She found the turnoff as Brooke had described it, and turned onto a winding road. For several miles, it twisted and turned passing restored farmhouses and huge tracks of undeveloped land. Behind walls of wrought-iron or stone Sandra continued until she reached the farthest point, where the road gave way to the natural beauty of the land. The house was situated at the end. A modest country French farmhouse that had been restored.
Sandra parked and got out. The wind was crisp and cold. She held her hair to keep it from smacking her in the face. There was a natural barrier of evergreen trees along one side of the house. The other side was free to the wind and Sandra saw a landing strip in the flat plane below her.
"Hi." Brooke Richards came out onto the porch, holding her engorged belly. The wind blew her hair in all directions. "You'd better get out of this wind''
Quickly, they raced across the yard and joined her. Inside, it was warm and cozy. She had cups of hot coffee waiting in the sunken living room which had hardwood floors that gleamed brightly in the sunlight streaming through the many windows. Area rugs cut the space into definable groupings and gave the expanse an ultimate atmosphere.
"I was surprised you called, Sandra," she said. "From what Grant told me I was sure you'd have everything you needed."
"I'm sorry we disturbed you." Sandra wondered if her husband had told her where he'd taken her. Did Brooke know that she and Wyatt had been guests of the President? That they had been whisked to Camp David and been treated as honored guests?
"I'm glad for your company." She rubbed her belly. "I'm not used to being home all day. It's good to have visitors."
"When is your baby due?"
"Not for another couple of months." Her hands moved across her stomach again. Sandra had seen many pregnant women do that. Marjorie did it. She wondered what it felt like to be pregnant and why the women constantly touched themselves that way.
"Is this your first," she heard Wyatt ask.
"My second . . . and third" she said. "I'm having twins. I have a daughter, Kari. She’s in school now."
For a moment Sandra envied her. She and John had tried to have children. That's when they discovered John had leukemia. She never thought she'd get over his death, but she'd met Wyatt and couldn't imagine life without him.
"What can I help you with?" Brooke asked bringing her attention back to the information they needed
"We need a disk read." Sandra got straight to the point. "As I mentioned on the phone, it's encrypted."
"That shouldn't be too hard," the long-haired woman told her. "Why don't we go into my office."
She moved toward the back of the house. In a room with a window that looked out on the airstrip was a series of computers and shelves of books. Sandra looked at the titles. Everything from food preparation to quantum mechanics.
"Do you teach?" Wyatt asked her as she turned on the equipment and waited for it to boot up.
"No," she laughed. "I used to work for the FBI."
Wyatt stiffened.
"That was years ago. Then I started a chain of restaurants. My partner manages them now."
Now Sandra understood the cooking books.
"I'm a consultant at the university on certain government projects," she finished.
Sandra realized she hadn't really said anything. She wondered what Wyatt thought. Sandra trusted her. She'd trusted her in the limousine that night when she'd come to her rescue.
"Let me have the disk."
Wyatt had it. He slipped it from his pocket and handed it to her. Wyatt had been cautious this time. Sandra had the original in her backpack, along with the chest of diamonds. Wyatt had made a copy on Marjorie's computer before they thanked her and promised to return the borrowed clothes they now wore.
"Where did you get this?" Brooke asked in a whisper. A frowned creased her brow.
"A friend sent it to me," Sandra hedged.
"This is good, very good." Pride at a fellow colleague's ability showed in her voice. "Whose work is this?"
Wyatt looked at Sandra over Brooke's head. "Jeff Taylor," he answered.
She swung around on the office chair. "I'm sorry," she said to them. "I heard about his death. I never met him. He'd left the government about the time I started consulting. People spoke of him with great pride."
"Do you think he made the code so complex, we won't be able to discover what his message says?"
She swung back to the screen. "It does look complicated, but I’ll see what I can do. Why don't you two make yourselves comfortable. This might take some time."
"How about a walk?" Sandra suggested and she followed him, putting her coat back on and leaving Brooke seated at the console screen. She was already into the work, oblivious of them. There was nothing they could do anyway.
They didn't go any farther than the porch. The wind whipped at them as it had done last night when they were digging around the rocks on Route 95. Wyatt put his arm around her and pulled her close.
"I've been thinking a lot about President Horton's request that we work with him. I want to know what you think about it."
Everett's question had been at the top of her mind, too. She hadn't come to a decision yet. "I think we need another alternative," Sandra said. "I've been racking my brain trying to come up with something that will be workable and not harm anyone now or in the future, but I can't think of a thing. This might be a problem which has no solution and certainly no winner."
Wyatt turned her face to him and kissed her forehead. She'd come to the same conclusion he had. God, he loved her. He couldn't imagine what he'd have done if he'd never found her. If nothing good came out of this mess over Project Eagle, at least he'd met the woman of his dreams. He couldn't ask for a better partner.
"I think we'd better let him know we've agreed to his plan," Wyatt said.
"But we haven't," Sandra corrected.
"He won't know that. We need to play his game, let him think he's making the rules. At least until we can find another alternative."
