John Sandford - The Devil's Code

"Could be a while," LuEllen said.

About three hours, in fact. The group in the lounge stayed for an hour and a half, an animated conversation that seemed to go on forever. When they finally left, a couple of other people had settled in. More came and went from the exercise room. Traffic slowed down after midnight, but every time we thought to move, somebody else would show up. At one-fifteen, we hadn't seen anybody for fifteen minutes.

"Let's try," LuEllen said.

We left the blanket and started through the dark to the clubhouse door. Twenty yards out, at the edge of the golf course, we came to a line of head-high shrubs. After we passed them, we'd be out in the open and committed. We stopped, looked around, then LuEllen touched my arm and we moved.

Slowly, LuEllen on my arm. We got to the clubhouse, stepped inside. No sound, except a refrigerator gurgle from one of the soda machines. We waited another second; then LuEllen slipped the dinner knife out of her pocket, walked to the door connecting with the executive suite, slipped the lock with the knife blade, and we were in. And up.

Ralph's office door had the same crappy lock. We slipped it and LuEllen led the way inside. I shut the door behind us and she turned on the penlight. The flat files were not locked; didn't have locks. The architect's drawings for Poinsettia were right where they were supposed to be, in the Poinsettia drawer, with drawings for Wild Rose, Black-Eyed Susan, and Hollyhock. The drawings for Poinsettia made up a pad a half-inch thick, and probably three feet long by two and a half wide.

"Take the whole thing?" she asked.

"Might as well. Hope nobody goes looking for them."

"They're dusty; we should be okay," she said.

We put the room back together, and walked out. As we crossed the paved area toward the parking lot, another couple was coming off the parking lot, carrying a blanket, but not ours. We never got closer than fifty yards, but they waved, and LuEllen waved back, and then said, "Jesus Christ, Kidd, the golf course is the local lover's lane. We're lucky we didn't trip over somebody."

"Better cover for us," I said.

We saw nobody on the course. We crossed the fence, strolled back to the car, and were out of there.

LuEllen tends to wrestle herself around pillows, and wind up in odd positions. When I woke up the next morning, her bare bottom was sticking out of a tangle of sheets, and a glorious sight it was, like a new peach, round and firm and slightly pink. I will confess to an inordinate fondness for that portion of the female anatomy, and after a few minutes I reached over and gave it a little pat. A little stroke.

"If you touch me, I'll rip your fuckin' heart out," she groaned.

"But it's so interesting."

"Shut up."

"Can't. Time to get up."

She propped herself on her elbows and looked at the bedside clock. "Bullshit," she said, and dropped straight down. "Be quiet. I need another hour."

I went to the window and stuck my face into the crack between the curtains. "Nice day out. Blue skies, no clouds."

"This is Dallas, you moron, it's supposed to be like that," she said. "Now go away."

Not a morning person. I got cleaned up, humming to myself. Thought about LuEllen's assall right, I'm not just fond of it, I actually contemplate itand remembered Clancy.

Clancy's the woman back in St. Paul, who was building a computer with me. Very nice woman. Smart, interesting, sexy. Too young for meI'm eight years older than she isand the difference troubled me, though it didn't seem to bother her much. And we weren't finished with each other; there was more to say.

Clancy in St. Paul, LuEllen in Dallas. Hmm.

When we were done in Dallas, LuEllen would most likely take off again. She had a tendency to winter in warm places, like Mexico, Venezuela, or the Islands, and to hang with the indolent rich. I, on the other hand, would be back in St. Paul, in snow drifts six feet deep, with wolves, and would need the comfort of a woman like Clancy.

I would probably try to hide this moment with LuEllen. Given my past track record, I'd probably succeed. The thing was, LuEllen wasn't just sex: she was a friend. Our time in bed was an expression of friendship. I worked over that line of thought as I shaved. This whole sex thing with LuEllen would take some seriously hypocritical rationalization, I thought, if I wanted to keep my feet warm over the winter.

LuEllen was still in bed when I finished cleaning up, so I went downstairs to the restaurant, had eggs, bacon, and toast, read the paperFirewall was still on the attack. The IRS had no idea of how to screen them out without losing billions and billions. In Germany, the cops raided the apartment of a kid who had an Internet handle that translated as Cheese (so said USA Today), but Cheese had been in the bathroom at the time and that apparently gave him some kind of immunity from prosecution: he wasn't actually hacking when they came through the door. In any case, USA Today said that Cheese was the rat in the DoS attack.

When I got back upstairs, LuEllen was dressed: "Green called. He and Lane are checking into a Radisson Hotel up in Denton, which is like twenty miles from here."

"Why there?"

"Because Green plays golf, and it's a golf resort."

"Silly goddamn game," I said.

"You don't know the first thing about it," she said.

"Chasing a white ball around a cow pasture."

"Look at a list of people who play it, and tell me they're chasing a ball around a cow pasture. If you gotta brain in your head, you gotta suspect that there's something else going on, even if you don't play yourself."

My eyebrows went up: she actually sounded a little passionate on the subject. Not like LuEllen, eternal cynic. "Mmm," I said.

"Fuck you."

LuEllen drove. I sat in the passenger seat, looking through the architect's drawings and trying not to get carsick. Eventually, I gave up; but I'd found one interesting thing.

"There's a silent alarm wired into Corbeil's apartment. The console is in a closet."

"Can you trace the out lines?"

"Nope. The lines go into an indicated junction box along with lines from some other rooms, and then they all go down to the first floor."

"Either to a security service or over to the reception area in the clubhouse. Or both."

"Clubhouse would get a quicker response," I said.

"Yeah, but if you wanted a little more weight, some pros with guns, it might go out."

The Radisson sat on a hill on the west side of the highway; it took a while to find the driveway in, but we got it sorted out eventually and went up to Lane's room. Green answered the door. He was wearing a golf shirt and loose, pleated, tan slacks and had his hand in his pocket. He took it out when he saw us. "There you are."

Lane was lying on a bed, watching a movie on HBO. LuEllen, who'd come in behind me, looked past me and said, "Emma. I didn't know that was on."

She went over and dropped on the bed next to Lane.

"I think we're gonna go into this Corbeil guy's apartment," I said to Green and Lane. "We've got some."

"Shhh," Lane said. "They're gonna kiss. This only takes a minute." Emma and her friend were standing under a spreading oak. Lane and LuEllen were totally focused.

"I think we gotta."

"Shut up, shut up, just one minute." LuEllen held a finger up.

I went over to look: "Christ, that woman's got a long neck."

"They all did back then," Lane said.

"This wasn't made back then, this was made."

"SHUT THE FUCK UP," LuEllen said.

I looked at Green, who shrugged, and we went over to a corner of the room, sat down, and shut up.

After Emma and her friend were married, and the movie ran down what happened to everyone else, Lane sighed and turned off the TV. "God, I love that movie."