Cruel Intent

by J. A. Jance

  Leaning against the headrest, Matt wondered how long it would take. It would be better for all concerned if it was over long before Jenny woke up. She usually staggered out of bed around seven or so and came scrounging out to the kitchen in search of her first cup of coffee. Matt knew there would be far less fuss and bother if there was no chance of reviving him when she opened the door and found him. Things were going to be bad enough for her that Thursday morning. He didn’t want to make the situation any worse.

  The first bottle of Baileys was entirely empty, and the second was mostly so by the time he started feeling more drowsy than drunk. It took several tries before he was able to twist the cap back on the bottle, but he managed it.

  Good, he thought dreamily. No sense in spilling what’s left and making a mess.

  Ali’s phone rang at five to six, dragging both her and the cat out of a sound sleep. Samantha left the foot of the bed in a huff while Ali groped for her phone.

  “We have a bingo,” B. announced triumphantly. He sounded wide awake and amazingly chipper.

  Ali was not. “A what?” she grumbled.

  “A bingo,” he repeated. “Our bad guy tried logging on to your e-mail account a little while ago. I’m pretty sure we nailed him.”

  “And you collected all his files in the process?”

  “I think so,” B. said. “And if he had to sit there and watch his computer die, he’s probably not a happy camper at the moment.”

  Ali made the effort to sound a little less grumpy. “That’s great,” she said. “So does that mean I can use my own computer again?”

  “Probably,” B. said. “If I were him, I’d have learned from my mistake. I doubt very much that he’ll be trying to invade your computer files again anytime soon. He won’t want to risk damaging a second computer.”

  “So we’re done, then?” Ali asked.

  “Not by a long shot,” B. said. He sounded focused and energized. “I’m a little surprised it was that easy. I would have thought he’d do more about securing his own equipment. He does have a fairly sophisticated encryption code. I’m working on breaking that in hopes of getting a look at his files.”

  “What are you hoping to find?” Ali asked.

  “We managed to stop him before he could do any real damage to you, but there may be others who weren’t as lucky—people who maybe don’t yet know they’ve been victimized. If we can find them and let them know what’s going on, we may be able to bring law enforcement in on this after all.”

  Now that the crisis with her own computer had been averted, Ali found that idea appealing. “In other words, now that we’ve had our immediate gratification, we’ll let someone else take a crack at him.”

  “Exactly,” B. agreed. “In the meantime, I’m hoping that having access to his files will give us some clues about who this guy is and where he lives.”

  “Any ideas on that?” Ali asked.

  “My first guess would be that he’s one of the employees on the Singleatheart server farm in South Dakota—some low-level minimum-wage guy who figured out how to circumvent the system. I’ll start by doing some unofficial background checks on a few of those folks and see if anything jumps out at me.”

  “How?” Ali asked. “Will you ask the cops for help?”

  B. chuckled. “Are you kidding? There are background checks, and then there are underground background checks. For what I do, the second one is far more useful, and those will have to wait until later. Right now I have all my computer power working on breaking that encryption code. And since my computers can churn out logarithms without any help from me, I’m on my way to bed.”

  Having just abandoned her own, Ali was a little surprised. “You’re going to bed at six o’clock in the morning?”

  “What I do crosses international datelines, so local time zones tend to fade into the background,” he replied. “I sleep when I’m tired, eat when I’m hungry, and don’t punch a time clock.”

  “Luckily for me,” Ali said. “And thank you for this good news, but are you sure it’s safe to use my computer?”

  “Relatively safe,” B. told her with a laugh. “From that one source, at least. It doesn’t mean someone else won’t try to pull the same stunt, but you can rest assured that if there’s another problem, it’ll show up on my system as well.”

  “Good night, then,” Ali said. “Or should I say good morning? Sleep well.”

  Fully awake, she scrambled out of bed and reached for her robe. Out in the kitchen, the coffee grinder howled into action as Chris started brewing fresh coffee. She followed the heady aroma into the kitchen, where she found her son looking questioningly at the two computers and the two thumb drives that still littered the dining room table.

  “What happened with all the computer drama?” Chris asked.

  “Thanks to B. Simpson, good has prevailed,” Ali replied. “When whoever it was tried to access my e-mail account early this morning, our worm knocked him out and collected all his files in the process.”

  “Way to go,” Chris said admiringly.

  While Ali waited for the coffeepot to finish, she sat down at the table. Her old computer, left on as bait, clicked with a new mail announcement. Reassured that whoever had been spying on her had been taken offline, Ali was relieved to see a familiar name in the address line—Velma T, her longtime correspondent from Laguna Niguel.

  Dear Babe,

  I’ve had the most wonderful surprise, but now I’m in a bind and don’t know what to do about it. You maybe remember that earlier this year, when I went on that long trip, I met up with a wonderful lady from Oak Harbor, Washington, Maddy Watkins. She just sent me an e-mail that she wants to come down to see me over Thanksgiving. I think she’s really trying to get away from her kids, but that’s another story.

  The problem is, I had just told you that I’d come to your place for Thanksgiving, and now I don’t know what to do. I’ve never been to Sedona, and after you brought it up, I had my heart set on coming to see you. Should I e-mail Maddy and tell her not to come or what?

