by JM Addison
*
She drove the car back towards her rented ‘room’, if you could call it that. She had to get some rest. She wanted to talk to Dell. She promised she would call him today to let him know she was OK – that she got settled and was safe. There was a phone in the room but at this point even that didn’t seem safe to use. On a whim, she swerved into a deep discount drugstore to buy a few items she suddenly thought might give her some temporary protection. She would have to go easy on her cash since she would not easily be able to get more.
She drove back to the room carefully keeping a sharp eye for any suspicious activity. She sat in the cold in the parking lot for awhile and watched the dumpy little tired motel. It must be almost 10:00 and there was dwindling neighborhood activity.
Once she got settled in her room she went to work. As she examined herself in the mirror, she felt sad over the prospect of losing some of her hair. It was almost shoulder length and had a bit of natural bounce in the cheerful brunette strands that seemed to give her hair a life of its’ own. She went to work with the scissors. Cutting your own hair didn’t produce the best results when you are not able to see or even reach all of it comfortably. However, after the final rinse of the bleach solution and a bit a time spent drying and fluffing, she didn’t look to bad. Bleach blond with sort of a controlled chaos look. In fact, she rather liked it. She would have to get to a real salon soon, but for an emergency, she could pass. Time would tell whether changing her appearance would really benefit her or not. At least it made her feel a little less conspicuous. A little safer.
She had some time to think and decided to call Dell tonight and set up a meeting in the morning. She simply was too exhausted to meet tonight.
Standing there in the cold was awful. The little car did little to keep her warm on the drive to the pay phone and now, just standing around in the cold didn’t help. She wished she had included a pay-as-you-go phone in her drug store purchase. If they were good enough for terrorists, they were good enough for her. She tried to be patient as she waited for him to call back after she paged him with the number of the payphone. After what seemed like eternity, the phone rang and she snatched it up.
“Hello?”
“Mara? It’s Dell!”
Mara began, “We need to get together because I’ve found out some more that I think might be useful. It could at least be a starting place.”
“Mara, I’ve been worried sick waiting for you to call! Where the heck are you?”
“I’m at a payphone.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Let’s just pick a place to meet, not your place”, she said rather coldly. She felt wary and did not want to get too cozy with anyone even though she really needed to trust someone. She still had the bitter aftereffects of being burned by her precious “Will”. It would be hard to fully trust anyone. Besides Dell was a cop.
They agreed on a place to meet in the morning for breakfast where they could talk.
She hung up with an abruptness that she regretted. He was trying to help after all. He even admitted he was worried. Sounded like he was letting himself get personally involved in a case. But she was running scared. She was still wanted by the police. Professor Tattinger spooked her a little. Especially now that she began to realize the magnitude of what was going on. First she could see how Viiradium might want to keep secret the knowledge of a way to break practically any security technique their products might use. But that was minor when compared to the criminal possibilities Professor Tattinger explained. Since the message from her brother said that the ‘Tomb’ was discovered at Viiradium, she could only assume they themselves discovered it and were using it to exploit or compromise data transmissions anywhere they wanted. Could they really be using or even selling stolen information? Could they even ‘eavesdrop’ on government or military data traffic? If that were the case, no wonder they felt no remorse about doing whatever they had to do to keep the secret safe.