Unauthorized Access (39 page)

Then he heard it again, a faint
pop
as a dried bit of vegetation crunched under someone’s foot. His skin crawled as he turned his head in that direction. He had positioned himself so he was concealed if someone approached from the cabin, but he was more exposed to whoever was coming now.

The small hairs on the back of his neck stirred when he saw a flicker of movement. A shadow that was marginally darker than the surrounding forest appeared from behind a tree, paused, then moved out of sight again. Rob’s eyes bored a hole in the gloom ahead of the moving shadow. A soft momentary scuffing noise floated his way, then the shadow reappeared, picking its way toward the cars.

Rob shifted his weight carefully, holding his breath as he tried not to make any sound. He brought the gun around slowly and pointed it in the direction the shadow was headed. His hand trembled as his slick finger found the trigger. Another glimpse, closer this time, the edges of the shadow increasingly distinct, taking on a more human shape. The pressure of Rob’s finger increased imperceptibly on the trigger.

Then the shadow passed through a narrow band of moonlight and Rob caught a glimpse of Lesley’s face. He gasped and jerked the gun upright, taking his finger off the trigger. He stood up and called out in a hoarse whisper.

“Lesley.”

Lesley’s hand flew to her face as she turned toward him with a start. He motioned for her to join him. She ran over, crunching through the debris on the ground as she did so. He could feel her trembling against him as she grabbed him in a tight hug and planted her cheek against his chest.

Rob pulled her down so they both crouched next to his bush.

“Oh, God,” she said, “I’m so glad—”

Rob put a hand over her mouth. “Shh,” he said. He held his hand in place while he listened. Lesley made no attempt to remove it. Her eyes darted from side to side in a panicky way. Hearing no sign that anyone had heard them, Rob took his hand away.

“Are you okay?” he said as quietly as he could.

Lesley looked back over her shoulder. “Can we get out of here now?”

“What happened to Tim?”

Lesley seemed to flinch at the mention of the name. “No idea. I lost him, I guess.”

“Well he’s still around somewhere,” Rob said. “His car’s right over there.”

She craned her neck up over a branch to look where he was pointing, then toward the cabin.

“But I don’t see Uncle Stan’s,” she said.

“He’s gone,” Rob said. “I left him to watch the guy who kidnapped me, but he must have got the better of Stan somehow. I saw him troop Stan out of the cabin at gunpoint and force him to drive away. Then the guy started searching the bushes around the cabin.”

“So we can just go.”

“We can’t. Someone ripped the spark plug wires out of my car.”

“But can you hot-wire one of the other cars or something?”

“Wouldn’t even know how to try. Besides, I have to stay here.”

Lesley looked at him in disbelief.

“I got away from that guy once before but it didn’t do any good,” Rob said. “He found me again, and you too. I’m not going to let that happen anymore.”

“But—”

“I’m assuming Stan will send the police as soon as he can. Until they arrive, I plan to make sure the guy doesn’t leave.”

Lesley’s mouth hung open as she stared at him.

“That’s crazy,” she said. “We need to get away from him, not stay here where he can find us.”

“You’re half right. I don’t want you here if he shows up. You should start walking out of here. I’ll catch up as soon as I make sure no one’s coming after us.”

“No way,” Lesley said. “I’ve had my fill of being alone in the woods at night.”

“Suit yourself, but I’m staying.”

“You said the police will probably be here soon. Let’s just leave and let them take care of it.”

Rob shook his head. “I can’t take that chance. I need to finish this. Tonight.”

“But how are you going to—”

Both of them jumped when a gunshot split the night. Their heads swiveled as they tried to separate the echoes from the true direction of the sound.

“I think that came from the other side of the cabin,” Rob said.

Lesley put her hand on his arm. He could feel her trembling.

“You stay here,” he said. “I’m going to circle around and see what happened.”

“No,” she said in a shocked whisper.

“I know where he is, and he doesn’t know where I am,” Rob said. “That advantage won’t last long. I have to go now.”

She looked at him with terrified eyes.

* * *

Once Rob was close to the spot where he thought the gunshot had happened, the moaning guided him the rest of the way.

“Oh,” the voice croaked. “Help me.”

Rob pushed aside a leafy branch so he could see the clearing. Tim lay next to a clump of pine trees, clutching his hands over his stomach. Rob moved the branch further and looked around, but saw no one else.

He hesitated before emerging from cover, suddenly wondering if giving Kirsten’s gun to Lesley had been such a good idea. Screwing up his courage, he hurried over to Tim and crouched beside him. Tim’s face was slick with sweat. He looked up at Rob through barely open eyes.

“Oh, Rob. It hurts.”

The lower half of Tim’s T-shirt was soaked in blood, which looked pure black in the moonlight. Rob remembered having plenty of evil thoughts about his ‘buddy’ earlier in the day, but he wouldn’t wish this kind of suffering on anyone.

“Hang on,” Rob said. “Help should be here soon.”

Tim winced and lifted his head off the ground in apparent agony.

Landry stepped out from behind a nearby clump of trees.

“I’m not sure the help will be soon enough,” he said.

Rob’s mouth went dry as he stared once more at the nine-millimeter.

“Stand up,” Landry said, “and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Rob did as he was told.

“That makes two out of three,” Landry said with a self-satisfied tone. “Now I can use you to flush out your girlfriend.”

Landry emerged from the shadows and nudged Tim with his toe.

“Think she’d give herself up if she thought it would keep you from ending up like him?”

Rob dropped to the ground and a gunshot rang out immediately. The bullet hit Landry’s left shoulder and he fell backwards. Rob struggled up as quickly as his gimpy knee would handle and launched himself on top of Landry. Rob grappled for the gun the older man still held in his right hand. Even with his wound, Landry might have gotten the upper hand, except Lesley ran out of the trees from the same spot where Rob had emerged. She pointed Kirsten’s gun at Landry’s head, at which point he stopped struggling and Rob took the nine-millimeter.

