She gazed at Tavak. "You didn't cooperate?"
He shrugged. "I gave him what he wanted."
"Simon?"
"He gave it to me, but it's so damn complicated it's taking me a hell of a long time. So I thought I'd drop Tavak off and go back. Okay?"
"Okay." She watched Tavak get out the car. "Phone me if you have trouble, and I'll come."
"I know how to do it. I've already closed one backdoor. It's just that I don't think the way Tavak does. Hell, nobody thinks like Tavak." He grimaced. "It's like being in a maze with no exit."
"You did pretty well," Tavak said. "In fact, you did damn well."
Simon grinned. "Are you patronizing me?"
"I wouldn't think of it." Tavak got out of the car. "I never intended to make closing those doors easy."
"Then you succeeded." He waved his hand. "I'll call you if I need rescuing, Rachel."
Rachel turned to Tavak as Simon drove away. "Could you have made it easier for him?"
"Well, I could have done it myself. But then he wouldn't have had the satisfaction of working through it. Simon needs a challenge." He smiled. "That's why he works for you."
She had seen that quality in Simon before she had hired him. Tavak was very perceptive. And that perceptiveness made him even more dangerous. "Just so you didn't hold anything back."
"I didn't." He grinned. "But that doesn't mean I haven't an idea or two about getting back into Jonesy by another method and route. It would be much more difficult now, and Simon isn't the only one who needs a challenge."
"Don't you dare." Lord, that was feeble, she thought wearily. He'd dare whatever he chose, and she'd have to find a way to cope with him. At the moment, that prospect seemed insurmountable.
Evidently Tavak must have sensed that weariness because his eyes narrowed on her face. "Not such a good visit with your sister? She's not well?"
"Well? She's dying, dammit." She turned and strode toward the security entrance of the building. "And she wants to help. She wants to catch the brass ring for me. She wants me to stop protecting her."
"Help?"
"Peseshet's cure. She doesn't believe in it, but she wants to help me try to find it." She leaned back against the brick wall beside the door. "Do you know how many times she's been in a hospital in her life? I would have crumbled away at all the things those doctors did to her. She just kept on. She always just takes the pain and doesn't complain. I won't let her spend what might be her last days searching for something that might not exist. I told her that, but she just smiled at me." She could feel the tears sting her eyes. "And she kept talking about that damn brass ring."
Tavak reached out a hand, then let it drop before he touched her. "I'd like to help you, but I know you aren't going to listen to anything I say. Besides, I'm not good at comforting people. I'm awkward as hell."
"I don't need you to comfort me." She straightened away from the wall. She didn't know why all that emotion had erupted. Maybe because he was a stranger, and she felt less vulnerable venting with someone who didn't know her. She cleared her throat. "I'm sorry. You don't care about any of this. As you said, it wasn't a good visit." She turned and unlocked the door. "Let's have you meet Jonesy. The main computer is much more complex than that Galveston branch."
"I'm looking forward to it." He paused. "You know, your sister may be like Simon and me… and you. She may need a challenge in her life."
"Staying alive is her challenge. She couldn't have a bigger one."
"She may be ready for another one."
"Then she's not going to get it." Rachel opened the door and made an effort to smother the emotion that was tearing her apart. "The subject is closed, Tavak."
He nodded. "But I don't think it's any more firmly shut than those backdoors I showed Simon." He didn't wait for an answer as he surveyed the computer lab they'd entered. "This is your supercomputer? I expected it to be—"
"Bigger?" Val turned from a bank of three monitors. "That's what everyone says. But you don't need a building full of processors when you're using power from machines all over the world." She stood up and walked toward Rachel. "I don't know how you did it, but Demanski's computer network has already been integrated with Jonesy. It's an incredibly powerful system."
Rachel leaned over Val's desk and checked the readings. "That's why I wanted it so much. By the way, Val, this is John Tavak."
Val glanced at him. "I've spent two days figuring out how you tapped into our network. It was ingenious."
Rachel shook her head. "Don't encourage him."
Val shrugged. "Give credit where it's due. Every time one of your security protocols did a system sweep, his spyware mimicked the behavior of one of our thousands of processing donors. That's why we couldn't catch him. His software was constantly adapting and learning new ways to stay hidden. I'm impressed."
"Coming from an expert such as you, Val, I take that as a great compliment."
Rachel was surprised to see the color flush Val's cheeks. The young woman had always received a lot of attention from her male colleagues, but Tavak was obviously having as potent an effect on her as he'd had on the students last night. She pointed to the allocation tables. "So Norton is back up to his full power?"
Val took off her wire-rimmed spectacles and wiped them on her shirt. "Yes. Maybe he'll finally get off our back. Whatever projects he's working on, they're using every ounce of his computing power."
"Aren't you curious about what the NSA is doing with your system?" Tavak asked.
Rachel smiled. "Me? No. But Val and Simon have wasted countless hours speculating on what he's doing."
"You're exaggerating," Val said.
"Only slightly. As the NSA gets more and more interested in the personal lives of U.S. citizens, there are millions and millions of pieces of information to be analyzed and sorted out. If one person buys airline tickets for himself and a couple of buddies, and one of said buddies happens to buy materials that could be used to make bombs, the NSA wants to know about it. And they want to know about it now, not in a few days or weeks. It takes a lot of computing power to sort through all those billions of transactions. Jonesy can do in minutes what might otherwise take them hours or days."
"Can't they build their own supercomputers?"
"They already have. But we're on the cutting edge here, and they're still playing catch-up. And Norton may be doing something with Jonesy that he doesn't want anyone to be able to tap or subpoena. The truth is, I don't care what they're doing. It's all encrypted anyway, and the information could be parsed out among hundreds of other systems. Even if we wanted to crack the NSA encryption—not a smart thing to try, by the way—our tiny piece would probably still be meaningless."
Tavak nodded. "If you say so. But the NSA project could be the reason that sniper was using you for target practice. Did that occur to you?"
"It occurred to me." Rachel crossed her arms and leaned against Val's desk. "Make up your mind. You were telling me your hacking into Jonesy could have gotten me shot."
"I find that even more reasonable. Less than seventy-two hours ago, Dawson tried to kill me for Peseshet's secrets. He wouldn't hesitate to do the same to you." He glanced at the monitor. "But what would Dawson have to gain from your death?"
"I'll give you the same answer you gave me. He could have been trying to slow you down."