Johansen nodded without smiling.
Vasquez sighed. “Sorry for snapping,” she said without looking at him. Johansen nodded again and visibly relaxed.
From his vantage point in the back seat, Ray slid his eyes from one of them to the other. He wondered vaguely about their relationship. They seemed closer somehow, more concerned.
When they reached the house they all got out of the car. Johansen half-lifted Ray out of the backseat and the doors crumped behind them. Ray’s legs were so stiff from his ordeal that he could barely walk.
“I’m really grateful that you guys are giving me this chance,” said Ray. “I realize that it must not be easy for you.”
“We should have already gone through Ingles machine,” said Vasquez.
“Won’t Verr be pissed if we do it now?” asked Johansen.
“It’s a valid lead in both cases. Including the one we’re on now,” she said.
“He’ll still be pissed. I bet he’ll report it.”
“Like I said: Screw him,” replied Vasquez with a smile.
“You two will feel and look good if this somehow leads to my son’s freedom,” said Ray. He felt the moment of hesitation and discomfort that his words caused them. He could tell they already counted Justin as dead and gone. Well, he thought to himself, screw them too.
Still in a fog of uncomfortable silence, they entered and the screen door slammed shut behind them. The sound made them all jump a bit. Ray shuffled into the den, heading for Ingles’ computer. He paused when he got there and gestured to Johansen impatiently with his cuffed wrists. Johansen looked at Vasquez, who nodded. He produced a key and unlocked one of the cuffs, swung it around Ray’s body and cuffed it in front of him.
“Wha-” said Ray, then he grimaced and nodded at the agent. Best not to look this gift-horse in the mouth. He could still type this way. That should be all he needed.
The first problem presented itself immediately: The system was passworded. Everything was password- protected, including the BIOS setup in CMOS, the hard disk booting process, and doubtlessly, the network connection and any sensitive files on the hard disk. Ray sighed.
“This will take a minute. Any suggestions?”
Vasquez looked over his shoulder. The BIOS setup password was first. If they could get into that, they could cause the system to boot from an external drive and thereby bypass the hard drive’s boot-up password altogether.
Together, they tried all the obvious ones: just hitting the enter key, typing: “password”, and “santa”.
“Nothing,” said Ray. “Let’s short the battery on the motherboard.”
“That can be dangerous,” cautioned Vasquez.
“Look, if my son is still alive somewhere, he can’t last long with Ingles’ and the rest dead. We have a big time factor here.”
She nodded. They turned the system off, removed the back of the computer and touched a screwdriver to the battery posts on the motherboard. This created a short circuit and within a few seconds blanked the computer’s CMOS chips. Essentially, the computer “forgot” its password and setup.
They then put it back together, fired it up and were able to set the machine up to their liking. Booting on an external drive, they bypassed the boot-up password on the hard disk. Next, they began searching the hard disk for files. Vasquez always carried a boot drive with a set of excellent hacker’s utilities for just such a purpose. Ray could see that she was anxious to take his place and work it herself. It was what he had been hoping for.
“Look,” he said after a few minutes of searching. “I’m feeling a bit sick.” The truth was that he could barely hang onto a thread of thought.
“I’ll bet,” chuckled Johansen. “After a night in that trunk. How long since you ate anything?”
“More than a day. And that was just Nog’s stale snacks. Too bad he didn’t keep a stash in the trunk.”
“I know my search utilities better than you do, anyway,” said Vasquez, sliding into his place as he staggered out of the chair. She bent forward with a look of concentration.
Ray smiled and Johansen caught him. They exchanged knowing glances. She had taken over the legwork on this one. Johansen led him into Ingles’ kitchen and they raided the place for a quick snack. They made what his wife Sarah would have referred to as “bachelor sandwiches”. Two pieces of bread and four slices of lunchmeat, slapped together. No condiments, or any other sissy stuff. It was Spartan fare, Ray reflected, but filling.
“Just don’t tell anyone that we did this,” said Johansen as they wolfed down stolen sandwiches.
“This bastard ruined my life. The least I can do is eat some of his food,” muttered Ray bitterly. He decided he almost liked Johansen. The man could certainly eat. No less than four wads of bread and meat vanished into his broad mouth.
After a few minutes, they went back into the den to hover over Vasquez’s shoulder. “What have you got?” asked Ray.
“There was nothing in the e-mail directory of any value-except for one zip file that I’m trying to get into.”
Ray examined the screen. There appeared to be a fairly large compressed file in the e-mail directory. It was unreadable until the compression process was reversed. The problem was that there was yet another password attached to this particular file. This password could not easily be bypassed.
Again and again they tried one password after another. The process was known as “hacking”. Finally, after about half an hour, Ray watched as Vasquez typed in the password: “Sarah”.
Immediately, data spewed out on the screen. Ray blinked in alarm. What were the implications of that password? How had she known?
“My wife’s name?” he asked aloud.
Vasquez didn’t look at him. “This message looks good. It appears to have the word Santa in it.”
“ Sarah was the password?” he demanded. “Why?”
“Look, Dr. Vance,” said Vasquez. “If you’re right, we need every second to work on finding your son.”
He stared at her, knowing she was avoiding his questions. “Just tell me in one sentence then: Why?”
She looked back to the keyboard and brought up a screen full of text.
Ray looked to Johansen. The man’s face was troubled. Ray knew what he was thinking: they were both men, and they had just eaten a sandwich together. Did that mean you owed a guy something?
“You should ask your wife about that one, Vance,” he rumbled. Vasquez stiffened at his words, but said nothing.
Ray turned back to the screen and tried to put it all out of his mind. What did it matter? The guy was dead anyway. He would figure it out later. Right now he wanted to find his son.
Things weren’t so simple, however. Somewhere, in the darkest corner of his mind, an annoying, chattering monkey would not be quelled, would not be silenced so easily. What if she caused all this? screamed the monkey. What if your precious wife has been a traitor? What if she has brought about all this hellish misfortune upon her family? What then, Dr. Raymond Vance?
Vasquez was saying something. She sounded excited. Ray blinked and tried to focus. “What?” he asked.
“There’s a letter here. A letter to you,” she said. “It says something about buried treasure. And about a man named Spurlock.”
“Buried treasure?” asked Ray. Even as he worked to read the lengthy note, a popping sound came from the driveway as gravel spit from beneath rolling tires. Several cars pulled up. Moments later a tall black man in a dark coat strode into the house with the air of a father that has discovered a pack of naughty children. Behind him came his partner and four sheriff’s deputies in kakhi uniforms.
He lifted a finger and extended it to the length of his very long arm. He aimed the finger like a pistol at the computer they all huddled around.
“Get away from that machine!” he roared.
… 5 Hours and Counting…
Ray turned his head away from the man and continued reading the e-mail message as fast as he could. He would ignore the intruder, he decided. He needed all the information that he could get. His eyes scanned the text as quickly and cleanly as he could. What he read there made his blood run cold.
