Lynn Bulock - Protecting Holly

Jake laughed and took the coffee from her. He took a long drink before he said anything, setting the cup down on a small island of clear space on his desk. “I know. It’s not the commonest way to find somebody’s passwords, but I’m down to desperate measures. See, you can find the BIOS password by taking apart hardware, and I’m figuring that this will lead me to the other passwords I need to open the files he thought he’d hidden. I found them, just can’t open them.”

“Okay.” The room still looked like the elephant’s graveyard of computer parts. Holly trusted her boss to do the right thing in most situations, but this was a new one on her. “There sure looks like there’s more than one computer in all this.”

“There is. Somewhere along the line someone apparently expected this kind of interference. So when I opened up the tower, there were dummy circuits as well as the real thing. I looked around this morning until I found somebody with a similar unit and borrowed it for a little while to compare the innards.”

“This means that somewhere in this building is an agent who has no idea that his computer, which he loaned you, is now totally in pieces.”

Jake’s grin was a delight. “Well, yeah, but it’s Bob. He doesn’t use his computer all that much anyway, and I’m nearly to the point of putting it back together. He’ll never know what it went through. In fact, it will probably run smoother once he gets it back.”

Holly just shook her head. “As long as mine’s in one piece. Now give me your lunch order. I’ve already decided I’m going to run over to the café and bring stuff back about one. From now on we’re eating healthy and keeping to as regular hours as possible.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, throwing her a mock salute. “And thanks for the coffee. It really hit the spot.”

“You’re welcome.” Holly was surprised he even noticed. If she had this much hardware strung across her office, she wouldn’t have noticed a mere cup of coffee. She did the rest of her morning’s work to the accompanying tune of Jake putting the two computers back together and continuing to talk to himself while he did it. As far as Holly was concerned, there were few sweeter sounds outside the church choir.

Jake looked around at the piles of stuff in his office, wondering if he could really put it back together as easily as he’d told Holly that he could. She was a great assistant, and thought he could do anything. He hated to disabuse her of that notion. If anything would, it would be this case they were preparing for the prosecutors. Everybody knew that Barclay was working for La Mano Oscura, the drug ring that was bringing tons of junk into Colorado Springs. But Barclay had certainly hidden his connections well. So well that even though he’d ratted out his boss in Venezuela, Baltasar Escalante, there just wasn’t the trail leading back to Barclay that would let prosecutors convict him of the worst of the charges against him. They needed proof that matched Escalante’s files to Barclay.

While Jake toyed with all the options for opening those files on Barclay’s hard drive that could provide that proof, he put Bob’s computer back together. It wasn’t a difficult job. During college and in the twelve years since he’d built far more complicated computers himself from parts. In fact, he preferred building his own because it allowed him to look at the circuit boards fairly quickly and see whether or not someone had tampered with anything.

By the time Bob’s tower was back together, Holly was at his door again. “Okay, I’m double checking your lunch order before I go over to Aunt Lidia’s and get it.”

Jake glanced at the watch his long-sleeved shirt hid. “Man, time flies when you’re having fun.”

“So does the snow. It’s been snowing off and on all morning since I came in. Can I borrow your car keys to take Big Red on the lunch run? I’ll be nice to him, I promise.”

Jake fished around in his pocket. As late as he’d made Holly come in, her Jeep was more than likely in a parking space she’d lose if she left it for lunch now. Especially on a snowy day. Since his spot was reserved, it made more sense to let her drive his vehicle. “Sure. And the soup and sandwich I ordered earlier are fine, unless they have apple pie left this late. Then get me a piece of that, too.”

Holly caught the keys he tossed her and grinned. “Already done. I had Aunt Lidia save two slices so they’d be there this late. Otherwise it was no chance. I’ll be back in twenty or so.”

“See you then.” He started putting the screws back into Bob’s tower housing, ready to take it back to the other agent. As he’d told Holly, no one would ever know that the machine had been in pieces on his floor and desk half an hour ago.

He’d dropped the unit off in Bob’s office and was back, reassembling parts of Barclay’s when Holly came in with the bags and bundles that made up lunch. He could hear her rattling around in the outer office, and expected to hear one of her always cheerful greetings. Instead she was standing silently at his doorway a moment later, and she looked upset.

“Hey, you’re back. What’s up?” He laid down his tools and came to the doorway to greet her. His normally smiling assistant looked on the brink of tears.

“I was careful like always, and I parked in one of the café’s twenty-minute spots right in front. I took my eyes off your car only for a minute or two inside.” Her lip was trembling.

“It can’t be that bad, because you drove back here, right? What happened, did somebody hit Red?” If so, they would have come out the worse for wear unless they were driving the biggest truck or SUV on the market. He couldn’t see what Holly was this worked up about.

“Worse. Somebody scratched the paint all the way down the passenger side. It wasn’t a little thing like an accidental door ding, either, Jake. Looked like a screwdriver blade or a key, drawn all the way from front to back.” She covered her face with her hands, and Jake thought the usually calm and reserved Holly Vance was going to sob on him. “It’s all my fault. I should have just taken my old Jeep. Nobody’d even notice if that happened to it.”

“Hey, it isn’t your fault. It was probably some thoughtless kid, or somebody with a kid’s intelligence anyway, just looking for a little stupid fun. Could have happened anywhere, no matter who was driving.”

Holly seemed to calm down a little. “I still feel bad. You drive such nice cars, and keep them up so well. It isn’t fair that somebody would do this to one of them.”

Jake shrugged. “A whole lot of life isn’t fair. Now let’s have lunch and afterward I’ll go down to the parking garage and take a look. It might not be as bad as you’re making it out to be.”

Her dubious expression said that it was going to be bad, but Jake still wasn’t prepared for the depth of the damage when he stood in the garage half an hour later. The gouge was deep, and ran an easy eight feet across the front fender and both passenger side doors. There was no way this could have been anything but a deliberate, malicious act.

He went back up to the office where Holly was still cleaning up the remains of their lunch. She hadn’t done more than pick at hers, even though Jake had tried to reassure her that this was no big deal. He tried to stay nonchalant even as he asked her questions now.

“Anybody parked next to you on the passenger side when you went in?”

“Nobody. I remember, because there was still snow in the space as if no one had been in it for a while. Even when I came out, there were no fresh tracks over there.”

“Did you happen to see any vehicles peel out in a hurry?” Jake was forming a picture in his mind, and it wasn’t pretty.