Woman On the Run (35 page)

“I—ah—I wouldn’t do that if I were you Mr.—”

“Cooper. And I’ve got Manson’s number right in front of me.” Cooper was so convincing that he saw Julia looked, startled, at his empty hands, expecting to see an address book. He didn’t need an address book for Rob’s number. “Manson works late Sundays while the newspaper is put to bed. He’s still at his desk. You’re going to notify the sheriff here, Charles Pedersen, and we’re all going to come up with a plan to keep Julia Devaux safe until the trial or I’m calling Rob and then Justice. And I mean right now. Rob might be in time to have the story in tomorrow’s paper.”

“Look, Mr. Cooper, surely you realize that I can’t trust you. How do I know who you are? You’re complaining that we’re not protecting Miss Devaux adequately. But we’d be reckless if I just entrusted her to the first man who calls me up.”

He was making sense, damn him. Cooper stared at the wall, thinking furiously. “Okay,” he said finally. “This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to call a number I’m going to give you. It’s Josh Creason’s private cell phone number. You ask him who I am. Tell him I have Harry Sanderson and Mac Boyce with me and that none of us have lost our edge. I’ll hold the line.”

“This Joshua Creason,” Herbert Davis hedged, “would that be General Joshua Creason? Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?”

“No.” Cooper raised his eyes to be ceiling. “That’s Joshua Creason, the opera singer. Of course it’s General Creason, you—” Cooper bit his tongue. He wanted the man’s cooperation, not his antagonism. “You’re wasting time. Check me out with Josh. And tell him he still owes me ten bucks and that he’d better have improved his poker game.”

Cooper was put on hold. He leaned against the table, preparing to wait it out. Sally—Julia—watched his face, her own white and strained. They didn’t speak. He just pulled her into his arms and held her close, his cheek against the top of her head.

After a quarter of an hour, the voice came back “Mr. Cooper.”

“Yeah.” Cooper straightened and Julia looked up at him tensely.

“This is—this is highly unusual.” Davis blew out a breath. Stress reliever. Cooper just bet that this son of a bitch was under stress. His fumbling had almost cost a witness her life.

“Yeah.” Cooper wasn’t about to give him any slack. He waited.

“I, ah, I consulted with General Creason, who gave me a number of reassurances about yourself and Sanderson and Boyce. And we checked Sheriff Pedersen out.”

This was stuff Cooper already knew. He was silent.

“After, ah, after consulting with my colleagues, we have decided that if you come up with a feasible plan, we can keep Ms. Devaux in place. You will coordinate with our Boise office.”

“Roger that.”

“You’ll give me status reports on a regular basis.”

“Yeah. And I want more information on the case right now.”

The hairs on the back of Cooper’s neck rose as Davis recounted, as blandly as an accountant discussing the new tax code, how they suspected a security breach. And how the word on the street was that the price on his Julia’s head was now two million dollars.

“So…I’m placing Ms. Devaux in the hands of your sheriff and yourself. Her safety is your direct responsibility now. You’re okay with that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay. Call me tomorrow afternoon and we’ll go over the details.”

“Will do. I’ll call you at thirteen hundred hours with a detailed security plan. And you plug those leaks, you hear?”

Cooper heard another little puff of air and Davis hung up. When Julia timidly touched his shoulder he whirled to gather her in his arms, holding her tightly.

“So that’s that. You’re staying here,” Cooper said finally. Every muscle was stiff with tension and battle-readiness. “The only way anyone will ever get to you will be over my dead body.”

Julia drew in a long breath. “In that case, Cooper,” she said faintly into his shoulder, “maybe you better put some clothes on.”

Chapter Seventeen

At Stanford, Professor Jerzy Stanislaus had perfected a computer model he’d called Matrix Architecture Topography, or MAT. The whole idea of MAT was that the best way to navigate a computer’s database was three-dimensionally. Stanislaus’ concept was that a computer was like a house, and like any house, it had a door and a key to the door. Then the Professor had gone on to explain how three-dimensionality was a key itself to the door. The professional had been fascinated by the symbolic logic MAT represented.

