantic-type girlfriend. We rescued the girlfriend last weekend from her mother’s cult.”

“So that’s why she was suddenly so worried about her mother … Actually, this still makes no sense.”

“Also, there are multiple groups in town, one of them connected to her mother’s cult, which are trying to stir up trouble. Potentially a lot of trouble.”

“Do you think Nell is involved with any of them?”

“Yes, and I think the app it uses might be interfering with her phone—sending her fake texts, blocking real ones. So if you’ve been texting her to say you’ve got an appointment with a lawyer, it may be sending her texts that look like they’re from you that say her mother arrived in town and is looking for her.”

Siobhan rubs her forehead. “Okay,” she says. “I’m going to set you up with a conference room and a Wi-Fi password and then text the rest of the nest.”

“Do you play any weird online games?” I ask. “New in