Only the extraordinary women of Athena Academy could create Oracle—a covert intelligence organization so secret that not even its members know who else belongs. Now it’s up to three top agents to bring down the enemies who threaten all they’ve sworn to protect….

Kim Valenti:

An NSA cryptologist, this analytical genius and expert code breaker is the key to stopping a deadly bomb.

COUNTDOWN by Ruth Wind

Diana Lockworth:

With only twenty-four hours until the president’s inauguration, can this army intelligence captain thwart an attempt to assassinate him?

TARGET by Cindy Dees

Selena Jones:

Used to ensuring international peace, this legal attaché has her biggest assignment yet—foiling a terrorist attack abroad.

CHECKMATE by Doranna Durgin

Countdown
Ruth Wind

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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RUTH WIND

is the award-winning author of both contemporary and historical romance novels. She lives in the mountains of the Southwest with her two growing sons and many animals in a hundred-year-old house that the town blacksmith built. The only hobby she’s had since she started writing is tending the ancient garden of irises, lilies and lavender beyond her office window, and she says she can think of no more satisfying way to spend a life than growing children, books and flowers. Ruth Wind also writes women’s fiction under the name Barbara Samuel. You can visit her Web site at www.barbarasamuel.com.

For my son Ian,

who helped a lot with this book.

Thanks, kiddo!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Prologue

Tuesday, October 5

I t was night and snowing when Kim Valenti parked at FBI headquarters in Chicago. Snow came in through the window of the stolen car—a 1971 gold Buick Skylark—that she’d hot-wired at the parking lot of the UBC television station. She’d be glad to get somewhere warmer.

Before she got out, she checked her face in the rearview mirror. If there was blood showing, she would draw attention to herself, and someone would be concerned or alarmed, which would cause more delays. She couldn’t risk losing any more time.

There was a bomb ticking away at the airport. Somewhere. Due to detonate in exactly—she checked her watch—seventy-nine minutes.

In the mirror, she saw that her lip was swollen. She’d have a black eye tomorrow. A few scrapes, but no damage that would make her stand out too much in a law enforcement agency.

She got out of the car and hid the gun she’d also stolen in the small of her back, tucked into the waistband of her jeans. The weight of it was comforting and cold. Her cell phone was in her hand, the cord around her wrist.

Snow fell more heavily now, and she was half-frozen from the drive through the Chicago streets in a broken-down car with a shattered window.

In spite of the cold, her torn and battered ear throbbed. She wished it would have frozen. At least that would make it stop hurting. Without breaking stride, she scooped a handful of snow from the hood of a nearby car and pressed the icy ball to torn cartilage.

As she approached the front doors of the FBI building, a group of men erupted into the parking lot, rushing toward cars and vans. They shouted directions to one another, pulled on gloves, carted cases and rifles.

All headed, no doubt, for the television station. Kim ducked into the shadow of a truck, watching, her mouth hard. She could tell them that their rush was futile, but they wouldn’t listen to her now any more than they had earlier.

No, if she had any chance of success, there was only one man for the job—Lex Tanner, FBI explosives expert and a compatriot she’d believed in before this morning.

She spied him toward the back of the group, carrying a metal suitcase. His dark hair was cut very short, the nose surprisingly recognizable from the pictures she’d seen, and he was quite tall. At least six-four. Rangy, lean and muscled, with shoulders big enough to shelter her from the wind.

As he neared her spot, she stepped out of the shadows. “Lex Luthor, I presume?”

He started, narrowing his eyes and sizing her up. Recognition washed over his features. “Valenti?” He looked more alarmed than pleased. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling all afternoon.”

“Long story. Right now, I need you to bring your little bomb kit and come with me to the airport.”

“I can’t. I’m on my way to UBC. There’s a terrorist—”

“Yeah, yeah—” she waved a hand “—never mind. That’s not the problem.”

“They’ve stolen a bomb they’re threatening to detonate—”

“It’s not at the station.”

“They’ve got hostages.”

“I know.” She took a breath. “Look, I don’t have time to explain everything, but the drama at UBC is a smoke screen—the bomb is at the airport.”

“It’s not there! Don’t you get it? We’ve been over it a hundred and forty-seven times.” His exasperation might have been understandable if they’d been strangers.

If he hadn’t seen that she was extremely skilled. If he didn’t know better.

If she hadn’t proved herself by trusting his instincts, sight unseen.

If, if, if. She shook her head. She could stand here and argue, wasting time, explaining, or she could—

She pulled out her gun, using her body to shield it from the sight of the others, and poked the barrel into his ribs. “I didn’t want to do it this way, but you won’t listen.”

“What—?”

She glared at him. “Don’t make me hurt you, Luthor. I liked you until today.”

“This is crazy.” He glanced toward the men entering their trucks.

“Don’t even think about it.” She jabbed the butt into his ribs, harder. “I am dead serious.”

“You’re going to fuck up your career doing this.”

Kim met his eyes. They were extremely blue. She’d read somewhere that extremely blue or green eyes showed a highly sexual nature.

Furious was more the word at the moment.

Oh, well. “Get in the car and I’ll explain.”

“You won’t shoot me. I know you won’t.”

“I won’t kill you,” she said. “But I will hurt you if you don’t come with me. Now.” She pushed harder.

He resisted. “Explain.”

She met his eyes with an icy lift of her own eyebrow. “Walk.”

He glanced over his shoulder. No one was looking at them. Kim nudged him. “I tried to go through channels, but none of you has given me the respect I deserve, and because of that, people may die unnecessarily.”

“If I go against orders, I’ll be fired.”

“I’m not talking anymore.”

For an instant longer, he resisted. His nostrils flared in fury.

“It’s killing you to have to listen to a girl, isn’t it?”

“No, I—”

“My mother was a nurse in Vietnam. Did you know that? She was taken hostage once for three days, and it’s something that has given her nightmares the rest of her life.”

“Why the hell would I care, Valenti?”

“Because you can trust that I am very, very sincere when I say that I hate the whole hostage game. I would do anything to free hostages—but I won’t let other people die. Do you understand?”

He narrowed his eyes, the jaw still mulish. Damn. She really did not want to hurt him. She would if she had to, but it would be messier and she needed him.

“Luthor, I’ve had a very bad night. My ear is killing me. There are a couple of bastards at that television station who may or may not kill hostages, but there are law enforcement officials on scene to deal with them. They also don’t have a bomb at the station, and that’s what I need you for.”

“How is it, Kim, that you’re so much smarter than the entire federal law enforcement community?”

She blinked. “I don’t know, Lex. You tell me. Maybe I’m just smart. One thing I know for sure is that I do know what I’m talking about because—by the way did I tell you I speak Arabic fluently?—I overheard them talking at the television station. There is a bomb or a suicide bomber headed for the airport or at the airport, and people will die if we don’t go now. I don’t know how to defuse a bomb. You do.”

“You finished?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go. You can explain the rest in the car.”

Chapter 1

One day earlier—Monday, October 4

S omehow, Kim Valenti fell asleep next to her lover. It was not something she ordinarily allowed. Maybe it was the long days trying to break a troublesome code. Maybe it was the cold, nearly winter night. Maybe just general weariness. Whatever.

She slept.

Hard.

And as often happened these days, the nightmares came. Jason, laughing and joking, his big hands and goofy smile—suddenly beheaded. A casualty of war. He’d been a professional soldier, after all. Sometimes soldiers died in the line of duty.

The dream yanked her out of sleep, her hands raised, her legs thrashing, a yell of protest on her lips. This time, her lover caught her in his sturdy arms.

“Hey,” Marc said quietly. “You okay?”

