Cyber Genius (21 page)

He had a point there. I didn’t know if it was enough of a
point to persuade me to crawl back into his bed. I was pretty limp but still
hungry for more of what he had to offer. Like sugar, sex is addictive. I didn’t
need either, but boy... I
wanted
them.

I showered and grabbed a hotel robe. When Graham staggered
into the bathroom looking gloriously rumpled, unshaven, and way too tempting
for my own good, I sashayed back to the bedroom. While the water ran, I hunted
through his drawers and stole one of the black t-shirts he must buy by the
dozen. It fell nearly to the hem of my skirt, but that was okay. I was aiming
for grungy.

I braided my hair into two plaits and wrapped them around my
head, pinning them close to my scalp. My stockings had a run, but I needed them
to go with the sensible but despised pumps. Grumbling about women who let
fashion dictate misery, I shook the dust from my suit jacket. At this hour of
the afternoon, it would be too cold to go without it.

Graham stalked out wrapped in a heavy white hotel robe. I
nearly melted all over again. Just imagine every square-jawed, steely-eyed,
rugged movie star you’d ever admired rolled into one whiskery grouchy hunk...
And I happened to know he cleaned up well too.

“Meaningless sex,” I informed him before he could say
something even nastier. “I needed that. So did you. Discussion over.”

“Adrenalin rush,” he agreed, eyeing my outfit with
displeasure.

While he was grudgingly communicating... “Adam Herkness
referred to you as
Day.
Does he know
your full name? Will he give it to the feds?” I opened my attaché and produced
a black knit hat and gloves. So, Tudor wasn’t the only nerd around.

“Stiles and I went back a few decades. He knew my name.
Herkness heard him call me Day. He’s a salesman. He remembers names. I don’t
know if Stiles told him more, which is why I’m here. Did you call Sean?”

“Sean wants a news story. So does Patra. How much are you
prepared to give them?” I dug out my phone and scrolled to Sean’s name.

“Not my name,” Graham said dryly.

“He already knows that. And he won’t buy the empty attic if
I show it to him, although the cops might. But I’m talking about the flawed
operating system. You told the cops to keep it undercover, but it can’t be a
secret much longer now that the sheep are bleating about the destroyed NSA
files.”

He ran a hand over his scruffy jaw. “It’s a national
security issue. Sean will need to confirm it with other sources. Go ahead, but
tell him to keep the sensation down low until the facts are substantiated—which
they aren’t at this point.”

I hate voice mail so I texted Sean to see if he was
available. “All right, but I’ll need a safe house for Maggie and her son until
their new apartment is ready in January. I can ask Nick to move back in with us
and let her have his place, I guess.” I was thinking out loud more than
anything.

“Tell Nick everything we know and have him pass it on to the
British consulate,” Graham actually agreed without my twisting his arm. “His
moving back in will be safer until the news is out there—
if
the killers were out to keep the OS flaw quiet. We still don’t
know that for certain. Kita was gunned down by a hired assassin—not as well
planned as Stiles’ death. I need to see if Hilda was killed by the same weapon,
but that wasn’t a professional hit. Someone panicked.” He rummaged in a drawer
and pulled out fresh boxers—black Calvin Klein knit, if I wasn’t mistaken.
Yummy.

I kissed his cheek and ran before he could drop his
underwear and grab me. Too much of a good thing makes Ana a dull girl.

Still feeling abraded and satiated from the unexpected sex,
I hurried down the hushed corridor, pretending I had a clue of where I was going.

Thank goodness, the elevator worked normally and didn’t take
me into a Secret Service closet somewhere. I took it downstairs and hid my
attaché under my suit jacket. My knit cap helped me blend in as I sauntered
through the crowded lobby like any of the nervous, milling nerds, pretending to
talk into my phone while not making eye contact.

I carried Graham’s warmth and the memory of great sex into
the cold November gray, still without a hint of what I meant to do. With the
limo shepherding EG home from school, I headed for the nearest Metro.

When he didn’t answer my text, I left a suggestive message
on Sean’s voice mail, then called Patra. When I got her voice mail, too, I told
her I was about to give Sean the scoop if she didn’t call right back. Then I
pinged Nick to give him the bad news that he had to move home if we found
Maggie.

