Mortal Fear

“It’s so simple. So clear. Don’t you see? You are a huntress who needs to be caught. A healer who needs to be healed. I am the wounded beast, Drewe. I-”

“Berkmann’s not in the building,” Miles says in my ear. “We’re on the second floor. SWAT confirms it.”

My pulse is racing. “He’s still talking, Miles.”

“Maybe he was telling the truth about being out of the country. Maybe he really has another base, another voice-rec unit somewhere. He probably has the money for it.”

“The phone company has a busy signal on the warehouse phone?”

“Yep. Christ, look at this.”

“What?”

“I’m at the computers. It’s serious stuff. Sun, Digital Equipment. Massive power here.”

“So where’s Berkmann?”

“Man, some of these boxes I don’t even recognize.”

I kneel beside Drewe and whisper in the shell of her ear. “They’re in the building. Keep talking.”

Her head bobs slightly. “Catherine played the piano?”

“Yes,”Berkmann replies. “She had a gift.”

“I play as well,” she says. This is a lie.

“You play Beethoven?”

“I prefer Chopin. Tell me something, Edward. Did Catherine breast-feed you?”

“Of course. There was no cow’s milk in the basements of Berlin.”

“Are you circumcised, Edward? Is that how they discovered your hemophilia?”

“No. That was for Jews. My uncle noticed it first, through abnormal bruising.”

Over Drewe’s shoulder, I watch Berkmann’s words materialize on-screen as flawlessly as film credits. He’s definitely using a voice-recognition system. But where is it? I turn away and walk back toward the desk that holds my Gateway computer. It sits purring like a faithful dog. Where could-

“Harper!”

Drewe’s yell shocks me out of myself. I whirl, afraid that my name has gone out over the data line, but she has her hand on the space bar.

“What is it?” I ask, moving to her side.

“I’m getting errors in Berkmann’s side of the conversation.”

A ball of ice forms in my chest. “What do you mean? Like typos?”

“More like dropouts. Wrong words. Nonwords.”

“Okay… I’ll check on it. Just keep talking to him.”

She releases the space bar and resumes the conversation, though in a less controlled voice.

“Miles?” I say into the phone.

Nothing.

I walk as far from Drewe as I can get and snarl, “Miles!”

“What?”

“Drewe’s getting errors from Berkmann!”

“You mean typos? All of a sudden?”

“Yes! But more like dropouts, she said.”

“There’s a lot of gear in this room, Harper, including a home-engineered phone system. I just picked up a receiver and heard a data stream.”

“Then Berkmann must be there. There must be a room in the building SWAT hasn’t found.”

“But where?”

Drewe’s voice control is degrading by the second. “Miles, what if he’sremotely using the system in front of you? You picking up that receiver could have caused the dropouts Drewe saw. Especially with a cellular data connection.”

“He’s never used it remotely before. I’m sure of it.”

“So that means he can’t?”

Miles clucks his tongue. “If he could have, why didn’t he? It’s a lot easier to talk than it is to type, especially when you’re flying a plane or hiding outside somebody’s house in the dark.”

“Maybe it’s technically possible, but not that reliable. So he just never messed with it.”

“Until now, you mean?”

A hot wave of fear rolls up my spine. “Miles, what if he knew all along we were using his error rate to predict his movements? Or that we could use it? When he killed Lenz’s wife, hewanted the FBI to know he was on the move, so he stuck to his old pattern and didn’t use voice recognition. He wanted them to see the errors.”

“And with Erin?”

“He just stayed off-line until he got here. That way there were no errors to see, even though he was moving.”

There is a sudden, awful silence.

“He’s known all along,” Miles says quietly. “It’s just like his back door into EROS. He saved it until he needed it.”

I feel like I’m riding an elevator whose cable just snapped.

“I’m going to pick up the receiver again,” Miles says. “Tell me what happens.”

Almost instantly Drewe throws up her right hand, then spins in her chair, an anxious look on her face.

“More errors?” I whisper.

She nods violently.

“We got errors, Miles. Would Berkmann have seen that?”

“Probably. He might think it was just line noise, though.”

“He’s not in New York, Miles.” I hesitate to voice the certainty that has crystallized in my brain. “I guess we know where he is.”

“Harper-”

“Tell Baxter to get somebody out here as fast as humanly possible. I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait!”

“Ciao, pal. Good knowing you.”

With an eerie sense of resignation, I hang up the phone, then walk to the office door and lock it. The heavy window blinds make it virtually impossible for someone outside to see into the room. From my desk I pick up a legal pad and a pen and scrawl,Berkmann may be here. Stay calm. I’m calling for help. Keep talking. Then I carry it over to Drewe and hold it where she can see it.

Her composure melts like ice thrown into a fire. My immediate concern is her voice. Berkmann can’t hear the fear crackling through it like electricity, but if she loses enough control, the voice-rec program may stop functioning. As she struggles to continue the conversation, I dial her father’s house. There are two other options-Sheriff Buckner and Wes Killen-but Bob will come faster. Besides, I made him a promise.

While the phone rings, I walk to one of the two front windows, slide the blind to the side and peek out into the blue dusk. The deputy’s car is still at the end of our drive, nose angled toward the highway. Because of the fading light and the car’s position, I can’t see whether he’s in it or not.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Anderson, it’s Harper. I need to talk to Dr. Anderson right now.”

“They’re not here.” Margaret’s voice is cold. “I’m here with Holly.”

“Who’s they?”

“Bob and Patrick. They went out to the cemetery to visit Erin.”

“At night?”

“That’s what they wanted to do. They’re grown men.”

“Do they have a cellular phone?”

“No. They took Bob’s old truck. You sound funny. What’s-”

I disconnect and dig Wes Killen’s cellular phone number out of my back pocket. My thumb is touching the keypad of the cordless when Berkmann’s voice shocks me into stillness.

“What’s the matter, Drewe?”