> It wasn’t nice to wake up this morning and find the letter that I thought you would destroy in the pages of the newspaper. Not nice at all. Made me feel — hunted. > But I’ve come to understand why you did it. I don’t know if I can approve of your tactics, but it’s easy to see that your motives were sound. > If you’re reading this, that means that there’s a good chance you’ve gone underground. It’s not
263 · LITTLE BROTHER
I got online with his XBox and a huge plasma screen in the living room. He showed me how many open WiFi networks were visible from his high vantage point — twenty, thirty of them. This was a good spot to be an Xnetter. There was a lot of email in my M1k3y account. 20,000 new messages since Ange and I had left her place that morning. Lots of it was from the press, asking for followup interviews, but most of it was from the Xnetters, people who’d seen the Guardian story and wanted to tell me that they’d do anything to help me, anything I needed. That did it. Tears started to roll down my cheeks. Nate and Liam exchanged glances. I tried to stop, but it was no good. I was sobbing now. Nate went to an oak book-case on one wall and swung a bar out of one of its shelves, revealing gleaming rows of bottles. He poured me a shot of something golden brown and brought it to me. “Rare Irish whiskey,” he said. “Mom’s favorite.” It tasted like fire, like gold. I sipped at it, trying not to choke. I didn’t really like hard liquor, but this was different. I took several deep breaths. “Thanks, Nate,” I said. He looked like I’d just pinned a medal on him. He was a good kid. “All right,” I said, and picked up the keyboard. The two boys watched in fascination as I paged through my mail on the gigantic screen. What I was looking for, first and foremost, was email from Ange. There was a chance that she’d just gotten away. There was always that chance. I was an idiot to even hope. There was nothing from her. I started going through the mail as fast as I could, picking apart the press requests, the fan mail, the hate mail, the spam... And that’s when I found it: a letter from Zeb.