The escape hatch seemed to breathe a little bit of optimism into him. I apologized to the guard for making my nephew late and begged him not to blame Robbie: I had gotten lost, and that wasn’t the boy’s fault. I had thought another dazzling smile would take care of matters, but now here was Major Enderby calling the Baladines to tell them Aunt Claudia had violated lights–out.
I waited in the kitchen bathroom until I heard the loudspeaker heralding the start of the swim meet. The bathroom had a second door, locked right now, that led into the maid’s room. It took about fifteen seconds to pick that lock. I moved quickly, in case Rosario was getting a break while the swimming started, only stopping for a moment in front of a tin icon to the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was nailed over the prim single bed. I whispered a little plea for protection, although perhaps the Virgin would feel that not even Baladine’s iniquities warranted protecting an intruder.
The back stairs led to Utah’s and Madison’s bedrooms and their playroom. On the other side of the playroom was a hall leading to Baladine’s home office. I studied the location of the monitoring cameras in the bedrooms, playroom, and hall on my pencil map and ducked around the lenses, creeping into Baladine’s office on my hands and knees.
Robbie said the system was voice– and motion–activated. My hands and knees rustling on the carpet wouldn’t turn it on, but a cough might.
Inside Baladine’s office, I crawled along the edge of the room and came to the desk from behind. Lying flat, I stuck up an arm and found the switch for his in–office video monitor and turned it off. I got to my feet and held my breath. After a couple of minutes, when no security guards appeared, I relaxed enough to look around.
I found myself listening tensely for noise. The house was well–soundproofed, and the cheers from the pool came through as only a faint echo. I might have half an hour; I needed to control my nerves and make the most of it.
The room held everything a manly man wanted in his home office, from the buttery black leather couch in a window alcove to the electronics on the zebrawood desk, which included a shredder, a fax, a scanner, and a videophone.
I switched on the computer, covering my hand with a Kleenex—I thought it would be impossible to explain away rubber gloves if someone came in on me. The system came up and asked for a password. Baladine’s ship number was what Robbie thought his father would use. When that didn’t let me in I tried the name of the ship. Bingo. To get into Carnifice files I needed another password. I tried the ship ID again, but the machine preferred his service dates.
I called up the home–security system and set the hall camera to appear in a split screen of the computer. That would give me a little advance warning if Baladine was coming. I checked the doors on the far side of the room. One led to a closet, another to a bathroom, and a third to the far hallway.
I logged on to the e–mail server and called up the list of clients. Five of my own former clients had little stars by their names; Darraugh Graham had a question mark. I had memorized what I wanted to say and typed quickly, nervously proofreading and correcting my text. Did I want to send to the entire recipient list? I did.
Next I typed in my own media list and composed another message. When I’d e–mailed my media list I breathed more easily. I deleted all the messages, both from the out–box and from the trash file, so that Baladine wouldn’t know from looking at his mailbox that someone had been using the server. Even if he found me now, I’d done enough to cause him some discomfort.
Just as a precaution I copied his home–security file onto a floppy, copied his client list onto another floppy, then, while I was still logged on to his network, started looking through his in–box for any messages that might be about me.
The searches had taken too much time. I was sweating, wondering if I’d better pack up and go, when I saw Baladine and Alex Fisher appear on the hall camera. I turned off the machine, grabbed my floppies, and dived into the closet at the back of the room. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought the closet door must surely vibrate in rhythm with it.
The two came into the room, talking in such low tones all I could make out was the murmur of their voices. Sweat began soaking my shirtsleeves as I imagined a telltale floppy or tissue alerting them to an intruder.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream when I realized that Baladine and Alex hadn’t come up to look at his computer, but to grab time together while Eleanor was focused on the pool, although I had one bad moment when Baladine spoke loudly enough for me to hear, saying he didn’t remember switching off his office camera. After twenty minutes of frenzied thrashing on the leather couch and the murmured endearments of one barracuda for another, a hand grasped the closet doorknob.