When Lightning Strikes

by Aimée Thurlo

  Seeing a scrap of paper with faded writing taped there, he removed it carefully. The paper contained two words—“mission” and “drought.”

  He knew what they were—passwords, but to what? He tried both words on her computer, but got nowhere. Every file on the hard drive seemed to be gone, including the operating system.

  Daniel put everything back the way he’d found it, except for the note that had the passwords written on it, then went to the office door. Wolf hadn’t moved.

  “Let’s go, buddy.”

  He led Wolf through the adjoining door into the deacon’s office, closing the doors behind them. From what he could see, nothing had been moved since the last time they’d been there.

  Wolf was placed on guard duty at the outside door, again with it slightly ajar while Daniel sat down by the deacon’s computer and switched it on. As he stared at the slip of paper that had been taped to her desk, he remembered Hannah telling him that she didn’t have her uncle’s password. Following his gut instinct, he typed the first word, “mission.” Nothing happened. He then tried the second option, “drought.”

  The screen flickered and a list of files appeared on the screen. Taking the disk he’d brought from his pocket, he copied a few of the smaller files onto it.

  “There’s a car coming down the street,” Hannah warned through the speaker in a wing of his glasses.

  “Just finished,” he said.

  He slipped the disk back into his shirt pocket, turned off the computer, then left the room with Wolf and walked outside and across the parking lot quickly.

  Anger filled him with a blackness of spirit as he forced himself to accept the fact that Hannah had lied to him, perhaps not for the first time. It was clear that she’d had her uncle’s password all along. The worn paper and the yellow tape indicated it had been there for a long time. Although he was willing to concede that it was possible someone had blanked out the memory in her computer in order to frame her, that still didn’t explain the lie. Now other questions plagued his mind.

  Never realizing when or how, he’d lost his objectivity when it came to Hannah. He’d wanted to help her. She’d looked lost and broken somehow—an innocent caught in something she didn’t understand.

  Feeling like a fool for having lowered his guard like he had, he hurried back to the SUV. Things between them were about to change radically.

  Chapter Eight

  As Daniel slipped back into the SUV, Hannah noted the change in his expression. She’d expected to see satisfaction or frustration on his face, but the anger that was clearly mirrored there took her by surprise. His black eyes held a spark of barely contained rage. Instinct warned her to let him speak first.

  Even Wolf seemed affected by whatever had happened in there. The dog gave her a long, soulful look, then lay down silently in the back, his head between his paws. She could have sworn he was trying to avoid looking at her, though she knew that was clearly her own imagination. Dogs didn’t think—did they?

  “It’s too bad that you don’t know your uncle’s password. A little piece of information like that could have made my job easier from the start,” Daniel said, his voice too hard to pass as normal.

  “I never work at my uncle’s computer,” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the safe house. It’s getting late. But, first, as soon as we’re a little farther from the church, I’m going to pull over and check in with Silentman.”

  His words were gruff and spoken without much inflection. Something was terribly wrong.

  It was dark outside and only the headlights seemed to cut through the black gloom that surrounded the SUV. As she waited for him to tell her what had happened, the passing minutes ticked by so slowly, they each made their own version of eternity. Uneasy, she broke the silence.

  “Okay, let’s have it. What happened in there?” she asked, at last.

  “I went to your office first and took a look around.” He reached into his shirt pocket. “I found this.”

  As she took the scrap of paper from him, their hands touched. It was chemistry—or magic—she wasn’t sure which. But the warmth of his hand burned into her, wrapping itself around her until she could barely think. When she looked at him, she saw the answering flicker in the darkness of his eyes that told her he’d felt it too.

  She looked away and forced herself to focus on business. Hannah read what was on the paper, and drew in a breath, recognition and understanding slowly dawning over her. “I totally forgot about this,” she said, her stomach sinking.

  There was an odd twist to his smile. “Oh, come on! I’m sure you can think of something better.”

  His eyes were all coldness and shadows. Sadness filled her as she realized what had been troubling him. Like many others in her life, Daniel was quick to condemn her. “You found this and now you think I’ve been lying to you all along,” she said.

  His gaze was unwavering. Though she was sure he’d meant it to be icy and unfeeling, she could feel the hurt that lay just beyond his hooded eyes and it tore at her heart.

  He pulled off the road and parked beneath the glow of a street lamp just outside a filling station. “I’m going to call Silentman.”

  “Wait. Before you do, we need to get this settled. I haven’t lied to you,” she said softly. “I truly had forgotten this was there.” She held the paper out in the palm of her hand. “Look at it. Don’t you see how faded the writing is? And look at the traces of yellowed tape around the edges. That tells you that it has been there for a long time. That piece of paper has been stuck there for years and that’s the reason I’d totally forgotten about it.”

  “How long would you say you’ve had these passwords?” he asked.

  A trick question? She wasn’t sure, but she desperately needed him to be on her side. As she looked him straight in the eyes, she realized that she wanted him to believe her—but the reason for that went beyond the demands of the case. His opinion of her mattered to her on a much deeper and disturbing level.

