Patrick reminded her, “He knew he wasn’t alone. Even at the end.”
The end. It didn’t get much more final than that, did it?
She stared at the DVD. A piece of polished metal and plastic was all she had left of him. They’d had so many hopes. So many dreams. One of those dreams had been this computer security business. They’d built it together from the ground up. And it had been so exciting to see the encryption algorithms they had developed now in use in banks and financial institutions all over the world. Even lowly credit card swipe machines contained their code. It had been Nathan's last project, begun just after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Jackie had wondered why he had taken on such an ambitious project after his diagnosis — but he had, sometimes by sheer will alone, accomplished the project, on time and under budget.
“Why don't you take a few days to gather yourself?” Patrick asked.
Still trying to hold back tears, she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t. At least not right now. There’s so much work here.” That, at least, was true. With Nathan gone, she was running the business herself — which was why she was here late again tonight. “Maybe in a couple of weeks or so, after I get a handle on things, okay?”
“The place practically runs itself. You should take some time off.”
“Speaking of which, I need to do this. Alone.”
He briefly touched her shoulder. “I'm sorry to have intruded.”
Giving her one last hurt look, he left, closing the door behind him.
She didn't mean to lash out at Patrick, but she felt like someone had sandpapered her skin off, leaving raw nerves that screamed in agony even with a loving caress. Not that she could ever love again with this hole in her chest.
Staring at the closed door for a moment, she knew she couldn’t handle both Patrick's well-intended hovering and her own grief over losing Nate.
She looked back at the DVD. He’d spent hundreds of hours on it. Whatever it was. At least the project had taken Nathan's focus away from his anti-government rantings.
No, he hadn’t been perfect, but when you loved someone, sometimes you overlooked things. Jackie had learned early on not to discuss politics with Nathan. It invariably ended up being a shouting match he always managed to dominate. She didn't really want to deal with the distractions that resulted in fighting the system. Nathan seemed to thrive on it. He was a strict Constitutionalist and hated all forms of the current government ranging from the local building inspector, who had once denied the company's expansion plans, to the IRS and almost every member of Congress.
She remembered his words as he had given her the DVD. “This will fix the bastards.”
Those were the last words that he ever said to her, and she’d been so numb with the impending loss that she could only wonder fleetingly what the hell that meant.
“Guess it’s time to find out,” she said aloud to the empty room and, with equal measures of trepidation and excitement, loaded the DVD into the computer.
Whatever was on it, the program had been important to Nathan. So important, he’d been secretive to the point of being spooky. She wanted to work with him during his final months, to help him, but he wouldn't have it. Instead, he’d shut her out and she’d had to watch independent contractors come and go, leaving the computer lab at all hours of the day and night.
She hadn’t liked being out of the loop but she hadn’t fought him on it. He’d been so sick. And so determined to surprise her.
Her stomach felt a little jumpy as she waited until the auto-run icon popped up. On a deep breath, she clicked on it and watched the green light on the DVD drive start flashing.
It hadn’t been easy, but per his wishes, she hadn't looked at it before running it. As a hacker, she was intrigued; as his long time lover, she was positively trembling. Taking a close look at the DVD's contents was the closest thing to being with him.
“That’s odd,” she murmured when she saw the T-3 connection status lights were all red, signifying that the Internet connection was maxed out. It didn’t make any sense since her program was the only one running.
“Nate,” she said aloud again, her words drifting away into the empty room, “how big is this sucker?”
Big, she decided. Mega big. Considering that a T-3 line could dump almost forty-five megabits per second directly into the Internet, it was impressive.
She slumped back in her chair, squinted at the screen. What the hell is on this DVD?
She crossed her arms, eyes glued to the screen and waited to find out.
Leo had read somewhere that if you kill someone by stopping the heart, the bleeding would be minimized. The last thing he needed was a mess to deal with. It worked. The man gasped and dropped like he had been poleaxed. He twitched for a few moments, made a grab at the letter opener shoved in his chest, sighed and went still.
He fought back nausea. Leo had never seen death up close and personal like this. A splash of blood on a wall after a perfect sniper shot was completely different. But he'd been preparing for this possibility for the past ten years — his past coming to confront him violently.
Leo took a couple of shallow breaths, and then settled down to do what he needed to do — take care of this problem.
Rolling the man over on his back, Leo checked for a pulse and didn't find one. It was handy that he was still wearing the plastic gloves that he used to keep his hands clean while handling coins. He'd gotten damn lucky in hitting this guy exactly in the heart. The letter opener could have slipped off a rib only causing a superficial injury or the guy could have had something in his pocket that could have blocked the blow. In this case, luck was better than being good, but he couldn't always count on luck; he had to be a great deal better than anyone else he came up against.
He left the body and chanced a glance out the front window. There was a full-sized car parked out front, but the rest of the parking lot was empty.
Leo rolled the body up in the rug and dragged it around to the back where no one could see it from the front windows. He double checked the corpse, relieved when there was still no pulse. Methodical and deliberate movements were necessary for him to be a precision long distance shooter; he practiced both skills now. Searching for an ID, Leo found a new wallet and could practically smell the fresh ink on the man's driver's license. It didn't look fake, but Leo sensed that it was. The name on the driver's license, credit card and other wallet 'fluff' read “James Phillips.”
He found a cell phone that he wasn't familiar with, having a miniature keyboard and small screen. He took it, removed the battery from the back and slid it into his pocket. He knew that cell phones could be tracked even if you weren't using them and he didn't want to take any chances.
Another surprise was the suppressed .22 Beretta Model 70S. A favorite of the Mossad — Israel's secret intelligence agency. With the suppressor, the most sound you would hear would be the slide moving and the bullets slapping into their target.
Leo had kept up his college habits, studying up on assassinations, and was somewhat of an expert on the history, techniques and particular styles favored by various people and organizations. It was an interesting hobby, but he had been forced into it, and with the exception of that brief period of time that he deeply regretted, didn't consider himself a killer — today being the exception.
The .22 pistol confirmed that Phillips was a professional killer. It also meant that he was a close-in specialist, you had to be two feet away from the person you were killing as you fired bullets into their head. Killing people was still murder no matter if it was at over six hundred yards or at one foot. And in this particular murder game, he knew that if he had declined the job, he would have been quietly eliminated. As loathe as he was to kill Phillips, he had no doubt he’d be the one dead by now if he hadn’t. Still, self-defense or not, he’d just been forced back into a game he’d never intended to play again.