“What we found on your computer last night…all those dead and missing people…Who could be doing it? I mean, the whole thing is so huge. Do you think…it might be the government?”
He understood her wary suggestion. “I know it’s a pet theory of the people who believe there’s a conspiracy under every bush.”
“I know. But…”
Tucker nodded. “Yeah. But. It’s hard not to wonder. The kind of manpower this has to involve, the cost, the sheer scope of the thing—how many organizations could handle it? Not many, I’d guess.”
“But the government could.”
He smiled faintly as she turned her head to look at him. “I’m one of those people who believe our beloved government couldn’t keep a secret for more than ten minutes no matter what it involved. However…I also believe that’s the Our Government entity—the entire unwieldy mass of bureaucrats stabbing each other in the back while they try to run the country. Or not, as the case may be. Within that mess, there could well be considerably smaller groups a bit better organized and a lot better at keeping secrets. The CIA’s supposed to be dandy, and the FBI not half bad. And we can’t discount the various branches of the military.”
“But why would they?”
“That’s the question we need to answer. Somehow I doubt we’ll be able to figure out who’s doing this until we understand why it’s being done.”
She was silent for a moment or two, then said absently, “Your computer beeped a little while ago.”
“Um. Must be finished with the search.” Before they had gone to bed, he had set up his laptop to search a number of data banks for some of the information they sought, and then had simply closed the lid and allowed the machine to work, hoping the satellite wouldn’t cut the search short; reception up here tended to be spotty at times.
Now, he carried his coffee with him to the couch and sat down to open the laptop. What he saw surprised him.
“E-mail? What the hell…”
Sarah turned off the stove and came to look over his shoulder at the computer. “Is something wrong? You have an e-mail address, don’t you? Everybody seems to, these days.”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s probably one of your friends.”
Tucker shook his head. “Sarah, this message isn’t coming through a server into an e-mail account. It’s being sent directly into my system via the satellite dish and my wireless connection, even though I set the program to disconnect from the Internet as soon as it had completed its task. A message being sent straight into the laptop’s operating system…that is not supposed to be possible. Not only does it mean my firewall has been breached, it also means whoever did it knows where I am.”
After a moment, she said steadily, “Then maybe we’d better see what the note says.”
Tucker opened the note. And it was brief.
Leave the cabin now.
They’re coming.
“It could be a trick,” Sarah whispered.
“To drive us into a trap?” Tucker knew his voice was grim. “We’re trapped now, with our backs against the lake. God, how stupid can I be? Grab your bag, Sarah.” He was typing rapidly.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to find out where the note came from. Grab your bag, we’re leaving.”
She obeyed, returning to the great room only a couple of minutes later. “I’m ready. I have your bag too.”
“Thanks. Dammit, they’ve routed the call through so many proxy servers, it’d take me a week to trace it.”
“We don’t have a week.”
He hesitated only an instant, then swore and quickly closed his computer, flipped it over, and removed the battery, severing whatever connection there was between his laptop and whoever had contacted it. Sarah was right; they were out of time. It took only a minute more to pack up the computer in its case, grab it and his other bag, and kill the lights.
They slipped from the darkened cabin as quietly as possible. The car was parked nearby, and it took only seconds to stow the luggage and get moving. Tucker didn’t turn on the car’s lights.
“I know these roads,” he told Sarah as she sat tensely beside him. “They’re like rabbit trails around here. If I can get far enough back into the woods, we may be able to slip past them.” He was assuming that, as at the apartment, the enemy would come in force, possibly from several different directions at once. He thought it was poor strategy to make any kind of assumption, but knew it would be far safer to overestimate the enemy rather than underestimate them.
The Mercedes purred quietly through the woods, shocks efficiently absorbing most of the bumps from a narrow and badly rutted road. But they were forced to go slowly without headlights as Tucker picked his way cautiously around curves and between looming trees.
And they were no more than half a mile from the cabin when suddenly, ahead of them, lights stabbed blindingly through the darkness.