Germ

'Probably. I'll need to send you an app that'll tell your computer not to attempt mounting it. Then you can send it to me.'

'Bonsai, could you go somewhere else to receive it?'

'Are you talking about the tap the feds have on my Tl?'

'You know about that?'

'What kind of hacker would I be if I didn't? I got a second Tl nobody knows about.'

'I should have known.'

'You got Wi-Fi?'

'With a trace-interlock.'

'Nice.' A trace-interlock was like an antenna for wireless Internet connectivity. It pulled in Wi-Fi signals within a mile radius and ran a quick decryption on any firewalls it encountered, granting the user access without passwords. It was built into the SATD software.

He gave her a web address where they would meet online to swap files. He also issued her four pass phrases, which she would need to communicate with him online, one pass phrase at a time.

'I need to get back to my room and reboot,' she said.

'My site has a VOIP function,' he said. 'You know VOIP? Voice Over Internet Protocol?'

'I know it.'

'We can talk that way. It's secure.'

Walking back to the room, she thought about Bonsai. He'd been a seventeen-year-old high school geek in Denver when he'd hacked into the Strategic Air Defense computers at NORAD's facility inside Cheyenne Mountain. He had done it only to see if he could, but Air Force brass, NSA goons, and the FBI came down hard on him. Before he'd fallen victim to a merciless judicial system, however, Donnelley had fought for his rehabilitation, pointing out the value of the kid's incredible computer savvy to national law enforcement. Prosecutors had reluctantly agreed, and Bonsai became a freelance computer hacker for the U.S. government.

The skinny kid with flaming acne and long oily hair had proved to possess one of the sharpest security minds in cyberspace, going on to make a six-figure income showing corporations the chinks in their firewalls—a computer system's version of a vault door. Now twenty-one, he had a wife and a newborn boy—Baby Bonz, Goody had called him, though his name was Christopher. Bonsai credited Goody for his freedom. Julia knew he had always wanted to repay the favor. News of his death must have cut deep.

Repositioned on the bed, Bonsai's web site on the screen, Julia waited for him to send her the application she needed. She started the transfer of the encrypted memory chip data. A bar graph appeared, indicating that the transfer would take a long time, maybe hours. Bosai's Tl line was fast, but Julia's Wi-Fi was slow; transfers always moved at the slowest speed in the conduit.

'Julia?' His voice came over the laptop's speakers.

'Hmm.'

'Go to bed. I'm going too. I'll get on it as soon as I get the whole thing.'

'Thanks, Bonsai.'

She watched the bar graph. Progress was marked by a blue bar moving from left to right. She stared at it for five minutes, and it barely moved.

It might have locked up, she thought. I should call Bonsai, see what he thinks . . .

But then she was asleep.

thirty-four

Eternal night.

The morgue was as black for the shadowy figure gliding through its halls as it was for the bodies tucked coldly into the endless rows of metal cabinets. If human eyes had caught a glimpse of the fleeting shadow, they would look again and see nothing. It moved quickly along the edge of the corridor. Silent. Aware.

No amount of Clorox could eliminate the smell of death from the air. The figure inhaled the odor, discerned the metallic blood scent from the pungency of flesh.

A door opened, seemingly of its own accord. The shadow slipped through.

A fine beam of light erupted from the shadow, glinted off the lipped edges of an aluminum table. It flashed up to the far wall, which was sectioned into three-foot squares, each with its own stainless steel handle and dangling tag, a copy of the one tied to the big toe of the corpse inside.

A hand formed out of the shadow. Clad in black leather, it snatched the tags, turning them toward the light: Willows, R. . . . Jeffreys, M. . . . John Doe.

The hand stopped as the shadow contemplated the non-name: John Doe.

It lowered to the handle. A metal latch clicked, airtight seals ruptured, steel rollers slid on metal. A white sheet billowed up, drifted down.

The drawer slammed shut. The shadow hand continued past the names. Then stopped again.

Another John Doe.

Another click. Another tissshhh of escaping air. More rollers. The flutter of a sheet as the beam fixed on a face, pale and frozen as statuary.

The beam clicked off. The shadow, blacker than the dark air around it, engulfed the body. When it retreated, the body was gone.

A sound startled Julia out of sleep. She was sitting on the bed, leaning askew against the wall where a headboard would be in a nicer motel. Sunlight filtered through the tattered curtains, brightening the room almost reluctantly.

Julia looked around for whatever had awakened her. Bolts of pain shot up from her stiff neck. She became aware again of aches in her throat and side and other injuries, but realized they were less severe than they had been the night before.

She started to rise, and her leg bumped the computer, which had toppled off her lap and onto the bed sometime during the night. She tilted it up to look at the screen and tapped the track pad to bring it out of its own automatic slumber. The screen lit up. It showed Bonsai's web site and the words transfer complete.

The computer must have chimed to signify that Bonsai had received the file. That was fast. She looked at her watch and realized it hadn't been so fast. It was 9:28 a.m. She'd slept for seven hours. She wondered how long it would take for him to figure out the encryption.

She picked up her cell phone from the bedside table and turned it on. It rang immediately.

Yes!

'Bonsai?'

'Where in the name of Clint Eastwood have you been!'

She instantly recognized the gruff voice of Edward Molland, her boss. Each word rang as sharp as a rifle shot.

'I have been dialing this number since yesterday afternoon.'

She thought of slamming the phone down, just dropping it and leaving the motel.

'The phone was off, sir.'

'Well, why haven't you called? Why didn't you check in with the Bureau's Chattanooga office? Man alive! The fiasco down here. The death of a federal agent, Julia—Donnelley! And whatever that was you were involved in last night—the bloodbath they called me about. Sounds like you were smack in the middle of it, then just disappeared. They wanted to put an APB out on you, get a warrant for your arrest—your arrest, Julia! I convinced them to wait. Now you have to convince me.'

'Arrest me? On what grounds?'

'You name it. You know how this works. At the least, you're a person of interest. They want to talk to you, and they'll find a way to haul you in, if you don't haul yourself in first.'

'I'm trying to work a few things out first.'

'Work what out? Julia, you are a federal agent. You are part of a spin-off agency of the FBI, if you need to be reminded. We have procedures, protocol. You've broken at least a dozen regulations that I know about. This is not like you, not like you at all.'