Nick always answers his phone, when he’s not in the depths
of a bad love affair anyway. He chirped cheerily on the other end, so his love
life was currently good.

“Is your phone secure or do you need to call me back?” I
asked, just to get his edge up.

“This one’s safe,” he said, a little more warily. “Did you
just blow up the Stiles’ memorial?”

“Close. But apparently keeping secrets just got a woman
killed, so I’m passing on ours. Graham still insists it’s a national security
issue. If nothing else, if this news gets out, it will blow the hell out of MacroWare’s
stock price and probably Wall Street, but you can pass on this much to your
boss. Someone has programmed an opening into some, but not all, of MW’s new
OS’s to make them easily hacked from the outside—that’s how the NSA’s files got
deleted.”

“Whoa, back-up, I’m not Tudor. How does that translate into
simple English?”

“Can’t make it any simpler. Some of MacroWare’s new trial
operating systems have a built-in spyhole for anyone who knows how to find it.
We don’t know who knows about it, besides us. Tudor’s cookie monster program
found the flaw, he told Stiles, Stiles died, but we have no proof there’s a
connection. Essentially, whoever knows about the security defect can go in and
rummage around in any computer using the faulty software.”

“And destroy the computer’s contents?” Nick asked in
incredulity.

“Presumably. Tudor did it accidentally,” I said with a
casual shrug he couldn’t see. “We need to keep Tudor undercover in case they
realize that. Besides Tudor, any hacker”—like me—“can potentially read the
contents of the vulnerable hard drive, download anything they want, introduce
Trojan horses, whatever.”

Nick may not be technologically competent, but he knows how
people behave. He added two and two pretty quickly. Actually, he was something
of a card shark and could add the entire deck if necessary. He came back with a
swift summary. “You think Stiles was killed to keep this flaw secret? So they
can keep using it?”

“They killed Stiles, and the guy who could repair it, and
the chef who cooked the poison soup, and mother of the guy who sold all his MacroWare
stock this week. But we can’t find the logic yet. The O/S hole will be
discovered by others eventually, so the deaths may be a delaying tactic,
however improbable that sounds.”

He whistled. “The ambassador should give me a bonus for
this.”

I rolled my eyes at this selfish assessment. “You’ll have to
earn my cooperation. I have a potential witness who needs a safe house. I’m
nominating your apartment. You need to move back in with us until we get this
nailed. Graham has left the building.”

“A family confab is needed,” he said ominously. “We’ll talk
later.”

He hung up on me. I get that reaction a lot. I hopped the
Metro heading home to EG. I really needed to make lists and do more research,
if only Sean would call and tell me he could find Maggie.

Sean rang back as I got caught in the rush hour crowd at
Dupont. The elevators on the Metro were out of order, so I elbowed my way up
the stairs as we spoke. I filled him in on everything we knew and gave him the
national security spiel. He’s not dumb and could figure out the rest on his
own. Then I gave him Maggie’s address.

I was nearly breathless by the time I reached the top. I
needed to find more time for exercise.

“Maggie won’t believe me at this point,” I told him. “I
don’t know if you can talk her to safety, but we’ve got Nick’s place lined up as
a safe haven. It’s a first floor walk-up with a handicap ramp, so her kid can
get in and out. I don’t know about schools. I’ll look into it if you can get
her out of there. Detective Azzini knows guys who will help, if she needs
persuasion.”

Sean had met the good detective when we’d helped him bring
down the mob boss, so he knew who I was talking about. Sean asked a few
pertinent questions so I could tell he was on top of the game. I spotted a
black suit with a bulge under his coat out on the street, near our corner.
Pulse escalating, I idled past in the crowd, holding the phone to my ear and
tilting my face away.

Hanging up on Sean so he could get to work, I debated the
best angle to reach home. Without Graham there to monitor the situation, I had
no way of knowing if there were feds on every corner and cops in every car.

I needed to be in my basement, hooking my Whiz up to his
security network so I could assess the extent of the problem.
This
was why Graham never left his lair.
Paranoia required constant monitoring.

I stopped and thought about that.

