He's got it coming: Love is the best revenge Page 3

  “Oh, um, yes. Good night,” he stutters in a hoarse voice.

  My pulse beats like a concert bass speaker blasting through my skin as I twist the lock on the door. My mind spins out of control, imagining crazy scenarios of that fatal evening when Isac died.

  It makes no sense. Henrik’s a player. Cecilia flirted with him, clearly indicating sex was on the menu, and then suddenly he disappeared?

  I’m smart, reasonable, and desperate to get to the bottom of this. Henrik might not have told Cecilia if he saw a man die, but maybe he told a friend or a family member he trusts? I need evidence, and Cecilia will help me get that.

  Until then, stay calm.

  In our guest room, I rip open the box marked ‘Donations’ and search for an iPhone 8. I push aside the 5, 6, and 7 there. I pull out my laptop from another box, grab a brand-new USB stick and phone, and head into my hollow office. It’s brighter now with the screens, hard drives, and wires removed. What’s left are the white walls, wooden floors, and a bare white desk as cold in color as the temperature in the room.

  I sit on my hands to defrost them, but my body has dropped in temperature too, so it doesn’t help much.

  The wall thermostat light flashes red as I cave and switch it on, then close the door to keep the heat from spreading to the rest of the apartment. My rigid fingers hinder me from touch typing at my usual rapid speed. Like an old man, I press one key at a time with my index finger.

  In case anyone wants to look for a trail later, I connect to my VPN in order to hide my IP address and obscure all activities. This way, they’ll have a hard time finding any trace of what I’ve done.

  Searching the online phonebook, seven names and profiles of men named Henrik Larsen appear. Three are in other cities, and two are too old according to images I find on their workplace’s contact pages. The last two both live in Oslo, and I immediately rule one out since he is fat and bald. Cecilia would never date him.

  I check the last man’s Facebook profile. He’s thirty-five years old, and his picture is of a grinning, bearded man with brown ruffled hair pulled up in a man bun.

  Henrik’s home address in Sagene sends a rush of adrenaline through me. Isac crashed at Griffenfeldts Road, and Henrik lives three streets up.

  I search for Cecilia’s address to set as a destination to get the exact time each route would take at seven-thirty in the evening. But her address doesn’t appear in the phonebook’s website or any other place.

  Strange. I usually find addresses easy. There’s always a bread crumb, a post with an IP address I can track, social media, something. But with her, I don’t find anything.

  I plot Henrik’s address into Google Maps as a starting point, then add Cecilia’s posh neighborhood of Frogner as a destination, displaying two routes.

  Both choices lead onto Griffenfeldts Road. One passes the accident, the other crosses it about six hundred feet further ahead.

  Shit. What if Henrik was there? What if he saw Isac die?

  Never expecting to use my printer again, I strategically placed it at the bottom of the boxes in the guest room. After a bit of shuffling around, which warms me up a little, I bring it into my office, plug it in, and print out his photo to pin to my wall. He is definitely Cecilia’s type with his rugged looks and flirtatious grin.

  My clenched teeth are making my jaw hurt, and I force myself to release them as images play like a movie in my mind of Isac’s car spinning off the road, away from something. Henrik, this grinning person in the photo in front of me, sexted Cecilia at the same time as the accident. Then he stopped texting when Isac crashed.

  Police suspected Isac avoided an animal. Everyone told me I was crazy for doubting them. If Henrik was there, he saw what happened, and chances are he’s told someone. Soon, I’ll know what.

  I connect the USB to my laptop and open Kali Linux. A couple of hours later, the clock on my screen shows four thirty in the morning. My eyelids are heavy as steel doors. I’ve installed the code to clone Henrik’s phone and downloaded the backdoor code onto the USB stick. The rest is up to Cecilia.

  I think back to the grueling eighteen-hour-long exam for my master penetration tester certificate, to how hard I worked through ethical hacking and security analyst courses, to how I graduated first in Europe. Isac was proud of me—my family and I were too. I still am. Only a handful of people in the world have this degree, and I’m about to throw it away. I shove my moral thoughts down.