There wasn’t a student in the room who hadn’t hacked from time to time. And there wasn’t a student in the room who hadn’t immediately grasped the very real uses of MAT as a literal key to enter locked rooms.

Occasionally in the professional’s forays into cyberspace, there had been traces left behind by someone who had clearly used MAT to penetrate the firewalls. The size of the key told the professional that it was one of Stanislaus’ students. Usually, the professional symbolically closed the door quietly and tiptoed out with a silent salute.

The professional was going to use MAT to penetrate the Department of Justice’s files and access Julia Devaux’s location.

The Department of Justice’s computer codes were now three levels deep and with a 240-bit encryption code. No more Yale locks and flimsy window casements. Their computers now had reinforced concrete doors and bulletproof windows. And no amount of rattling the doors and using a hairpin was going to open them. But a door was a door was a door—in other words, a way in.

The professional carefully made a salami attack into a powerful array computer in Madison; it belonged to a company that foolishly left its magnificent machine unoccupied during the night. The machine had immense number-crunching potential—the mother of all motherboards, the professional thought wryly.

Julia Devaux, compute your prayers.

The professional began the search for the key. It was an enormously long string of numbers that stretched even this computer’s abilities.

While the laptop in Idaho communed with the computer in Wisconsin, the professional dined—very badly—on saltines and Diet Coke. No caviar and champagne out in the boondocks. Thank God this business would soon be over.

The professional checked the time. The company’s computer could only be used for short bursts of less than half an hour, otherwise the engineering department of the company the professional had hacked into would notice. Twenty minutes had elapsed.

Time to sign off.

The professional sighed and started the long delicate process of backing out. Cracking the Department of Justice’s code would take another two nights—three at the most. The problem was what to do with the partially decoded key. It was too long and too complex to fit into the hard disk of the laptop. Where to leave it?

The professional suddenly smiled.

Where to leave the key? Why the answer was obvious. Under the MAT, of course.

* * * * *

“Cooper, no,” Julia whispered, shocked. Then more loudly, “No!”
Sha
king with nervous tension, she jumped up and paced around her living room.

Cooper watched her with his usual impassive expression, but Chuck looked concerned, then pained, as he shifted uneasily on one of the broken springs of her couch.

Cooper had called Chuck immediately after hanging up. Chuck had made it to her house in less than ten minutes, huffing and puffing, which had given Julia enough time to put on her jeans and to pull a sweater over her head. Chuck walked into the house just as Cooper had come out of the bedroom buttoning his shirt, missing a few buttons as he worked his way up.

Despite the serious circumstances, Julia had felt a quick flush of embarrassment. Chuck would draw the obvious conclusions. But to his credit, Chuck didn’t give the slightest indication that he thought she and Cooper had been doing anything more than sipping tea and discussing the weather.

Chuck had listened soberly as she told him about the murder that September day and what had happened since. Then both of them had listened as Cooper outlined his plan to keep her safe.

Julia grew more and more anxious as she listened to his low voice outline a plan that would have been banned by Amnesty International as cruel and unusual punishment.

Cooper’s plan basically consisted of keeping her in a locked room with an armed guard outside the door for as long as it took the State to take its case to court. Julia felt her throat close at the thought.

“That’s not a plan, that’s a sentence.” Julia wrapped her arms around her midriff, shaking with cold and tension. “You’ll have to come up with some kind of alternative plan, Cooper. You can’t keep me under lock and key like some prisoner. I’d go crazy.”

Cooper watched her calmly, dark eyes steady. “You won’t be anyone’s prisoner. It’s just that you’ll be safe. As safe as I can keep you.”

