by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees
As good as the food was, her appetite was off. She was missing something important. She could feel it. And if she didn’t figure out what it was in the next couple of hours, Gabe would still be in danger.
“Are you sure you want to be President?” she asked him skeptically.
He shrugged. “It’s not like I have any choice at this point.” He paused, then added, “And even if I did, I’d still want the job.”
“Why?” she asked curiously.
“Because I can do some good in the next four years. Maybe I can make my country and my world a little better place. And that’s a worthy thing to do with a lifetime.”
So. Beneath all that charm and social polish lurked a reformer. A doer. Like her. The discovery was comforting not only because it was a good trait for a President to have, but because it also meant that, at their cores, they were like-minded people.
Gabe surprised her by asking, “If you had a chance to run for President, would you do it?”
She flinched. “My family’s got some pretty ugly skeletons in the closet. I don’t think they’d hold up to public scrutiny very well.”
He snorted. “Like my family’s skeletons aren’t a nightmare? If you’ve got enough character, you can overcome all that stuff.”
She leaned forward. “Is that how you did it? How you got past all the garbage in your background? You compensated by displaying extraordinary amounts of character?”
The question gave him pause. “Can’t say as I’ve ever thought of it in those terms,” he finally replied. “But I guess that’s what it boils down to. If I do my best to do the right thing all the time, I believe the public will see it and respect me for who I am rather than judging me by my family and its past indiscretions.”
He could say that. He only had a gambling, alcoholic father who’d had the good grace to die in his past. She was stuck with a military scandal that had disgraced her mother and even sent her into an asylum. Even though Josie had cleared their mother’s name last year with her own stealth technology research, the stain lingered.
She replied, “At any rate, I think you’ll make an excellent President. The American people chose well.”
“Thank you,” he said simply. “For the record, if you ran, I’d vote for you.”
She started. “I’d be a lousy President! I’m too much of a rebel to deal with the Washington establishment peaceably for four years. And don’t get me started about world leaders and their antics.”
Gabe laughed. “Yes, but you’d step up to the plate and do what you had to in a crisis. Today is a good case in point.”
“Nonetheless, I’ll leave the job to you.”
The smile faded from his face. “This is a hell of a way to come into office. I start by killing a half dozen of the very citizens I’m supposed to be serving and protecting.”
She reached across the table and squeezed his hand sympathetically. “You didn’t kill anyone. A terrorist named Tito Albadian did. It’s not your fault.”
Gabe sighed. Eventually, the tight grasp his fingers had on hers loosened.
She had to do something to lighten the mood. To distract them both from the day’s events. She asked drolly, “So. How much longer are you going to be a slacker and dodge starting your new job? Honestly. Your first day of work and you’re already hours late. This won’t make a good impression on the taxpayers at all.”
Gabe smiled, a hint of gratitude in his twinkling eyes. “I’m scheduled to take the oath of office at 7:00 p.m. in the Capitol Building. We’re going to break into the evening television programming and do the deed without any advance announcements. Security around it will be insanely tight.” As her brows drew together in a frown, he added, “Really. I’ll be safe. In fact, why don’t you come to the inauguration and you can keep an eye on me yourself. I’ll put your name on the list of approved guests.”
She nodded. If all went well, she’d take him up on that invitation. But after the kind of day she’d had so far, she couldn’t predict if the next few hours would go well or not.
“Who all’s going to be there?” she asked.
“Key members of the government, mostly. A few handpicked guests and none of the public. The media will be there in force, of course. We need to make it clear that there’s been a smooth transition of power today, and live TV coverage will get that message out the most effectively.”
Crud. Seven o’clock? That didn’t give her much time to figure out what was niggling at the back of her brain so tantalizingly. Maybe if she ran it all through Oracle one more time, the computer would see what she could not.
She looked up, startled. Gabe stood beside her, holding a hand out to her. She took it silently, and he tugged her to her feet, standing intimately close to her.
He murmured, “Thank you for shouting that warning to Owen. And thank you for your persistence and courage. I’m not sure I’d be alive right now if it weren’t for you.”
Damned if she didn’t feel a blush stealing into her cheeks. “Uh, my pleasure,” she mumbled abashed.
Gabe chuckled. It was a sexy sound. Private. Personal. “I highly doubt it was pleasurable chasing down a terrorist single-handed,” he murmured.
She replied, “Well, I’d never have met you without the help of the Q-group.”
Another chuckle rumbled through Gabe. “I never thought I’d say this, but thank goodness for the Q-group, then.”
She grinned up at him. “May I quote you on that?”
He matched her broad smile. “Don’t you dare.”
Her humor faded. “Gabe, I’d love nothing more than to spend the rest of the day down here with you in your cozy little rabbit hole, but I need to do more research. I’ve got a really bad feeling about all this, but I can’t put my finger on what’s bugging me.”
He stared down at her intently for a moment before nodding. “Your intuitions have gotten you and me this far in one piece. Go track down whatever’s bothering you. And let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. But you stay safe. Okay?”
