He holds both his hands up. “I’m not here to do your job, Agent.”

  “Fine,” I say. “Right now you’re looking at five years max. I add an obstruction charge to that, and it could be twenty.”

  Aruz looks grief-stricken for half a second before his original swagger returns. He glances at Cox who nods. Aruz just shakes his head. “It’ll never stick. This is all just a charade.”

  That’s it. I’ve had it with his games. I get right in Aruz’s face. “You think so? You so sure about that? Because right now I’ve got a missing woman. The daughter of a federal judge in fact. Young. Pretty. And what happens when the national media finds out that you, Mr. Aruz, you personally were responsible for keeping us from finding what we need to save her? How do you think that will look? Even if you don’t get convicted, the court of public opinion will slaughter you. You will never be able to run another company in this country again.”

  His mask falters.

  “Why put up such a fight now? You’ve already lost.”

  “Because of you and your kind,” he spits. “So called officers of justice, when all you do is use the system to unfairly punish those who don’t look like you.”

  I’m taken aback, though I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s true that some officers distort the law based on their own biases, but I’ve always worked hard to make sure I’m not one of them. “We’re not all the same, Mr. Aruz. I’m not here because of the color of your skin, or your heritage. I’m here because you have committed a crime and the law demands you pay for that crime.” I look him in the eyes. “But you’re also in the unique position of being able to help someone else. Someone who can’t help themselves right now. And I can tell you if you’re cooperative, that will go a long way to favorability in your case.”

  Aruz looks back at Cox again and the older man scans my face, then nods. He knows I’m telling the truth. My only concern at the moment is Hannah.

  “Fine,” Aruz says, the fight going out of him. “You win.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Aruz sits at his desk, his hands no longer bound by the zip ties, while Zara and I watch over his shoulder. Cox and Dana stand off to the side, neither of them saying anything. I have to admit this is not how I saw this encounter going. I was originally just going to use the information about Aruz’s taxes to strongarm him into giving us access, but now it seems I have no choice but to actually charge him. The funny thing is if he hadn’t been so defensive from the start, we might not have even found out about all his additional income.

  Aruz’s fingers fly over his keyboard as he logs into one system after another. They’re a complete blur to me. “When did you start selling your user’s data?” I ask.

  He shrugs as he finishes the login. “I didn’t have a choice. We were growing too quickly, and I needed an influx of cash. The bank wouldn’t lend me any more, so I had to resort to other methods.”

  “Despite the fact your terms of service state the opposite,” I say.

  “It was never designed to be permanent. Just until the company was growing at a sustainable rate. Then I was going to shut it off again.”

  I hold up my phone. “I got a telemarketer call the morning after using your service for the first time.”

  He shrugs again, unconcerned. “What can I say?”

  “Is that where all the extra income was coming from?” I ask. He nods. “I was hoping to keep it from the IRS so I wouldn’t have to pay the taxes. They are killer on small businesses like mine. If I could, I would have moved to the Caribbean now, run it from there.”

  “Ah, the American dream,” Zara says. “Shovel your money into tax havens and live by the beach.”

  Aruz rolls his eyes. “The system is up. Who are you looking for?”

  “A customer named Hannah Stewart,” I say. Half a second later her information pops up on one of Aruz’s screens. It shows the date she registered with the company, how many rides she’s taken, how often she takes them, the average length of the ride, the average tip she provides along with dozens of other statistics.

  “Now, see if she scheduled a ride on Saturday evening,” I say. “Around eleven p.m.” I can already feel my heart beating in my chest. It honestly feels like we’ve run a marathon to get to this point, but I can almost feel Hannah is within our grasp.

  “Nothing,” Aruz says.

  My heart drops into my stomach. “What?”

  “She scheduled a ride at eight p.m., which dropped her off at 425 Arlington. That was her last scheduled ride in the system.” He turns to me with a smug look on his face. “It’s like I told you from the beginning, if there had been an error in the system, I would have seen it. And you still didn’t believe me.”

  I shake my head; that can’t be possible. We’ve eliminated every other avenue. I look at Zara who seems just as shocked as I am. “What are we missing here?” I ask.

  She grabs Aruz’s chair, rolling him out of the way as she stares at the data. She backs up into the raw files, going through the lines of his proprietary system, one by one.

  “What are you looking for?” Aruz asks. “There’s nothing there. When will you ever stop harassing me?” He turns to Cox for support. “Is there anything we can do about this?”

  “Agents,” Cox says. “I’ll have to ask you to—”

  I spin on him. “Don’t start. Not after the fight he put up. We’re perfectly within the scope of our investigation to keep looking. You want to dispute it, bring it up in court.”

  He gives me a smile like he knows we’re screwed, and he’s going to try to use it to get his client a lighter sentence. It’s as if I can see the whole thing falling apart in front of my face. All this work to get into these records, and she didn’t take the ride that night? Then who could have picked her up? We cleared all the taxi services. All the private companies. The big ride-shares, all of whom were completely transparent with us. This was the only option remaining.

  And yet she’s not here.