  This isn’t right, but I have to know.

  If I do this, I’m going against who I am as a person, my morals, my ethics, what I’ve based my entire life on. I’m not this person. I always do the right thing. I don’t break the law. I catch criminals who do by working hard and then…

  And then my husband dies, and assholes like this Henrik get to live.

  I shut the heat off and the warmth from the floor ceases. The chill from the hallway strikes me, not only cooling my body but my soul.

  I squeeze the USB in my hand, wishing I had the power to put Henrik in that car and revive Isac.

  Why do good people die? It’s not fair.

  If anyone looks for evidence of my illegal activity, they won’t find any. I’ll make it appear like Henrik searched through his messages and emails himself from his own phone and computer. Cecilia won’t understand any of this, and it’s not traceable in any way when I’ve never met Henrik or have any ties to him online.

  I can’t die without knowing for sure. Unpacking my sheets and remaking my bed, it’s like the universe is telling me to wait, to find the answers I didn’t get two years ago when Isac died.

  Maybe I’m fooling myself, and it was an animal like the police said after all. If so, I’ll go back to my plan of joining Isac in the afterlife. But I can’t shake the thought I’ll discover it wasn’t.

  Three hours later, the doorbell rings, and Cecilia barges in dressed all in black with red heels to match her nail polish.

  “Here.” I hand her the phone and USB stick. “When are you meeting him?”

  “At three, so…” She looks at her blinking smartwatch. “An hour.”

  I would go insane with a constant interruption device strapped to my arm.

  Cecilia takes the phone in her right hand, and the USB stick in her left as if holding dead fish by their tails.

  I point to the phone. “Turn it on when you’re within one yard of Henrik’s phone. The closer, the better. Make sure it gets at least ninety seconds to work and set it to silent immediately after.”

  “Why?” She turns the phone sideways, flipping its silent button on.

  “Because then it will be a clone of his, and once it’s cloned, it will act exactly the same way as Henrik’s phone. You don’t want someone to call him and your phone to light up with the identical name and ringtone at the same time as his.”

  “No. That would…this makes me nervous.”

  You and me both.

  I fight my urge to bombard her with warnings to ensure she doesn’t forget the phone. She has to keep calm for Henrik to not get suspicious.

  “Don’t be scared. If Henrik’s cheating on you, he’ll probably have his phone on silent anyway. The clone gives us most of the information we need, like his passwords, images, text messages, Facebook, and whatever else he uses it for.” I gesture to the USB stick. “Put that in his computer and leave it there for at least a minute. It’ll give me a back door to get the IP and MAC addresses.” I wait for a sign that she understands.

  But instead of confirming what I’ve said, she laughs. “He doesn’t own a Mac. It’s a PC laptop. A black one.”

  “The MAC address is the machine access code. Every computer has one, and along with the IP address, it gives us what we need.”

  As well as make it look like everything I’m doing is coming from his computer.

  Cecilia puts both items into her purse. “Count on me. I can do it while Henrik’s in the kitchen cooking. If he keeps his phone in his pocket, I’ll make out with him in those ninety sec
onds to get close enough.”

  “You want to make out with the man you suspect is cheating?”

  “Um…I…he’s a good kisser.” She clears her throat. “It’s not like I haven’t made out with him before…”

  “True. If you keep it going for ninety seconds, it’s close enough. But, remember. No text messages.”

  “You won’t even hear from me until I return. But please do something about the heating here. If Henrik’s cheating, I need tonight to discuss options with you.”

  “Options?”

  Cecilia places both hands on her hips. “We’ll need to come up with some evil form of punishment.”

  She strikes me as a woman who doesn’t let anything get in her way, and won’t need me to create a revenge plan. But I need her to disclose what Henrik knows about Isac’s crash. “Hurry, please. And bring both the phone and the USB stick back, so he doesn’t find any of it.”

  “When you said you’d never do anything illegal again…?”

  “I was wrong.”