Blinking, shuddering as if she’d nearly fallen off a cliff, Kim wiped her face. “Yeah.”

Kim’s mother, Eileen, had been plagued by nightmares throughout Kim’s childhood, and the children had learned never to awaken her in the usual way, by grabbing a shoulder or an elbow. If she fell asleep on the couch after work, they’d simply stand beside her and call her name quietly until she stirred. To do otherwise was to risk a sharp fist to the face as the soldier she’d been reacted to a threat long past.

Now that she’d lost a son to war, Eileen said she never dreamed at all anymore. Kim had wearily confessed one night, over plates of pasta, that she’d taken it on for her mother. She had regular nightmares about her brother Jason. Her mother had squeezed her shoulder. Sorry, sweetheart.

“Argh!” Kim said, rubbing her eyes. “It’s this damned code! It’s driving me nuts!”

“You’re having nightmares about codes?”

She shook her head. “Not exactly.” She couldn’t discuss it. Her brother’s death was something she didn’t talk about, and the code was something she wasn’t allowed to discuss with a civilian.

The two things were feeding into each other tonight: Jason, dead in Iraq two years ago, and the Arabic code running through her mind. Endless ribbons of delicate, graceful lettering flowing across the back of her eyelids. Over and over. Almost clicking into place, then sliding away from her.

Kim swore. She wasn’t going to be getting any sleep tonight. Even less if she didn’t get rid of her lover.

“We’re not supposed to be doing this anyway,” she said, easing away from him. “No sleeping over.”

He groaned, and buried his well-chiseled face into the pillow. Glossy black hair splashed over the white linens. His shoulders, round and smooth, stuck out of the sheet. “Don’t make me go.”

“You know the rules.”

Marc faced her. “What would it hurt if I slept over just once?”

“Nyet, nope, not a chance.” She rolled away, slid into the robe she’d left at the foot of her bed. As she tied it, she tried to soften up her line a little bit. “You don’t want this to get serious any more than I do. We’d make each other crazy in a week.”

He rubbed his perfectly grizzled jaw. “I know, I know.”

She liked Marc just fine. He was a safe, warm companion, who made her laugh. They’d dated off and on for more than two years, and neither of them saw anyone else, particularly, but they didn’t intend to be serious. No one in his life knew she existed, and no one in hers knew he did. They kept company, sometimes made love, kept each other on track about getting too serious. They were both very ambitious and had no intentions of getting sidetracked from their careers into something as ordinary as love and marriage.

If he’d had a few more brains, he might have been good long-term material, but his IQ just about matched his job: he was a model for a major men’s clothing line. Beautiful to be sure, but not someone she felt she could trust for the long haul. It was the perfect arrangement for the short haul.

Marc buried his face. Made a noise. Kim slapped his very nicely shaped butt. “Get moving.”

“C’mon. Have a heart.” He reached out a big hand with elegantly manicured nails that somehow managed to look rugged anyway. “I’m tired, Kim. Really. It’s cold out there. This bed is so comfortable.”

She headed for the bathroom. “Nope. You’ve got to get moving because I’ve got to work.”

“Work? It’s nearly midnight. Won’t it wait until morning?”

“No. Do you want a shower?”

“No, thanks.” Reluctantly, he tossed the covers off and stood up, stretching. Kim allowed herself to admire him. Too bad he wasn’t brighter, she thought wryly. He was Italian, handsome, kind, and she had no doubt he’d be a good father. And she could look at him for hours. Trouble was most women could, and he’d age well. She suspected he would be married many times as the years went by.

Just a gut feeling.

He put on his jeans and wandered over to put his arms around Kim. He kissed her neck. “Thanks for a great evening. You know I’m crazy about you.”

She patted his hands, allowed the kiss. “Yeah, yeah, Spinuzzi.”

Against her neck, he asked quietly, “Did you have a good time, Kim?”

It was unexpectedly vulnerable. Kim cursed inwardly. One of these days, she was going to have to remember that men were not as tough as they wanted women to think they were.

She turned and kissed him. “Always, Marc. I enjoy your company, and you’re a great guy. We’re just not couple material and you know it.”

He squeezed her shoulder and nodded. “You’re right, you’re right. Go take your shower and I’ll call you in a few days.”

“Thanks.”

After a hot shower, Kim made a peanut butter sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate and carried them into her study.

“Alone at last,” she breathed, tugging her thick hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. She settled her cup and slid her chair up to the computer. Code rolled relentlessly through the back of her brain. Insistent, incoherent. Strings of garbled letters, Arabic and English, back and forth. She squeezed her eyes shut and let go of a sigh.

As a code breaker for the National Security Agency, Kim was trying to decrypt a group of e-mails suspected to have originated with a terrorist network called Q’rajn. The NSA had intercepted dozens of missives over the past few weeks, and the flurry had turned into a blizzard of e-mails the past three days. Kim, along with her partner, Scott Shepherd, had been working for weeks nonstop to find the key. With the increased activity, there was increasing dread.

Something nagged her tonight, a sense of something glimpsed out of the corner of her eye, something visible only in peripheral vision. She wanted another look at the code, to see if that jarred anything loose.

Her study was a plain room with open desks and two computers. The blinds were drawn. It was quiet so late. Her neighbors were largely young professionals like herself, with jobs in the local “alphabet agencies”—CIA, NSA, FBI—or the military installations in and around Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.

While she waited for the computers to boot, Kim ate her sandwich and admired the view of her kitchen from the office chair. A large jade plant stood on the windowsill, and on the wall behind the table was an enormous red-and-black Navajo blanket. It had been a gift from her mentor and reminded her of the time she’d spent at the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women in Arizona. Athena educated girls ages ten to eighteen, at a state-of-the-art facility where girls trained in academics, martial arts, languages and other leadership skills.

Kim was proud of her little condo. Few women in her traditional Italian family lived on their own, even when they were twenty-five, as Kim was. Even fewer lived outside the enclave in Baltimore known as Little Italy. Not one of them had purchased real estate, not on her own.

It was one of the first goals Kim had made and met. The modern, two-bedroom condo was not particularly notable, though she loved the big windows and the master bedroom loft, but it was all hers. All modern convenience and post-turn-of-the-century architecture, which she’d decorated in a bright, coral-and-turquoise Southwestern theme. Some locals thought it was kitschy—so “last year,” as one friend had said—but for Kim, it was a reminder of the things she’d learned in the harsh and beautiful world of the desert. So much of who she was came from those days outside of Phoenix.

As she waited for her computer to load various programs and go through the virus checks, she switched on the radio that sat on the corner of her desk. The dial was tuned to a world music station that played a variety of Latin, African and European selections. The switches helped keep her awake.

Usually.

When the computers were up and running, she clicked on the icons to download e-mail on both machines.

Kim had three e-mail addresses—one for personal mail on her home computer, one for NSA-related material, which had a dedicated line the government paid for.

A third address was used strictly to receive e-mail from a top-secret, outside agency, called Oracle. It was located on her personal machine, to avoid any cross-contamination from work.

On the work computer, she dialed into the government network, where she would be able to explore the files connected to the current case. It was sometimes laborious signing in, but tonight the computer whizzed through the screens, the layers and layers of security designed to thwart hackers.

Most of them, anyway. No system was entirely safe, no matter what the government wanted to believe. They did their best. It was a fairly tight system, and whenever a weakness was discovered, computer security experts were on the spot to fix it.

On her home computer, the personal e-mails sorted into one folder. Twenty-seven, which was a lot for her in one day. She frowned. She’d check them in a minute, but first she switched IDs and asked the computer to fetch her Oracle e-mails. Maybe they’d have something to help crack this code.

