Total Control (50 page)

She dialed her parents' number in Bell Harbor. An automated message greeted her and announced that the number was not in service.

She groaned as she suddenly remembered why. Her parents always had the phone turned off during the winter. Her father had probably forgotten to turn the service back on. He would certainly do so once he got up there. Since it wasn't back on, that meant they probably hadn't arrived yet.

Sidney swiftly calculated travel times. When she had been a child, her father would drive all the way through, about thirteen hours, stopping along the way only for food and gas. As he had grown older, though, he had become more patient. Ever since his retirement, he would stop along the way for the night, break the trip up into two days. If they had left early yesterday afternoon, as planned, that would put them in Bell Harbor at about midafternoon today. If they had left as planned. It suddenly occurred to Sidney that she had not verified her parents' departure yet. She decided to correct that oversight immediately. The phone rang three times and then the answering machine picked up. She spoke into the phone to let her parents know it was she. They often screened their calls.

However, no one picked up the phone. She put the phone receiver back. She would try again from the airport. She checked her watch and decided to make one more phone call. Now that she knew of Paul Brophy's involvement with RTG, something didn't make sense to her. There was only one person she could think of to ask about it.

And she had to do it before news of the murders reached the public.

"Kay? It's Sidney Archer."

The voice on the other end of the line was sleepy at first and then wide awake as Kay Vincent sat up in bed. "Sidney?"

"I'm sorry to call so early, but I really need your help on something."

Kay didn't answer. "Kay, I know what all the papers have been saying about Jason."

Kay's voice cut her off. "I don't believe any of that stuff, Sidney.

Jason could never have been involved in any of that."

Sidney breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you for saying that, Kay.

I was beginning to think I was the only one who hadn't lost the faith."

"Not by a long shot, Sidney. How can I help you?"

Sidney took a moment to calm her nerves, to keep her voice from shaking too much. She eyed a police officer walking down the hallway of the train station. She turned her back to him and hunched against the wall. "Kay, you know Jason never really talked to me about his work."

Kay snorted. "It's no small wonder. It's beaten into our heads here: Everything's one big secret."

"Right. But now secrets don't do me any good. I need to know what Jason was working on the last few months. Were there any big projects he was on?"

Kay shifted the phone to her other ear. Her husband was snoring on the other side of the bed. "Well, you know he was working on organizing the financial records for the CyberCom deal. That took a lot of his time."

"Right, I knew something about that one."

Kay chuckled. "He'd come back from that warehouse looking like he'd just mud-wrestled an alligator, filthy from head to toe. But he kept at it and did a great job. In fact, he really seemed to enjoy it.

The other thing he spent a lot of time on was the integration of the company's tape backup system."

"You mean the computer system storing automatic copies of e mails and documents and such?"

"Right."

"Why did they need an integration of the tape backup system?"

"Well, as you probably could've guessed, Quentin Rowe's company had a first-rate system before it was bought out by Triton. But Nathan Gamble and Triton didn't. Between you and me, I don't think Nathan Gamble knows what a tape backup is. Anyway, Jason's job was to integrate Triton's previous backup systems into Quentin's more sophisticated one."

"What exactly would the integration entail?"

"Going through all of Triton's backup files and formatting them into a shape that would be compatible with the new system. E-mails, documents, reports, graphs--anything created on the computer system. He finished that one too. The whole system is now fully integrated."

"Where were the old files kept? At the office?"

"Oh, no. At the storage facility over in Reston. Boxes stacked ten high. Same place where the financial records were stored. Jason spent a lot of time there."

"Who authorized those projects?"

"Quentin Rowe."

"Not Nathan Gamble?"

"I don't think he even knew about it initially. But he does now."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because Jason got an e-mail from Nathan Gamble commending him on the job he had done."

"Really? That doesn't sound like Nathan Gamble."

"Yeah, it surprised me too. But he did."

"I suppose you don't recall the date of that e-mail, do you?"

"Actually, I do, for a terrible reason."