  “I’ll keep it short, and bring groceries and Cava when I get back. Either we’ll be celebrating, or we’ll be plotting revenge.”

  I want to object. This is no time for bubbles. But instead, I smile to save time as she leaves for her date with Henrik.

  When Cecilia returns a couple of hours later, I’ve got the fireplace going.

  “I got it.” She raises a bulging bag filled with groceries and another black Wineopoly bag with at least three bottles of Cava.

  A sweet strawberry scent oozes from her, much stronger than yesterday, telling me she drowned herself in perfume before meeting with Henrik. “The USB stick and phone?”

  She hands me both, then pulls out two gold bottles of Cava, waving them next to her head as if about to party. “I’ll bring salads upstairs if you deal with that.” Not waiting for a response, she begins filling my fridge.

  “Didn’t you just eat?”

  “I saved room since you clearly haven’t.” Cecilia opens the empty cutlery drawer. “You’ve packed everything, haven’t you?”

  “Um…let me get you some knives and stuff.” I run upstairs and retrieve kitchen appliances from a box before handing them to her in the kitchen. Making sure she doesn’t have time to ask more about it, I call out as I head back up. “I’ll need thirty minutes.” Hopefully, she’ll stay downstairs long enough for me to check his Google Maps history and text messages, and leaving her unaware of my ulterior motives for hacking Henrik.

  I locate his computer, and a few minutes later, I’m logged in.

  Fortunately, the idiot left his tracker on when Google Maps guided him towards Cecilia’s apartment.

  And there it is.

  According to the map, Henrik passed Isac within a minute of the accident. Then he turned the guidance off at that point, and the tracker stopped. If Henrik didn’t cause the crash, he saw it happen and could have prevented Isac’s death. No one called for an ambulance that day, and according to Henrik’s phone log, he didn’t call or text anyone about the crash.

  What the hell happened?

  I go through his calendar, notes, emails from that day, search his computer for the words car accident, car crash, and road accident along with every variation possible. Nothing emerges.

  As a last resort, I search the date. I gasp when a picture of Isac’s car smashed into the tree appears. Zooming in, I recognize my husband’s right hand with the watch I gave him for his birthday resting on the passenger seat. It’s as if my body travels back two years ago to December 14th. I can’t take my eyes off his hand. The rough fingers that caressed my cheek, opened the velvet box when he proposed, and held mine when we walked together are lifeless. Tears blur the image.

  Why the hell did Henrik take the time to snap a photo of a dead person in a car when he didn’t call an ambulance?

  Who does that? If you drive past an accident, you help. Unless…Henrik caused the crash.

  I swallow, and my hands shake in response to my thoughts.

  From downstairs, Cecilia’s phone is bombarded with messages, so I close the door to mute the sound.

  The animal that caused Isac’s death was Henrik.

  That’s why he disappeared and never told Cecilia about it. Apparently, he also took some sick satisfaction in keeping a picture as a trophy.

  Last time I saw pictures like this of Isac’s car was when the police showed me. I couldn’t stand it then. I cried so hard they removed me from the room. Now, my tears stop, no sadness takes hold of my body—only rage. Cecilia mentioned getting revenge on Henrik for him cheating on her, which in comparison to this is a joke. I can’t let Henrik live. He caused Isac’s death. A life for a life. It’s only fair.

  No one can connect me to Henrik. I’ve kept my trail clean, and people die all the time without the police solving the case. It’ll be easy. I’ll bake cupcakes filled with enough ground up pills to put an elephant to sleep, place them outside his apartment with a lovely fake note from one of the women he’s dating. He’ll never think twice about eating them, and the police won’t be able to connect the handwriting back to me. Henrik dies with no ties to me, and I can get back to my plan to join Isac.

  Perfect.

  4

  The door opens behind me. “Did you crack the password on Henrik’s phone?” Cecilia holds out a plastic bowl of lentil salad topped with avocado and reeking of garlic.

  I close the image and grab the bowl to compose myself.