Unlike Graham, I’d learned my lesson—I hoped. Paranoia was
like hatred—more harmful to the person suffering from it than to the object.
Besides, as I’d tried to tell Graham, we couldn’t protect everybody, all the time,
and it wasn’t healthy if we tried.

I’d be danged if I’d let a bunch of cops shove me back into
my childhood defensive modes.

Instead of defense, I opted for offense.

I called Tudor. “You’re in charge of EG. She should be home
shortly. Nick is on his way. I’m about to hunt an illegal immigrant. There are
feds on the corner and probably more under every bush. Don’t go out. Hold the
fort.”

He growled something obscene. I didn’t listen. I was already
circling the block, heading back to the Metro.

Graham would have a cow.

Ana gives new meaning to Black Monday

Late afternoon clouds dimmed the streets, and I shivered
in the November cold. I needed my army jacket, not a damned suit coat. If I
meant to kick myself out of my warm basement office, I ought to at least stash
a closet elsewhere.

I found a café with free wireless, ordered a large hot tea,
and defrosted my hands enough to type. My attaché contained my trusty laptop.
It wasn’t a sleek new model, but it had a huge processor and programs that
blocked the idiots who sat around coffee shops, trying to hack my wireless.

Really, sometimes the world is out to get you. Paranoia
isn’t all wrong.

I wanted to ask Graham to hunt Wilhelm’s address, but he’d
roar like a wounded lion if he knew I hadn’t gone home. Understanding just how incompatible
we were served to remind me that great sex was just that, nothing more. We each
had our own separate neuroses and never the twain should meet.

Now that I had Wilhelm’s last name—Vokovich—I had a little
more to work on.

He didn’t show up on any of the search engines I could
access from this limited network. I needed Graham’s satellite connections. So I
looked up Adolph’s address and proceeded under the assumption that Adolph and
Wilhelm were getting it on in the same house.

I took the Metro to Adolph’s upscale community. As I hit the
street and checked my phone map, I noticed a Goldrich mortgage center on the
corner. Recalling that company as high on the banking committee files I’d
searched, I pondered connections as I hurried down rush-hour-jammed sidewalks.

I knew that Tray Fontaine and Adam Herkness had mortgages on
fancy houses that didn’t seem affordable given their high level of debt.
Judging by this neighborhood, it looked as if Adolph was also living on a scale
higher than his chef’s salary could command. I’d skimmed his HR file and could
do the math. Kito had also been planning on moving into a high-end community,
although it would just be his rent and not his mortgage that pushed his budget.
How did these pieces fit together?

Adolph’s posh condo had no yard, just a planter on the steps
containing a skinny evergreen. Land is too expensive to buy more than one needs,
and what city dweller had time for a lawn? But condos made life difficult for sneaky
rats like me.

I circled the block, looking for a rear entrance to the
complex. I was shivering and about to consign this notion to the trash pile of
stupid ideas when I encountered an automatic gate sliding open to allow in an
Audi. In the fading daylight, the driver didn’t notice as I slipped through the
closing gate behind her.

Other than trapping myself in the parking lot behind the
condos, I wasn’t certain what I’d just accomplished. I wore no disguise. Adolph
and Wilhelm could easily recognize me, especially after I’d karate-chopped
Wilhelm into submission. Great stupid idea, Ana.

I was playing on the impression that Wilhelm had just lost
his aunt, possibly his guardian angel in the world of illegal immigration. The
police would want to question him. Had he slipped away before the cops found him?
He had to be feeling trapped like me—and paranoid.

In the interest of getting the heck out of the cold before I
became an Ana-sicle, I dialed Adolph’s phone number. I stationed myself against
the wall of his unit, beside his garage door, where no one could see me from
above.

On caller ID, my cell phone number would only show as
unknown with a local area code, like almost everyone not in their address book.
No harm trying.

“Ya?” a male voice answered cautiously.

I hadn’t heard Adolph speak a lot, but I knew he had been
born and raised in this country and was unlikely to mock an accent.

“Wilhelm Vokovich?” I asked in a voice of nasal authority.
“This is Linda Lane in Human Resources. It has come to our attention that we do
not have your green card on file. Immigration authorities are asking for your
documents. I believe they are on their way to your home. If you could fax or
scan—”