She reached up to touch his cheek with her fingertips. “Okay. You, too.”
“That’s a deal.”
But, as she donned the blindfold once more so Agent Tilman could take her back to the surface, and blackness descended upon her, she had a sinking feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy.
5:00 P.M.
She dumped her cashmere coat on the couch and went directly to her computer the second she walked in her front door. She cranked up the Oracle database, praying the morning’s lockdown on the system had been lifted by now. The computer monitor blinked for a few seconds after she tried to sign in, and then the Oracle welcome screen flashed up before her. Thank goodness.
She went to the data-entry screen and typed as quickly as her fingers would go, throwing in everything that had happened to her today in as much detail as she could remember. Her hands ached by the time she finished, and daylight was fading from the living room. Night came early at this time of year.
She punched the command that started the Oracle database processing the new inputs. An analysis could take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, depending on the complexity of the computations her entries triggered. She’d seen the logic algorithms for the database once, and had been blown away by them. Whoever’d invented this system was a bona fide genius.
She wandered into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of stale coffee from the pot she’d brewed so long ago this morning. At this point, she didn’t care if it tasted like battery acid. She was beat. And she suspected this day wasn’t over, yet.
To kill time while Oracle did its thing, she flipped on the television and was assaulted immediately by images of the day’s near miss on Gabe. She switched the channel quickly. She didn’t need a blow-by-blow replay of the horror she’d gone through. She lurched as the next channel flashed up a picture of one of the Q-group members her hacker buddies had tracked down that morning. She sat down in front of the TV to hear the whole report. Appare
ntly ten of the fourteen suspects had already been apprehended, and a massive manhunt was underway for the remaining possible terrorists. An FBI spokesman said tips were coming in from all over the East Coast and the Bureau had confidence it would have its men in custody within a matter of hours.
Now she could only hope that she and her buddies had fingered the right guys. She shoved down the moment of doubt. She’d read these guys’ e-mails to each other for months, and there was no doubt in her mind that this was the cell that had planned today’s attack on Gabe.
Her computer beeped. She set down her mug and turned off the TV, hustling over to the computer. She sat down at the console eagerly to read the analysis. As shock paralyzed her mind, she skimmed faster and faster, catching key phrases as they leaped out at her.
…no significant correlations have been identified…random occurrences…day’s other events bear no relation to any threat to the Presidency…
This was a very different analysis from the one she’d seen in Oracle’s main database this morning. Even if the Q-group threat had been successfully neutralized, as sure as she was sitting here she was certain there was still someone out there gunning for Gabe. How could Oracle have reversed itself so radically like this in a matter of hours? Last night, Delphi personally had been convinced Gabe was in huge danger. That whoever was after him would not give up until he was dead. And now, everything was hunky-dory? What in the hell was going on?
She stared at the computer screen in dismay, her mental wheels spinning, until she became aware of a vague noise behind her. Someone was knocking on her front door. Insistently. She stood up, went to the front door and opened it numbly.
Her mother stood on the porch, shivering in the bitter chill.
“Come on in, Mom.”
“Hello to you, too,” her mother replied mildly. “Did I come at a bad time?”
“Actually, yes. I’m in the middle of a crisis.”
“What sort of crisis?”
Diana winced. Her mother only wanted to be part of Diana’s life and be the kind of parent Diana had deserved for all those empty years. And Diana wanted to let her, get to know her as an adult. But the timing sucked. Except…what was she going to do if her mother turned around and walked out this second? She didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do next. Even Oracle had given her nothing but a dead end.
“Can I get you something to drink, Mom?”
“No, thank you.” Her mother sat down on the sofa resolutely. “Tell me about your crisis.”
Even at the worst of her depression, Zoe Lockworth had always known when one of her girls was in trouble. It was some sort of maternal sixth sense.
“I can’t talk about it, Mom. It’s classified.”
Her mother pursed her lips. “Are you sure you’re not just avoiding me?”
Diana huffed in exasperation. “Why does everyone in the family keep accusing me of that?”
“Maybe because it’s true, honey. Look, I know I wasn’t there for you when you were young, and I take full responsibility for that. I chose to do dangerous work, and I chose to put myself in harm’s way even though I had a family to think about. But I’m here for you, now. I’d like to help.”
The fight went out of her in a rush. What was the point of being mad? It didn’t change anything that had happened. In comparison to everything that had happened to her today, her childhood was starting to look pretty bland. She sat down on the other end of the couch and asked her mother, “Was your work really that important?”
Zoe shrugged. “It seemed so at the time. We were trying to save the lives of thousands of pilots by coming up with stealth technologies to protect them. I suppose you’d have to ask pilots like Josie and Diego if the research was ultimately worthwhile.”
Diana’d already heard her sister’s opinion on that, and the answer was an emphatic yes. “Yes, but was your sacrifice worth it all?”
