Neil opened the rogue computer file and studied it for long seconds, blue eyes unblinking behind thick-lensed glasses. “I can tell you what it’s not, and that’s a security program, although it’s dressed up to look like one.”
He reached for the can of soda sitting beside the scrunched-up wrapper of the burger he’d just eaten for lunch and gulped a mouthful as he continued to read. “Cool.” He gave her an apologetic look. “Whoever wrote this was smart. It’s designed to mimic the security suite it bypassed.” He grinned. “Smart, but not smart enough.”
He finished the drink, crumpled the can and tossed it into the trash can beneath the counter. “Looks like it was installed about six months ago and it’s been sending stuff to this address.” He pointed at a row of code.
“You mean dialing out?”
“Not on its own, because then you’d know. It just sends while you’re online.”
“Can you locate the server?”
“Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile…” He rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a disk. “I’m guessing that you’re going to have trouble removing that sucker, so run this through your machine. It’s a program I designed to uninstall hostile software.”
She slipped the disk in her purse, then pulled out two twenties.
He looked faintly embarrassed. “You don’t have to pay me. I don’t even know if I can find the server.”
And obtaining the name of the server probably wouldn’t give her anything extra to go on. Even if she could get the server to hand over the personal details of the account, the chances were that whoever had registered it had given a false name and paid cash. But, blind alley or not, right now, she didn’t have anything else to go on.
She put the bills down on the counter. “You’ll probably have to do it in your spare time, so it’s not fair if I don’t pay. If you can locate the server, I’ll pay a bonus.”
Slipping the disks he had copied for her into her purse, she drove back to work, making a stop at her bank on the way. Aside from renting a safe-deposit box to keep her personal papers and the disks safe, she now had decisions to make regarding the money from the sale of her apartment in D.C. At the moment it was sitting in an account, but she was seriously considering buying a house in Cold Peak and she needed to check out the viability of the investment.
After signing up for a safe-deposit box and securing the disks, she requested information on mortgage rates. When she stepped out of the interview room, a familiar set of shoulders sent a mild shock through her system. Fischer, dressed in faded jeans and a white T-shirt that clung across his chest, was just finishing up with a bank teller. The bank was close to the gym, so she shouldn’t be surprised to see Fischer here.
He arrived at the door a split second before she did and waited for her to walk through ahead of him.
“How’s the ankle?”
She was aware of his focus on her legs and the fact that he was enjoying the view afforded by the short sundress she was wearing. “It’s fine.”
“If you want a lift back to work, I’m on my way there now.”
She spotted his truck, which was parked in the space directly behind her SUV, and the tension in her stomach tightened another notch. She was almost certain he knew he had parked behind her vehicle, because her SUV was parked at the gym every day she worked.
Reaching into her handbag, she pulled out a set of keys. “It’s okay, I’ve got my car.”
He shrugged and slipped dark glasses on the bridge of his nose. “It was worth a try. I’ll see you back at work.”
As she slid into the driver’s seat, she caught a glimpse of the truck in the rearview mirror. Taking her time, acutely aware of Fischer behind her, she fitted her key in the ignition and latched her seat belt, waiting for him to pull out first. When he didn’t, she realized he was waiting for her, which meant he would be tailing her all the way back to the gym.
Jaw tight, she put the car in gear, signaled and pulled out, trying to concentrate on traffic as Fischer nosed in behind her. Minutes later, she parked in the private lot behind the gym and tried to ignore the fact that Fischer, just two spaces down, was already out of his truck.
Collecting her bag, she locked the SUV and strolled toward the back door of the gym. Fischer held the door, letting her precede him into the building. The act was polite and any number of men would do exactly the same thing, but with Fischer it felt different. He wanted to make her aware of him, and he had succeeded.
What she was feeling for Fischer didn’t make any kind of sense. For weeks she had been immune. Now, suddenly, she was turned-on.
The only explanation she could come up with was that she had changed, not Fischer. Her biological clock was ticking, courtesy of the attempts on her life, and Fischer had just happened to walk into the frame.
Despite the hormones, the timing was wrong. The place was wrong. Until Lopez was caught, everything was wrong.
When she got home that evening, Letty’s house was still closed up, the curtains drawn, and Buster was lying on Taylor’s sundeck. Hooking the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she walked down the neatly kept path and knocked on Letty’s front door. She waited a couple of minutes, then knocked again.
Just to double-check, she called out then walked around the back. When she tried the back door, that was locked, too. She checked the garage, which was also locked, but when she looked in the window, the Buick was still there.
Frowning, she studied the car. Letty drove everywhere in it. If she had caught a flight out, though, it made sense that she would have gotten a taxi to the airport, because long-term parking was expensive. Either that, or her son had driven from Boston to pick her up.
Feeling uneasy, because she had assumed Letty would fill her in on when she was leaving and when she was due back, and leave a contact number just in case something went wrong, she walked back to her house.
Changing into track pants and a crop top, she went out for her evening jog. When she got home there was a truck with C. K. Hansen Lawn Mowing printed on the side parked in Letty’s driveway and she could hear a lawn mower. Walking around to the rear of the house, she waved at the man pushing the mower until he cut the engine. “Did you know Mrs. Clayton’s away on holiday?”
The guy, presumably C. K. Hansen, took off a ball cap to reveal a shaved head that went with the steel earrings punched through both ears. He wiped the sweat off his face. “It’s okay, she paid me in advance.”
Which meant she had taken the time to make arrangements with her lawn-mowing service but not with Taylor. “Did she tell you when she’s due back?”
He shrugged. “The next time I’m scheduled to mow the lawn is two weeks from now, if that helps.”
After dinner, Taylor ran the program Neil had given her to wipe the spyware that had been posing as her old security suite. When her computer was clean, she reinstalled the files she’d saved to disk, then began reviewing the information she still had on the Lopez case. Both Burdett and Bayard would go nuts if they found out she had retained her microfilm and Internet files—in effect, everything the FBI had had on Lopez up until the time she had left.
The room was dim, the computer screen glowing in the dark, before she finished reading the material. Sitting back in the chair, she stretched the kinks out of her neck and shoulders. She had read every word, and some things twice, and she kept coming back to the same conclusion. Since Slater’s arrest the previous year, the only breaks in the case had been the two attempts on her life. Apart from that, the Lopez case was as cold as her own shootings appeared to be.
The fact that the D.C. police department had offloaded her case on the Bureau didn’t mean a thing, either, other than that the FBI had put their hand up for the job. With hundreds of unsolved homicides every year, a nonfatal shooting wasn’t that big a deal. An overworked detective would have taken the break for what it was and handed over the paperwork before the case could get pushed back at him.
Smothering a yawn, she closed the file. Buster, who had spent most of the evening behind the monitor, was sitting on the floor, staring through the glass doors at Letty’s house. Shutting down the computer, she pulled the curtains, blocking the view. Without Letty’s presence, the old villa wasn’t nearly so appealing, and she could do without the reminder about how she’d overreacted the night before.