Deep Fake by Ward Larsen

Author:Ward Larsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

* * *

Claire tried to focus on the road—the visibility was awful and rush-hour traffic was bogging down. Night had fallen hard, the oncoming headlights creeping past as blurry paired circles. The rain had reached car wash intensity, her little Mazda’s wipers groaning from exhaustion.

They’d driven in silence since leaving Georgetown, and in the darkness Claire caught glimpses of Sarah in passing streetlights. She was pressed deep into the passenger seat, curled against the door with her arms crossed as if she were cold. Claire was no medical professional, but she knew the signs of shock when she saw them. Limbs pulled in protectively as withdrawal took hold. Pale fingers and lips, blood retreating to the more vital parts of the body. She could almost hear Sarah’s heart pounding away.

For Claire it was unsettling. She was used to Sarah being Sarah, calm and unflappable. A stalwart military wife who stood by her rock-solid husband, the two of them combining as an unshakable foundation. Now that base had been shattered.

Claire distracted herself by contemplating what mistakes they’d made, a burglar’s self-assessment. Had she locked the door properly? Left fingerprints? What might they do differently next time?

Next time.

She couldn’t shake the imageries she’d seen on the camera feeds. She’d shown some of it to Sarah, but never gotten around to the rest—what she’d discovered while Sarah was going through the binders. Aside from the live feeds, Claire had uncovered thousands of hours of archived recordings. She’d sampled a few, enough to learn that the videos were matched by high-quality audio. In essence, a record of virtually every moment in every room of Sarah’s home going back half a year. Not to mention a feed from at least one congressional office building. Claire had kept it to herself, figuring enough damage was done. But at some point, Sarah had to know.

The silence became unbearable.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

No response.

Claire looked outside and saw a third-tier strip mall ahead. She turned in and pulled into a parking spot between a dive bar and a massage parlor. Both had red neon signs, one offering two-for-one specials, the other happy hour. She put the car in park, and finally Sarah’s thousand-yard stare broke.

“Are you okay?” Claire asked again.

“No. But I’ll get past it. I have to … for Alyssa’s sake.”

“She’s staying at a friend’s tonight?”

“She is.”

“That’s good. Maybe you should do the same. I’ve got the spare bedroom.”

Sarah didn’t respond.

“Look,” Claire said, “at least we know what we’re up against now.”

“Do we?”

“Okay … maybe not exactly. But we can buy time, figure out how to deal with it.”

Sarah’s tone turned sarcastic. “Yeah, we’re kind of in a bind, aren’t we? We found evidence of a crime in the course of committing one ourselves. Then again, I’m not sure if any of what Bryce has done is illegal. He installed a really extensive nanny-cam system in his own home. Then he either bought or rented a condo and put pictures of his family and friends on the wall.

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