  Velma T in Laguna.

  Ali sent off an immediate reply.

  The more the merrier. Invite her to come here. Will she be coming from Seattle, or will she be coming with you? Please let me know so I can make suitable travel and room arrangements for you.

  After punching send, Ali reached over, absently picked up one of Bryan Forester’s thumb drives, and held it in her hand. She had fallen asleep the night before while still wondering what to do about them. Now that B. had cleared the way, Ali felt she could risk looking at them on her own computer. If there happened to be another computer virus lurking in the background of Morgan’s files, Ali could be reasonably sure that she wouldn’t be putting B.’s equipment at risk. And since there was no love lost between Bryan Forester and B. Simpson, it was a relief to Ali that she wouldn’t have to ask for B.’s help in dealing with the Foresters’ situation.

  She was about to insert the drive when the doorbell rang. Company? she thought. At six-thirty in the morning?

  Except what she found waiting on her front porch wasn’t company at all. It was Leland Brooks, lugging a humongous carpet-cleaning machine. “What are you doing here so early?” she wanted to know.

  “Sorry,” he said apologetically, wrestling the machine through the front door. “I thought I mentioned it to you last night. It turns out everyone else is trying to get ready for Thanksgiving company, too. They told me I could use this today on the condition that I have it back by nine A.M., when it’s booked to go out again.”

  Sam took one look at the load of equipment and bolted for the relative safety of the laundry room, where she would no doubt squeeze herself behind the dryer and then need to be coaxed out with offers of food. For right now, however, it was a good place for her.

  Chris emerged from his room dressed for school. He paused in the kitchen long enough to fill his coffee cup. “Good morning, Leland,” he said. “I hope you’re not planning on doing any cleaning down
in my studio.”

  “Let’s see,” the butler said. “Would your studio happen to be the source of all the metal filings and BBs I vacuumed out of the carpet yesterday afternoon?”

  Chris’s metal sculptures did leave behind a certain amount of debris. He looked slightly crestfallen. “Yes,” he admitted. “I suppose so.”

  “In that case,” Leland replied, “since I expect to do a thorough job of cleaning the carpet, you can also expect that I will clean your studio. There’s not much sense in doing one without the other. You can also rest assured that I’ll put everything back where I found it, which won’t necessarily be where it belongs.”

  It was a statement that brooked no disagreement. “Right,” Chris said, backing down. “I’ll get out of your way, then.”

  Ali concealed a grin behind her coffee mug. She had already learned that when it came to cleaning, Leland Brooks was not to be denied. Chris was coming to that same conclusion.

  “Why don’t I get out of your way, too?” Ali offered. “I’ll get dressed and go have breakfast with my parents.”

  As someone accustomed to taking full advantage of other people’s lax computer security measures, Peter Winter was surprisingly blasé about his own. His dealings with Singleatheart were concealed through multiple layers of identity that protected him. For his personal computer, he employed a sophisticated encryption routine, but for the most part, he didn’t worry about it. People like Matt Morrison and his ilk were nothing but chumps, and Peter was willing to bet this Ali Reynolds woman was the same—stupid beyond bearing.

  By five A.M. on Thursday morning, after a restless night, Peter took his cup of coffee over to the desk and sat down at his computer. The little notes people sent back and forth to their friends and relations often gave away much more than they knew. And that was where he went—straight to Ali Reynolds’s computer and her e-mail records.

  The moment he tried to log on to Ali’s e-mail account, however, something strange happened. The egg timer showed up and stayed there. After a moment or two, he tried control/alternate/delete, but nothing happened. The egg timer wouldn’t go away. And that was when he knew he’d been hacked. His computer froze up. He knew that even unplugging the damn thing would accomplish nothing. As soon as the power was restored, the inevitable destruction would continue. For the next three minutes, unable to stop the slow but inexorable process, he sat and watched helplessly to the end, until the words FATAL ERROR flashed across his screen.

  Full of impotent fury, Peter watched his computer’s death throes and worried that his whole house of cards was about to tumble down around him. It wasn’t just his computer. He could replace that. Though it would take time, eventually, he’d be able to reconstruct the passwords and most of the files. But he couldn’t do it right then. What left him feeling half sick was that someone—a woman, no less—had been smart enough and had gotten close enough to him to do this kind of damage. And she’d had balls enough to hit him where he lived. Yes, Peter hacked in to other people’s systems all the time, most recently, that hopeless asshole Matt Morrison’s. But to Peter’s knowledge, this was the first time anyone had ever hacked him. Turnabout definitely wasn’t fair play.

  Who the hell is this bitch? he wondered. How dare she do this, and what makes her think she can get away with it?

  Slamming away from his desk, Peter headed for the shower. Trying to harness his outrage, he stood under the stream of hot water and considered the problem. Nothing Peter had read about Ali Reynolds had indicated that she was any kind of computer genius. In order to take on the unassailable Peter Winter, he knew she must have had help of some kind—talented and very capable help. That detective friend of hers, maybe? What Peter found most disturbing was that the woman had made no effort to conceal her identity, although clearly, the attack had come from her. What did that mean? Was she letting him know she knew everything? And what if she and her helper had somehow managed to gain access to his files or break his encryption code? That would spell utter disaster.

