The Blue Nowhere

She sat down, scooted the chair forward.

"You're still here," he said, lowering his head slightly to speak through the holes in the Plexiglas. "I never heard from you. I assumed you'd left a couple of weeks ago."

She said nothing in response. Looked at the divider. "They added that."

The last time she'd been to visit him, several years ago, they'd sat at a table without a divider, a guard hovering over them. With the new system there was no guard; you gained privacy but you lost proximity. He would rather have had her close, Gillette decided, remembering during her visits how he'd loved to brush fingertips with her or press his shoe against the side of her foot, the contact producing an electric frisson that was akin to making love.

Gillette now found as he sat forward that he was air-keying furiously. He stopped and slipped his hands into his pockets.

He asked, "Did you talk to somebody about the modem?"

Elana nodded. "I found a lawyer. She doesn't know if it'll sell or not. But if it does, the way I'm handling it is I'll pay myself back for your lawyer's bill and my half of the house we lost. The rest is yours."

"No, I want you to have-"

She interrupted him by saying, "I postponed my plans. To go to New York."

He was silent, processing this. Finally he asked her, "For how long?"

"I'm not sure."

"What about Ed?"

She glanced behind her. "He's outside."

This stung Gillette's heart. Nice of him to chauffeur her to see her ex, the hacker thought bitterly, inflamed by jealousy. "So why'd you come?" he asked.

"I've been thinking about you. About what you said to me the other day. Before the police showed up."

He nodded for her to continue.

"Would you give up machines for me?" she asked.

Gillette took a breath. He exhaled and then answered evenly, "No. I'd never do that. Machines are what I'm meant to do in life."

To thine own self be true…

He expected her to stand up and walk out. It would have killed a portion of him – maybe most of him – but he'd vowed that if he had a chance to talk to her again he'd never lie.

He added, "But I can promise you that they'll never come between us the way they did. Never again."

Elana nodded slowly. "I don't know, Wyatt. I don't know if I can trust you. My dad drinks a bottle of ouzo a night. He keeps swearing he's going to give up drinking. And he does – about six times a year."

"You'll have to take a chance," he said.

"That might've been the wrong thing to say."

"But it's the honest thing."

"Reassurances, Gillette. I need reassurances before I even begin to think about it."

Gillette didn't respond. He couldn't present her with much compelling evidence that he'd change. Here he was, in prison, having nearly gotten this woman and her family killed because of his passion for a world completely alien to the one that she inhabited and understood.

After a moment he said, "There's nothing more I can say except that I love you and I want to be with you, have a family with you."

"I'll be in town for a while at least," she said slowly. "Why don't we just see what happens?"

"What about Ed? What's he going to say?"

"Why don't you ask him?"

"Me?" Gillette asked, alarmed.

Elana rose and walked to the door.

What on earth was he going to say? Gillette wondered in panic. He was about to come face-to-face with the man who'd stolen his wife's heart.

She opened the door and gestured.

A moment later Elana's staunch, unsmiling mother walked into the room. She was leading a small boy, about eighteen months old, by the hand.

Jesus, Lord… Gillette was shocked. Elana and Ed had a baby!

His ex-wife sat down in the chair once again and hauled the youngster up on her lap. "This's Ed."

Gillette whispered, "Him?"

"That's right."

"But…"

"You assumed Ed was my boyfriend. But he's my son… Actually, I should say he's our son. I named him after you. Your middle name. Edward isn't a hacker's name."

"Ours?" he whispered.

She nodded.

Gillette thought back to the last few nights they'd been together before he'd surrendered to the prison authorities to start his sentence, lying in bed with her, pulling her close…

He closed his eyes. Lord, Lord, Lord… He remembered the surveillance at Elana's house in Su

I saw your e-mails. When you talk about Ed it doesn't exactly sound like he's perfect husband material…

He gave a faint laugh. "You never told me."

"I was so mad at you I didn't want you to know. Ever."

"But you don't feel that way now?"

"I'm not sure."

He gazed at the boy's thick, curly black hair. That was his mother's. He'd gotten her beautiful dark eyes and round face too. "Hold him up, would you?"

She helped her son stand on her lap. His quick eyes studied Gillette carefully. Then the boy became aware of the Plexiglas. He reached forward with his fat baby fingers and touched it, smiling, fascinated, trying to understand how he could see through it but not be able to touch something on the other side.

He's curious, Gillette thought. That's what he got from me.

Then a guard appeared and a

Elana and Gillette faced each other across the Plexiglas divide.

"We'll see how it goes," she said. "How's that?"

"That's all I'm asking."

She nodded.

Then they turned in separate directions and, as Elana disappeared out the visitor's door, the guard led Wyatt Gillette back into the dim corridor toward his cell, where his machine awaited.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

In writing this book, I've taken some significant liberties with the structure and operation of federal and California state law enforcement agencies. I wish I could say the same for my depiction of computer hackers' ability to invade our private lives, but I've got bad news: It happens with alarming frequency. Some of the computer specialists I spoke with felt that a program like Trapdoor probably couldn't be written at this time. But I'm not completely convinced -upon hearing their opinions I couldn't help but think of the senior researcher for one of the world's biggest computer companies who in the 1950s recommended that his company stick with vacuum tubes because there was no future for the microchip, and of the head of another international hardware and software manufacturer who stated -in the 1980s – that there'd never be a market for a personal computer.

For the moment we can assume that a Trapdoor-like program doesn't exist. Probably.

And, oh, yes, the chapter numbers are in binary form. Don't feel bad – I had to look them up too.