Viljo just chuckled. “Ivan pays me to be the best. Enjoy the show.”
More windows popped up on the screen, and the computer took on a labored wheeze. “Hey, Vil? Remind me to have you look at this thing later, okay? It doesn’t sound so good.”
“Shoot it. Bury it. Let me build you a new one. In the meantime, I have messages from Sveta, and Father Gregory, and all is well with them.”
“Father Gregory?”
“The senior member of the Ordo Sancti Silvii. It turns out, he is a very pleasant man, and he said to thank Ivan for the consideration.”
“Well, that’s good.” Yay for diplomacy, I guess?
“And in the bad news, I did confirm that the phone number is a prepaid cell phone. Nothing useful there.”
“Dammit.”
“Indeed.” Windows vanished, others reappeared, and the computer whined plaintively.
“Seriously, Viljo, stop with the windows. I don’t think this thing’s gonna handle it much longer.”
He frowned at the camera. “That bad? Strange…” Still, the windows shut down immediately, and the noise in the tower subsided a bit. “I was very disappointed about the phone, as you may guess, but I have discovered something else that may redeem me.”
The image on the webcam got choppier, and I couldn’t even make his mouth match up with the words I was hearing. I frowned, fiddling with the buttons on the monitor in the vain hope that it would help. It didn’t. “Well, what is it?”
“Miguel’s credit card was used, one week ago, in Del Rio, Texas.”
“Say again?”
“Miguel, or someone with his credit card, used his card in Texas.” Even his voice over the headset was starting to hitch. “They booted me out once. I am still looking for another back door so I can get more specifics.”
“Viljo, man, you sound like a drive-through intercom. What’s up with the connection today?”
He peered into the camera, giving me a close-up of his nose for a second, as if he could see across the distance between KC and Colorado. “Did you get a second computer?”
“No… why?”
His frown was very clear, even in the grainy feed. “Because… there is something…” I could hear his keyboards rat-a-tat-tatting as his fingers flew over them, and Mira’s computer gave a strained whine.
“What are you doing, Viljo?” I’m not even sure he heard me the first time. “Viljo? What’s up, man?”
“Shit!” He vanished from the webcam’s view for a few frames, but I could still hear him. “He’s… in your… - chine!”
Who was what? I watched in fascination as the geek’s choppy image flitted around his little control room frantically. “What the hell is going on?”
“Hack-… in… machine. Catch this… -ther fucker.. .”
Meanwhile, the computer was making a horrible roaring noise, like a jet engine about to take off. I eyed it warily, wondering if something evil was going to jump out of it at me. Stranger things had happened. “What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing… -got it…” There was a pause, and then he added, “I think.”
I could only watch, and I had a crappy view as it was. Viljo seemed to be teleporting around the room, so badly did the image jump. One moment he was at his usual keyboards, the next he was in the back of the room fiddling with something, and then he was front and center again, a snarl on his geeky little face.
Though I had no idea what he was doing, I saw the moment it all went wrong. There was a look of absolute horror on Viljo’s face. “Shit shit shit!” He vanished again; then his silhouette appeared in the rear, yanking cords out of equipment willy-nilly.
I lost the visual feed and the sound at the same moment, Viljo blipping out of existence. Then my monitor went black, and Mira’s computer gave one last ominous pop and was silent. Blue smoke trickled from the tower in a stench of burned electronics. “Oh shit.” What the hell just happened?
The phone’s ringing nearly jarred me out of my seat, and I snatched the cordless before anyone else in the house could get to it. “Hello?”
“Jesse?”
“Viljo?” He sounded different on the phone. Younger, maybe. “What the hell?”
“Shut your machine down. They were hacking through your security clearance.”
I eyed the now-smoking ruin. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Did you get him?”
“No, dammit. I threw everything I had at him, and he walked through it like nothing. I had to use the air firewall.”
“The what?”
“You know-yank the cords out of the walls. No Net connection, no hack.”
“You’re sure he didn’t get anything?” I could hear Mira coming down the hallway, no doubt drawn by the aroma of charred motherboard. I was doomed.
“I do not think he did. It is going to take me a bit to be sure. Tell Ivan, until further notice, Grapevine is off- line.”
I groaned. Ivan was going to chew me a new asshole, as soon as Mira was done throttling me for nuking her computer. “I’m a dead man.”
“What?”
“Nothing. You gotta get it up and functional again, Viljo. We need a way to keep an eye on everyone, and you’re it right now.”
I could almost see him straighten up, emboldened by his sworn duty. “I will. A day, maybe two. I need to put some extra security in place. It will take equipment I cannot get easily.”
“While you’re at it, order the stuff to build Mira a new computer.” I sighed, shaking my head. “This one is toast.”
“Ouch. You are a dead man. I will call when things are up again.”
“Take care of yourself, Viljo. And here, talk to Mira about her new computer.” I tossed the phone at my startled wife as she entered the room, then fled toward the safety of the shower.
I stayed under the running water until I was certain that Viljo had time to talk Mira out of any retaliatory rages. I also ran out of hot water.
The shower eased my aching muscles, but the right calf still wasn’t sound. Testing it as I moved around the bathroom, I kept thinking that they used to shoot lame horses. The thought of two weeks, two weeks beat inside my skull like a bass drum. I had two weeks to get better again. Two weeks to keep Mira from ending up a widow, and Annabelle from going fatherless.
As I limped out of the bathroom, I could hear my cell phone ringing in the den. “I got it!” I did my best to run down the hall with a towel draped around my hips, grabbing the phone just before it went to voice mail. “H’lo?”
There was a puzzled pause, then, “Dawson?”
“Ivan!”
“I am to be interrupting? You are to be sounding out of breath.”
I flopped into my chair, keeping my weight off the right arm lest I wind up sprawled on the floor. “Nah, you caught me in the shower is all. What’s the word?” Water dripped from my hair to puddle around the castors of my chair as I talked.
“I was wishing to ask you the same question. What news are you to be having?”
Well, let’s see, I had a Mohawked demon stalking me, a blue car tried to run me off the road a couple times, someone just blew up Mira’s computer, there was probably a warrant out for my arrest, and I was gimpy as hell in one leg with a fight coming up. I told him none of these things.
“We have a problem with Grapevine. Someone tried to get in again today, and Viljo had to take the whole system off-line to keep them out.”
A string of Ukrainian curses flowed from my phone, and I waited patiently for the flood to subside. “Was any information to being compromised?”
