At the near end of the room, above the door to the kitchen, an exit sign glowed dimly. Looking over her shoulder, she could see the hostess’s podium near the front door. It felt comfortable to be near an exit, but she got out of her chair and sat down in the opposite chair so she could see anyone entering the dining room from the front.
She looked over the menu and had narrowed her selection to a few things by the time the waitress arrived with her drink. Caitlin made the final cut, ordering calamari for an appetizer and a shark steak for her entree.
As soon as the waitress left, Caitlin picked up the glass and downed a third of the Manhattan in one gulp. Its smooth warmth spread to her stomach.
Now what, Ms. Maxwell? You’ve shaken the killer for now, but you’re a thousand miles from home and don’t know who to trust. The first order of business is to get some food in you, and that’s taken care of. But then what? You can’t trust anyone in this town, certainly not the police. Who else is in on this? Is that Romax character a real policeman? Is Patricia Ferguson in with them or did she really call the police? Holdren implied they had patrol cars available and certainly no one but the police had access to patrol cars. And just what the hell do they want with you?
She needed help, but from whom? The only person she knew in San Francisco besides Koenig and Teigue, and she wasn’t sure she could trust them, was ... John Blalock. God, she hadn’t seen him in twelve years. Only by accident had she even learned he was in San Francisco. She’d come across a reference to him on the Web a few months ago and had tracked it to a home page that indicated he now did business in the Bay Area. She could probably trust him or at least she had been able to once, but she hadn’t seen him since before her wedding.
A lot had changed since then.
He’d once saved her life. Would he be as willing to do it again?
The calamari arrived. It had been sautéed in garlic and lemon before being browned in olive oil and tasted delicious. While she munched on it, Caitlin took the notebook computer from her purse. She pushed the appetizer plate to one side, set the notebook down, and powered up. She logged into the restaurant’s free Wi-Fi. Activating her Web browser, Caitlin searched the area phone directories for John Q. Blalock, but it yielded nothing. She dropped out of the telephone database and called up a search engine. A minute more and she had a list of references to John Blalock.
One was the item she’d noticed last month. The article concerned the return of stolen industrial secrets to a small Bay Area firm by the Blalock Security Service of San Francisco. It provided a brief bio of the owner of the service. When it mentioned the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Caitlin realized it had to be John Q. Blalock.
She cross-referenced to Blalock Security Service and found its Web page address. Accessing it, she received a list of services offered and a list of references to past employers of the Blalock Security Service. She recognized many of the companies on that list.
The page had the usual feedback notation at the bottom, but it also had an emergency response button.
Caitlin clicked on it, and her screen went red. A second later, an icon, a yellow rose with the electrical symbol for a lightning suppressor, appeared with the subscript.
“Searching–”
Caitlin watched the screen for a minute, growing impatient, but then the subscript changed to: “Found–”
She waited another thirty seconds, then the screen shifted into a chat mode with Blalock Security Service at the top and her screen log-on at the bottom.
“You have an emergency?” appeared in the top box.
Caitlin put down her fork and typed. “Yes, I do. Is this John?”
“Yes. State your problem.”
“John, this is Caitlin Maxwell, from Colorado.”
There was a noticeable hesitation before the next line appeared. “Hello, Caitlin. It’s been awhile. What’s your emergency?”
“Is this secure?”
“As secure as anything can be.”
“I’m in San Francisco. I’m being hunted by people I don’t know. They’ve broken into my room, tried to kill me.”
He responded immediately, “Are you safe where you are?”
“I don’t know. I’m in a public place.”
“Safe enough for the moment then. Do you want to go into detail?”
“Not over the net. I used the restaurant’s Wi-Fi, but they may be able to track it back to me.”
“Right, I’ll meet you. I’m going to send an encrypted address. The decryption key will be–”
Caitlin leaned back. Security over the web was always a problem. You couldn’t encrypt things unless the other party knew the decryption key and you couldn’t send it to them through unsecured channels, or anyone else could use it to decrypt the same message. How was he going to do this?
Letters appeared on the screen. “The name of the last place I saw you.”
Ah, that limited the choices. “All right.”
“Sending.”
A download symbol appeared briefly and then disappeared.
“File received. How soon?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“All right, I’ll–”
Caitlin stopped typing as she noticed movement by the entrance. A woman, wearing a dark suit with her blond hair pulled back in a tight knot, had come in, and stood talking to the hostess. She appeared to be showing her a photo.
A premonition seized Caitlin. She killed the connection and quickly returned the notebook computer to her bag. She stood up.
The hostess shook her head and handed the photo back to the stranger.
Turning away, Caitlin walked
