by Dee Davis
Originally hailing from Jersey, Eric wasn’t as convinced of the connection. “I can’t imagine what the desk sergeant was thinking, Roswell, releasing the prisoner to a Yankee. An undercover one at that. Must have just been a bad day.”
“I want an APB out on Brighton this minute, and I expect the full cooperation of this department in finding him.”
“Not that I want to quibble, Roswell, but if I recall correctly, you made it more than clear that this is your case, and that you wanted the Austin PD to stay out of your way.”
“This is your fuckup, D’Angelo, and I expect you to fix it, before Brighton manages to get out of the country.” Roswell was yelling now, others in the squad room glancing over at them with curiosity.
“I haven’t fucked up anything, Roswell.” Eric stood up, anger replacing his disdain. “You’ve done that all by yourself. Besides, if I had to bet on it, I’d guess that Cavanaugh and Brighton are holed up somewhere here in Austin. He doesn’t strike me as the type to run away.”
Roswell’s eyes narrowed, a pumping vein in his throat signaling he was close to apoplexy. “What do you call Mexico? He’s run before, and thanks to that bitch, he’s running again. I guarantee it.”
“Have you considered that maybe Cavanaugh isn’t to blame here?” Tony held up a hand, the gesture meant to ease the tension, but accomplishing just the opposite.
“Of course she’s to blame. She’s got the hots for the bastard, and we all know how women are when they’re like that.” Again with the disgust. Despite the gravity of the situation, D’Angelo found himself wondering how long it had been since Roswell had gotten himself laid.
“Kill the anger, Roswell. I’ll see what I can do to find them. In the meantime, I suggest that instead of wasting your time here yelling at me, you head back to your office and see what the FBI can do to find them. Unless, of course, you’ve got a reason for not wanting them to know you’ve misplaced an agent and a suspect all in one fell swoop.”
Roswell stood for a moment, his angry gaze locked with Eric’s, then without another word, he turned and walked out of the office.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Tony’s smile was slow, his expression reflecting Eric’s, their thoughts obviously in tandem. “You were right.”
“This is a bad idea.” John stared up at the house, wondering what the hell he was doing. Derek Miller lived in an Enfield bungalow. Small square footage, big price tag. The paint need refreshening, but the lines of the house were good, the small yard the perfect frame for it, pecan trees arching gracefully over the roofline. The quintessential yuppie fixer-upper.
Except that there was police tape across the entry-way.
Wonderful.
“Come on.” Katie grabbed his arm. “We need to get out of sight.”
They’d left the car in Pease Park, making their way on foot from there, using the evening shadows for cover. Pulling him forward, Katie ducked under the yellow tape, maneuvering her way past the porch swing to the front door.
“Okay. Now that we’re here, how are we supposed to get in?” He couldn’t help the skepticism in his voice. “I might be an expert at hacking into computer systems, but I’m afraid physical breaking and entering is not on my résumé.”
“Well, first we try the obvious approach.” She reached out and turned the doorknob. It rattled ominously, but refused to open. Stepping back, she studied the front of the house, her expression hard to read among the shadows of the porch.
“That window’s our best bet. See, the screen’s busted.” Without waiting for an answer she crossed the porch and pulled off the screen, peering in through the dusty window glass. “It’s not latched.”
The window groaned in protest as it lifted, and with a mischievous smile, Katie disappeared through the resulting black hole. Wonderful, they were adding breaking and entering to their repertoire.
“In for a penny . . .” He muttered to himself, surprised at his own reticence. Still, they’d come this far. He threw his leg over the sill, stopping almost as quickly as he’d begun.
Katie was standing off to his right, equally still, her gaze locked on the chaos around them. The house was a mess. Papers strewn everywhere, the couch cushions ripped, shredded actually, their stuffing spilling out onto the floor, white against the dark wood of the floor.
“When the police use the phrase toss a house, they aren’t kidding, are they?” He dropped to the floor, but Katie grabbed his arm, halting forward progress.
“The police didn’t do this.” Pulling her gun, she edged in front of him, her eyes scanning the room, the doorways, looking for motion of any kind. Back to the wall, she motioned for him to stay put and then disappeared into the next room.
It was a side of her he’d never seen. The real woman. The FBI agent. Proof that the Katie he’d fallen for really didn’t exist. The thought hurt more than he cared to admit.
She came back into the room through another doorway, her gun arm relaxed. “Whoever did this is gone. There’s nobody here.”
He released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Did you find the computer?”
“Yeah. It’s in the bedroom.” She tipped her head toward the door on the right.
He headed through the door, ignoring the chaos of the room, focusing instead on the oak desk and the computer, safely tucked into its docking station. Righting an upended chair, he powered the computer on, waiting as the machine booted up.
“Why do you think someone would leave the computer?” Katie’s breath brushed against his cheek, almost a caress.
“I don’t know. Either they didn’t find what they wanted, or—”
“They erased it.” She finished his thought for him, bending down to stare at the machine.
The computer beeped, and the operating system started with Window’s musical refrain, the sound jarring against the silence of the house. He clicked explore to pull up a list of directories. Nothing happened.
