Germ

"I've always loved private aviation. I took some private pilot lessons but never finished. Got too busy. Sometimes I still park by the airport to eat my lunch, watch the planes come and go. Here, look at this." He read it aloud: "Fourteen-eighteen. Cessna Citation CJ2. N471B."

"Yeah?"

"How many four-million-dollar private jets fly into Chattanooga?"

"The timing's right. Just before the killings at the bar."

"You think that's the plane that brought in the two-man hit team?"

"It's the Warrior's. The first two assailants pursued Goody and Vero from Atlanta. The second set of assailants, the ones who came for you at your house, you said one of them had a cop's badge. A local cop. Maybe by then they were getting desperate, hiring whoever was available."

Allen said, "The FAA maintains a plane registry right on the Internet. We can find out who owns that Citation without jumping through techno-hoops." Something on the screen caught his eye. "Hold on. Oh-five-fifty-one, Cessna Citation . . ."

"This morning? He left?"

"Yesterday morning. Another landed. N-number: N476B."

"Two Citations? Sixteen hours apart." Julia was thinking out loud. "Could the same people own both?"

"Same type of plane with almost sequential tail numbers? Very likely." Allen read again from the screen: "Oh-eight-twenty, Cessna Citation."

"Another one?"

"The first one, N471B, took off yesterday morning, two and a half hours after the second arrived."

"What are we supposed to do now?" Stephen asked from behind the wheel.

She gave herself a moment to think. "I suppose we find out who registered the Cessnas. Probably a dummy corporation, owned by another dummy corporation. But if we burrow deep enough, maybe cross-reference the names we dig up with other clues we find along the way, we'll uncover something solid."

Allen didn't look happy.

"Welcome to detective work," she said. "Ninety percent of criminal investigations is following paper trails, digging through computer files, reading receipts and depositions and ledgers until your eyes are ready to fall out. Forget CSI, it's more like—wait a minute." She spun the laptop around, away from Allen.

"Hey."

She began typing, staring at the screen.

"What?"

"The hard drive. Can't you hear it? It's working too hard. Someone's hacked into my computer."

sixty

"You're in the airport's computer," Allen said.

"Maybe they're trying to hack you back."

"That's not they way it works. If they detect the breech, they just cut you off. Someone's going through my files."

"So cut them off."

"I'm trying. They've got some kind of protection against that. I've never seen anything like it."

An observer catching her flexing bands of jaw muscles, the determined flash of gritted teeth, would have guessed that she was battling for her life. And they'd have been right: Survival on the run was like a knife fight. The outcome was rarely determined by the planting of one deadly blow, but by the number and depth of slash after slash after slash—until the one most slashed bled to death. She could not afford the injury of giving away access to her computer, whether the intruder's motive was to find out its contents or destroy its data.

"Disconnect the phone," Allen said.

"If I can stop him, maybe I can find out who it is." She keyed in more commands. "It's not working." She reached for the phone line. The screen went black, and a line of white text appeared at the top:

> Ms. Matheson?

Allen, unable to see the monitor from the front seat, asked, "What is it?"

She told him, then typed:

>  Who is this? The answer:

> A friend.

"What's going on?" Allen stood to lean over the top, bumping the table and nearly dumping everything to the floor.

Julia caught the computer and phone, stabilizing them on the table once more. "Allen! Sit. I'll tell you. He says he's a friend."

"A friend? Your friend? What's his name, Bonsai?"

"Shhhhh! This isn't Bonsai. Just be quiet and listen."

Speaking the words, she typed:

> I don't need any more friends.

>  That's not what I've heard.

She read the response aloud, already typing her reply:

> How do you know me?

> I've been waiting for you. I knew you would eventually think to check the airport records. I'm surprised it took you so long.

Allen whispered, "Is he still going through your hard drive?" "No, he's just talking." She wrote:

>  Why did you hack me?

> Just trying to make a connection.

"That's not true," she said. "He was digging. I think he realized I was onto him and decided to take another approach, instead of just getting cut off."

> Ms. Matheson. Your enemy is my enemy. Does that not make us friends?

> No. Who is my enemy?

> Atropos.