Cut and Run

Larson took a chair facing her. “It’s a two-step process. Our best shot, our most likely prospect, remains Markowitz.”

On the way to the condo, he’d told her all he knew about Markowitz. Hope already had a better grasp of the computer and technology aspects of the case than he did.

“So you’re saying the Romeros got to Markowitz.”

“Or they didn’t have to because it could have been his idea in the first place. No one is saying Leopold Markowitz walks on water. He could be bent. He could be broke. He could have approached the Romeros for protection while he went about stealing the list. We won’t know until we get there.”

“Are you saying if we find Markowitz, we find Pe

“It’s a possibility, yes. If the Romeros are behind this-and I’m convinced they are-then finding Markowitz gives us the Romeros, and we’re that much closer to Pe

“And how do we find him?”

“WITSEC is convinced he’ll need a supercomputer to accomplish the decryption.”

“If it’s one-twenty-eight-bit or higher, then, yes,” she said, interrupting. “It would be painfully slow, even on the fastest PC.”

“And with such computers in short supply,” he continued, “that makes them a good lead. We have guys spread out from accelerators at Stanford to cyclotrons at U of M, Indiana, and Duke.” He saw a sparkle in her eyes. “What is it?” he asked.

“By now, knowing you guys, you’ve confirmed where he last was seen?”

“Stanford- Palo Alto, yes. Just before that, Wash U. And he was in any number of places before Palo Alto. We’re still chasing his travel, his finances, and the like. It’s a job even tougher because Justice is not eager to let anyone know he’s missing.”

“But that’s stupid!”

“Government work,” he said, as frustrated by it as she was.

“What department at Wash U.?”

“Planetary Sciences, I think it was,” he answered.

“Makes sense. Weather prediction. That would be a Silicon Graphics or even a Cray. Those machines create processor reports, ways to determine a machine’s activity, even if they’re not showing Markowitz himself as having been logged on.”

He welcomed her excitement, her computer expertise surfacing. “I’m assuming we’ve checked all that,” he told her.

“I can’t just sit here,” she said. “Can you?”

“No.” For one thing, he’d fall asleep.

A look of defiance overcoming her, she said, “Good. Then let’s check for ourselves. I’ll need access to the processor reports. We can start at Wash U. ”

“I can’t take you out in public.”

“I thought the best place to hide a person like me was out in the open.”

He felt himself losing ground. She had the will of seven. He felt a heat hanging between them, wondering if she felt it, too.

“Trust me,” she said, “I’ve become something of an expert in the art of disguise.”

He told her if she slept for a few hours, he’d consider it.

She nodded her assent.

Larson double-checked his BlackBerry. No messages. Rotem would understand his going AWOL, would contact him when he was certain FATF was safe again, the internal threat contained. Fatigue was getting the best of him, he realized.

Hope brought him out of it. “The point being that if they aren’t going to bring Pe

Her hands were right there on the table, and seeing them Larson felt compelled to reach out and surround them with his, which he did. Of all he’d done that day, he considered this his biggest act of bravery. Hope did not pull her hands away. Instead, just as the awkwardness of the moment required him to let go of her, she looked up and they met eyes, and his hands stayed where they were.

“Thank you,” she said.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The bathwater continued to rise, and Pe

At a little over the halfway mark, the rising water hit the overflow drain, forcing Pe

Water still seeped out, but there was more water coming in than going out. The tub continued to fill.

She peed in her pants, into the tub, unable to hold it. Sight of the yellow stream motivated her. Soaked through, the duct tape had lost some of its stickiness. The tape at her knees came loose, her knees able to bend, her ankles wiggling.

She hooked a knee, rolled over the edge of the tub and crashed onto the floor of the bathroom, face-first, a splash of bathwater following with her. As she sat up, she saw the water on the floor was pink. Blood pink. Her nose screamed with pain, and she screamed right along with it-a muted, worthless cry forced through a knotted sock. The thin puddle of water grew as she kneeled. A dead fly floated past. This all but yanked her to standing.

Then, her knees giving out, she sank back and collapsed onto the toilet with a loud bang. Try as she did, she could not get hold of the chip of pottery she’d hidden in her sock. It took her several minutes to get feeling back into her legs. Her strength returned, she kicked and fluttered, and tried everything to break the tape at her ankles, but it held.

Soaked through to the bone, more determined than ever, she rose, held her stance, and hopped toward the bathroom door, angling like a penguin to use her right hand, still taped to her waist, to try to open the door. Locked.

She remembered the man with the scars reversing the doorknob. On her side of the door the knob now had a hole in it. But Pe

Pe

Her arms and hands held to her sides with tape, she nonetheless fingered the belt and drew it around her waist toward her fingers. The buckle caught on the first belt loop. But this proved close enough for her to deftly unfasten her belt with outstretched fingers. It did not go smoothly. She fell back onto the toilet twice, losing her balance, only to stand again and continue with her efforts. Finally, the belt buckle came open and Pe

She had to push her arm against the knob and slide down to make it turn. It took four tries before the door finally came open, the bedroom lit only by the shifting colors of the TV.

Her face exploded into a smile: She’d done it. Better, she’d done it herself. Along with the fear, the dread of Him returning, came a gleeful sense of accomplishment. Usually Mommy did everything; told her what to do; made all her decisions. Somehow, this one act of floating herself out of the tub and wi

Wanting nothing more than to find her mother and tell her everything she’d been through, all that she’d accomplished, Pe