“Shit.” Katie’s expletive echoed his thoughts perfectly as he tried again. The computer screen remained blank.
“It’s all been erased.” He slammed his hand against the docking station.
She sank onto the unmade bed, her expression bleak. “Checkmate.”
He sat back, rubbing his temples with his fingers. His head wasn’t hurting as badly as it had been, which should have given him hope, but it didn’t. Considering the circumstances, his injury was suddenly the least of his concerns.
Be careful what you pray for.
The phrase ran through his head like a litany. How many nights had he prayed for it all to just go away. For something to come along and take his mind off his problems. Prison wasn’t exactly what he’d been hoping for.
Guess he should have had a backup prayer— something along the lines of a miracle or two.
“John, are you all right?” Katie was kneeling beside him, her expression clouded with worry.
He dropped his hands, his eyes on the computer again, the word backup singing through his brain. “I’m fine. Couldn’t be better. Help me look for a tape drive.”
“You think he had a system backup?” She was already moving, pushing aside books and papers on the desk.
“I know he did. Miller was anal to a fault. We break into other people’s systems all the time, which means we know the havoc that can result when someone gets in. Tends to make a guy overly cautious.” He started yanking open drawers, disappointed to find most of them empty.
“The tape drive’s here. But no tape.” Katie pointed at a shelf near the desk, her tone bordering on despondent.
“See if you can find the tape, maybe it’s on the floor somewhere. I’d do it myself, but crawling isn’t on my dance card at the moment. I’ll search the bookshelf to see if there’s anything else.”
“Secondary backup.” It was a statement not a question, and he was grateful for her continued hope.
He reached above the desk, pushing aside the books that littered the bookshelf. “Whoever prece
ded us at this didn’t give a damn if anyone knew he’d been here.”
Katie crawled along the floor, pushing aside wires and other discarded junk. “The stakes seem to be pretty high here. My guess is that destroying evidence was a lot more important than tidying up.”
“What about the police, why wouldn’t they have taken his computer?” He reached for a stack of magazines leaning drunkenly against the far side of a shelf.
“Unless they thought it would be useful in the investigation, they wouldn’t have looked at it too closely. And when this first happened they thought it was drug related, remember?”
“Yeah. Wish it had been that simple.” He pushed the magazines aside, his hand shaking. “Hang on, there’s a zip drive here.” The magazines had hidden it. He hit the eject button, heart hammering. A disk popped out, the black casing looking like manna from heaven. A bona fide miracle.
With a quick look heavenward, he smiled down at Katie.
“Looks like we aren’t out of the game yet.”
Chapter 24
“Not a damn thing.” John pounded a hand against the computer screen, his voice reflecting his frustration. Her frustration, too, for that matter.
They were safely back in the motel room, which meant that for the moment they were still undetected. They’d brought Miller’s computer with them, and John had successfully imported the backup files from the zip disk, but so far they hadn’t found anything helpful.
“Have you checked his email?” She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, the meager remains of their dinner spread on the floor beside her.
John was braced against the end of the bed, the computer in his lap. “What, you think he emailed somebody with details of why someone would be out to kill him?”
“No. But people do discuss their lives in emails. It’s possible there’s something. It’s not like you’ve come up with anything spectacular.” She reached for her Coke, letting the fizzy liquid cool her throat. Despite the late hour, the heat hadn’t abated at all, the humidity making her hair curl around her face. Her clothes were stuck to her body, and her temper was just barely in check.
“Sorry,” he offered mildly. “I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. It’s a good suggestion. Let’s see what we can find.”
They’d fallen into a truce of sorts, ignoring the undercurrent between them in favor of concentrating on the task at hand. It was the right decision, but the building tension mimicked the palpable heat, its power allusive, like heat lightning, a harbinger of things to come.
She shook her head, clearing it of romantic notions. This wasn’t the time. Scooting over beside him, she chewed on the corner of her lip, staring at the screen, willing it to yield Miller’s secrets.
“There’s a lot here. Looks like he kept just about everything.” Thankfully, he seemed oblivious to the turn of her thoughts. “Why don’t we start by looking at the emails around the time of his death?”
“All right. Look for things from you or Flo or Jason to start with.”
“Me? Still thinking I’m in on this?” He frowned, and the tension between them ratcheted up a notch.
“No. I’m just trying to be thorough.”
He glanced over at her, his expression inscrutable, and then turned back to the computer, reordering the list of emails. “Nothing to or from Flo. Not surprising really.”
“How about Jason?”
“There’s a couple.” He opened an email dated the day before Derek’s disappearance, scanning the contents. “Just a request for some promo material. Pretty routine.”
“What about that one?” She pointed to another one dated the day of his murder. John clicked on it, and she read the brief missive. “This guy isn’t big on words, is he?”
“He was always the cryptic type. Sort of a social misfit. Incredibly bright, but not too adroit at dealing with people. It was sad really. I think that’s where the drug use came from. His way of leveling the playing field.”
“Something to make him feel more normal.”
“Exactly.” He opened another email and they read through it. It was a thank-you note, of sorts. Something about securing the horse with the purloined groat.
