This is the creepy part. While I was in jail, Rudker (or someone he hired) broke into my house and took the disk. So now I’m unemployed, facing criminal charges, likely to lose my custody hearing (which could send me over the edge), and have no way to help the people who will eventually take the drug.
I keep telling myself to forget about the drug, but I can’t. People will die. And Rudker doesn’t care. He just wants to make more money. It infuriates me, but I don’t know what to do now. Sorry to lay this on you, but it’s been a wild week, and I had to tell someone. Thanks for listening.- Sula.
She pressed Send, then used Google to search for the state’s employment website. She hoped to dig up more job opportunities and find out what she could about filing for unemployment.
There weren’t many jobs and none involved reporting, writing, or communications of any kind. Except one TV producer position, which, in the Salary section, said “guarantees minimum wage.” Great. She clicked through the site looking for filing info. Her cell phone rang, startling her. Timidly, Sula picked it up, half expecting it to be Rudker. “Hello.”
Paul’s voice shrieked at her. “Why didn’t you call me? This is the wildest story I’ve ever heard. It’s so unlike you and yet, so like you. I want details. Start at the beginning. Where did you hear the first conversation?”
Sula recounted the events of the past six days, with a dozen interruptions from Paul, who kept repeating in a stunned voice what she had just told him.
“You went to the morgue and looked at a dead body?”
“You ran from your boss and he chased you?”
“You spent a night in jail?”
Paul’s hysteria made her downplay her reaction to it all, but she had, in fact, taken more Xanax in the past week than in the past six months.
“Unless he has the judge in his pocket, those charges will be dismissed.” Paul sounded sure of himself, even over the phone.
“I hope so. Fortunately, my court date is a week after my custody hearing.”
“Does your lawyer know about any of this?”
“Not yet. I plan to tell her though.”
“Sula, you did the right thing. Don’t doubt that. I wish I had your courage.” Paul sounded a little choked up, and it made her feel self-conscious.
“Hey, don’t get gushy on me. Bravery and stupidity are sometimes hard to tell apart. If I lose Tate over this, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Sula, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I don’t think you should get your hopes up about the hearing.”
She knew Paul felt that way, so she rarely discussed it with him, but now she felt defensive. “You don’t think anything I do now will make a difference?” She popped up and began to pace.
“I didn’t say that. But-”
She cut him off. “What do you think I should do about Prolabs?”
“You have to expose them. By the way, what was on the disk?”
“Patient records of the two guys in Puerto Rico who killed themselves and two other files I couldn’t open but that are labeled DNA.”
“Would those files still be in the company’s computer system?”
“I don’t know. Rudker probably destroyed everything he could find. Why do you ask?”
“I could get into the database.”
Chapter 18
She had forgotten Paul was a reformed hacker. If there was such a thing. Being a hacker was a lot like being a gambler. People might stop doing it, but they never really got it out of their system.
“I can’t let you do that.” She chewed on her lower lip. “It’s too risky.”
“Not really. Hacking into the Defense Department’s system is risky. Prolabs’ IT people will never know I was there.”
“Really?” She felt a little surge of hope. “It would be worth a look.”
“Why don’t you come over and keep me company while I look at their system.”
“Sure. When?”
“Right now. It’ll be fun. I haven’t done any snooping in a long time.” Paul laughed. “Hey, before I got your e-mail, I was playing online chess with a smartass from Singapore. How boring is that for a Saturday night?”
“You’re one up on me. I’ll be over in twenty minutes.”
Still groggy from two sleepless nights in a row, she stopped for a diet Pepsi. She would need the caffeine to keep up with Paul’s energy. She crossed Ferry Street Bridge and drove out Martin Luther King Boulevard to a large apartment complex.
She shut off the truck and checked her watch: 9:33. A few years back, she’d gone through a phase of hating the habit but hadn’t been able to break it. Now it didn’t bother her. She took the stairs up to his unit two at a time. Paul greeted her with his usual big hug. Sometimes his affection made her uncomfortable; tonight it made her feel less alone in the world. She hugged him back with a good squeeze.
Physically, she and Paul were enough alike that people often thought they were brother and sister. They both had dark hair and eyes, light brown skin, and a slender, slightly taller than average build. Paul was Philippine and German, while she was Irish, Spanish, and Indian. People were often fascinated when they heard she belonged to a local Indian tribe, but Sula considered it an honorary membership that required no active participation. Her mother’s tales of growing up on the reservation had done the opposite of what she’d intended. Sula wanted no part of it. Some cultures had no place in the modern world.
“You’re home on a Saturday night. What’s up with James?” Sula peeled off her sweater. Paul had the heat going, and it was warm enough to strip down to shorts.
“He found a job in Portland, but I don’t want to move. So he’s not talking to me.”
“Do you think he’ll take the job anyway?”
“Hard to say. James is usually more talk than action, but the job is with an ad agency and he’s pretty excited.”
They moved into the living room where Paul kept his computer set up-three hard drives, two monitors, a printer/fax machine, a phone, a sound system, and a tangle of cords that looked like it could power a small city. A love seat and small TV occupied the other half of the room.
“Why don’t you go with him?” Sula asked. “What’s keeping you here in Eugene? I mean, since you don’t have family.”
“I’m comfortable here.” Paul parked in front of a monitor displaying a three dimensional chess board with cartoon rabbits for game pieces. “I hate the thought of starting all over. Friends-people like you-are too important to give up.”
“That’s sweet, but I would ditch you in a heartbeat for a great job in Portland.”
“As you should.” Paul sent an instant message to the guy in Singapore to let him know he would be leaving the game room for a while. He rolled his chair in front of the second monitor. “Prolabs, here we come.” He typed the company’s name into Google and pulled up its website. He turned to Sula and said, “We’re going to try an old fashioned Trojan horse.”
“What’s that?”
“Pretty much like it sounds.” Paul rubbed his hands together and grinned. Sula hadn’t seen him look this happy in a long time. “First, we send an e-mail to someone at the company. The e-mail contains an embedded program that copies itself to the company’s system when the recipient opens it. The program attaches itself to the guest directory and records users’ names and passwords for all the databases. Then we check the guest directory, find the program, and copy the passwords.”
She followed the scheme up to a point. “How do we check the guest directory?”
“That’s the hacker part. Don’t worry, I’ll get in.” Paul turned back to the computer. “Who do you want to send an e-mail to?”
