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She pushed her hair back with both hands, feeling the grit and grease from the undercarriages she'd crawled beneath. She walked slowly into the bathroom and pressed her palms against the countertop, leaning over the sink. One of the two fluorescent tubes above her flickered madly, transforming her reflected face into something from a carnival fun house. The brown of her eyes, eyebrows, and hair, the maroon of a small cut on her cheekbone she didn't remember getting, appeared black against the white of her skin.

She splashed cold water on her face, then did it again. She poured it over the back of her neck, ran streams of it into her hair. Yes. Her skin thirsted for the water's briskness, its energizing purity. She threw her arms back to let her jacket fall to the floor, followed by her cream blouse. Water cooled her chest, streaked over her belly. The next thing, she was naked under the icy jets of the shower. The cold robbed her breath but ignited her mind. In minutes, she felt new, ready.

Then she added heat to the stream and lathered soap over her body and shampoo into her hair. She leaned against the tiles and watched the suds spiral down the drain until the water was clear. A sharp toss of her head snapped the water from her hair, and she stepped out. In the mirror, her skin glowed a healthy pink.

Okay, she thought. Time to get to work.

She sat cross-legged on the bed, the computer in her lap.

She called up the web site Bonsai had given her. It was blank except for a single rectangle in the middle of the screen that read CLICK ME. She did and was prompted to enter a pass phrase. The third one she entered caused the words in the box to change to PLEASE wait. She worked a towel over her moist hair. She hoped that Bonsai had been able to decipher the chip and that it contained enough evidence to end this thing.

He worked out of a home office in Morrison, Colorado, a quaint tourist town in the Rocky Mountain foothills west of Denver. She pictured him there now, playing his computer keyboard with the vigor of a virtuoso pianist. In fact, he bore a fair resemblance to a young Beethoven: wild hair, fiery eyes, stern mouth. She assumed the acne had cleared up by now. When he typed, fingers blurring over the keys, his head bobbed spastically to a tune only he could hear.

A minute later she wondered what she was waiting for, if a glitch would keep her waiting forever. Not like Bonsai, but nothing was sure with computers or the Internet, regardless of the skills of the person trying to tame it.

Then a voice came through the speakers. "Julia?"

"Bonsai! Did you crack Vero's code?"

"Nope."

Her stomach lurched nauseously.

"Nothing to crack," he continued.

"What?"

"It's not encrypted. It's a new type of digital media, very cutting-edge. High-resolution, lightning-fast rendering, incredibly dense code. It requires an unholy amount of computing power to drive it. What compact disks are to eight-tracks, this thing is to anything on the market today."

"So what, I need special hardware?"

"Not anymore. I linked with some buddies at MIT's computer lab. After some trial and error, they were able to supply me with a program that converted this code to one that a top-of-the-line Pentium can handle."

"So what's on it? What kind of files?"

"Mostly video. You lose quite a bit of resolution in the conversion process, so it's grainier than the original, and the image stutters a little, but you can see it okay. What kind of brain you running?"

"The Bureau's best. Custom configured to power some pretty incredible satellite communications software."

"The clock-speed has to be fast, Julia. Nothing you can pick up at Sears. I mean—"

"Prototype Athlon two-gig processor, two gigs of RAM, a gig dedicated to video rendering, and a half-tera hard drive."

"Yow! Okay, then. I'm ready to send when you are."

"I need another favor first."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Hack into the Knoxville Police Department and the Tennessee State Criminal Investigation Division for any pending investigations of clone-phone dealers in the 423 area code. Make sure it's not a sting operation, just an investigation. I also need the name of one of the dealer's customers. Cross-reference it with recent busts; I don't want the dealer talking to the guy. Doable?"

"Consider it done. VOIP me in thirty minutes."

fifty

Atropos considered the possibility that his prey had changed hotels, but dismissed it. They probably thought the Oak Ridge ruse was evasive enough. If they had gone somewhere else, the chances of finding them without his employer's help was slim. This place was the best lead he had.