“What the hell is he talking about?” She stared at the words, as if by doing so they’d suddenly make sense.
“Heroin. He’s talking about buying heroin. The groat is an old English coin. He must have used the thirty-five thousand he got from Jason to feed his habit.”
“Wonderful. So we’ve got vague confirmation he received money from Jason, but nothing that gives us anything new.”
“Hang on.” He moved up the alphabetical list to the J’s. “Maybe there’s something to your idea about me.”
She looked at the list, short but sweet. Only two emails corresponded with their time period. One that John had written to Miller, and another that Miller had written back. John sucked in a breath, a sure sign that he was as nervous as she.
“Okay, here goes.” He clicked on the email. It seemed John was no more inclined to wordiness than Jason.
“Thanks for the info on D.E.S.,” she read out loud, trying to find meaning in his words. “Keep hunting. There have to be answers somewhere.”
“Well, that’s wonderfully cryptic.” Her frustration was reflected in her voice. “Maybe there’s more in his email.” She reached over to move the cursor, clicking on the email to open it. They read it in silence, and despite the ambiguity, a chill chased across her spine.
Problem solved. Evidence secure. Per your email. Reference phoenix file.
“Clear as mud.” John sounded more disgusted than anything.
“Wait a minute. There’s something to this. First off,” she pointed at the date, “this was written just after you left on your vacation. Which goes a long way to proving you didn’t kill the man. I mean, he’s writing, so he’s obviously alive.”
“But if Miller found the evidence, where the hell is it? Certainly not in my email.”
“The phoenix file . . .” She trailed off, her eyes locking on the little statue. “Oh my God, John. You knew about this.”
“What? I thought you just said you believed me.” There was hurt mixed in with anger.
“No.” She shook her head. “Not that. I mean the statue. It was your brain’s way of trying to send a message. Remember the movie Regarding Henry?”
“Unfortunately, I do.” He winced, the memory obviously hitting too close to home. “But I don’t see—”
She cut him off with the wave of a hand. “Your bird is like Henry’s painting. His mind was sending him a message. Telling him that Ritz was important somehow. So he painted a box of crackers, but the message shortcircuited somehow. He thought it was crackers, but it was really the hotel.”
“And you think it’s the same with my phoenix?” He looked over at the statue, incredulity washing across his face.
“Yeah. Same short circuit, only in your case, it’s the file that’s important, John, not the bird. Miller’s file. You take your computer, I’ll search his.”
She grabbed the laptop and entered the find command, typing the word phoenix into the blank. The computer whirred and began its search, and she waited, watching as John ordered his computer to do the same.
Hers finished first. “There’s nothing on this computer by that name.”
“Nothing here either, so far.” John shook his head, his eyes glued to the screen. “But there’s more to search. I want to look at the router logs as well, in case something came in or went out with that name.”
Katie frowned and called the emails back to the screen, something tugging at her brain. The first email, John’s, mentioned D.E.S., hunting for information and answers that needed to be found. Miller had obviously continued the hunt, found the answers, and put the evidence somewhere secure.
Per John’s email.
She stared at the machine. The only physical thing mentioned in the email was D.E.S. But that didn’t make sense.
“Katie, I think maybe I’ve fo
und something.”
She broke away from her train of thought. “A reference to phoenix?”
“No.” His tone was regretful. “There was nothing in the system with that name. But it looks like just before Miller emailed me, he accessed the D.E.S. system. There’s a reference to it on the log.”
“That’s got to be it.” She jumped to her feet, coming to stand beside him. “He must have hidden the phoenix file, whatever it is, in the D.E.S. computer system. Then he emailed you, and in his own obtuse way told you where to look. A blinding glimpse of the obvious.” She gripped his shoulders, excitement building. “So all we have to do is get into the D.E.S. system and find the file.”
“Easier said than done.”
“What do you mean? You’ve been telling me what a fabulous hacker you are. Now’s your opportunity to prove it.”
“I can get in, but not from here.” He sat back, rubbing his temples again. “When I was injured, Wilson Harris was worried about security. He’s always been a bit obsessive about it. Up until then I was the only one allowed full access to the system.”
“But we’re assuming Derek got in. In fact, the log says so.”
“I could have given him the access codes. If I thought it important enough. They could easily have been changed again later if I wanted to keep him out.”
“So what happened after you were hurt?”
“Harris blocked access altogether. Frank was working on the account, and anything he did, he gave to Harris and then he added it to the system. I’d already put most everything in place. There was very little that needed to be done. More maintenance than anything else.”
“So we’re out of luck?”
“Maybe not. If I can get access to the actual D.E.S. computers, I should be able to get in.” He frowned up at her. “I wrote a back door into my program. So that I could get into the system if there was an emergency.”
“Well, I’d say this qualifies as an emergency.”
“Yes, but in case you’ve forgotten, I’m on the lam. I can hardly just walk up to the door and request a little computer time. Besides, it’s the middle of the night, and while I think I handled breaking into Miller’s house with aplomb, I don’t think I’m ready for breaking into a department of Defense contractor’s corporate headquarters.”