"I'll ask Brooke if we can use her phone."
***
Brooke had been cloistered in her office most of the day. Sandra and Wyatt had paced the floor, looked through all the windows and speculated on what Jeff could have given them until finally they lapsed into silence. Only the incessant wind could be heard in the quiet house.
A maid had prepared a light meal at lunchtime and taken a tray into Brooke. Wyatt and Sandra had eaten silently, and finally he'd fallen asleep on the sofa. Sandra knew how little sleeping he'd done the night before. She pulled off his shoes and covered him with an afghan from the back of the sofa. Then she put another log in the fireplace and sat reading a magazine.
She couldn't remember a word of what she read. Finally, she put it aside and stared at Wyatt. She wondered all sorts of things about him: what was it like where he grew up; were his parents still alive; did he have brothers and sisters? They had been on the run virtually since they met. They'd had no time to exchange the facts of background or tell stories of their pasts. Now she was in love with him.
It felt like the first time. He was her first thought in the morning and her last at night. She loved sleeping in the warmth of his arms and finding herself cradled like a baby when she awoke. She liked the newness of discovering things about his body, where he was ticklish and what turned him on. She liked the feel of his skin and the smell that was only his. She liked the way he could make her hot by only looking at her and that she could become aroused just thinking of him.
Their morning in bed had been a powerful experience for her. She thought their first time was the best it would ever get, but each time something new and exciting happened to let her know that Wyatt Randolph would surprise her every day of her life. She wanted those surprises, longed for them. She wanted to anticipate what he could do and how she could help him. She didn't mind being in the limelight if it bathed the two of them. He was a good senator. He believed he could make a difference, and if he believed he could do it, then sh
e believed too.
"Sandra?" The voice calling her was so soft she almost didn't think it came from outside her head. She was staring at Wyatt. "Sandra?" It came again. Suddenly, she realized Brooke was standing in the doorway. She stood up quickly but didn't wake Wyatt.
Going to the office, both women went inside and closed the door.
"Have you found out what's on it?"
She nodded.
Sandra tried to read her face, but saw no change of expression.
"It's a schematic." Brooke sat down at the computer screen and pulled the image up.
Sandra looked at it, but only saw a convergence of lines.
"There are fifteen diamonds," Brooke said.
"How did you know that?" Neither Sandra nor Wyatt had mentioned anything about the stones.
"The message on the disks talks about them. There are fifteen. They have to have a particular and specific arrangement in order for the system to work." She glanced at Sandra. "Jeff didn't mention what the system does, so I don't know."
"It's a communications system," she said, feeling compelled to say something. She couldn't give her a full explanation, but this was as close to the truth as she would go.
"The stones have specific shapes." She pulled one stone up on the screen. It grew larger and larger. "Even though the sides might look the same, they are minutely different. These differences allow light to pass through and be refracted. The refraction along with the computer system activates the system."
"So that's why," Sandra said. That's the real reason the chips are encased in stones. It has to do with light bouncing off the cut surfaces. Fifteen diamonds all with different cuts. It would take years to re-create what Chip Jackson had done. Even with two systems ready and waiting for the stones, only one set of stones in the world would work. And he's sent them to Wyatt.
"Why what?" Brooke asked.
"Nothing important," she said. "Is there anything else?"
"Yes," she said. She pulled the connecting lines back onto the screen. Then she superimposed the jewels over the lines at specific points. What Sandra saw on the screen reminded her of a necklace.
"It's beautiful," Sandra whispered.
"Beautiful and deadly." Brooke pointed to the screen. "Each of the stones has a symbol on one side. Seven of them have it on the right, seven on the left, and the fifteenth stone has it on the bottom tip. The symbols are both mathematic and musical. You need an electron microscope to see them."
"What are these symbols?" Sandra thought she recognized some of them when she'd first seen them.
Brooke pulled them up on the screen. As she'd done with overlaying the stones on the lines, next to each stone appeared a symbol. The mathematical symbols went down the left and the musical notations down the right.
"They seem to have no order. Did Jeff say they have a meaning?"
"I couldn't find that anywhere."
Sandra looked at them. Did Chip use them for something special, or merely identification? On the left she saw the mathematical symbols for pi, delta, summation, function, square root, greater than and equal. On the right the musical symbol for a whole rest topped the first stone, followed by the G clef, F clef, pianoforte, a quarter note, the time signature for a waltz, and the staff. The symbol for the final fifteenth stone was infinity.
"Do you think they mean anything?"
"In programming nothing is done for cosmetic reasons. Everything has a purpose or it would be a waste of the programmer's time to put in unnecessary information. These symbols could be for identification only. Whatever the program, it doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with the symbol."
"Then why didn't he just number them one through fifteen?"
Brooke shrugged. "You got me there."
"Math and music?" Sandra walked to the windows and looked at the bare branches blowing in the high winds. "I don't know about the music, but the math symbols are incomplete. For example, function alone doesn't mean anything. It needs to be a function of something. And square root? Square root of what?"
