The Big Bad Wolf

have it any other way. So we dropped her SUV off at her house and she rode with me to Dale City. I’d already called ahead and spoken to the girl’s mother. She sounded nervous, but she said she was glad the FBI was finally coming to talk to Lili. She added that “nobody can ignore Lili for long. You’ll see what I mean.”
    A young girl in black coveralls answered the front door. I assumed she was Lili, but that turned out to be wrong. Annie was the twelve-year-old sister. She certainly looked fourteen. She beckoned, and we stepped into the house.
    “Lili is in her laboratory,” said Annie. “Where else?”
    Then Mrs. Olsen appeared from the kitchen and we introduced ourselves. She had on a plain white blouse and a green corduroy jumper. She was holding a greasy spatula, and I couldn’t help thinking how casual the domestic scene was. Especially if what Lili thought she had come upon was real. Had a fourteen-year-old found a possible trail that would lead us to the kidnappers? I’d heard of cases solved in stranger ways. But still . . .
    “We call her Dr. Hawking. Like Stephen Hawking? Her IQ is up there,” said her mom, poking the cooking utensil upward for emphasis. “Smart as she is, Lili lives on Sprite and Pixie Stix. There’s nothing I can do to influence her dietary habits.”
    “Is it all right if we talk to Lili now?” I asked.
    Mrs. Olsen nodded. “So I guess you’re taking this seriously. That’s so wise with Lili. She’s not making any of this up, believe me.”
    “Well, we just want to talk to her. To be on the safe side. We’re not sure that this is anything, really.” Which was true enough.
    “Oh, it’s something,” said Mrs. Olsen. “Lili never makes a mistake. She hasn’t so far, anyway.”
    She pointed the spatula up the stairs. “Second door on the right. She left it unlocked for a change, because she’s expecting you. She instructed us to stay out of it.”
    Monnie and I headed upstairs. “They have no idea what this could be, do they?” she whispered. “I almost hope it’s nothing. A false lead.”
    I knocked once on a wooden door that sounded hollow.
    “It’s open,” came a high-pitched female voice. “Come.”
    I opened the door and looked in on a pine bedroom suite. Single bed, rumpled cow-pattern sheets, posters from MIT, Yale, and Stanford on the walls.
    Seated behind a blue halogen lamp at a laptop was a teenage girl—dark hair, eyeglasses, braces on her teeth. “I’m all set up for you,” she said. “I’m Lili, of course, of course. I’ve been working on a decryption angle. It comes down to finding flaws in the algorithms.”
    Monnie and I both shook Lili’s hand, which was very small and seemed as fragile as an eggshell.
    Monnie began. “Lili, you said in your e-mail to us that you had information that could help with the disappearances in Atlanta and Pennsylvania.”
    “Right. But you found Mrs. Meek already.”
    “You hacked onto a very secure site. That’s right, isn’t it?” Monnie asked.
    “I sent out some stealth UDP scans. Then IP spoofing. Their root server bit on the false packets. I planted a source code for the sniffer. Finally hacked in using DNS poisoning. It’s a little more complicated, but that’s the basic idea.”
    “I get it,” Monnie said. Suddenly I was very glad she was there with me at the Olsen house.
    “I think they know I was on with them. Actually, I’m sure of it,” said Lili.
    “How do you know that?” I asked her.
    “They said so.”
    “You didn’t get into too many specifics with Agent Tiezzi. You said you
thought
someone might be ‘for sale’ at the site?”
    “Yeah, but I blew it, didn’t I. Agent Tiezzi didn’t believe me. I admitted I was fourteen, and a girl. How dumb of me, right?”
    “I won’t hold it against you,” Monnie said, and smiled kindly.
    Lili finally cracked a smile too. “I’m in big trouble, aren’t I? Actually, I know I am. They might already know who I am.”
    I shook my head. “No, Lili,” I said to her. “They don’t know who you are, or where you are. I’m sure they don’t.”
    If they did, you’d already be dead.

Chapter 66
    IT WAS SO EERIE AND STRANGE, being in the young wunderkind’s room—with her life, and her family members’ lives, possibly in great danger. Lili had been a little coy in her message to the Bureau, so I understood how the tip might have fallen through the cracks. Also, she
was
fourteen years old. But now that we’d met and