"What do you mean?"

Kay Vincent sighed deeply. "It was the day of the plane crash."

Sidney jerked upright. "You're sure?"

"There was no way I could forget that, Sid."

"But Nathan Gamble was in New York on that day. I was there with him."

"Oh, that doesn't matter. He has his secretary send out his e-mails on a preset schedule regardless of whether he's in the office or not."

That didn't make any sense to Sidney. "Kay, I suppose there's been no more news on the CyberCom deal, has there? The records issue is still hanging things up?"

"What records issue?"

"Gamble didn't want to turn over the financial records to CyberCom."

"I don't know anything about that. I do know that the financial records have already been turned over to CyberCom."

"What?" Sidney almost screamed out the word. "Did any attorneys at Tyler, Stone look them over first?"

"I don't know about that."

"When did they go out?"

"Ironically, same day as Nathan Gamble sent Jason that e-mail."

Sidney's head was spinning. "The day of the plane crash? You're absolutely sure of that?"

"I'm real good friends with one of the mail-room clerks. They recruited him to help transport the records to the copy department and then he helped deliver them to CyberCom. Why? Is that important for some reason?"

Sidney finally spoke. "I'm not sure if it is or not."

"Oh, well, do you need to know anything else?"

"No, Kay, you've given me plenty to think about." Sidney thanked her, hung up the phone and headed for the cab stands.

Kenneth Scales looked down at the message he was holding in his hands, his eyes narrowing. The information on the disk was encrypted.

They needed the password. He looked over at the one individual who they now knew had to be the recipient of that precious e-mail. Jason wouldn't have sent the disk to his wife without sending the password as well. That had to be the e-mail message Jason had sent from the warehouse. The password. Sidney stood in the cab line outside Penn Station. He should have just taken care of her in the limo. It was neither his practice nor to his liking to leave anyone alive. But orders were orders. At least she had been kept on a short leash until they knew where the e-mail had gone. Now he had marching instructions he could truly sink his deadly blade in. He moved forward.

When Sidney's cab pulled up, she caught a reflection in the window of the vehicle. The man was only focused on her for an instant, but with her nerves set on high, it was long enough. She whirled around and their eyes locked for one terrifying moment. The same devilish eyes from the limo. Scales cursed and raced forward. Sidney jumped in the cab and it roared off. Scales pushed several people waiting ahead of him in line aside, threw the protesting cab stand attendant to the pavement and leaped into the next available cab. It sped after Sidney.

Sidney looked behind her. Through the darkness and driving sleet she couldn't make out much. However, traffic was relatively light at this time of the morning and she saw a pair of headlights swiftly approaching. She ran back. "I know I'm going crazy, but we're being followed." She gave the driver another destination.

He made a hard left, then a sharp right and roared down an empty side street and then back out onto Fifth Avenue.

Sidney's cab pulled to a stop in front of a skyscraper. She jumped out and raced toward the entrance, pulling something out of her purse as she did so. She stuck the access card into the slot in the wall and the door clicked open. She went inside, pulling the door closed behind her.

The security guard at the granite console in the lobby looked up sleepily. Sidney dug once more in her bag and produced her Tyler, Stone ID card. The guard nodded and slumped back in his chair.

Sidney glanced back once more as she hit the elevator button. Only one elevator car was activated this early in the morning. The second cab screeched to a stop in front of the building and a man jumped out and raced over to the glass doors and pounded on them. Sidney watched as the guard got up from his chair.

Sidney called to him. "I think that man was following me. He might be a nut. Please be careful."

The guard eyed her for a minute and then nodded. He looked back over at the doorway. One hand slipped down to the pistol in his holster as he strode over to the doorway. Sidney glanced back once more before she got on the elevator. The guard was looking up and down the street. Sidney breathed a sigh of relief and got on the elevator, hitting the button for the twenty-third floor. Moments later she entered the darkened Tyler, Stone suite and hurried into an office. She hit a light, pulled out her address book, consulted a phone number and dialed.