"The musical symbols don't give much, either. All of these symbols would be used in various pieces of music. The three-quarter-time signature indicates a waltz, but there are hundreds, thousands of waltzes."
"Do you think the light refraction has to bounce off these symbols?"
Brooke hunched her shoulders. "They are on the stones and the light isn't going to know if its a facet or a symbol. I can't even offer an educated guess to their purpose."
Brooke suddenly looked through the window over Sandra's shoulder. "There's my daughter's bus. I have to go meet her."
"Sure," Sandra said, seeing the yellow school bus making a complete turn in the circular space outside the stone wall. Sandra was glad they hadn't blocked it.
"One more thing. I said the jewels were deadly."
"Yes."
"The fifteenth stone is necessary to the system, but it serves a dual purpose."
"What is it? Of the other stones, the one is larger than any of the others."
"That one," Brooke cautioned, "is a bomb."
***
"Absolutely not!" Grant stared at his wife. He stepped back from the embrace of a moment ago and wondered what could be going on in her head. Very likely, a hormonal imbalance.
"Grant, I can do it."
"Have you lost your mind? You're carrying twins, sweetheart. If you're not thinking of yourself, think of them."
Her dark eyes pleaded with him and he melted in the love he saw reflected there. Usually he denied her nothing, but he'd lost her once. It had been five years before he found her again. No way was he letting her work with a bomb.
"They can call the bomb squad. You are not doing it. What do you know about bombs anyway?"
"It isn't the bomb as much as programming it to do something else."
"And suppose something goes wrong? Robyn . . . B." He slipped back into the use of her real name when he was truly angry. "I'd die without you. You know that."
He put his arms around her engorged body. Brooke only had two more months to full term. He'd missed the birth of his daughter, Kari. Brooke had been Robyn then, and in the Witness Protection Program. When he'd found her, hiding behind an alias, he'd sworn he'd protect her and never let her out of his sight. When the twins made their entrance, he didn't want to be anywhere but at her side.
They had had a rocky couple of years while the federal Witness Protection Program put their lives back in place. Since it had settled into a normal routine, he didn't want it disturbed. His own connection as a pilot with the government on a part-time basis and Brooke's consulting on government projects was enough excitement.
"Grant, look at them." She pulled him around until he could see Wyatt and Sandra through the office door. They were standing by the fireplace in the next room. Wyatt had his arm around Sandra. Grant could see how much in love they were. They were both in love and in danger. He remembered his own life just two years ago when he'd flown into Brooke's life and couldn't stop himself from seeing her again and again. Despite the danger she was in and the threats to her life, she'd risked everything for him.
He knew the couple he was looking at would do the same thing. Brooke was soft-hearted. She'd always been like that. She hired people at her restaurant who needed a second chance. She was always willing to give them that chance to turn their lives around. She was asking that for Senator Randolph and Sandra Rutledge.
Grant had read the accounts in the newspaper and he knew from personal experience that there was more to the story between the couple in his family room, a lot more. He ran his fingers under Brooked hair and massaged her neck. She leaned into him.
"They need us, Grant. We have to help them."
Grant sighed and gave in.
***
Wyatt hugged Sandra to him. He could feel the warmth of the fireplace behind her, but the heat she generated in him was no match for a mere fire. They'd been there long enough. Brooke Richards had helped them with the informati
on on the disk. It was time for them to go. He'd become too used to moving around to stay any longer. Grant and Brooke Richards and their daughter Kari were a wonderful family. He no longer wanted to disrupt their lives.
"It's time we left," he said into her hair. It smelled like shampoo, and he could have gone on smelling it all night.
"What are we going to do now?"
"I suppose we should report to the President what we've found."
"I think he already knows how the system works. He probably knows the significance of the symbols."
"I'm not sure. For some reason I feel Chip was riding solo by the end of the project. When he decided he didn't want to be part of a system this enormously powerful, he'd have deliberately built traps in it."
Sandra had told him everything Brooke found on the disk, including the secret of the fifteenth stone.
The bomb needed a trigger mechanism and there didn't appear to be one, according to anything Jeff had left on the disk. Sandra assumed the trigger had to be on the connector board. If she was right activation of the system would cause it to self-destruct. But there were two systems. Did both of them have the same trigger? Had the stolen system been taken before Chip made the decision to set the trap?
Chip was the only person who knew the answer to that and he couldn't answer. Her guess was, only one of them had it, and she didn't know which one. For Chip it wouldn't have mattered. If the one system was destroyed, the other would be inoperable. It needed these stones and these only. The opportunity for another programmer to develop the fifteen exact stones would take a millennium. She wondered if he'd thought that some other enterprising systems analyst could configure the system to accept another set of stones.
Grant and Brooke came in. Sandra and Wyatt separated.
"Sandra, I talked to Grant and we agree I can take a further look at that last stone."
Sandra knew exactly what she meant. She could either try to disarm the stone or reconfigure it.
White Diamonds (Capitol Chronicles Book 2) Page 27