Rob scrambled away from Landry and pointed the gun at him with both hands. Lesley knelt down beside Tim.

“Oh, Tim,” she said.

Tim looked up at her. Rob saw a dribble of blood at the corner of his mouth.

“All I wanted …” Tim paused to cough, which caused him to screw up his face in pain. “… was for you to love me back.”

Lesley’s face crumpled.

“You just lay still,” she said.

Rob kept his attention mostly on Landry until he heard Lesley’s sharp intake of breath.

“No,” she said, “you have to breathe.”

Rob looked down to see Tim’s head slumped to one side. As soon as he did, some primitive survival instinct screamed that he had made a mistake. He whipped his head back around in time to see Landry pull a second pistol from the small of his back. Rob started pulling the trigger as quickly as he could. The noise was deafening. At some point after the third shot he realized something had barely missed the side of his head and Landry was down with a dark bloom spreading in the center of his chest.

Keeping his gun pointed at Landry, Rob sidled in close, kicked the backup pistol away from a motionless hand, and then backed out of reach. He watched Landry closely for signs of life but saw no movement.

Rob looked down at Lesley and saw her sitting beside Tim with tears running silently down her cheeks. She was holding Tim’s hand, but it looked like he was past the point where he would ever know about it.

That’s when they heard the faint sound of sirens.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY

ROB SAT SLUMPED in a folding chair, his arms resting on a gunmetal gray table. The interrogation room was nicer than the ones he had endured in Boston. At least this one had windows, although the darkness outside matched his mood. His swollen knee and aching shoulders were complaining like crazy, and he was still numb from finding out about his good friend’s betrayal. The two dead bodies he had left in his wake didn’t help either.

He did his best not to stare back at the officer assigned to stand guard over him. The officer leaned against the wall with folded arms just inside the door. They had been waiting in the room for over an hour, with the pudgy officer watching Rob the entire time. Apparently they didn’t get many famous computer criminals in Worcester. This guy was determined to get an eyeful while he had the chance.

Rob wanted to talk to someone so the whole mess could be over, but he had been given little chance to do so. His frustration had been building ever since the two police cruisers with
Worcester County Sheriff’s Department
on the doors had arrived at the cabin, their flashing lights casting eerie shadows in the surrounding woods. He and Lesley had given the officers a quick recap of how Tim and the other man had died, then the two of them had been bundled into the back seats of separate cars and left to wait until the officers were done at the scene.

Things hadn’t improved much when they arrived at the Sheriff’s Office. He and Lesley were placed immediately in separate rooms, not long after which Rob had a brief interview with the Sheriff himself. Sheriff Olmstead had a broad, ruddy face and a closely clipped mustache that matched the way he talked. Everything he said sounded like a military command. Olmstead got Rob to sketch out the barest details of what had happened at the cabin and then had shut him down, saying that someone else would be in to question him in more detail. Rob could only assume Lesley had been treated the same way. Since then Rob had grown so annoyed he could almost taste the frustration like a bitterness at the back of his throat.

The door opened and Rob saw the reason for the wait. Special Agent Steeves walked in accompanied by Sheriff Olmstead. The Sheriff nodded to the pudgy officer, who closed the door as he left. Steeves sat down opposite Rob. Olmstead chose to stand. Officious arm folding seemed to be a popular pastime in these parts.

Steeves dropped a sheaf of paper on the table.

“I read the statement you gave to the Sheriff here,” he said. “You’ve had quite a day.”

“I’ve had better,” Rob said.

Steeves stared at Rob for a moment, then pointed at the papers and said, “You expect me to believe this fairy tale?”

Rob’s eyes widened in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s see. Two people get shot and killed, and now you conveniently say one of them confessed that he sabotaged the bank and set you up.”

“It’s the truth.”

“So you say.”

“Lesley can tell you what happened. I wasn’t there when Tim told her.”

Steeves craned his neck to one side and looked at the Sheriff.

“You’ve never had a young lady tell you stories to save her boyfriend’s skin, have you?”

Olmstead just smirked.

“We’re used to wives and grandmothers and fiancées providing alibis,” Steeves said. “Funny thing, they never seem to want their men to go off to jail.”

“But Stan was there, too. He can back us up.”

“Yes, I talked to Mr. Dysart. He confirmed that Tim and the other guy held you at gunpoint for a while, but he didn’t see how they died and he never heard Tim say anything about what happened at the bank.”

Rob’s fingers turned white as his hands balled into fists.

“Not only that,” Steeves said, “you’ve admitted your prints are on the guns that shot both Tim and the other guy.”

“I explained that.”

“I can think of several possible motives for killing them. Tim could have been in on it with you from the start. Maybe he got nervous, afraid we’d tie him in and he threatened to come clean and testify against you.”

“I didn’t shoot Tim,” Rob said.

“Or maybe you wanted to blame him for the computer sabotage. It makes sense. You’d have to pick a co-worker, someone with the same computer access you had. And that jealousy angle with your girlfriend. Now that’s brilliant, supplying him with a motive like that. You have to admit, though, it sounds a bit far-fetched when you stack it up beside the evidence we have against you. I mean, we didn’t find Tim’s fingerprints on any memory sticks, did we?”

“Talk to Lesley. Tim told her that he did it.”

“Oh, yes,” Steeves said, “I’ll see her next. From what the Sheriff tells me, I expect she’ll give me essentially the same version as you. But then, the two of you had plenty of time to get your stories straight.”

“But we didn’t—”

“She might have even been in on it with you from the start.”

Rob sat and fumed.