having spent the afternoon with them. Your mother … Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t like it.”
“Okay.”
“Your mother put her arm around my shoulders. It was just a careless gesture. I doubt she gave it a thought, and has done the same, countless times, to others. But when she did that, to me, I felt—I thought—So this is what a mother does. She touches you, or holds you, just because. For no important reason. And then I thought, If there are children, I want to learn to be the kind of mother who can touch or hold without thinking, and for no important reason. I hope I have the chance to do that.”
“You will.”
“Anson talked with the FBI.”
“For most of the day. His take is, initially, at least, they’d hoped to do an end run around him, get to you. But he stuck with the out-of-left-field contact. They were careful what they passed on to him, but he’s dead sure they’ll be doing some surveillance on Cosgrove and Keegan.”
“Does he think they believed my story?”
“You’d laid it out, step-by-step, right down to what John said to you. And now you’ve been this very valuable source over the last couple years. Why would you lie about Cosgrove and Keegan?”
“It wouldn’t be logical.”
“No, it wouldn’t. They want to talk to you in person. They want you to come in. They promise you protection.”
“They want to question me, to make certain I wasn’t complicit in John’s and Terry’s deaths. If and when they’re sure of that, they’ll want me to agree to testify against Korotkii.”
“Yeah, and they’re going to want more. You’ve got an inside track on the Volkovs, access to data that can, likely would, put a lot of the organization in prison, fracture the rest.”
“As long as the data comes from an anonymous source, the authorities can use it. Once it’s known the data’s been obtained by illegal means, they won’t be able to.”
“No, they wouldn’t. They may be able to find a little wiggle room.”
She’d considered this, all of this. “I won’t give them the process, even if they grant me immunity for the hacking. I need the process to take down the network. They can’t do what I hope to do, not technically nor legally. I’ll be exposed again unless I can break their network and siphon off their funds.”
“Siphon off … You have that kind of access to their money?”
“I can have, to a great deal of it. I’ve been considering where to funnel it once I’m ready to transfer funds from various accounts. I thought substantial anonymous donations to charities that feel most appropriate.”
He glanced away from the road, gave her a long look. “You’re going to clean them out.”
“Yes. I thought you understood. If they have what’s approximately one hundred and fifty million in accounts to draw from, they can easily rebuild. And then there’s the real estate, but I have some ideas on how to dispose of that.”
“Dispose.”
“Tax difficulties, a transfer of deeds—some property the authorities can and will simply confiscate, as they’ve been used for illegal purposes. But others are rather cleverly masked. They won’t be when I’m finished. It’s not enough to testify, Brooks,” she said, when he pulled up at her cabin. “Not enough to put Korotkii, potentially Ilya, even Sergei, in prison. With their resources, their money, they’ll regroup, rebuild—and they’ll know I caused the trouble. I don’t intend for them to know how their network was compromised. And I don’t intend to tell the authorities. They couldn’t sanction what I plan to do.”
She stepped out of the car, looked at him over the roof. “I won’t go into a safe house again. I won’t let them know where I am, even if and when I agree to testify. I don’t trust their protection. I trust myself, and you.”
“Okay.” He opened the door for the dog, then held out a hand for hers. “We find a location in Chicago when that time comes. You and me? We’re the only ones who know where it is. We’ll stay there. For the meet, you pick a place. A hotel, I’d think, maybe in Virginia or Maryland, and you don’t tell them the location until you’re in.”
“That’s very good. You can’t be with me.”
“Yes, I can. As long as they don’t see me.”
It stopped now, every bit of it stopped, unless he was with her through it.
“I figure you can get eyes and ears in the hotel room so I can follow—and so we have a record, if we ever need one.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I should have, as that would be best.”
“You think, I think—that’s how it’s done.”
She turned to him, let herself move into him. “It has to happen fast, when it starts. Everything will have to happen quickly, and in proper order.”
She wouldn’t take him from his family if things went wrong. She’d learned that, too, at a backyard barbecue.
“I need to finish the program. This is only partially done without it.”
“You work on that, and I’ll start some research myself. I’ll find us a location for the meet.”
“Virginia,” she said. “Fairfax County. It’s far enough from D.C., and less than an hour from a small regional airport in Maryland. I’ll charter a plane.”
“Charter? No shit.”
“Perhaps you forgot you have a rich girlfriend.”
He laughed. “I don’t know how that slipped my mind.”
“If they want to back up the meeting, have me followed, we’d be able to lose them on those roads, and they’d most likely look at Dulles Airport, or Reagan National.”
“That’s a plan.” He kissed her. “Go play with worms.”
He stayed out of her way, for the most part. But, Jesus, after a couple hours on the computer, a man wanted a beer on a Sunday evening. And some chips, which he’d had to sneak in, as she didn’t have a single item of junk food in the place.
When he walked into the kitchen, she sat, hands in her lap, staring at her screen. He eased open the fridge, took out a beer, glanced her way, eased open the cabinet where he’d stashed the chips. Sour-cream-and- onion.
And she turned.
“I’ll be out of your way in a second.”
“I did it.”
He studied her face, set the beer aside. “You finished the program.”
“Yes. It works. Theoretically. I’ve tested it several times. I can’t actually run it into the network until it’s time, so I can’t be absolutely certain. But I am. Certain it will work.”
He grinned, came over, boosted her up by the elbows for a kiss. “You’re a genius.”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you look happy?”
“I am. I’m … numb, I think. I believed I could do it, but when I did, I realized I hadn’t really believed I could do it.” Because it ached a little, she pressed her fingers to her left temple. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Brooks. I can take down their network, corrupt every file, every program. I can shut them down, no matter what operating system or computer any individual uses. I can do it, and, doing it immediately after I siphon the funds, they’ll be ruined. Broken.”
Now she pressed her hand to her heart. “And before I do that, I can give the authorities enough to shut down a string of operations, use that to prosecute other lieutenants and soldiers, until the Volkov
“Humpty Dumpty them.”
She let out a breathless laugh. “Yes. Yes. I didn’t really believe I could do it,” she murmured. “If I had, I’d have done it before I agreed to testify.”
He kept his face blank. “Do you want to step away from that?”
“You’d let me.” As he often did with her, she framed his face in her hands. “I love you so much. You’d let me step away, even though it’s against your code. But no, I won’t. I can’t. It’s part of the whole, part of who I want to