  I can feel this case slipping through my fingers by the second. I was so sure we were close. How could I have gotten this so wrong? Have I been spending too much time obsessing over finding the woman that killed my husband and not putting all my heart into this case? I’ll have to update Janice on our progress when we leave here. And she’s not going to be happy.

  “Hey, Em,” Zara says. “There’s something strange in these records.”

  I look over her shoulder, but I can’t make heads nor tails out of what I’m seeing. It all looks like gibberish to me. “What do you mean?”

  “It looks like someone has been in here, messing with the code.”

  For a brief moment I consider what this means before turning on Aruz. “You. You erased her records.”

  He gives me a nervous chuckle. “What? I didn’t even know her name until two minutes ago. How could I erase the records?”

  “Because you’re in on it,” I say. “You collaborated with the driver. Hell, you might even be the driver for all I know. And you deleted the transaction because you didn’t want anyone finding out what you’ve done. You certainly had plenty of time.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” he yells. “I worked for years on this system! You think I’d be so careless to go in there and screw it up? My algorithm is a masterpiece. I’m certainly not about to potentially corrupt it by trying to erase data. The entire unit depends on reliable information.”

  “Well, someone has been in here mucking around,” Zara says. “I can see the artifacts from where they cleared out certain lines of code without properly reclosing the loops. It looks like a quick job. And look, there’s one that points to the timestamp when Hannah was picked up.”

  “Let me see that,” Aruz says, standing from his chair. I hold up a hand to keep him in place. “I just want to see if she’s right.”

  I reluctantly withdraw my hand. Aruz squeezes in beside Zara, scanning the data. “This is impossible,” he says as she points out the artifacts. I still can’t see what she’s talking about. I guess that’s only something a data analyst would know to look for.

  Aruz takes over the station from her and begins working on the system again. “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Trying to see where they came in. This system should be nearly impenetrable. I don’t write bad code.” He works for a few minutes. “Looks like you’re right. Whoever did this, they were in a hurry. They left a trail half a mile wide.”

  “Do you know who could have done it?” I ask. “Who else has access to the raw code?”

  He shakes his head. “No one. It would take a particularly skilled individual to do this, but it all leads back to the driver portal. I’d say whoever broke into the system, managed to brute force their way through there.”

  “Brute force?” I ask.

  Zara turns to me. “Someone with a lot of computing power can momentarily overwhelm security systems if they know what they’re doing and have enough computations per second to beat out a given system. We do that sometimes to terrorist organizations.”

  I look around the room at all the servers. “So someone would have to have more computing power than this to do it?”

  “A lot more,” Aruz says, still working. “Whoever they were, they didn’t leave a trace of their identity. Sloppy enough to leave a trail, but smart enough to make sure the footprint wasn’t identifiable.”

  “The driver portal, you said?” I ask, thinking. “The only reason I can think of for a driver to break in would be to erase a travel record, wouldn’t you say?”

  He turns slowly in his seat. “That makes sense.”

  “Then one of your drivers did pick up Hannah,” Zara says.

  “They’re not my drivers,” Aruz says. “They’re independent contractors. And like I told you, we perform extensive background checks. I can’t be held responsible for the actions of one rogue person.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I say. “I want a full list of all your drivers that were registered on the app last Saturday night.”

  “Em,” Zara says. “Anyone smart enough to clear the record probably erased their entire employment contract with Ryde 4 Lyfe. Unless they were extremely stupid, they’re not going to be in there.”

  “Right.” She’s correct, of course. I just wasn’t thinking clearly. I have no doubt our kidnapper isn’t stupid enough to leave their name in the system. I pull Aruz back away from the desk. He seems engrossed in trying to patch this hole that’s been left in the system that his business is built on. “What about backups? Do you have any backups that wouldn’t have been part of this system? Records this person wouldn’t have been able to access?”

  He huffs. “I want all of this to go into the official record,” he says. “I feel like I’m being more than generous with my time and my expertise here.”

  I lean down so I’m in his face. “You act like all of this is a big inconvenience to you. Well trust me, you’re going to have plenty of time to be inconvenienced when you’re being held in a federal prison.”

  “Now, now, Agent Slate,” Cox says. “I don’t think we need to be throwin’ threats around. Robert here would be more than happy to answer your question.” He gives Aruz a pointed look, causing the man to grimace.

  “We back the system up every month. Last one was seventeen days ago. I keep all the backup files stored offsite and off the mainframe in the event we have a catastrophic problem. That way the backup can be uploaded manually and reset the entire system.”

  “And these backups will have employee records?” I ask.

  “Contractor records, yes,” he replies.

  “But how is that any better?” Zara asks. “It’s still thousands of people to dig through. How do we know which one is the one who picked up Hannah?”

  “Because,” I say. “We’ll compare the records today with the records seventeen days ago. Whoever isn’t there now is our culprit.”

  “And if he didn’t register until sixteen days ago?” she asks.

