Page 62 of The Newcomer
“It was in Maya’s stuffed elephant,” Letty said quietly.
“Genius!” Sierra exclaimed. “Who put it there?”
“Maya’s mom. My late sister.”
“Oh, man. Sorry. Isabelle told me the little girl’s mama was dead. So she was spying on someone? Like, literally the nanny?”
“No,” Letty said. She checked to see if Maya was listening, but the child was still enraptured by her favorite television program.“More likely Tanya was spying on her ex. They were fighting over custody of Maya, and things had taken a nasty turn. I’m sure she was trying to get the goods on him.”
“So, she didn’t tell you the nanny cam was there?”
“I had no idea. My sister… liked to have secrets. Any idea how it works?”
Sierra held the camera inches from her nose. “Okay, so the brand name is TriCommCo. I’ll have to look them up to see the specs for this camera, but I can tell you most of these things are usually motion and sound activated. Battery operated. Some of ’em have a little flash card, but this one looks like maybe it’s Wi-Fi enabled.”
“Do you think the camera could have been ruined when Ellie got left out in the rain last night?”
“Only one way to find out,” Sierra said.
“So… where does the video, or whatever you call it, end up?”
Sierra gave Letty the exasperated look every teenager gives any technically challenged person over the age of twenty. “It’s uploaded. Like, to the cloud, or a phone or a laptop.”
“And how would I retrieve it?”
“You’d have to hack into her account. And you’d need your sister’s phone or laptop. And the username and password.”
“Sierra can hack anything,” Isabelle said proudly. “She hacked into our school’s database to figure out who had the highest GPA.”
“I didn’t change anybody’s grades or anything illegal like that. I just wanted to know, in case our dipshit administration named one of the cool kids valedictorian,” Sierra said. “It wasn’t me, obviously. I only made a B in AP English.”
“And she hacked her boyfriend’s phone…”
“Ex,” Sierra said.
“… and figured out he was out there on Tinder trolling for cougars,” Isabelle said.
Sierra allowed herself a small smirk. “Busted!” She looked over at Letty, whose expression answered her next question. “So, you don’t have her phone?”
“No,” Letty said, her shoulders slumping.
“Hmm.”
Sierra sat down at the postage stamp–size table, unzipped her backpack, and brought out a slim silver laptop. “You’ve got Wi-Fi here, right?”
Letty nodded and told her the name of the network— “‘MURMURING SURF,’ all caps”—and the password.
Sierra’s slender fingers danced over the keyboard with lightning speed. “A lot of people don’t bother to come up with a unique username for all their apps and devices. Big mistake, but it happens. Worse than that, lots of times they just leave the factory-set default password on their device. Like, a password that’s 1–2–3. How dumb can you get?”
As dumb as me,Letty thought, silently vowing to change the password on every app and device she owned.
“Okay,” Sierra said. “I’m on the TriCommCo website.” She held the nanny cam next to the laptop. “Looks like this is their most-expensive-model camera, which isn’t great news, because the cheapest cameras are usually the ones with the worst security lapses. We need to log on to her TrimComm website and they will ask for verification from her email. Tell me your sister’s email address.”
“It was Tanyaterrible, all one word, at gmail dot com,” Letty said.
Sierra snickered as she typed. “Okay. Let’s try obvious passwords in email first. How do you spell the little girl’s name? And what’s her birthday?”
Letty spelled out the name. “M-A-Y-A. And her birthday is 09–23–2014.”
