Донна Эндрюс - Access denied

Tim recognized the object now—a little camera. Had Sam realized they were in trouble and brought Turing's laptop to the window to fake an FBI raid?

"You have to make this harder, don't you?" Ishmael said, shaking his head as if disappointed at their lack of cooperation. "I'm supposed to give you a message. From an old acquaintance. That whatever you were trying to pull with that credit card stunt—it hasn't done you any good. If you were trying to set a trap, looks like it backfired on you, doesn't it?"

He smiled, and moved his arm so now they could see the gun, aimed at Claudia's head again.

He's going to shoot her in front of us, and then shoot us, Tim thought.

"Attention, inside the house. This is the police. You are surrounded. Drop your weapons and come out with your hands in plain sight."

"Don't you people ever give up?" Ishmael said, shaking his head. He dropped Claudia, who fell with a sickening thud, and stepped a little closer to the window.

"I repeat," came the voice outside. "This is the police. You are surrounded. Drop your weapons and come out with your hands in plain sight."

Ishmael glanced at Tim and Maude, then stepped forward in front of the window, fired once—in the direction of the voice, Tim presumed—and turned quickly back to point the gun at them. He waited, listening. If he does that again, I go for him, Tim thought.

Ishmael whirled again to fire, and Tim launched himself across the room, shouting incoherently. As he leaped, he realized that this time, echoes had followed the shot, two of them. He smashed into Ishmael, knocking him down, and grappled for the gun. He had the gun in his hand and was trying to stand up with it before he noticed the blood. Blood all over his hands, and all down the front of his clothes, and the gun was slick with it.

He dropped the gun and looked over at Ishmael. He was dead.

"It's okay," Maude said, coming up beside him and patting his shoulder.

"Either the police really are out there," Tim said, his voice shaking. "Or Turing has a lot of explaining to do."

Once agaitii I lost all sound and picture. Not as startling this time, since I expected it. But even more stressful, because this time I knew much more about what had gone wrong. Ishmael had shot Kyle Evans, clubbed Claudia and probably Sam, fired a shot at Casey, and was probably even now grappling with Tim. And I could do nothing. I didn't even know what was happening.

/ tried calling Casey's cell phone. He answered in the middle of the second ring.

"Hello?" he said, in a stage whisper.

"Casey, are you all right?"

"I don't know," he said. "I've been shot."

"Where?"

"Right outside the window, when I was — oh, you mean where was I shot. In the arm. It's bleeding. I feel funny. What does it feel like when you're about to pass out?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never actually done that. Is there someone who can help you? Do the police know you've been shot?"

"I'm not sure they even know I'm here," he said. "I didn't want to bother them while they were so busy."

"Let them know you're there right away," I said. "You don't want them shooting at you, too, do you?"

"That's true," he said. "Oh, good, Maude and Tim just walked out."

"Tell me what's happening."

Casey stayed on the phone long enough to tell me that my other friends were alive, though not unharmed. Maude was fine. Sam and Claudia were injured but alive. Tim was alive, and though soaked in blood for some reason, he appeared unharmed.

Then I sent Casey off to present himself to the police and have his arm fixed.

He didn't see Evans or the gunman come out. I suspect they are dead. I only hope Maude got enough information to make this whole thing worthwhile.

And I won't get to talk to my friends until the police are finished with them. I'm settling in for a long wait.

Tim lost track of how many hours they spent at the police station, answering questions, separately, and then as a group. It all sounded so plausible the

way Maude, Sam, and Claudia spun it out. If you left out Turing and the burglary—and they all did that, instinctively, even Casey and Claudia, who didn't know how touchy mentioning Turing could get—it just sounded as if they'd made a bunch of good guesses.

"So you guessed that this Professional Recovery Systems place was the source of the credit card information," the detective said.

"The way these guys were running the scam, I figured it had to be a collection agency," Claudia said. Okay, Tim thought, technically Turing had figured it out, with some help from him, but there was that goal of not bringing Turing's name in. For that matter, he didn't mind if they left his name out, too.

"And PRS was the only local creditor that had my client on its books," Sam added.

"It was an educated guess," Maude said. "But it turned out to be correct." p

"And then when I found out that this young guy who worked in skip tracing stopped showing up the day after the murder—bingo!"

"Another educated guess," Maude said, frowning at Claudia. "If we'd had anything concrete we would have reported it."

"Okay, a guess—a hunch, if you like," Claudia said, only slightly subdued. "But I was right, wasn't I?"

"But how did you find him?" the detective asked.

"We sent him an e-mail," Maude said.

That was the part that took the most explaining. By the third time Maude took the detective through the explanation of the tracking graphic, complete with little diagrams, Tim almost understood it himself.

"So once you found him, why didn't you call us?" the detective asked.

Access Denied 235

"We found him, yeah, but we didn't know for sure if he was involved," Claudia said.

"And if he was involved, he was not only a suspect in his partner's murder, he was also facing the possibility of multiple felony charges in the matter of the credit card thefts," Sam said. "The plan was to get him to accept me as his interim legal counsel so I could arrange for him to turn himself in. Sadly, that plan was overtaken by events."

Tim suspected that Sam's look of regret was sincere. At any rate, he knew he'd be a long time getting over his own feelings of guilt. About Kyle Evans's death. Blake's death. Nikki's.

He wasn't sure if the police suspected them of concealing something or if the cops' dubious looks were standard department issue, but he fully expected to be arrested at any minute. Tim hoped his look of surprise didn't look too suspicious when the detective finally gave them grudging permission to leave.

He didn't know whether to be relieved or worried that Dan Norris, after a brief, unexplained appearance at the crime scene, left things to the Loudoun and Fairfax police. Relieved, because he suspected Norris's questions would be a lot harder to answer. And worried because he knew Norris would turn up later to ask them.

Getting home was a relief, but also a little bit of a letdown. No messages on his answering service. The place seemed small, and a little too quiet. He took a long shower, and wasn't sure if he was still trying to wash off the blood or just postpone going to bed. He didn't really want to be by himself. Not on a night when he'd seen three dead bodies in a little over twenty-four hours, and been splattered with blood and brains from the last one. He had a hard time not seeing them when he closed his eyes, and he was afraid when he went to sleep he'd dream about them.

Although technically, he thought, as he stumbled into his bedroom, it was tomorrow already, which meant the dead bodies happened yesterday. For some reason, he found that thought immensely comforting, and he clung to it as he drifted into a welcome dreamless sleep.

MONDAY MORNING-, 11 A - M -

Plaude checked to make sure Casey was

still home, following her orders to stay in bed and take his pain meds. Claudia was supposed to sleep late and then pack for her trip back to Miami. Sam was probably a little the worse for wear, too, but Maude decided to assume her refusal to rest was a good sign. And she didn't argue when Sam suggested meeting at the Alan Grace offices to clean up a few loose ends.