Zoe shrugged. “I’ve made my peace with what happened to me. I lost a chunk of my life in the name of serving my country. I’m just grateful I didn’t lose my life altogether. What I can’t forgive myself for is the sacrifice you girls and your father had to make. Nobody asked you if you were willing to lose your mother for twenty years.”
They’d been over this ground before. Her parents just assumed that, because she and her sister were in the Armed Forces, they’d understand the idea of serving one’s country. Of sacrifice and loss in the name of freedom. Of the price military families paid alongside their active-duty members. Josie bought into the idea hook, line and sinker. But Diana had trouble swallowing the concept. There came a point beyond which families shouldn’t suffer the same way their military members did.
Although, she had put her neck on the line for Gabe today. Hadn’t hesitated to do so, either. Like her mother, she’d dived into this mess without a second thought for herself. Why was that? Was it just that she hadn’t found something—or someone—important enough to die for until now? At the end of the day, was she as dedicated as her mother had been? Maybe to different causes, but both in the name of defending their nation.
Startled, she asked her mother slowly, “Did you hesitate to get into such dangerous research?”
Zoe laughed ruefully. “I have to confess I leaped before I looked. I was well into the work before it occurred to me that there might be menacing forces opposed to what I was doing. But even if I had known in advance, I’d have done it anyway. I was one of only a handful of scientists who could do the research. And the need for stealth technology was bigger than me. More important than me. I did what I had to do.”
Diana froze, stunned. If someone asked her if she’d considered the risks of saving Gabe, she’d have answered the exact same way. For the first time, she got it. Zoe was absolutely driven by her most fundamental belief in right and wrong. And Dear God, Diana was stuck with the very same set of beliefs. Was she destined to wreck herself on the rocky beaches of her morals the same way her mother had?
A chill chattered down her spine. This must be how her mother had felt once she discovered the dangers stalking her. Even if Richard Dunst or his superiors were out there waiting for her at this very moment, she still had to do this. She had to save Gabe from them or die trying.
She eyed her mother speculatively. What the heck. Her mom had been a highly intelligent scientist in her day, an expert at computer analysis of problems. “I’ve got a work-related question for you, Mom.”
Zoe blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “I’ll do my best, but it has been a long while since I did any research.”
“If you were to put a set of data into a sophisticated database that has always been accurate in the past, and you suddenly got back a set of completely garbled analyses on that data, what would you do?”
Zoe laughed. “I’d recheck my data. You know what they say. Garbage in, garbage out. Computers are really just huge calculators, and databases are just big sets of mathematical formulas that get applied to your data. Those formulas never change once they’re entered into the computer. The computer will do the exact same thing to your data every time you enter it. So if your output is wonky, you’ve got to suspect the input.”
“I’ve rechecked the data entered. It’s accurate. Late last night, the database analyzed a similar set of data and came up with completely different conclusions than it did just now.”
“Well, then I’d check the database itself for bugs. Go to a backup version of it and reload the data.”
Good idea. “And what might cause a bug—a big one—in a database?”
Zoe shrugged. “It could be something as simple as a maintenance technician or data-entry specialist making a mistake and hitting the wrong key. Or, it could be something as sinister as someone tampering with the database intentionally.”
The sight of four men leaping into the library at the Oracle safe house this morning flashed into her mind. Oh, yeah. The secret of the Oracle database’s existence was definitely compromised. Why not the database itself?
Diana leaped to her feet abruptly, causing her mother to jump up in alarm, as well. She gave her mother a big hug and commenced herding her toward the door. “Thank you so much. You’ve been a huge help. I’m glad we talked. We have much more in common than I ever realized. We must talk more. Very soon. Right now I’ve got to run.”
Her mother paused in the doorway, frowning. “Are you all right?”
She gave her mother a genuine smile. One of the few she ever remembered giving her mother. “For the first time in a very long time, I’m definitely all right. I know what I have to do, and I know how I have to do it. I’ll give you a call as soon as this is all over.” Of course, her poor mother had no idea what “this” was.
On impulse, she gave Zoe another hug. “I’ve got to go now. I’ve got a ton of stuff to do and not much time to do it.”
She closed the door in her mother’s disbelieving face and whirled, heading straight for the phone. She dialed Delphi’s emergency phone number for the fourth time in one day. That had to be some kind of record. The usual answering machine picked up her call and she waited impatiently through the bland message.
“Hi, this is Diana Lockworth. I need an access password to get into the guts of the Oracle database. I don’t need to have access to rewriting any of the code, but I need to take a look at it. No time to explain—”
The electronically altered voice interrupted her. “I’m here. What’s this all about?”
“I don’t have time to go into all the details, but I think the Oracle database has been compromised. I need to look at the program, itself.”
“That’s an alarming accusation,” the voice said emotionlessly.
Diana retorted, “No more alarming than four armed men bursting into the Old Town facility and making off with what they think is the hard drive holding the database.”
“We’ve already had a look at the database today, and it’s fine.”