  “Let’s hope that isn’t the case.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Zara and I are standing outside a small, ranch-style house in college park, just outside of the University of Maryland. The home, despite its small size, probably would go for a cool half a million even in its current state, which isn’t good. But that just speaks to the insane home prices in this part of the state.

  It’s all brick with green shutters and a storm door with the letter “M” carved in wrought iron on the front door. It looks to me like the house was built in the fifties or sixties and hasn’t seen much of an update since then.

  “You think he was telling the truth?” Zara asks.

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “He’s been pretty combative this entire time.” I glance over at her. “Did you see how red his face got when you started poking around in his system?”

  “Part of me just wanted to do it to mess with him,” she replies.

  I chuckle. “Is it bad I really enjoyed arresting him?”

  “For as much of a pain in our asses as he’s been? Not at all,” she replies.

  After Aruz had helped Zara download a list of all their drivers, active and otherwise, we waited on the support unit to come pick up Aruz. We would have taken him in ourselves, but given the time-sensitive nature of this case, Janice was able to pull some strings for us. Still, since we arrested him without a warrant, he’ll have to appear before a Magistrate Judge to determine culpability.

  But honestly, I don’t even care what happens to Aruz. Not until Hannah is back home, safe. Before they carted him away, he informed us all his backups are kept offsite at a second location. When he said that I hadn’t expected the second location to be an unassuming single-family home ten miles away.

  “Let’s go see if we can add perjury to his list of charges,” I joke, walking up the broken concrete walk leading to the front door from the small mailbox. If I had to guess, I would say this house belonged to a little old lady, given its condition. Though the plants out front need some care. It looks like they haven’t been pruned in a while.

  I knock on the door and step back, looking for any security measures and finding none. No video camera, no signs in the yard informing would-be thieves this house is protected by so-and-so. To house such secure data, Aruz sure isn’t trying to protect it.

  “Are we sure we have the right address?” I ask Zara. She only shrugs.

  A few moments later the front door opens to reveal a young woman who can’t be more than twenty-one. Her hair is a bright purple and she’s wearing fishnets under torn black jeans, combat boots and a leather jacket, along with a large number of bracelets and even a choker.

  “Yeah?” she asks.

  I hold out my badge. “Agents Slate and Foley with the FBI. Are you Julie?”

  “Jules,” she says. “What do you want?” She doesn’t seem perturbed in the slightest two FBI agents are on her porch. Either she puts on a good show or she really doesn’t care.

  “You work for Robert Aruz? With Ryde 4 Lyfe?”

  She scans the street beyond us. “Yeah. So?”

  “He’s been arrested,” I tell her. “On Fraud and tax evasion charges.”

  She crosses her arms. “Good for him. What’s that have to do with me?”

  “He told us you’re in charge of all of Ryde 4 Lyfe’s backups. That you keep them here?”

  “That’s classified.”

  I exchange a look with Zara. “Classified by who? Aruz was the one who told us.”

  “Mr. Aruz told me no one was to gain access. That’s the last I heard.”

  I arch an eyebrow. “Yeah? You look pretty young to be a homeowner in a neighborhood like this.”

  “It was my grandma’s house. She passed away six months ago. Left it to me.”

  “You a Terp?” I ask.

  She shrugs.

  “What’s your major? Computer science?”

  “And psychology,” she replies.

  “I like your hair,” Zara tells her. “Mine used to be blue but I had to change it. Benefits of the job.”

  Jules softens a little. “Thanks,” she says.

  “Listen. We’re just trying to get a copy of the driver records from the last backup. It would really help us out if you could let us access the system.”

  She nods to me. “You guys don’t look old enough to be in the FBI.”

  “My specialty used to be infiltrating gangs,” I say. “They never suspect the girl that looks like a teenager.”

  “Yeah?” she asks, opening up a little more. “Ever have any big busts?”

  “Yep. Took down a huge human trafficking ring here in D.C. just a few months ago,” I tell her. “Saved at least forty kids.”

  “No shit,” she replies, a smile forming on her lips. “And you arrested my boss?”

  “He was defrauding your customers. Selling their private data without their knowledge,” Zara says.

  “Man, I knew it,” she replies. “Dickhead. Yeah, c’mon in.” She unlocks the metal storm door and opens it for us. The first thing that hits me as soon as we’re inside is the smell of pot. The front room, which would normally be a living room, is littered with beer cans, bottles, and there’s a ping-pong table set up in the center.

  Jules leads us through the house, which is in a similar state, until we reach the back bedrooms.

  “You must be pretty popular,” I say. “Since you have your own house close to campus.”

  “Most people suck,” Jules replies. “I don’t have massive ragers here if that’s what you’re thinking.” She pulls out a set of keys that are attached to her belt and it’s then I notice four bolts on one of the doors. She uses each of the keys in turn until the door finally opens to reveal what used to be the primary bedroom but has now been converted into a server storage room.

  It’s almost as many processing units as what Aruz had back at his office, except most of them are off. A few are running though, each with their own cooling units.

  “Why would Aruz put all his stuff in here?” I ask, looking at the windows which are covered with blackout curtains. “This seems like a high-risk area. What if someone breaks in?”