Oracle was a special computer system developed to track information gathered from FBI, CIA, NSA and military databases, to be then cross-checked and matched. Created in the days before Homeland Security, it had been developed to help avoid disasters like Pearl Harbor and the 1993 Trade Center bombing, events that might have been prevented had key information been shared between agencies.

Kim had been recruited through AA.gov, a Web site connecting Athena Academy grads and students. She assumed Oracle was run by someone within the school network, and she knew there were a handful of operatives in key organizations—such as Kim and her work with the NSA—but all were protected by a cloak of anonymity. No one knew the agents. No one outside of Oracle knew it existed. It worked beyond the map of security in the U.S. government.

After Homeland Security had been created, Oracle had theoretically become obsolete.

Theoretically.

In fact, Oracle had not disbanded because it provided a fail-safe for the other organizations. Although she didn’t know the particulars, she knew Oracle agents were able to get a fix on problems and provide evidence to thwart troublesome activities before the agencies involved were able to act. It was not infallible any more than any other device, but it helped prevent information from slipping between the cracks.

The folder for Oracle mail was labeled simply Delphi. It only received e-mail sporadically, and always from the same place. Tonight, it showed one new message.

Tonight, Kim fervently hoped for some information about Q-group, and she clicked on the folder. The e-mail read:

To: Ariadne@orcl.org

From: Delphi@orcl.org

Subject: q’s

1. Intelligence reports Q’rajn definitely tied to Berzhaan. CIA has tracked operatives overseas. FBI reports activity within the United States, links to Berzhaan terrorist community.

2. Two names emerging in connection with current activities: Fathi bin Amin Mansour and Hafiz abu Malik Abd-Humam, both natives of Berzhaan. -Mansour is prodigiously intelligent. Advanced degrees from Oxford in chemical engineering and European history. Mother and two brothers killed in guerilla raids by the Kemini rebels four years ago, for which he holds the West responsible. He is connected to several bombings. His whereabouts are unknown. See attached photograph, taken in London, 2001.

-Abd-Humam is an associate of Mansour’s father, a professor without overt terrorist ties. Appears to be a devoted family man, religious but not overtly so. He has protested Western (particularly U.S.) involvement in Berzhaan politics and has written papers supporting self-determination for his country. His connection is not yet known. There are no known photos at this time.

Delphi

The attached photo showed a man in his early fifties, impeccably dressed in a dark business suit. His face was dominated by large, dark eyes and an intense expression, and Kim imagined that he generally received more than a cursory second glance from most women.

Kim copied the e-mail into a word-processing program, removed all header information and printed a copy. Then she destroyed the e-mail, both through the delete key and a more sophisticated function designed to erase it entirely from the hard drive. If she were investigated or hacked, there would be no trace of Oracle on her computer.

Taking the paper from the printer, she sipped her hot chocolate, thinking. Maybe the names themselves would offer a clue toward the code pattern.

Were there possibilities in the names? Abd-Humam was a common surname, but it had religious overtones: servant of the high-minded. Mansour was a very common name. She scowled, trying to remember. She was fluent in Arabic, as well as Italian, French, and—through a lovely triangle of events the year she was twelve—Navajo. But one didn’t remember everything.

With a pad of paper and a pencil, she scribbled more notes, played with possibilities, fixed the English, then the Arabic letters in her mind. Something for the wheels to spin around as she slept.

She rubbed her eyes wearily. Q’rajn was a very dangerous organization, as they’d proven more than once with all the usual—though no less horrifying—earmarks of fanaticism: suicide bombings and death threats and displays of bravado in villages across the Middle East. They always faded away before they could be captured, though the CIA had been lucky in nabbing a key player last summer. He’d not given up much information, but his background and connections had provided some genuine leads and links to terrorism in Berzhaan.

“Okay, let’s try something else,” she said aloud, and keyed in her code to open the work files, and ran sample lines from several e-mails through a mechanical translator: Arabic to English, English to Arabic. Arabic and English combined, one sentence in one language, the next every other word, the next the first language, just to see what might turn up.

Computers at the NSA were busy running the encrypted material—dozens of intercepted e-mails—through programs of various sorts, checking logarithms and structures and known patterns. It was also checking another series of possibilities that Kim had programmed.

Nothing so far.

She slumped in the chair and picked up a bottle of eyedrops from the desk. Leaning back, she dropped Visine into her dry eyes. The shift in position eased the tight muscles in her neck and she stayed there a minute, her chin pointed at the ceiling. Her eyes were closed. The room was quiet.

The agency was sometimes too crazy for her. At home there were no ringing phones, no jokes between members of the team, no one having a low, fierce argument with a spouse over a cell phone connection.

Around her, Kim heard only the breathing of her computers and above that a respectful female voice reading the headlines on the radio. It was the fourth time she’d heard the news since dinner, so she didn’t pay a lot of attention, but kept one ear open for anything new or notable. With such a blizzard of encoded e-mails, she was uneasy. Something was coming.

The newscaster said, “Fourteen people were killed when a train derailed near Munich this afternoon. A terrorist cell in the Sudan claimed responsibility.”

Kim straightened and growled at the radio, “Bastards.” All the innocents who had been slaughtered by terrorists the past couple of decades disturbed her. It was one of the reasons she’d wanted to work with codes in particular. By breaking them down, there was a chance she could stop violence before it happened.

Arabic and English sentences, written white on a black background, tumbled through her brain. What was she missing? It felt as if the key were just out of reach, just beyond her peripheral vision.

“Look to the middle of things,” said a voice in her memory. It was the voice of her first mentor, Arthur Tsosie, a Navajo who had served the United States as a code breaker in World War II.

Arthur had been stable master at the Athena Academy where Kim had gone as a shy and awkward twelve-year-old. Lonely away from her big family, but also determined not to let on that she wasn’t just as tough as the other girls, Kim had often retreated to the stables. Arthur, coming upon the bereft and weeping little girl who missed her family, had befriended her. The old man had provided a pocket of retreat for her when things had become too overwhelming.

And his stories of his adventures as a code talker, told in his lilting, soft tenor, had lit a passion in Kim that had never abated. When she proved to be gifted with both maths and languages, becoming a code breaker had been the obvious choice.

Arthur had always delivered his tidbits of knowledge while caring for the horses. Memories of him were now accompanied by scents of straw and dusty sunlight. She could see his hands, the color of pecans and gnarled into knots so the fingers looked like branches, grasping the currycomb as it moved through a pale blond mane. “The trick to seeing anythin’,” he’d say, “is to remember it’s not what it is on the outside. Code, woman, friend, dog—it’s all the same. Look through the top to the middl-a things.”

Look through the top.

Often that meant simply letting go of perceptions as they stood, to allow new angles to enter her brain. Kim let the reams of code float over the surface of her closed eyelids. The e-mails were exchanged in Arabic, or at least in Arabic script. The messages had almost certainly begun in the Arabic language, as well, although the words were now nothing recognizable in any language the computers could read.

The quirky dots and swirls of Arabic lettering moved on her eyelids, a dance. Along with computers that had been running the cipher text through programs all day, Kim and her partner, Scott, had been manually trying various approaches to decipher the code.

The Arabic letters turned into a swirling, Jasmine-and-Aladdin cartoon script, the dots exaggerated. She slammed her feet to the floor, jolting herself back awake.

“Damn,” she said. “Damn. Damn. Damn.” A sense of urgency built in her chest.

Solve the code.

The answer was right there. She could feel it. What was she missing?

Kim focused on the computer screen and punched some buttons on her keyboard to bring up the program running in the background.