She was calling her parents' longtime neighbor and family friend, seventy-year-old Ruth Childs. Ruth answered the phone on the first ring, and from her brisk tone it was clear, despite it being a little after six in the morning, that she had been up for a while. Ruth tenderly commiserated with Sidney over her recent loss and then, in response to Sidney's query, reported that the Pattersons and Amy had left yesterday around two o'clock after hastily packing for their trip.

"I saw your father put his shotgun case in the trunk, Sidney," Ruth said provocatively.

"I wonder why," was Sidney's weak response. She was about to say good-bye when Ruth said something that made Sidney's heart skip a. beat.

"I have to admit I was kind of worried the night before they left.

There was a car driving by at all hours. I don't sleep much, and when I do, it doesn't take much to wake me up. It's a quiet neighborhood, you know that. Nothing out here unless you're going to see someone for a visit. The car was back yesterday morning."

"Did you see anyone in the car?" Sidney's voice was trembling.

"No, my eyes aren't what they used to be, even with trifocals."

"Is the car still there?"

"Oh, no. It left right after your parents did. Good riddance, ! say.

I've got my baseball bat by the door, though. Just let somebody try to break in my house. They'll wish they hadn't."

Before hanging up, Sidney told Ruth Childs to be careful and to call the police if the car showed up again, which Sidney was certain it wouldn't. The car was far away from Hanover, Virginia. It was, she was almost positive, on its way to Bell Harbor, Maine. And now, so was she.

She hung up the phone and turned to leave. That's when she heard the ding of the elevator car arriving at the floor she was on.

She didn't stop to wonder who might be arriving this early. She immediately assumed the worst. She pulled out the .32 revolver and ran out of the office in the opposite direction from the elevator. At least she had the advantage of knowing the office layout.

Flying feet behind her confirmed her worst suspicions. She ran as hard as she could, her purse flapping against her side. She could hear the person's breath as he turned onto the darkened corridor she was on. He drew closer. She ran faster than she had since her college basketball days, but it clearly wasn't going to be fast enough. She would have to try a different tactic. She rounded a corner, stopped, spun around and knelt down in a shooting stance, the revolver pointed straight ahead. The man, charging hard, hurtled around the corner and stopped dead barely two feet from her. She glanced at the knife in his hand, the blood still gleaming on its blade. His body seemed to tense for an all-out attack. As if sensing that, Sidney sent a round sailing just past his left temple.

"The next one hits your brain." Sidney stood up, her eyes glued to his face, and motioned for him to drop the knife, which he did.

"Move," she barked, pointing behind him with the gun. She backed him down the hallway until they reached a metal door.

"Open it."

The man's eyes bore into her. Even with the gun pointed right at his head, she felt like a kid with a slender stick confronting a rabid dog. He opened the door wide and looked inside. The lights automatically came on. It was the copy room, a large operation with massive machines, stacks of paper and all the other mundane items required by a busy law firm. She motioned through the doorway to another door at the far end of the copier room. "In there." He moved through the doorway. Sidney caught the door and held it open as she watched him move across the room. He looked back at her as he opened the other door. It was a storage closet for office.supplies.

"That door opens, you're dead." Holding the door open with her shoulder, the gun still trained directly on him, she reached across to a counter just inside the room and made a show of picking up a telephone.

As soon as the man closed the door, Sidney put down the phone, quietly closed the copier room door and raced down the hallway to the elevators. She hit the button and the door immediately opened. Thank God it had remained on the twenty-third floor. She jumped on and pushed the button for the first floor, all the time listening for the man coming for her. She kept the revolver trained on the opening, but the office remained quiet. As soon as she reached the first floor, she hit all the buttons up to the twenty-third floor and jumped off the elevator. She let out her breath and allowed her-selfa small smile. It quickly turned to horror as she rounded the corner and almost fell over the security guard's body. Forcing herself not to scream, she raced out of the building and down the street.