Sealed In Lies (32 page)

Warren leaned back in his desk chair and ran his fingers up and down his nose. What an idiot that kid was, he thought. He just hoped that he was as good with computers as he’d been told. He was close to finding Jack Weaver’s weak spot and he didn’t want anything to stand in his way of finding that son of a bitch. He picked up the phone and dialed the number.

“
Hello?”

“
The Emperor, please. It’s Warren Walters.”

“
Of course, Senator. One moment please.”

“
Warren?” The Emperor’s voice came on the line.

“
Emperor. How are you coming with finding Jack Weaver and my wife?”

“
Progress is being made. I have spoken with your old teammate Hutch Armstrong and he will be in contact with Weaver soon. He will help us. Weaver has already contacted him for new identities.

“
I have instructed Hutch to draw Weaver down to the Keys. I want him to offer to help Jack to decode the files. That should be relatively easy since it was Hutch that taught you how to code the files in the first place.”

“
Do you really think, Weaver is stupid enough to fall for that?”

“
Once he figures out the Hutch is involved in this thing, he will disappear like the wind. We will never find him. It’s too risky a move. Call him off.”

“
Oh ye of little faith. I think that is the way your American saying goes. I have my men standing by and as soon as Weaver arrives in the Keys we will take him. He will never have a chance to know what Hutch’s involvement is. I will have Weaver, he will give me the discs, and our plans go on uninterrupted.”

“
What about my wife?” Warren demanded.

“
We will give her back to you.”

Something in the Emperor’s tone of voice made Warren uneasy. He was lying. Warren just wasn’t sure what he was lying about. He didn’t trust the Emperor. He needed a plan of his own. He was going to find Weaver and Caroline before the Emperor did and he was going to solve this little nuisance of a problem for the last time.

“
Let me know when you hear from Hutch,” Warren said.

“
Don’t worry, Senator. I will.” The Emperor disconnected.

Warren sat the receiver in its cradle and punched the intercom button.

A nasal voice came over the speaker. “Yes, Senator?”

“
Have my plane fueled and ready to go first thing in the morning.”

“
Yes, sir. Going somewhere?”

“
Most definitely.”

Warren stared at the picture of Caroline on his desk and smiled. He was going to enjoy punishing her when he found her and he would find her. He had no doubt. She was going to regret that clever little note she left him in Bristol.

Chapter 35

Caroline woke early and slipped out of bed. She was anxious to see what her computer program had turned up during the night. She pulled on her jeans and a sweatshirt and tiptoed out of the room. The old oak boards groaned as she made her way down the hall and she heard Jack stir and roll over in the bed. She hoped he would sleep for a while longer. She wanted to be able to surprise him with some good news when he came downstairs.

Caroline bounced down the stairs and into the dining room. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this good. There were things Jack did to her that she didn’t even know could be done, and she’d experienced emotions and sensations she’d never felt before. Who knew that your toes went numb when you had an orgasm? She chuckled to herself. Warren never took the time to numb her toes. Warren never took the time to do much of anything except serve his own selfish desires.

It was still scary thinking about leaving him. The pampered life she lived with Warren was all she knew. These new adventures of hiding her identity and not going into public, were strange. It was also scary to think about her feelings for Jack. Oh, she was sexually attracted to him, sure, who wouldn’t be? She just didn’t know if there was anything beyond that. She did know she felt safe with him. She knew that no matter what happened, Jack would protect her. Maybe that was enough for now. She couldn’t think much further than that. Times were just too unpredictable.

Caroline pulled her chair closer to the table and adjusted the laptop in front of her. She tapped a few keys to bring the laptop out of sleep mode. As the screen lit up and the little machine whirred to life, Caroline smiled smugly. It was fun surprising Jack with all of her hidden talents. He couldn’t believe that a woman who had spent the majority of her time in college participating in beauty pageants could be well versed in computer science. “There might just be a few more surprises up my sleeve, Jack Weaver,” she said to herself, tapping keys.

The screen flashed red in front of her eyes seconds later.

ERROR… DATA ERASED

“
Shit!” she exclaimed. “No, No, No, this did not happen.” She frantically tapped keys and tried to recover the data. Instead of helping to decode the data, her program had erased the data. She searched her mind and recreated all the steps she had taken last night when she built the program. One by one she went over them and realized she had flawless execution. Nothing she did would have caused this fatal error. It must be the encrypted code. There must be a warning built into the file that if someone tried to crack the code that the file would self-destruct.

She leaned back in the chair defeated. Some hot shot you are, she thought. Here I planned to have this entire file decoded and show Jack how smart I was. Yeah, she huffed out a breath, real smart, Caroline.

The one smart thing she did do was save a copy of the file to the removable drive she’d found on the table. The total file was not lost and she could review the encryption code again and see what went wrong. Her growling stomach reminded her that it was time for breakfast. She would ponder the problem while making bacon and eggs. She would let her subconscious mind work on it while she cooked.

Scooting the chair away from the dining room table, Caroline went into the kitchen. She removed bacon from the fridge and took down a frying pan from its hook above the stove. She placed the pan on the burner, turned it on, and placed several slices of bacon in the skillet. It had been a long time since she had cooked anything on her own, but she loved doing it. There was a sense of accomplishment creating a meal with you own two hands. Warren never let her cook. He said that was what domestic help was paid for. He never understood her desire to create in the kitchen.