  “I can’t say exactly,” she said slowly, “but I think it’s been about two years. I remember that my uncle gave me his password right before he went away on a business trip. He wanted me to have access to the reports he’d made out for the finance committee. I wrote it down in the same place I kept the password I used to access the church’s monthly accounts payable. But, honestly, I’m not sure how valid my uncle’s password is now. For all I know he’s changed it several times since then.”

  “He hasn’t.” Daniel watched her, questions alive in his eyes.

  Hannah knew he was still trying to make up his mind about her. “I don’t know how else to reassure you that I haven’t lied and I’m not guilty of anything.” Soon, if he hadn’t already done so, he would remember and misconstrue her earlier reluctance to have him go inside alone to search. She cursed herself silently. It was not only that the evidence was stacked against her, her own mistakes were now helping her enemies.

  More frightened than ever, and struggling to make him understand, Hannah continued. “I take pride in my work, just like you do in yours. If just making money had been my priority, I would have tried to get a job with a large corporation or moved out of state where I would have had more opportunities because no one would have known about my past.”

  Daniel nodded slowly. “That makes sense. But you realize that if I was able to find the passwords so easily, anyone else could have, too.”

  “But who else would have looked?” she responded. “Daniel, I trust the people who work there. They’re my friends and in a lot of ways they’re as much a part of my family as my uncle.”

  “You’re too quick to dismiss them as suspects. Look at things squarely and consider the possibilities. For example, if one of them searched your office and found your password, it could easily explain the computer problems you’ve been having. Someone with access to your office at the church could have messed with your computer at home via modem. With your password, they could have done almost a
nything to your records. Do you leave your home office computer on all the time?”

  “Yes, but no one at the church would do that to me. Only a person intent on destroying me would do something that nasty, and the truth is, I don’t have any enemies.”

  “You do have enemies, Hannah. Remember the pair who came after you? And what about whoever it was that sent them?”

  “You’re right.” Despair and sadness settled over her like an oppressive mantle. She couldn’t hide from this. She did have an enemy—one who would apparently stop at nothing to destroy her. They didn’t get any worse than that. “My life is unraveling, and I don’t know how to stop it,” she said, her voice a mere whisper.

  “Fight with everything in you. That’s your only choice.”

  “I don’t know how to win this kind of battle.” Bewilderment and sorrow made a tremor race up her spine. “These people want me in jail, or dead.”

  “Which is why you can’t afford to give anyone, no matter who they are, the benefit of the doubt. Everything is at stake and your enemy could be the person you least expect.”

  He was right, but it wouldn’t be easy for her to start looking for the worst in her friends—to expect it, in fact. But as he’d pointed out, she had no other choice. She was fighting for her own survival now.

  “I have more bad news, Hannah. Someone erased the hard drive in your computer. Not even the operating system remains.”

  She pursed her lips for a long moment. “Finally something I’m prepared for. It’s a nuisance, but I can deal with it. I have tape backups that I make after each work session. They’re in a safe in my home. I can retrieve everything, though it’ll take some time.”

  “Who do you think did that to your computer?”

  There was something in his voice that made Wolf sit up in the back seat and look at her as if he, too, were expecting an answer.

  Hannah knew without a doubt that Daniel was wondering if she’d done that somehow, probably when they were in there together. “It wasn’t me. It would have been pointless, and too much of a risk with you there next to me. Besides, I have those backups I just told you about, and they’re all dated. They’ll bear me out.”

  “Unfortunately, we can’t go there right now. Your home is probably being watched by whoever’s looking for you.”

  “Then we’ll have to wait until we can,” she said.

  “Is the safe in your home easily accessible? In other words, if the ones after you break in, are they bound to spot it? And who else knows it’s there?”

  “No one except you and me. It’s built into a wall in the laundry room and not very visible because there are shelves in front of it filled with laundry supplies.”

  “I’d sure love to know what happened to your computer at the church. No way that was an accident,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Before you jump to conclusions, I should tell you that it’s happened before. One of the organist’s teenage sons sneaked into my office last year while I was talking to Reverend Brown. He was showing off to a friend, and ended up reformatting the hard drive by accident which, of course, erased everything. That’s when I learned to make backups.”

  With the matter settled, at least for now, Daniel dialed Silentman’s number but when he got voice mail, hung up. “I’ll call again in a minute. I hate electronic voice mail. I prefer to speak to something with a pulse.”

  As they waited, she considered what he’d said. “I guess you also checked my uncle’s computer while you were there,” she said hesitantly. “Was his hard drive erased, too?”

  “No, and that’s the reason I’m trying to reach Silentman. I copied a few small files from the directory your uncle kept on the church’s building fund. I want Burke to have an accountant check them out for discrepancies and the like.”

  Daniel dialed again. This time he got through. As usual, his conversation with Silentman was quick and to the point, taking only a few minutes.

  Daniel closed up the cell phone. “We’ll leave this disk in a storage compartment the agency uses as a secure drop. But, after that, we’ll have to wait for it to be processed. I was hoping to take you straight to the safe house next and call it a night, but we have to make one more stop. Silentman says Reverend Brown wants to speak to me, and tonight would be a good time for him because the reverend will be up until late.”