From the radio on her desk came a somber female voice. “President James Whitlow endured questions from the press today regarding the Tom King-Puerto Isla scandal. Many Americans are beginning to question the connection between Puerto Isla and the current unrest in Berzhaan.”

To wake herself up, Kim said aloud, “Unrest in Berzhaan. There’s an unusual situation.”

The unrest wasn’t unusual, but some blamed the United States, or at least the current administration, for the trouble in the small Middle Eastern country. It didn’t matter to Kim whether the assessment was correct or incorrect—her concern was that there were terrorist cells that were determined to punish what they saw as the evil empire of the United States and make a statement by whatever means necessary.

With presidential elections coming up and the general unease about the world situation and the scandal of Puerto Isla hanging over the President, the situation offered too many opportunities.

Again she felt the urgency, that hollow sense of dread. Break the code.

On the radio, the announcer went on, “In other news, presidential candidate, Gabriel Monihan, appeared at a packed rally in New York City this afternoon, part of a ten-city election blitz that began yesterday in Washington, D.C.”

A window on Kim’s work computer popped up. In a blue box with red lettering, she read:

LEXLUTHOR: How’s the code chopping?

Kim grinned. Alexander Tanner was an FBI bomb-squad expert in Chicago who had assisted her with a case two months ago, when a young hacker used bomb schematics to encrypt messages through the upper reaches of government. Privately, Kim had been impressed with the kid, a bored seventeen-year-old with too much time on his hands and a brain that needed challenges. Lex had been the first to spot the schematics while working an unrelated case and had e-mailed Kim to ask her advice over whether the coding could be done.

Their cooperation—an NSA employee and an FBI agent—would have been unheard of several years ago. Animosity had been more the game in those days. But reporter after reporter had turned up examples of situations that could have been defused by real communication between agencies and the pressure to cooperate had become too powerful to resist. The top-level security agencies in the country were—at least officially—encouraging interdepartmental communication, including this connected link of instant messaging within the various agencies.

It was working. Sort of. The animosity between various agencies, the secretive and jealous ways they guarded their sources, the eternal race to see who would solve which problem first, would never entirely disappear.

Although she’d never met Lex in person, Kim liked his sense of humor and his breezy ways—such as using the name of a comic-book supervillain as his instant-messaging handle.

She typed:

WINDTALKER2: Hey, guy! Still chopping. You’re out late.

LEXLUTHOR: The same could be said of you.

WINDTALKER2: Trying to crack this baby. Feels big.

LEXLUTHOR: Yeah? Wanna brainstorm?

WINDTALKER2: Might be getting too scattered to think now. A.M.?

LEXLUTHOR: No can do. Big meetings.

Kim was overtaken by a yawn. She typed:

WINDTALKER 2: All right. How come you’re working so late?

LEXLUTHOR: Politicians up the wazoo in Chicago this week. Green candidate today. Prez appearing tomorrow. Monihan on Thursday.

WINDTALKER2: Bomb scares?

LEXLUTHOR: Dozens. Every lunatic in the greater metro area has a plan for saving the world. Gotta check ’em all. Been over the courthouse twenty times. The airport at least 452.

WINDTALKER2: 452? That would take a little time.

LEXLUTHOR: Well, maybe it was only six times. FELT like 452.

WINDTALKER2: Any bombs anywhere?

LEXLUTHOR: Nope. Real bombers don’t call ahead.

WINDTALKER2: Ah.

LEXLUTHOR: Hey. I looked up your picture on the company site.

WINDTALKER2: That’s creepy, Luthor.

LEXLUTHOR: Somebody told me you were hot.

WINDTALKER 2: It was probably me. I am hot, and don’t you forget it.

LEXLUTHOR: Kinda short. But then, I’m kinda ugly, so I guess we’re even.

WINDTALKER2: Short is a state of mind.

LEXLUTHOR: <clearing throat delicately> I might be in your area next week. You up for a cup of coffee or something?

WINDTALKER2: Hold on.

LEXLUTHOR: What are you doing?

WINDTALKER2: Checking out YOUR picture. What if you’re really ugly?

LEXLUTHOR: No fair going to the academy photo.

She opened a second window on the computer and ran a search for Alex Tanner, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Chicago, then clicked on the first link. Which was the Academy photo.

Kim grinned. It showed a serious-looking young man, about 21, skinny and with a nose almost too big for his face.

WINDTALKER2: <SNICKER>

LEXLUTHOR: Damn. I’ve put on a few pounds since then.

WINDTALKER2: Good thing.

LEXLUTHOR: We’re all geeks at 21. Check this link out: www.oaksidetelegraph.com/article00364.htm

WINDTALKER2: Yeah, yeah, Luthor. It’s probably a link to Heath Ledger.

But Kim clicked on the link, which took her to a newspaper site, and a headline that read, “Bomb Squadron Safety Record Vetted.” Beneath it was a photo of a man in a black T-shirt that showed off very nice shoulders, a good chest and excellent arms.

Kim raised an eyebrow. His hair was cropped to show a well-shaped head, high cheekbones and, yep, that aggressive nose. Which was a lot sexier on a thirtysomething face.

And he had that mouth, a Denzel Washington mouth, with an overbite and a full lower lip that looked very sexy.

Kim had a weakness for lips like that.

WINDTALKER2: Okay.

LEXLUTHOR: Okay, what?

WINDTALKER2: Okay, you won’t shame me. I’ll have coffee next week.

LEXLUTHOR: Not sure I can handle the exuberance, babe.

WINDTALKER2: Babe? What century are you?

WINDTALKER2: Hang on….

WINDTALKER2: Something coming up on my decryption.

The computer was making a soft, double beep that meant something had been noted in a special file. When she opened it, she frowned.

WINDTALKER2: Hmm. Odd.

LEXLUTHOR: Que?

WINDTALKER2: It’s an odd signature file.

LEXLUTHOR: Not my area, kiddo. I’ll let you get to it.

WINDTALKER2: K-O.

LEXLUTHOR: Next week.

“What am I missing?” she asked herself, peering hard at the screen.

And if she didn’t find the answer, who was going to die because of it?

A small musical noise told her an e-mail had arrived in her personal in-box. It brought the total to twenty-eight, and Kim remembered she’d meant to check the box. Her eyes burned and she knew she needed to get to bed if she was to have any brain at all the next day, but her little sisters were always wounded if she didn’t respond, so she dutifully opened the folder marked “Family.”

“Shit!” she said aloud.

There were two messages from her mother. One was—Kim sighed—an e-mail hoax that had been around for years, about people flashing their headlights erroneously.

The other…

TO: kvalenti@rsme.net

FROM: eileenvalenti@dearbornhosp.org

SUBJECT: Sunday dinner

Hi, honey. I’ve been on the phone all day and the girls finally stole it from me. Don’t forget, next Monday is the Columbus Day parade and your sisters’ hearts will be broken if you don’t show up to watch them tap dance on the police float. I was going to have our big meal that day, but nobody wanted to shift the tradition, so we’ll just do it Sunday, as always. Try to come for both, huh? Bring a friend if you want. Maybe your big handsome partner??

Love,

Mom

Below the message from Eileen was a list of twenty-seven e-mails, repeated over and over down the length of the window. Each carried her sister Lynda’s e-mail address, lyndavalenti2@rsme.net, and the same subject line: LOOK WHAT I FOUND ONLINE! A paper-clip icon sat beside each one.

“Lynda, Lynda, Lynda,” Kim said, and opened her virus protection software to isolate and examine the virus. “How many times I gotta tell ya not to open attachments, kid?”