“That’s not safety, Cooper. It’s death.” Julia shuddered. Over the past month and a half, having her Thursday and Saturday coffee with Alice, planning the resuscitation of the diner, getting involved in the lives of the people of Simpson—all those things had kept her sane. She knew herself. Knew how swamped with terror she would be if she holed up in a room, cowering. She would feel like a frenzied moth, beating itself to death against the windowpane. “You can’t do this to me, Cooper.” Her hands clenched. “You just can’t. I think—” She drew a shuddering breath, “I think I’d rather die.”

Cooper’s eyes honed in on her face, judging how serious she was. “So what are you suggesting?” he asked, frustrated. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Walking around with a bull’s-eye on your forehead? Taking out an ad in the
Pioneer
? Maybe with a map and an arrow. ‘Attention all hired killers. Julia Devaux is here.’”

Julia bit her lips and willed herself not to let the threatening tears fall. “I want to be safe, Cooper. Of course I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks. But I also don’t want to be buried alive. Now what exactly did Herbert Davis tell you? Does he know for certain that Santana knows where I am?”

“No,” Cooper said reluctantly. “But he strongly suspects it.”

“On the basis of what?” Chuck asked.

Cooper turned gratefully to Chuck, clearly hoping Chuck would be more rational. “Julia’s data was in an encrypted computer file together with two other cases. The other two witnesses were both relocated to Idaho, like Julia.” Cooper clenched a big fist. “They’re both dead.”

The stark words hung there. Chuck looked thoughtful and Julia felt panic rise again, a dark fluttery winged thing which threatened to cut off her air.

“Dead…how?” she asked finally.

“Accident. Both of them.” Cooper’s jaw muscles clenched. “So they say.”

The tight cold band around Julia’s chest eased a little. “They who?”

“Police and Feds.”

“Both the police and the FBI think they were accidents?” Chuck asked.

Cooper nodded tensely.

Chuck scratched his jaw. “Don’t know, Coop,” he said finally. “The police and the Feebs, they’re not dummies, you know. They’d have investigated pretty thoroughly. Nobody likes to be caught with their pants down…beg your pardon, Sally.”

Cooper’s jaw muscles jumped.

“And surely—” Julia licked dry lips. She was finding it hard to think straight, but one fact was staring her in the face. “Surely, if someone knew where I was—he’d have come after me first, wouldn’t he? I understand there’s a million-dollar bounty on my head.”

“Two million,” Cooper said grimly. “It was upped.”

Julia closed her eyes and shuddered. Santana was willing to pay two million dollars to see her dead. She’d never been on the receiving end of such hatred. Her mind raced as she tried to grope her way through the situation. “There’s no hard evidence that my cover has been blown, is there?”

“No.” Cooper spoke the word reluctantly. “But there’s no guarantee that it hasn’t.”

Julia walked slowly to the window and looked out. The temperature had dropped and the ground had frozen. The light coating of snow gleamed a dull, sodden gray in the lamplight. The world looked cold and lifeless. Julia tried to imagine staring out this little window, hour after hour, day after day, frightened, lonely and trapped. Her heart turned as cold and as sodden as the ground at the thought.

Cooper walked up behind her and she could see his reflection in the dark window. She met his reflected gaze. “I can’t do it, Cooper,” she said softly. “I can’t be locked up. Please don’t make me.”

He lifted his hands and put them on her shoulders. “You won’t go anywhere without telling me.” She turned around, hope flaring in her eyes.

“No.” Her eyes searched his. “I won’t.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“You’ll go to school and back, and either Chuck or Bernie or Sandy or Mac or I will accompany you.”

“Yes, Cooper.”

“You’ll carry a gun at all times. Except when you’re teaching and Chuck will be right outside the school.”

“I will?” Julia blinked, startled. “I’ve never used a gun in my life.”

“You’ll learn. I’ll teach you. It’s not rocket science.”

“Okay.” Julia tilted her head, considering. “And I want you to teach me the basics of self-defense.”