  “What’s he want to see you about?”

  “You, mostly. He’s concerned and wants to do whatever he can to help. With a little luck and some careful questioning, I may be able to get some answers he doesn’t even know he has. It often works that way in my line of work.”

  Daniel stopped at the drop site, a storage facility close to an apartment complex, on the way to Reverend Brown’s. It was nearly eleven by the time they arrived at the pastor’s home. Daniel parked down the block, then got ready to use the same mike and receiver setup he’d used before.

  “I want you to listen in carefully,” he said. “You know all the people at the church and you may be able to catch an inconsistency or an outright lie, if he goes that route.”

  “Reverend Brown would never do that,” she said flatly.

  “You’d be surprised how far people go when they’re protecting something they care about.”

  Hannah started to argue, but decided against it. The only thing they needed to concentrate on now was finding whoever was framing her.

  Daniel reached up and moved the switch on the dome light so the interior wouldn’t be illuminated when he opened the door. “It’s dark and that will shield you from any busybodies, but Wolf will stay with you in case of problems.” He stopped, glancing at the handcuffs on the seat beside him. “There’s a lot of danger in surveillance work, Hannah. I’m not going to cuff you any more. Sooner or later I’m going to have to trust you and it might as well be now. If someone recognizes you, take off. I’ll leave the keys in the ignition. If you’re not being followed, go to the safe house and I’ll meet you there. Otherwise go to Gray Wolf Investigations. Mr. Silentman will take care of you.” He gave her directions.

  Daniel left the SUV and walked to the reverend’s home. He was glad to have dispensed with the handcuffs. The simple fact was that it hurt his pride to resort to them. Women generally liked him, and gaining people’s trust had never been a problem for him. But nothing seemed to work the way he was used to around Hannah.

  To make matters worse, Hannah had managed to get him to shred a hard-and-fast rule he’d made for himself a long time ago—when working a case, never make it personal. He expelled his breath in a rush. That was a great rule, and one that was all shot to hell now.

  THE PASTOR WAS a small-boned man with a longish face and a salt-and-pepper beard that had been trimmed close. His brown eyes peered across at Daniel from behind wire-rimmed glasses. He looked like he belonged in a library guarding one-of-a-kind books and rare editions.

  As they took a seat in Reverend Brown’s small home office, Daniel declined his offer of tea.

  “I understand that you wanted to see me,” Daniel began.

  “We’ve all been very worried about Hannah. That young woman has had a very difficult life. I want to do something to help her before things get worse for her. To be honest, people have been talking a lot about her lately and that always leads to trouble.”

  “What have you heard?” Daniel asked, glancing around casually and noting the pastor didn’t seem to have a computer.

  “People have begun to notice that she hasn’t been around. So far, her uncle has told everyone who’s asked that she’s fine, and that she’s just taking a much-needed break, but that’s being regarded with skepticism, I’m afraid. Gossip is starting up and that’s bound to hurt everyone.”

  “What kind of gossip are we talking about here?”

  “We have good people at our church, but they’re human. When they think I’m not listening, they speak their minds about Hannah. The simple truth is that her behavior these past few weeks has been erratic, to say the least, and everyone
has noticed. It seems she’s been very distracted, and continually making mistakes with her clients’ accounts. Most of her business comes from the members of our church, and several of them are getting pretty fed up with her service. I’m afraid that if news leaks out about our missing funds, the membership will demand that we go to the police.”

  “Do you believe that her erratic behavior may have contributed to her taking the funds?”

  “Yes, I do, but frankly I’m more worried about what might happen to her than I am about the money. Living in our community among people who know and love her, Hannah’s been protected in a way, but I’m not at all sure what will happen to her if she’s on the run and ends up someplace where she has no one to help her. I’ve known Hannah for many years, and I don’t want to see anything bad happen to her.”

  “Is there any chance you’ve misjudged her? Maybe she’s missing or hiding out for another reason entirely.”

  The pastor hesitated. “There’s nothing I’d want to believe more than that, but based on her history and her recent actions, I can’t see what other conclusion I can reach.”

  Daniel stood up. “I’ll stay in touch. Meanwhile, if you hear of anything that might help me on this case, call the agency office. They’ll know how to get in touch with me.”

  Hearing a door open and shut, Reverend Brown smiled. “That’s my daughter now. Would you like to speak to her? She’s a little younger than Hannah, but they’ve known each other for many years. She may be able to give you another perspective on her.”

  Daniel nodded, aware that Hannah had already been convicted in the court of popular opinion, but unwilling to pass up a chance to question someone else who might know something useful. “That sounds like a good idea. Thanks for your cooperation.”

  HANNAH LISTENED to the exchange with a heavy heart. Everyone was convinced she was guilty of something. Although she understood that they were simply going on the circumstantial evidence and that the board was really trying to give her a break by not going to the police, it still hurt to think that they’d condemned her so quickly.