She finished as Roarke stepped back in, pressed the glass into both of Phoebe’s hands.
“Do you understand your rights and obligations?”
“Yes.” Phoebe took a deep gulp of wine. When she spoke again, the mouse squeak was gone. Now there was abject despair. “I don’t deserve an attorney.”
“It’s not about deserve. It’s your right.”
“I don’t want one. I just want to get this over with. I knew it was wrong, I knew, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I did it, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“You knew what was wrong?”
“Hacking into people’s personal information. Into their correspondence and their private data. Cyberstalking them.”
“Why did you?”
“She said I had to. Ms. Mars.”
“She forced you?” Eve spoke mildly. “Held a weapon to your throat?”
“Sort of,” Phoebe said as Nadine shot Eve a hard look.
“What was the weapon?”
“Okay.” Phoebe drank again, took two long breaths. “My father is Larson K. Derick.”
Eve drew a blank, but Roarke jumped on it. “Black Hat Derick?”
Phoebe nodded, stared at her wine. One fat tear popped into it.
“Black hat hacker extraordinaire,” Roarke explained. “Twenty-five years ago or so, he used his considerable skills to drain financial accounts, briefly turned Wall Street inside out. While he could have bought his own country and retired by the time he was done there, he turned to politics, you could say. I’m sorry,” Roarke added to Phoebe, “this is difficult for you.”
“It’s easier if you tell her.”
“All right. He became somewhat of a fanatic.”
“He went crazy,” Phoebe whispered. “He was a terrorist.”
“Yes. He broke into government facilities, exposed or held ransom highly sensitive information. He instigated a fire sale in East Washington—that’s e-talk for shutting down the city. The communications, the utilities. He chose to do this in the dead of winter.”
“People died,” Phoebe continued. “In traffic accidents. Some died of the cold because there was no heat, no way to get heat into buildings. Looting, people panicking and hurting one another.”
“I know this,” Eve said. “I know something about this.”
“He demanded the president, vice president, and their families be executed. He’d come to believe all government was corrupt, and needed to be leveled,” Roarke explained. “He believed the people would rise up and create a new society, a pure one. A utopia without leaders or the need for them.”
“They caught him, they stopped him, but people died. He was my father.”
“And nobody was going to give an e-job to the daughter of a notorious hacker,” Eve concluded.
“Any job, probably. I was only two when they caught him, and my mother had left him right after I was born because he started getting crazy. They put us in lockdown when he broke into the Pentagon and said who he was. They put my mother and me in lockdown, and questioned her for days and days. She told them all she knew, but she hadn’t been with him for two years. Still, some of what she told them helped them find him, stop him. They put us in witness protection. New names, new place, new everything. My mom wasn’t allowed to do any e-work, but I was only two. Nobody said I couldn’t. And I’m good at it. I never did any hacking, I swear.”
“Okay. But Larinda found out.”
Phoebe knuckled a tear away. “She found out. I didn’t lie exactly on my job app. I gave the data we’d been given. But she found out. She called me into her office. I thought she needed help with her comp, but she told me she knew, and she’d ruin me and my mom. When people found out who we really were, they’d turn on us, and how she’d make sure everybody knew. We’re just regular people, Lieutenant Dallas, but all my life we’ve been afraid somebody would find out who we used to be. And she did.”
“What did she ask you to do?”
“It was little things at first, like hacking into Valerie Race’s communications so Ms. Mars could see who she was talking to and where she planned to be. Her travel. I didn’t want to, but she showed me a picture of my mom at work. She works for a landscaper in New Jersey. I got scared, so I did it. I never hacked before in my life, I swear it. But I did it, and I did it again and again when she told me to. I begged her not to make me do it. She promoted me, made me an assistant. And she showed me she’d kept records of everything I’d done, and when she told Ms. Hewitt they’d believe I’d done it on my own, they’d believe it because I was my father’s daughter. She—”