J. Robb - Seduction In Death

"Can you get around it?"

"Eventually. The units in this club are designed quite well to shut down and lock at any attempt at contamination. There's an internal detector and filtering system as backup. Despite that, he managed to upload a virus that wiped this unit, and every other in here. And it did it in minutes, after detecting a shield notification."

She leaned back. "You sound impressed."

"Oh, I am. Considerably impressed. Your man has a brilliant talent. A pity, really, that he's as corrupt and worthless as this unit."

"Yeah. Breaks my heart." She stood up. "I'm going to spring the staff, have the unit impounded and sent to EDD. Once we're cleared out, I want a look at security. Let's see what he looked like tonight."

He looked, Eve decided, smug. She caught it in the way his eyes drifted over the crowd – dismissing, smirking even while he kept a pleasant, inoffensive smile on his face.

He walked through the crowd, kept himself removed from them. No contact, no casual greetings. And moved directly to the cube that put his back to the wall, and kept his view of the room unobstructed.

"He's been here before," Eve noted.

None of the staff had been able to confirm that. Then again, the manager had been so flustered – not by the police intervention, not even by the near-riot, but, she remembered, by the realization that Roarke was in the club – that he'd had a hard time sputtering out his own name.

The unit and cube had been reserved under the name R. W. Emerson. An alias, she had no doubt, and the name, she'd learned after a quick run, of a long-dead poet.

His hair was a smooth, warm brown mane tonight, and he wore square-framed glasses of tinted amber. She supposed his attire was casual trendy with the dark pegged pants, the ankle boots, the long, hip-swishing shirt in the same amber hue as his lenses. There was a gold cuff bracelet on his right wrist and a curve of winking studs along the shell of his ear.

He ordered the coffee first, made a call on his pocket 'link. Then he drank a little while he continued to watch the room.

"He's making sure the environment's stable," Eve said. "And he's hunting. Tracking the women, considering them. You can message to any other unit in the club, right? Isn't that one of the deals why people go instead of just staying home and scoping the 'net in peace?"

"Another way of socializing," Roarke confirmed. "Excitingly anonymous, even voyeuristic. You message a unit across the room, can watch their reaction, decide if you want to take it to the next step and make personal contact. Units are equipped with a standard privacy shield for those who don't want to be disturbed. Or hit on."

She watched her suspect log on, and choose manual instead of voice mode.

"There." Roarke touched her arm, then ordered the screen to zoom in, to enlarge a sector. "The scanner."

She saw what looked like a small, slim, silver business card case. He drew a thin, retractable cable out of the corner, plugged it into the side port of the unit.

"Oh, he is very, very good. I've never seen one that compact," Roarke told her. "Odds are he made it himself. I wonder – "

"Think about your research-and-development potential later," she ordered. "Bang. He's made us."

His body went rigid, his face slack. He didn't look so smug and superior in that instant. He looked shocked, and he looked scared. The eyes behind the fashionable lenses were jittery as they darted around the room.

He pulled the scanner out, then curled over the keyboard with the earnest devotion and intensity of the classic compu-geek.

"Coding in the virus," Roarke said quietly. "He's sweating, but he knows what he's doing. Uploading it."

He was shaking. He rubbed the back of his hand repeatedly over his lips. But he sat where he was, his gaze glued to the monitor. Then he was up, leaving his barely touched coffee, and hurrying for the door recklessly enough to run into tables, bump into people.

He was nearly running by the time he made the door. Eve saw him swing his body to the right before he disappeared and the door closed behind him.

"Out. Out and gone in what, under two minutes. Bolted a good minute before the uniforms responded and arrived on scene."

"Ninety-eight seconds by the clock," Roarke concurred. "He's fast. He's very fast."

"Yeah, he's fast, but he's shook. He was heading uptown. And he was running scared – for home."

It took him nearly an hour to stop shaking. An hour, two whiskeys, and the calmer Lucias added to the second drink.

"It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have been possible."

"Pull yourself together, Kevin." Lucias took out a cigarette he'd laced with just a whiff of Zoner. He lighted it, crossed his ankles. "And think. How did it happen?"

"They managed to dig under to the account name. The shielded account name."

Irritably, Lucias pulled in smoke. "You told me that would take them weeks."

"I underestimated them, obviously." Annoyance shimmered over nerves. "It can't be traced back to us in any case. But even having the account name, how could they trace me to that location, and so quickly? The police don't have the facilities, the manpower, the equipment to surveil every cyber-club in the city, and every unit in them. Then there are the matters of the privacy blocks, the standard one and the ones I implemented."

Lucias drew in smoke, then expelled it in a lazy stream. "What are the odds they just got lucky?"

"Nil," Kevin said between his teeth. "They used both superior equipment and a superior tech." He shook his head. "Why in God's name would anybody with those skills settle for a cop's salary? In the private sector, he or she could name any price."

"It takes all kinds, doesn't it? Well, this is exciting."

"Exciting? I might have been caught. Arrested. Charged with murder."

The Zoner, as always, was doing the job. "But you weren't." Willing to placate, Lucias leaned over, patted Kevin's knee. "However smart and skilled they are, we're more so. You'd anticipated this sort of possibility, and prepared for it. You infected an entire club. Very sweet. You'll be headlined in the media again." He sighed. "More points for you."

"They'll have me on security cam." Kevin inhaled slowly, exhaled slowly. In many ways, Lucias was his drug of choice, and his approval smoothed over the worst of the nerves. "I might not have altered my look if I hadn't been using a club so close by."

"Fate." Lucias began to laugh, and drew an answering grin from his friend. "It's really just fate, isn't it? And all on our side. Really, Kev, it just gets better and better. You'll take care of the account? Generate another?"

"Yes. Yes, that's no problem." Kevin shrugged that off. There was nothing he couldn't do with electronics. "They've made a great many details public, Lucias. The chat rooms, the setup. We may want to stop for a time."

"Just when it's getting interesting? I don't think so. The higher the risk, the greater the thrill. Now, at least, we know we've pitted ourselves against an adversary or adversaries that are worthy of our efforts. It adds such a flavor. Savory."

"I could keep the account open," Kevin mused. "Send out some decoys."

"Ah!" Lucias slapped a hand on the arm of his chair. "Now you're in the game. Just think of it. Think of when you have your rendezvous tomorrow night. Why, you and the lovely lady can discuss this recent horror over drinks. She shivers, delicately, over the fate of her doomed sisters. Never knowing she's fated to join them. God, it's delicious."

"Yes." The whiskey and the drug cruised inside him, turned the air he breathed into soft liquid. "It does add to the thrill."

"One thing for certain, we're not bored."