  By the time Peter stepped out of the shower, he had settled on a course of action—he’d have to go to Sedona and find her and her helper, too. Fortunately, even without access to his computer, Peter had a good idea where to start looking. He had scanned through a surprising amount of Internet-based Ali Reynolds material the day before and had read about her restoration project on Manzanita Hills Road, which also happened to be where he had located Bryan Forester’s truck. If the house was under construction, she probably wasn’t living there at the moment, but with any kind of luck, Peter thought he’d be able to decoy her into coming there—alone.

  And once he found her? It was pretty clear to him that he’d have to put her out of her misery. After that, it would be time for Peter Winter to exit stage left. He’d had that game plan set up and waiting for a long time, along with several suitable alternate identities. The problem was, he hadn’t intended to make use of any of them yet.

  Moving deliberately, he dragged two suitcases out of the hallway closet. He packed one with nothing but computer gear—the still-working laptops as well as the dead one. In the other bag he packed clothing, and not much of that, either. Depending on where he ended up, he’d buy whatever he needed. Right now it was important to travel light. He opened his briefcase and made sure he was fully equipped with gloves, scrubs, and duct tape. The last items he placed in the briefcase were the several vials of Versed that he kept at home and at the ready. Experience had taught him that unconscious victims were far less troublesome than those who were able to fight back.

  Just before leaving the house, he emptied the safe. The DVD and his collection of false documents went into the briefcase. The key ring went into his pocket. With Alison Reynolds rocking the boat, carrying a cache of phony IDs and precious mementos could prove dangerous, but leaving them behind was even more so. He might find himself in a position where he’d need access to one or more of them. As for the DVD and his collection of rings? He’d carry those with him until he once again had a secure hiding place.

  By eight o’clock, Peter was driving north on I-17, heading toward Sedona. When he called the hospital to let them know he wouldn’t be coming in to work that evening, he was already north of Black Canyon City. Careful to keep the right measure of hesitation and concern in his voice, he explained to Louise Granger, the administrator on duty, that he’d just received a distressing phone call from his mother’s physician in upstate New York. “My mom’s in the ICU in Buffalo,” he said. “She may not make it through the day. I’m on my way to the airport right now.”

  Louise was nothing if not sympathetic. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Dr. Winter,” she said. “Is there anything we can do?”

  “Cover my shifts in the meantime,” Peter said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, but there’s no way to tell how long I’ll be gone.”

  “Of course, Dr. Winter,” Louise said. “Don’t give it another thought.”

  Thanks, Mom, Peter said to himself as he put down the phone. He hadn’t spoken to his mother in over fifteen years, not since she had caught on to the fact that he’d been using forged checks to take money from her account. That tardy discovery had come years after he’d forged her name to countless excuses and permission slips all through junior high and high school. When the subject of families came up, he usually told people that his mother bounced back and forth between her condo in Florida and her home in upstate New York. That wasn’t true, of course. She’d been dead for a long time.

  He’d seen to it.

  By the time Ali emerged from the bedroom, Leland had the noisy carpet cleaner up and running. Ali grabbed her computer, the power cord, and the two thumb drives and headed for the Sugarloaf Café. It was cold and spitting snow as she started down Andante Drive. When she reached the Sugarloaf parking lot, her nose was assailed by the unmistakable aroma of freshly baked sweet rolls.

  Edie met her at the door. “You’re up bright and early,” she said.

  In answer, Ali held u
p her computer. “I’m looking for office space,” she said. “Leland Brooks is cleaning carpets.”

  Edie generally disapproved of people who used her tables for anything other than eating, but the restaurant wasn’t crowded, and she cheerfully led Ali to a booth in the back.

  “I know the drill,” Ali said. “I’ll close down and move along if it gets too crowded. In the meantime, I’ll settle for coffee.”

  Once the computer booted up, Ali extracted the two thumb drives from her jacket pocket. The two drives looked exactly alike, and neither of them was labeled. The first one she inserted into her computer turned out to be Bryan’s. Ali had no difficulty searching through his various files and folders. The internal passwords that had been installed in his programs worked as though the files were being opened by Bryan on his own computer.

  As far as Ali could see, everything was work-related and as dry as dust. There were immense files that held nothing but computerized architectural drawings. The saved e-mail file consisted mostly of back-and-forth correspondence between Bryan and his various suppliers or customers. Some of the e-mails concerned projects that were still at the planning or construction stage, along with others that had been completed.

  Ali remembered Morgan’s video complaint about her husband—that the man worked too hard and wasn’t any fun. From what Ali could see, he appeared to be guilty as charged. If he had any interests or pursuits outside work, they weren’t apparent in his computer files.

  “Okay if I sit down?” Dave Holman asked. “Your mother thought you might not mind sharing.”

  Having lost track of time, Ali looked around and was surprised to find that the restaurant had filled up while she was perusing Bryan’s files. Dave Holman, coffee cup in hand, was standing next to her booth.