When the box was cleared, she examined the isolated virus. It turned out to be a relatively benign form that simply replicated and sent e-mails to every address on an account. Not such a big deal if the infected computer was the personal machine of a teenage girl, but costly and damaging if it was the mainframe of a big corporation.

The fact that she did have a teenage sister was one of the reasons Kim kept her e-mail accounts so rigidly separated.

She sent her sister a warning message with instructions to remove the infected files from her own computer. In capital letters, she typed:

DO NOT OPEN ATTACHMENTS. EVER. Love, Kim.

Something jiggled in her brain, right at the edge.

The answer.

It was there, then gone, like a phantom.

“Get some sleep, Valenti,” she said.

Without dreams.

Please.

Chapter 2

Tuesday, October 5

T he following morning, Kim glared at the computer screen at work. They still had not made significant progress. Whatever clue was niggling at the edge of her brain had refused to come forth.

Her partner, Scott Shepherd, dropped down beside her, a sheaf of papers in his hands. “Anything?” he asked. His eyes looked as red as her own probably did, and she offered her bottle of eyedrops.

“That bad?”

“Three-day-bender bad.”

“Real men don’t use eyedrops. We just belt some bourbon and make it look authentic.” He rubbed his eyes. “The whole place needs new monitors, however. The refresh rate sucks.”

Kim leaned back and pointed at the screen with the eraser end of a pencil she’d been chewing on. “What do you make of this signature file? It shows up on all of them, invisible in the e-mail itself, but running in the background.”

He frowned at the screen, stroked his chin where he’d worn a goatee until joining the NSA. “I see it, but it’s not bringing anything up for me right this second.”

Rolling her tired shoulders, she stood. “I feel like we’re so close. It’s driving me crazy.”

“I know.”

She pushed her chair under the desk, smacked his arm. “C’mon. Let’s get on the treadmills for a half hour, talk it out. Maybe there’s something we’re missing.” She stretched the muscles of her back, hard.

“Sounds good.” He dropped the papers on her desk. “I pulled these up. Maybe there’s something else here.”

“Last one on the treadmills is a rotten egg.”

In the women’s locker room, Kim stripped out of her day clothes, a straight blue skirt, white blouse, stockings and low-heeled pumps. It was great to shed the uniform for stretchy shorts, a sports bra with a T-shirt over it, her comfortable Nike running shoes. She tugged her dark hair into a scrunchie and tucked her earrings into her pocket.

Exercise would help clear the cobwebs. She tossed a towel over her shoulder and made her way into the fitness center.

There were few people around. Although the NSA worked around the clock, this was generally a lull period. Scott had claimed a treadmill in the empty line, and she took the one beside him. She punched in numbers to get to a moderate jog and found her pace, then said, “So what’s going down? If you were a terrorist, what would you be targeting?”

He shook his head. His jaw was grim. “The elections are a possibility.”

The presidential elections would be held in a few weeks, and there had been a great deal of controversy over the incumbent, President James Whitlow. “Who’d be the best target?”

“I’d kill the young, handsome one,” he said.

Kim chuckled. “Personally dislike the guy, huh?”

“It’s the tragedy factor—an old guy gets blown up, even if he’s a president, it’s not as big a deal as when a charming and handsome younger guy gets it.”

“Good point.” Kim nodded. “Then again, terrorists have little love for the president, and it’s plain he’s not particularly effective at home or abroad.”

“Especially in Berzhaan.”

“Right. All the more reason terrorists might target him. Or maybe to get people to vote the way they want them to, as with Spain and maybe this new Munich thing. Get them to vote for Monihan.”

Scott made a derisive noise. “I’m still having trouble taking Monihan seriously.”

Kim wiped a lock of hair out of her eyes. “What’s the matter, Shepherd? He’s prettier than you?”

“Nah. I’m serious here. He’s too young, and the only reason he’s so popular is because all these women are swooning over his pretty face.”

“So, you’ve got to be old and ugly to be a good president?”

He shot her a grin. “Adds dignity.”

Kim rolled her eyes. “And Whitlow is so dignified.”

“He’s a statesman of the old school, you gotta admit.”

“Mmm. The who-cares-where-the-money-comes-from-as-long-as-I-get-elected school.” Whitlow was suspected of accepting money from a drug lord in Puerto Isla, and worse, sending in a SEAL force, which was then demolished, to cover it up. “Whitlow’s finished.”

“Maybe. Unless they kill Monihan.”

They ran in silence for a moment. Feet thumped rhythmically against the rubberized mats, and the motors whirred quietly. Kim felt her breath going deeper, expanding her lungs with oxygen—oxygen that then enlivened her brain cells.

“They’re planning something big,” Scott said grimly. “I feel it in my gut.”

“Me, too. If we don’t break this code, what are we going to find out in the worst way?”

“Exactly.”

“It’s a pretty sophisticated network,” Kim said. “So we’re looking at high-level planning.”

“It’d be nice if terrorists were as stupid as criminals, but they wouldn’t get far in the modern world.”

She grinned.

They ran in companionable silence for a while. After a few minutes, Kim felt a click of endorphins, and the stress seemed to drain out of her body in a rush, as if someone had pulled a plug in her toe. “Ah,” she said, and blew out hard. “Better.”

She glanced at Scott, who had sweat pouring down his rugged, well-cut face. “Admit it,” she said. “This feels pretty good.”

“Yeah, Valenti, you’re as smart as you are good-looking.”

“Sweet-talker.”

He blotted his face. “So they say.”

“The secretarial pool swoons when you walk through, Shepherd, along with half the cryptographers.” She gave him a sidelong grin. “Male and female.”

“Why do you keep ribbing me about this, huh? I think you have a secret crush on me.”

“That’s true. And you know me, I’m so mild mannered, I can’t come right out and say it.”

He laughed. “Mild mannered. Yeah, right.” He punched the controls. “Climb some hills?”

“You bet.” She punched in the incline numbers and grinned. It was the reason she liked working out with him—he was extremely competitive and pushed her to better levels. The hills were a point of pride. He’d grown up in Colorado, in a little ski town, and boasted terrific lung capacity. Kim had gone to prep school in Arizona, running the scorching mountain paths around Phoenix, and boasted her own great lungs.

They’d been in some grim contests. “Six,” she said, referring to the level of incline on the treadmill.

He nodded. They ran, breath coming too hard now for brainstorming or any other kind of conversation.

As her body sweated, her brain awakened, ran a thousand algorithms, trying to fit the pieces together. It wasn’t exactly a one-two-three process, a conscious thing, but a running stream of numbers, letters, patterns.

“Seven,” Scott said.

Kim punched the up arrow on the treadmill and leaned forward the slightest bit to accommodate the greater incline. The numbers and patterns kept whirring in her head. Once her brother Jason had asked her how she came up with the answers to number problems so fast, and she’d considered it seriously for a minute. The best analogy she could think of was a visual of a bike lock with spinning wheels. She just saw them, and they whirred until the right number appeared.

Her brain had always run patterns, looking for the ways things fit together. In the second grade, she’d been doing the newspaper Scramble every morning, and always got it right, even if she didn’t necessarily know the word. By fourth grade, even her very traditional Italian father was forced to admit his daughter was something of a math whiz. They’d had to hire a tutor to keep up with her.

Her thighs started to burn the slightest bit, and her breath came harder. Next to her, Scott lifted an eyebrow. His athletic arms, bared by a serviceable gray tank, were shiny. “Eight,” she said.

“Nine,” he countered.

