some point. Damn it, do you how much those things cost? And this one had a camera and everything.”
“You have a phone number for Kahsan?”
“No, a wireless link to the Internet. I could have posted a message that way. What about your phone?”
“It’s a two-way. I have a Palm to connect to e-mail, but I’m not carrying it. We need to get to a computer, fast.”
“I know just the place,” Sabrina said. “You said Havre de Grace, right? I’ve been there a bunch of times looking for antiques and stuff for the house. If I remember correctly, and we know I do, there is a library in that town that should have what we’re looking for. How much time do you think we have?”
“They’re going to be stuck in the woods for a while, but they’ll call Krueger.”
“What will he do?”
“He’ll call me. Let’s get to the library. Once we get the message off, his hand is going to be forced. He might have to consider letting us do this our way.”
She stuck to the back roads until she again found herself driving south. They pulled up into the quaint historic town and after a few turns found the library. Sabrina parked the car and got out. For the first time she saw the damage that had been done to the body.
She whistled softly and over the hood of the car she met Quinlan’s gaze with a worried expression. The paint was ruined and the driver’s side of the car was dented beyond repair.
“Hey, you don’t think they’re going to make me pay for this, do you?”
He didn’t bother to answer, but merely pointed to the doors of the library. She studied his face for a moment and saw a look that she hadn’t seen in some time. There was determination and there was steel.
Quinlan was on the hunt.
She remembered telling Krueger to send her the best. This close to the end, she was damn glad he’d listened to her.
Chapter 16
“How are you going to do this?” Quinlan asked. He’d already given her the information she needed to pass on to Kahsan, but he was curious how she was going to deliver it. “I don’t imagine Kahsan has an AOL account.”
Sabrina sat at the computer and had to connect to the Internet via a traditional phone line. The library had what they called a research center, which translated to a medium-size room filled with three long tables that held three aging PCs on each table. She and Quinlan chose the table farthest from the door and the last computer to the right. They were the only ones in the room and pretty much the only two people in the building at this hour, other than the librarian, of course.
The sound of the modem ringing faintly had Sabrina rolling her eyes. “Some research center. I’m dialing out on a 56K modem. I might as well be back in the stone age. They need a DSL.”
“Be grateful for what we have.”
Finally, a standard MSN browser blinked into focus. Sabrina didn’t waste time with the search engine, but immediately went to the Web-address line at the top and started to type.
“You’re kidding me,” Quinlan said as he leaned over her shoulder.
“Never let it be said the man doesn’t have a twisted sense of humor.”
The Disney World logo came into focus, then slowly inch-by-inch the Web page revealed itself on the screen.
“You’re going to contact the world’s most vicious terrorist through the Disney home page?”
“Not exactly the home page. The message board.”
“Hmm, excuse me. Are you finding everything you need?”
Together they lifted their heads at the voice. They had company. The librarian. A stereotypical elderly woman with her gray hair pulled tightly into a bun, she had an annoying habit of poking her head into the computer room every few minutes and asking them if they needed any help.
Sabrina couldn’t tell if the woman was bored or perhaps suspicious. She imagined she looked like hell and Quinlan was no fashion plate in blacks slacks and a ski jacket.
“We’re fine,” Sabrina told the woman, but she continued to linger.
Then Quinlan’s phone rang.
“Oh, sir, I’m terribly sorry, but we don’t allow the use of cell phones in the library.” She pointed to a sign next to the door that showed a cell phone in the center of a circle with a red line painted through it. “Too distracting for people trying to read and work, you understand.”
She waited for a minute so she could see that he had actually turned the phone off, before she shuffled away.
Sabrina actually giggled. “Our national security system thwarted by a librarian. You’ve got to love it.”
“I’ll take this outside.” He made a motion as if to leave, then stopped, his eyes watching her as the screen continued to load.
“Alarm go off again?” she wondered aloud, feeling his indecision.
She wished she could have said that the look in his eyes was concern over leaving her on her own. But Quinlan knew better than anyone that she could take care of herself. She thought about the next few hours and how they were going to manage Kahsan’s capture or kill when it was clear he still didn’t completely trust her.
He was trying; she supposed she should give him that.
Perhaps bringing him with her wasn’t the best move. His suspicion could end up getting them both killed. In the end, though, it came down to the odds. Two against one was always better than one on one. So she sucked in her breath, gritted her teeth and tried to pacify him.
“All I’m going to do is give him the location you gave me. And I’m going to be doing that in code, so it’s not like you would have been able to follow it even if I was passing on a secret warning.”
Grimly, he turned and left the room with the two-way phone clutched in his hand.
As she stared at the slowly processing monitor she thought back to earlier in the hotel room. He’d been the first to kiss her. He’d been the first to break.
Deliberately, she ran her tongue over her lips, still tasting him there. The urgency in his kiss had been on the point of desperation. As though he’d waited as long as was humanly possible for the contact he needed.
A man didn’t kiss a woman that way when he believed she ultimately would betray him. At least not a man like Quinlan. She was going to have to count on that. She was going to have to have faith that when push came to shove, he was going to believe her. Believe in her.
It might be the only thing that saved their lives.
Finally the message board appeared on the screen and Sabrina logged on with the name she’d given Kahsan earlier.
Kahsan would read something else.
Just as she hit the send button, Quinlan returned. She leaned back in the hard chair.
“Is it done?”
“I sent it. How often he’s patrolling the message board, I don’t know. Where he is and how long it will take him to get to the location? I don’t know that, either.”
“You didn’t set up a method for him to reply?”
She shook her head. “No point. The plan was for me to pass the address then go along with the agent to the location and simply stall until he got there. But he knows I would only be able to stall for so long before someone got suspicious.”
“And you passed along the number of agents with you,” he assumed.
“I told him one,” she answered.
Quinlan swore softly. “He’ll never believe that. He’ll never buy that we only sent one agent to pick you up and
