Since it was safe to use Peter’s landline, I went out to my car and got the instructions to my cell. I looked through them to see if there was a way to retrieve messages from a landline. There was. I followed the instructions and picked up my messages. There was one from my sister asking if I’d be coming to Thanksgiving with the family. That felt totally bizarre. For one thing, they had no idea what I’d been going through; for another, Thanksgiving was only a few days away. You’d think if they wanted me there they’d have asked before now. Fortunately, there were no other messages.
Then I pulled out my computer and tried to get on Peter’s wireless. He had password on it. At this point, I was getting pretty sick of passwords. I knew Peter pretty well, and I wondered if I’d be able to guess it. I had no idea what the name of his first pet was, but I did know the name of his ex, Donald. I tried it. Didn’t work. I tried a few combinations of Donald and years that he might have been born. Donald1978, Donald77, things like that. Then, on a whim, I tried Donald&Peter. That worked. I was on. Moments later, I had mailed the file to myself. Now I had three copies. One on the flash, one on the laptop, and one in cyberspace. That wouldn’t necessarily keep me safe, but it gave me options.
As I ate my Pad Thai, I wondered if Detective Hanson was still following the guy in the Buick convertible.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, “Shit! Shit!” I’d been so worried about being found through some fancy new technology, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I might be found through simple, old-fashioned footwork. They’d had my computer; they’d probably printed out my address book. Hell, they might have copied my entire hard drive.
All they had to do was work their way through, checking with people to see if they’d seen me, until they got to Peter’s name. Warren, Peter Warren. If they began at the beginning of the alphabet, it would take them quite a while to get to him. Well, maybe not such a long while. I didn’t know all that many people.
Jumping out of bed, I threw my clothes on and started grabbing my things. I had enough cash to spend the rest of the night in a hotel, thanks to my work as a masseur. I figured I should do that. Once I had everything, I turned off the light and left Peter’s apartment. It was around two in the morning. I walked down the complex’s sidewalk toward the street. Almost to the street, I was brought up short when a man stepped in front of me. Carlos Maldonado.
I looked into his angry eyes, then at the gun he held in his hand. “Turn around and go back to your friend’s apartment,” he said.
I wondered if he was waiting for Hanson. Was that why he was on the street? Had she said, “meet me out front then we’ll go in and kill him”, just as though they were planning some kind of shopping excursion?
Having no choice, I turned around and headed back to Peter’s apartment, Carlos close behind me. When we got in the door, Carlos asked, “Do you have it?”
There wasn’t much point in playing coy, so I said, “Yes, I’ve got it. It’s in my bag.”
He snatched my bag away from me, unzipped it, and began to rifle through it. A moment later, he looked up at me, pissed off. “Where is it?”
“The key chain. If you pull the duck’s head off, it’s a thumb drive.”
He pulled the duck’s head off and stared at the metal square end of the drive. “Is this the only copy?” he asked.
“Yes,” I lied.
“That would be stupid. You must have made a copy.”
“The file is password-protected. I never figured out how to open it.” He stood there, deciding whether to kill me. I still held my bag in my hand. At the bottom of the bag was a knife wrapped inside of a towel. It wasn’t much help against a gun, but it was something. If I could get to it, that is.
“What’s on the drive?” I asked, trying to sound like I didn’t already know.
He just stared at me.
“You killed two people to get it.”
“I have a big future ahead of me. City council. Maybe mayor some day. Maybe more. I’m going to be able to do good things for people. Do two lives really matter when compared to all the people I can help?”
I tried not to think too much about this, instead, I stayed focused on letting my hand fall into the bag and extending my fingers until I felt the towel.
“That’s kind of a leap, don’t you think?” I said, confronting him in hopes of keeping him distracted. “You killed to cover your ass, plain and simple.”
He raised the gun and aimed. I had my hand on the towel, separating it, my finger grazing the knife as I tried to grasp it without being noticed.
“They were blackmailing you, but that doesn’t make it okay to be my self-appointed executioner.”
“Who are you to tell me what’s right and wrong?”
“I’m innocent. I never tried to blackmail you. How are you going to justify killing me?” I could see him wavering at the thought. I had my fingers on the knife. I got my fist around the handle and pulled it out of the bag as I stepped forward. Before I really knew what I was doing,