She didn’t even bother to look at him, just pushed the arrow one more time. Sweat poured down her spine in a wash, and she wiped it off her forehead. Her feet clumped hard on the rubber matting, a fact she usually hated. Tonight, the sound was lost in the heavier pounding of Scott’s tread.

The patterns whirred in her mind, and she stared into the middle distance, not seeing the white-painted cinder-block wall with its poster citing heart-rate targets, but a stream of code. Ordinarily, e-mails were a less difficult form of code to crack, because certain elements, such as headers and addresses, remained constant, and once the code could be cracked there, it fell wide open.

Not in this case. The agency had collected hundreds of e-mails over the past several weeks, as many as fifty in a single day, but in spite of their best efforts with computer algorithms and sophisticated code-breaking software, they’d made no headway.

“What…” Kim gasped, “are we…missing?”

“Network,” he growled. “Some network angle.”

Her breath was growing ragged, and her thighs were burning. She ran five to seven miles a day, as well as lifting weights and practicing kung fu for strength, but the hills were always killer. Licking salt from her upper lip, she slid a glance toward her partner to see how he was holding up.

Sweat soaked his shirt and his streaky blond hair, but Kim only needed that one glance to know he’d hit his stride. Back straight, breath heavy but even. It was easy to see him running up some forested mountain trail at ten thousand feet, his powerful body in perfect condition. Like an ad for a sport drink.

“Uncle,” she said, and pushed the arrows to bring the incline down to a more normal level.

“Thank God,” he said. “I thought it was going to be me this time.”

“Damn,” she said, and blew out a heavy breath. “One of these days, Shepherd, I am going to kick your high-altitude butt.”

“Yeah, yeah, Valenti.”

She wiped her face. As if the towel wiped away a layer of confusion, the answer to the signature was suddenly plain.

“It’s a virus,” she said.

Chapter 3

S cott wiped his face with a towel. “What is a virus?”

“That’s what the signature is, a virus mark. It’s using the virus to encode the messages, the same way a virus works to infect computers.”

“I’m not following.”

“It’s a lot more confusing to say it than it is in action. When you get a regular e-mail virus, it comes in through your e-mail program, right? Then goes out through the addresses in your address book.”

“Okay.” He lifted the towel to his mouth.

“This is working the same way. The guy writes his message, adds the signature line, and it goes through the e-mail systems, bouncing here and there and everywhere, gaining a layer of corruption—in this case, encryption—with each bounce.”

“Jeez. So how do they decode it?”

“There’s obviously a key at the other end.”

A slow grin broke on his angled face. “Let’s go find it.”

It was the break they’d been looking for. Within twelve hours, Kim and Scott had broken down the e-mails and sorted them into two piles so that they could each run decryption possibilities.

The most logical place to look was the source of the virus itself. Most encryption was “private-key,” that is, it used the same key to encrypt the message as would be used to decrypt it. While there was such a thing as “public-key” encryption, where the encoding key was different from the decoding key, it was very slow and would be too noticeable for an e-mail virus. By examining the virus, they were able to crack the code itself.

Which left another layer: the e-mails had been written in Arabic and had to be translated into English so the bulk of the messages could be read by the team.

Even then, there were missing pieces of information, but pointers clearly indicated there was trouble on the way. It looked as if it would be centered around Chicago.

“We’ve gotta call Dana,” Kim said.

“You want me to make the call?” Scott asked.

Kim gave him a glare. “No way. He can be a bastard all he likes, but he can’t stop me.”

Scott lifted a shoulder. “Why subject yourself to such a jerk? He’s old school, no point in banging your head against the wall.”

“Because dealing with me means he learns, over and over, that women are in this organization to stay.”

“Suit yourself.” He waved a file. “I’ll get this copied.”

Despite her bravado, Kim had to brace herself before she picked up the phone. Dana Milosovich was a fifty-something CIA diehard, who thought women should be secretaries, whores or wives. Not operatives. Not code breakers. He had not forgiven Kim for an incident last spring, when she’d beaten him to the draw on an important case.

Too bad.

On the other end of the line, the phone rang. “Milosovich.” His voice was as gravelly as five miles of bad road, no doubt from decades of smoking contraband Cuban cigars.

“Hello, Dana. It’s Kim Valenti, from NSA. You have a minute?”

“A short one.”

“Thanks for your graciousness.”

“Don’t mention it. What is it?”

“We’ve been following some suspicious e-mail activity related to the Q’rajn. My partner and I broke the code this morning and it appears to be pointing to plans for a terrorist attack in Chicago.”

“Yeah?”

“Looks like a bomb. Maybe a truck, something to do with the bridges over the river or a freighter on the lake. They’ve created a virus code to encrypt the e-mails, which we’ve broken, but on top of that, the cell is using another layer of code substituting one group of activities for another. We haven’t entirely sorted that part out, but we’re pretty sure the site is Chicago.”

“We’re way ahead of you, Valenti. Our operatives have been following the same cell. They’re Berzhaanian rebels, and were planning to stage an event to draw attention to the situation in their county.”

Kim scowled. “Right, but we—”

“Two key members of Q-group were killed in Berzhaan yesterday. We feel certain they’re no longer an immediate threat, and in fact recommended that Homeland Security step down to a level-yellow alert.”

“What were their names?”

“Whose names?”

Kim pressed the eraser end of a pencil into the spot between her eyebrows. “The Berzhaanians who were killed.”

“Oh, let’s see. Ahmed bin Hoshel and Sabrout Al Javid El Thakur.”

Not her guys, but she paused and double-checked her notes before she spoke. No. Not the same names she had received from Oracle, but she couldn’t reveal that source. “Hmm. They may very well have been leaders in Berzhaan, but the e-mails we’ve examined have all originated within the U.S. It’s a different cell.”

“You don’t know that. They could have coded it from anywhere.”

“Not exactly,” Kim returned. Patiently, she thought. “There are ways to track addresses, but it’s more a matter of a pattern of exchange. The IP addresses are American. It looks like it’s out of the Chicago area somewhere, as well.”

“Is that so.” He coughed, a rattly, gray sound. “Don’t know how to help you, missy.”

“I’m asking you to check out the possibility of a terrorist attack in Chicago.”

“It’s done. The FBI has been over the city with a fine-tooth comb. Without a lot more information, I don’t see why we need to be wasting more man-hours and causing more unrest.”

Kim could read between the lines: there was a lot riding on this election, and the incumbent Whitlow needed things to appear stable, even if they weren’t. “Look, Milosovich, I know you don’t like me, but how’re you going to feel when a bunch of civilians get blown up because you want to piss in my cornflakes?”

“Give me something a little more substantial, and we’ll get right on it, sister.”

Scott came back, dropped a file on his desk opposite hers and raised an eyebrow. Kim rolled her eyes. “How about I give you names?”

“What names?”

“Two people associated with the terrorist cell we think is planning this attack on Chicago. They’re based just outside of the city.”

“Let me have ’em.”

“Not without a guarantee that I can have some cooperation.”

“What do you want?”

“Whatever you’ve got on these men.”

A short pause. She heard him rattling something. Maybe a canister of pens. “All right. Let me have ’em.”

With some reservations, Kim said, “Fathi bin Amin Mansour and Hafiz abu Malik Abd-Humam.”

Milosovich broke into a ragged, wet chuckle. “That loser? Abd-Humam is running a tire store downtown. He’s been here since his college days. Fathi Mansour…don’t know him.”

“My intelligence says he’s a professor with no known terrorist ties. But we both know that doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’ll look into it, see what we’ve got, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. I’m telling you the cell was castrated when the leaders were killed in Berzhaan.”

“Hope you’re right.”