  I focus on the keyboard to stay calm. “One more minute.” I’m already inside his phone, but I close Google Maps and search for ‘passwords’ on Henrik’s computer.

  As expected, the idiot, like most people, saved them in a folder.

  I open his iPhone with his code. ‘5-6-8-3’

  Cecilia drags the chair near the wall next to me and sits down. From her pocket, she gets out a fancy black pen and places it in front of her on my desk.

  “Taking notes?”

  “Sure.” She leans in to inspect the screen closer. “You’re in?”

  “We have access to everything.” I use this opportunity to focus my attention on explaining how this works to her. I have to. If not, I’ll burst. “It’s like we’re using our own phone.”

  I activate his webcam, and we watch Henrik carrying his laptop with him into bed. His hair is loose as he lies down on his side and opens a porn site. I switch off the connection.

  “Never mind.” I shudder.

  Cecilia points to the tiny light indicator next to the lens on my screen, indicating that the camera is on. “Won’t he see?”

  “No. My code makes his light stay off. We could film him and post his activities. That would make him think twice about not covering his webcam.”

  Her worried expression morphs into a satisfied smirk. She moves in even closer, placing her salad on the desk as she leans forward in her chair. “Can you open Henrik’s text messages?”

  I connect Henrik’s phone to my computer to see the messages on a bigger screen. Last night, when Cecilia came barging in because he canceled his date with her, he instead arranged for another woman to stay over. He sexted with three women this morning.

  She swallows. “I….don’t you think…this can’t…this is worse than I expected.”

  Cecilia’s jaw is tight as she leaves the office. She returns, carrying two crystal kitchen glasses filled with bubbles and the bottle under her arm. “Glad you turned on the heat.”

  Oh no, this is not turning into some chick-flick girl night.

  “I have what I need.” I unplug the USB and iPhone from my computer. “And so do you.”

  The less she knows about Henrik’s dark side, the better it is for her and me both.

  “You’ve heard of Tinder, right?” Cecilia takes out her phone and opens the Tinder app. “I had a great idea for revenge downstairs while preparing our salads.”

  I lean back in my chair with the salad bowl in my lap. “I don’t need to know about your revenge, that’s…”


  She holds her phone up in front of me like she did yesterday.

  My eyes bug out like a cartoon, blinking to be sure I’m not having a nightmare. I try to support myself on the back of my chair, but it swivels away from me. I spring up, staggering backward, salad and chair both falling. “What have you done?” My back hits the wall.

  She holds her arms out in front of her as if what she’s done is no big deal. “Don’t worry. I used a fake account for your profile since you’re not on Facebook.”

  “My name isn’t fake? My pictures…” I’m hyperventilating. “Delete it!”

  “Calm down. It’s a brilliant plan.” Cecilia shows me the screen where Henrik’s picture appears alongside mine with a message underneath. It’s a match.

  “Delete it!”

  “Delete it? He’s liked you back already.” A message appears in the app, and Cecilia beams at it. “He contacted you immediately. With me, it took a few weeks, so I contacted him instead of waiting. He must like you.”

  Who cares what he likes?

  My throat is closing, and I’m struggling to breathe. “I don’t care. Take it down! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  The sun emerges from behind a cloud, and I rip the curtains closed to block it out before taking the phone from Cecilia.

  My profile appears on the screen, along with pictures taken three years ago during the Easter holiday Isac and I spent at my family’s cabin. The photos show me skiing and having wine by the fireplace. Another photo is from when Isac proposed at my mother and father’s bed and breakfast in Portugal. They’re all from when Isac and I were together, only he’s cut out. These are the memories we were meant to reminisce over when we grew old together, but just like my new reality, he’s no longer there in the photos either. “I need you to go.”

  “What? I’m not leaving you now. We haven’t even finished our food.” She bends to gather my salad from the floor, scraping it back into the container. “You can have some of mine, and there’s Cava.” Seeming as desperate to stay as she did yesterday, she lifts her glass from the desk, holding it up to me as if I hadn’t seen it already.