For a moment I wished I’d taken the keys to the Rolls, but then thought better of it. A gold Rolls-Royce is hardly a discreet getaway vehicle. And stealing his car wouldn’t have been fair to Brian, after all he’d done to help me.
Wait. What had Brian done to help me? The police had turned up at his apartment, and his first thought had been to deny calling them. Why? Then he’d sent me down to the gallery, which was pretty much a dead end. When I didn’t get caught there, what was his top priority? Before kicking me out? To make sure I remembered the address of the summerhouse. The unoccupied, perfect-for-an-ambush summerhouse. And now the police had returned, just as he’d predicted they would.
Or just as he’d known they would?
The officers had been in Brian’s apartment for too long. What were they talking about up there? Had he sold me out yet? Or were they still negotiating? Haggling over the price on my head? Changing tack, I headed for the north side of the gallery. I slipped Brian’s jacket on over the top of mine. Swung the suit carrier up onto the first Dumpster. And sprang back as something launched itself at me from the darkness. A cat, all claws and teeth and fury, howling and hissing and slashing at my face. I swung the bag, using it like a shield, and pushed the animal away. Then I scrambled up onto the Dumpster, and from there onto the fire escape.
The door from Brian’s apartment had a window, and through it I could see—nothing. He’d hung a curtain over it. And I couldn’t hear anything, either. Whatever was going on at his little summit meeting, it remained a mystery. All I’d done was waste precious minutes that I could have used to put some distance between me and the police. Frustrated, I started back down the fire escape and was about to lower myself onto the Dumpster when I heard two car doors slam. An engine start. A siren spool up. Tires squeal.
Whatever Brian had told them, the cops had left in a hurry. There was no way I could risk the summerhouse now.
But where else could I go?
Thursday. Early morning.
SLEEP CAME TO ME SLOWLY THAT NIGHT.
The metal rungs that formed the platform at the top of the fire escape were square, but they were set at an angle with their sharp edges pointing upward. They were painful to lie on so I unzipped the suit carrier and laid it out as a makeshift mattress, using the old guy’s rolled-up dress pants as a pillow and his dinner jacket as a comforter. His shoes served no immediate purpose but I held them in reserve anyway, in case the cat came back for revenge.
The wind plucked at my clothes, chilling me, and carrying a constant barrage of sound. A persistent car alarm. Passing vehicles. A helicopter. A couple staggering home at three am, drunkenly squabbling. Stray dogs barking. The odd car stereo, cranked up to eleven. And the muffled bass notes of the music Brian kept blaring in his apartment to drown out his guilt.
BRIAN WAS STILL INSIDE when I awoke, shivering, in the early hours. But the guilt had relocated to my side of the wall. What was wrong with me? There was no reason to believe Brian had betrayed me. If anything, the opposite was true. He’d gone out on a limb to help me, and all I’d done was mistrust him. Despite taking his money. And his things. I’d even thought about stealing his car. So I resolved, there and then, that when the nightmare was over I’d make it up to him. And that wasn’t an idle promise. Because at some point, between the noise and the discomfort and the fitful moments of sleep, I’d had a revelation. And from that, at last, I could make a plan.
The data I’d taken from AmeriTel wasn’t—on its own—the key. What really mattered was the virus. Discovering it on my laptop was what had gotten everyone worked up into a frenzy. But there was also something critical about my home computer. Something serious enough for someone to steal it from under the detectives’ noses. I couldn’t see how everything was connected, before. But now the beginning of an explanation was coming—very slowly—into focus.
The laptop had been at AmeriTel’s offices, hooked directly into their corporate network. My home computer hadn’t been, but I’d loaded it with AmeriTel data to test my new algorithms. So, the common factor linking the two computers was AmeriTel. The company was the epicenter of whatever was wrecking my life. The virus must have come from there.
McKenna was on the right track. He’d been keeping AmeriTel—including Carolyn—under surveillance for a while. It didn’t throw any light on Peever’s real intentions, though. Or the identity of the guys who’d attacked us on the bikes. But that didn’t matter. I could sidestep them. All I had to do was call Homeland Security directly and report a suspicious virus on AmeriTel’s computers. Give them time to go and check. Then surrender to the police. Once I was proved innocent, someone else from Homeland Security could protect me. Finding out who all these other players were would be their problem. And they might even be able to catch whoever’d stolen my prototype, as a bonus.
THE BATTERY IN THE CHAUFFEUR’S phone died before its browser could open again, so I hit the Power key on the old Motorola Brian had lent me and waited impatiently for it to light up and find a signal. I called the operator, and she didn’t miss a beat when I asked for Homeland Security. She even offered to connect me. Within seconds I was through to an automated service, which came as a relief—it’s easier to lie to a machine—and I happily spun a tale about what I’d found when I was working for AmeriTel.
——
I FIGURED THAT TWO HOURS should be long enough for Homeland Security to take some action. Cautiously I made my way down to ground level, in case anyone spotted me and I had to run again. And then I settled back into the shadows to wait.
Normally hanging around for that length of time would drive me crazy, but that morning things felt different. I wasn’t exactly happy—that implied something more active—but I was certainly content. Like when you’ve just taken a long, hot bath after a grueling session on the tennis court. Only after a couple of days of being the ball—and getting smashed all over the court by unseen opponents who were playing by their own private rules—I was finally back in charge of the game.
The first hour I spent resisting the urge to try Carolyn’s number, still anxious about the consequences. And the second being bounced repeatedly into her voicemail. The only consolation was that she had no way to recognize the number I was using, which meant she wasn’t ignoring me in particular.
Then, when I was finally ready to leave, another upside dawned on me. I didn’t need to go off wandering the streets in search of the police. I had a cell phone and two detectives’ cards.
The police could come to me.
Thursday. Morning.
OUR DESTINATION WAS TWENTY MINUTES’ DRIVE AWAY, BUT NEITHER Hayes nor Wagner said a single word to me the whole time we were on the move.
The station house was a square, single-story structure with brick walls, a flat roof, and bars on the windows. It reminded me of a doctor’s office I’d visited once, when I was in college. I was helping Carolyn do community service in a housing project. Only this building was about fifty times bigger, and it wasn’t swathed in razor wire.
Hayes dumped the car in a lot that was separated from the rest with thick red lines and she and Wagner led me to a side entrance. A pair of glass doors parted and the detectives ushered me into a small, square room. It was divided down the center by a chest-high wooden counter, and the air was heavy with the stink of sickly sweet disinfectant. An older, uniformed officer on the other side of the divider got to his feet as we approached. Hayes nodded to him, and he smiled back at her. The old cop made a show of looking me up and down—filling me with a strange sensation, as if he could somehow see right through my clothes—then he slapped a large Ziploc bag down on the countertop.