“You know, Valenti, your arrogance pisses me off. I’ve been doing this since before you were born. You hotshot kids come in here with all your jargon and think you can save the world in five minutes flat, but it doesn’t work like that.”

Kim struggled with an array of answers, from the unprintable to the compassionate. He was an old man on his way out. He knew it and resented it. She could understand that, but not at the risk of human lives. “I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time, Mr. Milosovich,” she said finally. “You’ll let me know if you turn anything up.”

“You got lucky once, that’s all,” he said. “You broke a code.”

“Well,” she said slowly, her nostrils flaring, “if it was lucky, then it was three times, because that’s the number of codes I’ve broken since I arrived at the Agency.”

“Whatever.”

“Great comeback. You know, I’m trying to be patient with you, respect what you have to teach me. But you have to respect my knowledge, as well. Computers are here to stay, and just because they scare you, and you’ve got your voice-mail password stuck to your desk and you don’t know how to collect e-mail without somebody setting the program for you, don’t take it out on me. I’m trying to help you!”

“I don’t want your help.”

“Fine. Whatever.” Kim hung up and let go of a howl. “He drives me insane!”

Scott chuckled, stapling a sheaf of papers together. “Better call the FBI before he gets to them.”

“I have a better idea.” Kim opened the Instant Messenger box.

WINDTALKER2: Hey, Luthor, are you there?

No answer. After five minutes, Kim reluctantly picked up the phone. She dialed his desk directly, but an electronic voice answered and said simply that her party was away from his desk. “Damn.” She punched in the key to be connected to a central number.

A woman answered. “Federal Bureau of Investigation, Margaret speaking.”

“Hi, Margaret. Kim Valenti from the NSA here. Is Lex around anywhere?”

“Not at the moment. You want his voice mail?”

“No, thanks. I need to share some concerns I have over a possible terrorist alert in Chicago. Who’d be my best bet?”

“I think you’re probably all right, Ms. Valenti. We just had a call from the CIA about the same thing.”

“I’m sure you did,” Kim said as evenly as possible. “All the same, I’ll feel better if I talk to somebody on the bomb squad. Who else?”

“I can put you through to Agent O’Brien.”

“Thanks.”

“Hold please.”

“O’Brien here,” said a voice with the edge of a Spanish accent. The juxtaposition made Kim smile. She explained who she was and what her mission of the day was, but before she could finish, O’Brien interrupted her. “Right. I just took a call from the CIA, an agent Milosovich. He said your guys have been killed, so it’s not a problem.”

Kim rubbed her temple. “Not my guys. His guys. My cell is located somewhere in the Chicago area, and they’re planning something big. That is a problem.”

“With all due respect, Agent—”

“Valenti.”

“With all due respect, Agent Valenti, we’ve been over the city like dogs the past couple of weeks, sniffing out every corner.”

“He told you I’m high-strung and prone to exaggerate.”

“Words to that effect.”

“Right. Is Lex Tanner around?”

“Nope. They’re at the airport, going over it one more time, double-checking security standards. It’s unofficially code orange, but we don’t want to alarm the public.”

“Can you have him call me when he gets back?”

“Will do.”

Kim was about to hang up when O’Brien said, “Hold up. Tanner just got here. I’ll put you through.”

“Thanks.”

She listened to the sound of Vivaldi piped through the lines for a minute, then a man said, “Tanner here. What can I do for you?”

Kim had never had a phone conversation with him. All their business had been conducted via instant messaging or e-mail. For five-tenths of a second, she was startled by the unexpected richness of his voice. Humid with the blurred edges of somewhere south. Deep South.

“Hello?” he repeated.

“Hey, Lex Luthor,” she said, recovering. “Kim Valenti, at the NSA. How’re you doing?”

“Darlin’!” The genuine pleasure in his voice was unmistakable. “I’m doing just fine now that I’m talking to you. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a problem. Hoping you can help.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“We have intelligence that shows a Q’rajn cell in the burbs of Chicago, and they’re utilizing a virus to encode their e-mails. We broke the code and my partner and I are pretty sure they’re targeting Chicago in some way.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Damn it!” Kim swore. “Not you, too.”

“Hold on. No need to get ugly, now. I just heard from your buddy at the CIA who said they caught your guys.”

Gritting her teeth, Kim said, “First thing you need to know is that Milosovich is so not my buddy. He’d love to see me fall face-first in a mud puddle. Second, they’re not my guys. They’re Milosovich’s guys, and he wants to think my guys were castrated by the fall.”

“And you don’t think they were.”

“No. Those guys were in Berzhaan and they’re undoubtedly all part of the same twisted terrorist sect, but my group is here, on American soil.”

“All right. What’s your intelligence say they’re going to do?”

“It’s not that clear. A bomb. Maybe the airport or an airplane.”

“We’ve been over the airport five thousand times.”

“I know. Believe me, I wouldn’t insist if I weren’t pretty sure.”

He sighed. “Valenti, my hands are tied, babe.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry. Old habit.” She could hear a tapping sound, fast and tinny. “Look, it sounds like Milosovich and you have some bad blood, all right, but he’s a good agent. And he’s got a lot of seniority.”

“And I don’t.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. Look, what if it’s not the airport? What if it’s along the route to the airport, or somewhere one of the candidates is going to speak? Bridges, television stations—” She paused, trying to brainstorm. “Wherever. You know your city.”

He said, “Hmm.” And in spite of her concern and irritation, she felt it on the back of her neck. Velvety, rich. “A question—why target the candidates anyway?”

“Because they can? Because it causes trouble? Terrorists don’t need a clearly defined reason to do things—they just want to create fear and confusion.”

“I see your point.” Again that background noise of quick tapping.

Kim said, “What is that noise?”

“Sorry.” The sound ceased. “I have a bad habit of tapping a pen.”

“No big deal.”

“Look, Valenti, you’ve done me favors, and I’ll see what I can do, all right? But maybe you oughta look at the intelligence in another way, too. Maybe it’s not pointing where you think it is—and that would be tragic, too.”

“You’re right. I’ll go over it again. Let me know what you find out.”

“Will do.” He dropped his voice, and his next words were even richer, darker, like chocolate. Laced with espresso. “We still on for next week in your neighborhood?”

“I’ve gotta tell you, Lex, your voice didn’t hurt the cause any.”

“Yeah? You like it?”

Kim smiled. “Call me if you find anything, Luthor.”

“I’ll be talking to you.”

Scott, sitting at his desk, raised his head when she hung up. “You’ve got that gleam in your eye, Valenti.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, and stood up. “I’m going to take some personal time. I’ll be back later.”

Chapter 4

S he drove home and without taking off her coat, she fired off an e-mail.

To: Delphi@orcl.org

From: Ariadne@orcl.org

Subject: need help

Give me everything you have on Chicago, the campaigns, anything the Chicago set might have done previously. Not making a lot of progress through usual channels. Advise.

Ariadne

Still wearing her coat, she went to the kitchen, opened a vacuum-packed envelope of tuna and ate it leaning on the counter. From the other room came a soft beep and she walked back.

To: Ariadne@orcl.org

From: Delphi@orcl.org

Subject: re:

-Intelligence from CIA shows infiltration at Chicago UBC television station, CIA might have a man in there.

-Three moving vans were stolen last week in southern California. Home-move type, not professional.

-Quote keeps showing up in unrelated material: Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. Surah 4:34

-Reference to Cristopho in materials CIA intercepted. Columbus? Clue to city or holiday? Check. As always, act independently if necessary. Oracle will back you.