While the bacon sizzled in the pan, Caroline took out eggs, cheese, onion and some ham and placed them on the counter. She was going to make a western omelet. She flipped the bacon strips and then searched the cabinets for a cutting board. She found one under the sink and then foraged the drawers for a knife. The kitchen was very well organized. Each item was where she would expect to look for it. The silverware was near the stove, knives in the front of the drawer, pans and skillets hung within easy reach above the stove, and plates and serving dishes were in the cabinets directly to the right of where she was working. It’s funny, Caroline mused, that she would have organized her own kitchen in the same exact way.

For the next few minutes, the sizzling bacon took her full attention. She turned down the heat and wiped the escaped grease off the stove with a wet cloth. She was all about neatness while she cooked. She always pictured the pointed nose face of her Home Economics teacher in high school. “Always keep the sink full of sudsy water and clean as you go.” Caroline could hear the nasal tone in her head as clear as if the woman were standing right next her.

“
Yes, Mrs. King.” Caroline spoke aloud.

“
Who are you talking to?” Jack’s voice made her jump.

Her hand flew to her chest and covered her heart. “Oh, my. Jack, you scared me.”

“
Sorry, I didn’t mean to. You might have heard me come down the stairs if you hadn’t been so involved in your conversation with Mrs. King.” He smiled.

Caroline’s embarrassment was reflected in the pink tone of her cheeks. “Mrs. King was my home economics teacher in high school. I could hear her voice in my head as I was cooking. I was just answering her instruction about keeping sudsy water in the sink.”

“
Mmm.” Jack ran a finger through the soapsuds and blew some into Caroline’s face. “Sudsy water, huh? I can think of a few things to do in sudsy water besides wash dishes.” He raised one eyebrow and shot her a wicked grin.

She wrinkled her nose and blew the bubbles away. “One would think you had enough of that last night,” she said.

“
One would, wouldn’t one? However,” Jack wrapped his arms around Caroline and nuzzled her neck. “You create an insatiable appetite in me, Caroline. I don’t think I could ever get enough of you.” He nipped her bottom lip and then kissed her fully.

The smell of burning bacon caused Caroline to break off the kiss abruptly. “If you don’t leave me alone,” she said after she caught her breath and raced to the stove, “I’m going to burn down this charming place, and then where would we be?”

Jack looked chagrined. “Good point. What are you cooking, besides burnt bacon?”

Caroline scowled. “I’m in the process of fixing Western omelets if you don’t mind.”

“
Oh, I don’t mind at all.” Jack wandered over to the computer sitting on the dining room table. “Any luck with the decoding program last night?”

Caroline turned from the stove and gave him a sheepish look. “Well, if you call having a fatal error erase all the data in the file luck, then yes, I had plenty of it.”

“
You’re kidding.” Jack turned to stare at her. “Please tell me you are kidding.”

Caroline was hurt. He had no faith in her ability. She turned back to the makings of the omelet and said, “Calm down. I’m not an idiot, Jack. I did save a copy of the file before I turned the program loose on it. All the data is still there, it’s just not any clearer than it was yesterday.”

Jack released the breath he was holding. “Thank God. I was afraid we had lost the file.”

Caroline did not miss the emphasis on the word “we” but she refused to take offense. “I rechecked my steps and I couldn’t find where I had done anything wrong in the running of the program. My guess is whoever encoded that data put a fail safe in it to self-destruct should anyone other than the original programmer try to access the files.”

Jack nodded. “I was afraid of that. I ran into the same thing yesterday. I don’t want to call anyone else in on this but I may not have any choice. We have got to get that data decoded in order to prove who the Emperor is and what he is trying to do. If Warren or Carlos put the identity of the Emperor anywhere, it would be in these encoded files. If we could find out who he is then we can stop this crazy assassination attempt. If we can’t then I will just have to go to Washington with what I’ve got, and that is not very much. Certainly not enough to save my neck from the noose.”

Caroline poured the egg mixture into the omelet pan and swirled it around. As soon as it was cooked enough on one side she attempted to flip the omelet over. It promptly landed on the floor. She stood there staring at the mess, and an O formed on her lips.

Jack laughed, loud. It was not a small chuckle but a full belly laugh. “The look on your face,” he said between guffaws of laughter, “was so funny.”

Caroline glared at him. He was laughing at her. Here she was trying as hard as she could to cook him breakfast and he was laughing at her.

“
Let’s see you do any better,” she said irritably.

Jack rose from the table and grabbed several paper towels from the roll on the counter. He knelt, cleaned up the eggs, and threw them in the garbage. “Here,” he said taking more eggs and cracking them open with one hand. “It’s all in the wrist.”

Caroline handed him the skillet, stepped back and watched as Jack put the eggs in the pan and flip them like an expert. He then loaded it with the ingredients she had previously chopped and folded it into a perfect omelet. He slid it out of the pan onto the waiting plate. “There, like I said. It’s all in the wrist.”

Caroline had to admit the man knew what he was doing when it came to an omelet pan. It stung her pride to know he was a better cook than she was, but she acknowledged that is was so. “Nice job, Weaver. You seem to know your way around an omelet pan.”

“
Don’t be too impressed,” Jack said starting a second omelet. “This is about the extent of it. If I do any of the cooking from now on, it will probably come from a box with clear instructions on it.”

Caroline smiled. She doubted that was true but she appreciated the fact that he was trying to help her salvage what little of her pride was left. She put two slices of bread in the toaster and set the table with butter and a jar of grape jelly she found in the pantry.