Chapter 8: The Terminal Across Town
The municipal service office occupied the first floor of a brick building between a bus depot and a closed pharmacy. At eight in the morning, people already stood beneath the fluorescent lights holding numbered slips and document folders.
Emmett stopped the Navigator across the street.
“There are cameras over both entrances,” he said.
“That’s why I’m going in.”
“They’ll record you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
His expression stayed calm, but his hand remained on the steering wheel. “If Dean has access to municipal records, using your identification could tell him where you are.”
“If I hide, he still gets to tell everyone why.”
I stepped onto the sidewalk. The bandage made my shoe tight, and each step pressed the flash drive against my ankle. Emmett came around the vehicle and offered his arm. I passed him without taking it.
Inside, a security guard directed us to a kiosk. I entered my name, selected housing records, and received number forty-three. The screen above the service windows showed twenty-nine.
We sat beneath a camera in full view of the waiting room.
My phone vibrated. The unknown sender had written again.
LEAVE. THEY CHECKED THE TERMINAL.
I showed Emmett without handing him the phone.
“Who checked it?” he asked.
“If they wanted to help, they could use a name.”
A woman across from us lowered her newspaper and looked directly at Emmett. She folded it, stood, and left without her number being called. He watched her cross the lobby.
“You know her?”
“No.”
It was too quick.
“That sounded practiced.”
He turned toward me. “I have spent years learning not to identify people in public.”
Before I could press him, the screen changed to forty-three.
The clerk at window six wore a blue cardigan and a plastic badge that read MARA. I gave her my identification and the terminal number from the access log. She entered it, frowned, and asked me to wait.
“That terminal isn’t available to the public,” she said.
“Who can use it?”
“Staff with elevated account permissions.”
“Can you tell me who logged in at 4:52?”
“Not from this screen.”
Mara glanced at Emmett, then back at me. “Are you reporting identity theft?”
“Yes.”
The word carried across the quiet space between windows. Two people looked up. Saying it publicly changed the shape of the morning. I was no longer merely checking a record. I was creating one.
Mara printed a form and circled a case number. “Once I submit this, the accounts involved may be frozen during review.”
“My bank account is already frozen.”
“Your housing profile isn’t.” She hesitated. “But it will be.”
The apartment Emmett had preserved until noon could become inaccessible before then. I signed anyway.
Mara disappeared through a gray door with my form. A minute later, the lobby lights flickered. The numbered screen went blank, and the security guard’s radio snapped with a burst of static.
Emmett stood.
“What?”
“The woman with the newspaper just came back.”
She had. This time she was beside the entrance, speaking to the guard and pointing toward us.
I kept my seat. “I wanted public.”
“You have it.”
Mara returned carrying no paper. “You need to leave the window.”
“Was the report submitted?”
“Yes, but someone remotely opened your file while I was processing it.”
“From terminal seventeen?”
Her eyes shifted toward the camera. “I didn’t say that.”
“Who was it?”
“I can’t see a name. Only an authorization group.”
Behind us, the front doors locked with a magnetic click. The guard moved to the center of the lobby and announced that the building was temporarily closed for a systems issue.
Emmett leaned close enough that only I could hear him. “There’s a side exit through the permit corridor.”
“No.”
“Jillian.”
“If I disappear through a staff hallway, Dean gets the picture he wants.”
I raised my phone and photographed the case number, Mara’s badge, and the dead screen. Then I turned on the camera and recorded myself stating the date, the office, and what had happened to my accounts.
Emmett stared at the phone. “Where are you sending that?”
“Somewhere you can’t withdraw it.”
I emailed the recording and photographs to three former coworkers whose addresses were still in my contacts. I asked them to preserve the files and tell anyone who called that I had reported identity theft.
The guard unlocked the main doors. Outside, a man in a formal suit stood beside the Navigator, one hand resting on its hood.
It was not Dean. He held up a folded notice as we approached.
“This vehicle has been identified in connection with unauthorized access to municipal records,” he said. “It is being impounded pending review.”
Emmett did not argue. That frightened me more than anger would have.
May you like
The refuge that had carried me from the gate was taken behind a steel barrier. With my identity now attached to a public complaint and my apartment profile frozen, I stepped toward the bus depot under my own name.
Across the street, the woman with the newspaper lifted her phone and took our picture.
