Донна Эндрюс - Access denied

And in my darker moments, in the middle of the night when my human allies slept, I worried about anyone who approached me or them. Because Nestor Garcia knew who we were and where we were, and we would have no way to identify his allies until too late.

Not that Nikki seemed plausible as a danger or a Garcia ally. But still, I worried.

She had been foolish enough to use her social security number on her driver's license, instead of requesting a randomly generated customer number, as Virginia's Division of Motor Vehicles now permits.

So I could do a rather thorough investigation of her. I hadn't. I decided it would be a violation of Tim's trust.

But I was tempted. Especially since I couldn't really discuss Nikki with Maude. Maude had never mentioned Nikki to me, nor had Tim mentioned her in front of Maude, so as far as I knew, Maude was unaware ofNikki's existence. I would feel more comfortable if Maude knew and approved of Nikki. Maude was a good judge of character.

So was Tim, usually, but under the circumstances, other considerations might override his normal reactions.

Another benefit of enlisting Claudia. While she was here, she might encounter Nikki. And Claudia would not be shy about expressing her reaction.

I felt better already, just knowing Claudia was coming.

Tim squirmed in his seat again. His

delight at finding such a perfect observation post was fading. In fact, it had long since vanished. Probably because there hadn't been a whole lot to observe.

Turing and Maude seemed pleased with his morning's efforts, and after fortifying himself with a pizza and a six-pack of soda, he took up his observation post at 12:30.

The charm of bird watching had begun to pall by 1:30.

At 2:19, a brown UPS truck arrived, deposited half a dozen packages of various sizes on the porch near the FedEx package, and departed.

After that, nothing happened.

By 4:30, Tim was antsy enough to venture out to the mailbox, where he confirmed that unlike UPS and FedEx, the post office had skipped the Andersons that day.

On his way back to the car, he went up to the porch and quickly snapped pictures of the boxes—close-ups showing the tracking numbers.

Back in the car, he loaded the pictures into his laptop and used the wireless modem to send them to Turing.

His cell phone vibrated. When he saw Nikki's number on the caller ID, he scrambled to answer.

"So where are you, anyway?" Nikki asked.

"On surveillance," he said.

"Why are you being so secretive?"

"I'm on a case," he said.

"So who are you watching, and where, and why?" Nikki said. He could hear that she was pouting. "What's the big secret?"

The big secret, Tim realized, was that this case involved Turing. He hadn't told Nikki anything about Turing, so how could she possibly understand what the surveillance was about and why it was so important?

"I can't on a cell phone," he said. "It's not secure."

"You're so paranoid," she said. "You can tell me all about it tonight then. Bye."

He winced.

He wasn't looking forward to that conversation. Why couldn't Nikki understand that his PI work was just that, work—not some kind of adventure she could live vicariously?

And that he couldn't completely set his own hours, he thought, stifling a yawn. Nikki had kept him up talking until three a.m. last night, even though he told her he had to work today.

For the first time he allowed himself a few doubts about whether this thing with Nikki would last. About whether he even wanted it to last.

He backed away from the thought. Not something he wanted to deal with right now.

He wished he could think of some female friend to ask for advice. Not Maude. He wanted to postpone having Maude and Nikki meet. He didn't think they'd like each other, and he'd find it difficult to explain how he'd become such good friends with a rather severe and sharp-tongued

woman thirty years his senior. At least not without mentioning Turing, and it was way too soon for that. He couldn't ask Turing for advice about Nikki, either. She'd be sympathetic, but he wasn't sure she knew any more about human psychology than he did. Then there was the whole embarrassing fact that for the first six months he'd known Turing, he'd had a major crush on her, sight unseen.

He tried to push it out of his mind, and couldn't.

Another hour to go. Though maybe if nothing happened in that hour, he should call Nikki and tell her he had to work late after all.

He liked the idea. And for that matter, maybe it was his responsibility.

Yeah. If nothing happened in the next hour, he'd call and cancel.

"I've noticed an odd fact about these stolen credit cards," Turing said, as Maude was packing to leave.

"What?" Maude said.

"They're all relatively local."

"Like the drop-off sites?"

"Not quite that local," Turing said. "The two drop-off sites are within ten miles of each other. One credit card holder lives in Richmond, one in Maryland, and the rest in northern Virginia. But all within a very small area, relatively speaking. And that's odd."

"Yes," Maude said, frowning. "Local drop-off sites seem logical—the thieves wouldn't want to travel far to pick up their loot."

"But most online vendors will ship anywhere, so why choose only local card holders to rob?"

"Actually, I'd have thought local card holders would be

the last people they'd choose," Maude said. She stopped shoving papers into her briefcase and straightened up.

"Why?"

"What if I checked my credit card online and found out the thieves had used it to send goods to the Andersons' house? I could go over there and check it out. Report them, follow them, confront them. Hard to do that long-distance."

"Would anyone actually do that?" Turing asked. "Wouldn't most people just call the issuing bank and report an unauthorized use?"

"Most people would," Maude said. "But some people might not know how to report the problem. And a few hotheads might want to provoke a confrontation. A small chance, but not one they'd have to take at all if they just stole cards from people farther away from their drop-off sites."

"So why choose local credit card holders if it increases the chance of problems?"

"Maybe they didn't choose them," Maude said, slowly. "Maybe that's all they had to work with."

"You think they got the data from some kind of regional database?" Turing asked.

"Maybe they didn't get it from a database at all. Strange as you might find it, credit cards do have a life in the real world."

Maude went back to shoving files into her briefcase or her desk drawer, though she realized that she wasn't really paying as much attention as she should, and was probably taking home all the wrong ones.

"But how could one person get all these cards?" Turing asked. "I've already established that they weren't all used at one place, so that rules out a dishonest waiter or sales clerk."

"What if there are several thieves?" Maude asked. "A small band of dishonest waiters and sales clerks, each contributing a few names from his or her job. And what if they

job hop frequently? Multiply two or three people stealing card information by four or five places where they've worked, and you'd soon have dozens of places where the credit card thefts occurred."

Turing didn't answer immediately, so Maude locked her desk drawer and picked up her briefcase to leave.

"Tracing that would be a nightmare," Turing said, finally. She sounded discouraged. Of course that was often Turing's reaction when the answer to some important question lay beyond her reach, in the random and disorganized wilds of the real world.

"Or what if someone is dumpster diving?"

"And that is . . .?"

"Searching the trash for discarded credit card slips," Maude explained.