Delphi

Kim narrowed her eyes, punched in a thanks. A man at the Chicago UBC affiliate—at least it was a place to start. Her gut was screaming that Chicago was the place, the time not far distant. Not even as far away as Columbus Day, which was Monday, either. The flurry of e-mails was so intense, the deal had to be going down soon.

And if she couldn’t figure it out, somebody would die. Kim intended to do whatever was necessary to prevent that.

She picked up the phone, punched in some numbers. “Shepherd,” she said when Scott answered, “I’m going to Chicago. Let the boss know for me.”

“Whatcha got?”

“A hunch more than anything else. Not a lot more. Can you cover for me for a day or two?”

“I don’t like it when you do the maverick thing, Valenti. Too nerve-racking.”

“I know. But it’s the way I was trained.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with an FBI agent named Tanner, does it?”

“No. Why?”

“He left a message.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Kim made a noise of annoyance. “Are you gonna tell me what it is?”

“‘Checked it all. Everything is A-okay. Don’t worry.’”

A ripple of something she didn’t stop to identify raced through her—a twitchy mix of longing and regret. He hadn’t taken her seriously, either, and it was far more disappointing coming from him. Her sharp response was a warning.

She’d do well to leave the man alone. Completely.

“Nope,” she said. “Tanner is as clueless as all the rest of them. You’re the only one who ever believes in me. This trip is to check out a gut-level idea.”

“Your mysterious source.” Scott tsked. It wasn’t the first time she’d received information through Oracle. She simply let him think whatever he thought about it. “All right, Valenti, I’ll cover for you, but you keep that pretty ass out of trouble, will ya?”

“I’ll do my best. If you need me, I’ll have my cell phone with me.”

“Stay in touch.”

When she hung up with him, she looked up the number of the Chicago UBC station and called to speak with the personnel manager, a man named John. She identified herself as a member of the NSA, and said she was tracking some information regarding a case—would she be able to check the files tonight? He agreed warmly, said he’d be in that evening to train a new cameraman, and she could stop in at her convenience.

She changed into jeans and warm boots, but left her hair in a knot at the base of her neck. Into a small duffel, she threw a change of clothes and her makeup bag. From a rack on the back of her closet door, she chose a small shoulder purse, and tucked in her wallet, cell phone, and at the last minute, her NSA security badge. Within an hour, she was at the airport.

The ticket had been purchased at the last minute, so Kim wasn’t surprised when she was pulled out of the security lines for additional screening—and not just the usual, extra hand-wanding, but a full, focused search of her belongings and the body search by an appropriate female guard. The girl was skinny as a praying mantis, her elbows like knots. Her blond hair was tightly pulled back from her extremely young—and serious—face.

Kim joked, “All clear? For once, I remembered to not wear an underwire bra.”

“Wait right here.” The girl picked up a phone, punched in a number.

Scowling Kim said, “What is—”

“Better if you just follow directions, ma’am.” She turned away and said something into the phone, looking at the NSA badge with Kim’s picture.

Kim felt passersby giving her the curious eye. Odd how it made her feel guilty.

“I’m afraid there’s an additional problem, ma’am,” the girl said. “You’ll have to follow me, please.”

“Sure, but—”

“High alert this week and you have a lot of red flags.”

“Last-minute ticket, I know. It’s just that I work for—”

The woman flashed Kim’s confiscated badge. “National Security Agency. I know.”

Kim scowled at the rudeness and rolled her eyes. She looked younger than she was, she knew that. No point in antagonizing the woman further—it would just lead to more delays. “Will this take long? I’m worried about missing my flight.”

“There’s another one at 3 p.m. if you miss this one,” the woman said without looking at Kim.

“Great.” It wasn’t. It would mean getting to Chicago after dark, maybe not to the television station until the evening news. With an effort, she breathed in. Out. No point in getting upset. It wouldn’t hurry anything.

At an office with a window overlooking the concourse, the woman stopped and shoved open the door. “Here we are. Have a seat, ma’am.”

A tall, bearded black man in a Transportation Security Administration uniform waved Kim into the chair. The woman escort handed over Kim’s bags and badge, then exited.

“I’m sorry about the delay,” the man said. “I need to verify your identity.”

“No big deal.”

As the man dialed the telephone, Kim fidgeted, irritably wiggling her foot until she realized it would make her appear to be nervous. Which she was, though not because she wanted to blow up the airport.

The airport. Why had the FBI in Chicago paid so much attention to the airport? Airports were so heavily guarded since 9/11 that there had to be an easier way for a terrorist to accomplish goals of instilling fear. Why bother? Narrowing her eyes in thought, Kim decided the FBI must have had some intelligence they weren’t sharing.

The man hung up the phone. “I’m afraid we have to hold you for twenty minutes, just until they can fax a photo to your boss.”

“I’ll miss my flight.”

“Sorry, ma’am. When it goes to orange, it gets a lot tighter around here.”

Tamping down her annoyance, Kim folded her hands around her knees. “I appreciate that, but I’m bewildered. Why the trouble today? I’ve flown a dozen times under similar circumstances recently.”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“If I get through the security clearance will you tell me?”

He nodded. “That’d be all right, I guess.”

The fax went through with a series of beeps and bleeps. Kim stared through the window over the concourse at the streams of humanity bustling through the hallways. She puzzled over the challenge of clearing millions and millions of passengers every day. Millions.

And it wasn’t as if criminals hadn’t proven they were willing to do anything to reach their objectives. Q’rajn wanted to punish the U.S. for its involvement in Berzhaan. Other rebels wanted other things, and anyone with an ax to grind, a pound or two of plastic explosives and a death wish could do it. For terrorists of the ilk they were all trying to fight, life was as thin and cheap as paper.

Watching the crowds, she tried to imagine she was the one trying to decide who was a terrorist and who was an ordinary citizen. A tall man in a business suit looked like a physician, hurrying toward an important surgery. The turban on his head marked him as a Sikh, something Kim knew from her studies at Athena Academy. Exotic, but likely not dangerous.

But how would the ill-educated girl who’d carted Kim up here know that?

Odd, but sitting in the plastic chair in the office of the head of security made Kim feel guilty.

“It’s a pretty rough job, the security of airports,” she offered.

The man, his hands steepled in front of his mouth, raised weary brows. “That’s understating the situation, I’d say.”

“It’s impossible, really, isn’t it?”

He shook his head. “Never give up.” The fax machine spit out a piece of paper and the man leaned forward to swipe it off the tray. “Looks like you’re good to go, Ms. Valenti. Sorry for the delay.”

Kim shrugged and took the things he held out to her. “So, I assume it was the late booking that caused so much trouble, but what else? I’ll try to avoid it next time.”

He scratched his nose. “Not sure you’ll be able to do anything about it. The girl—er—thought you looked Arabic.”

“Ah.” She met his eyes.

He held her gaze for a second, then lifted a phone. “I’ll call your gate to have them hold your flight.”

Kim hitched the bag over her shoulder. “Thanks.”

On the concourse, she headed for her gate, glancing up over her shoulder at the two-way window. Something niggled—there was something they weren’t telling her. What could it be? What information had gone out that she’d not yet seen?

As she walked, she took the cell out of her bag and punched in the numbers to Scott’s desk. The phone rang at the other end as she reached the deserted gate.

An impatient flight attendant stood irritably at the door to the flight. Kim handed the woman her boarding pass. “Sorry. Got stuck at security.”

“Not your fault.” The woman gave her back the small piece of pass. “Have a good flight.”

Scott’s voice mail picked up. “Shepherd,” Kim said, hurrying down the ramp, “run the files again and see if there are any references to women, then get back to me. I’m getting on the plane right now, so I have to turn off my phone, but leave a message.”

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