Triple Threat (14 page)

Little feet pattered across the floor. One, then another, tiny dark-haired head peeked around Kate's legs.

“Hi, Josh.” Grady smiled up at him.

“Yeah, hi.” Gracie echoed. “It's Kaykay's birfday. She's all growed up.” Grace smiled.

He returned her smile, and then glanced at Kate. “Yeah. So I see, Gracie.”

The twins each took a hand and pulled him toward his destiny. Perhaps the most important evening in his mostly meaningless life. Kate was right when she said what a person believes really matters. But when a person doesn't believe anything, nothing matters and life loses all meaning. Maybe Josh's life was about to change.

If he was a praying man, he would've prayed for Kate and him, for a real relationship between them. That was the only thing Joshua West had going that might inject some meaning into his seemingly pointless life.

“Come on, Josh.” Grady pulled hard on his hand. “You gotta meet Grampa.”

“Yeah, Grampa,” Grace echoed. “He knows how to kick really hard. Maybe he'll show you. He's got a black belt.”

Had they also recruited the twins for the threats and intimidation?

Kate grinned at the twins, and then met Josh's gaze. “You should see your face. Don't worry, Josh. You'll survive.”

The dinner was warm, friendly. This was obviously a close family, unlike his. He envied Kate in that regard. Did she have any idea how lucky she was? She probably did, if she came to live with them from the foster-care system.

After the meal, Kate and Jennifer took the twins to the family room, leaving him alone with the two men.

Lee stood. “It's a nice evening. We should sit out on the deck and enjoy it.”

Enjoy it? He hoped he could just endure it.

Granddad was nearly a foot shorter than Josh, but his black belt and intelligent, piercing eyes more than made up for his stature.

Lee opened the slider from the dining room and they stepped out into a pleasant evening. The sun was sinking to the horizon above the Olympic Mountains to the west. Was it taking his life with it?
Not without a fight.

“Have a seat, Josh.” Lee pointed to a lounge chair near the deck railing.

Josh took a seat.

Granddad and Lee did not. They stood, leaning on the rail, towering over him. A hammer and a splitting maul. He was the round chunk of straight-grained cedar soon to be split wide open and served to the fire.

Lee cleared his throat. “Let's cut to the chase here.”

Josh's body tensed, like before a fight broke out on the football field, a fight where he was taking on the other team's middle linebacker and nose guard…simultaneously.

Lee cleared his throat. “This is the first time we've ever had this conversation with anyone about Katie. We expected it long before now. Certainly not on her twenty-first birthday.”

Granddad shot Lee a sharp glance. “To the chase, Lee. No cutting around the bushes.”

“You mean beating around—” Josh stopped. He'd just corrected Granddad.

Both men glared at him.

You are a fool, Joshua West.

Lee broke the tense silence. “If any guy ever hurts Katie, physically, emotionally, or spiritually, he will answer to me.” The tone of his voice told Josh this was a man of conviction. A man who would not hesitate to act on what he believed.

Granddad pushed off the rail and stood, looking down at Josh. “You may be a lot taller than me, but if you hurt Katie in any way, I will kick your head into orbit. And, yes, my foot can reach it even if you are standing.”

It was that time when every young man in his position must capitulate. Surrender completely and convincingly to their terms. “If I hurt her in any way, you can have a free kick, sir.”

Lee chuckled.

Granddad grinned at Lee. “Sounds familiar.”

Lee nodded. “But there is one thing that's different than when I asked to court Jennifer.”

Josh knew where this was going. “But, sir, I'm not asking to court Katie, only work with her on our dissertations.”

Lee twirled his index finger in a series of circles. “And spend hours and hours together. We know how that goes. But the real problem is that you and Katie don't share the same worldview. Katie's a committed Christian. What do you believe, Josh?”

The first blow of the hammer came down on his weakest spot. “I wasn't raised in church. After several years of confusing teaching in college, I'm still trying to sort all that out.”

Granddad looked over to Lee. “Maybe Katie can help him like she helped me.”

There was clearly a lot of history here and he was totally ignorant of it. But he could understand enough to know there was much more to Kate Brandt than what he'd suspected. “Look, I've never met anyone like Kate, and I'm beginning to believe I never will. If you two will just give me a chance, I'll—”

“Take her on a honeymoon to Whistler?” Lee folded his arms across his chest.

“So you know about our cover story?”

“A little.”

“Kate used it two or three times to elude two gunmen. But that's all it was, a cover story.”

Lee nodded. “She told us that.”

Had she told them about the pretend kisses? The ones that dropped most of the pretense? Josh would silently plead the Fifth Amendment on that subject.

“When you're with her,” Lee's piercing gaze carried authority and the intent to wield it as necessary. “Keep her safe, Josh.”

“In every way.” Jennifer's voice.

How long had she been standing behind him? They had all tightened the thumbscrews of accountability on Joshua West. But he intended to comply. Kate was worth it, including the queasy stomach the threats had given him.

The meeting ended as quickly as it had begun.

“Let's go inside and have some birthday cake,” Jennifer waved them inside.

Josh stood to follow them in, hoping he wouldn't barf up birthday cake all over their house like Kate had puked all over his hand.

 

 

 

 

17

 

Katie awoke at 5:30 AM on Monday. She hadn't had enough sleep, but didn't want any more. Her night had been filled with nightmares about missing pieces to the terrorists' multifaceted conspiracy. Flames burned forests. Explosions destroyed cities. People died. And, in her dreams, it was all her fault. The only way to stop her dreams was to stop the attack, no matter the personal risk.

By working into the evening, maybe she could unravel the remaining mysteries surrounding the plot.

If she hurried, she could catch the 6:30 AM Metro bus to campus. No. That would mean she had to ride Metro home tonight. Things tended to get out of control on the buses after dark. Three months ago, an aggressive weirdo had forced her to strip him of his dignity, using a pressure point to take him to his knees. When she let him go, he sought revenge, so she kicked him, sending him to the hospital, accompanied by a Seattle police officer. Then she had to testify in court against the guy. His lawyer tried to blame it all on her. What a mess. She didn't want to risk a repeat.

Katie would drive in today, get a head start on the work, and then fill in Josh when he arrived.

Two hours later, Katie sat at her desk reading the information on her laptop screen when she heard the sharp click of the lab door. She glanced at the clock on the wall. 8:30 AM. Josh was later than she expected.

He took off his backpack, set it on his desk, and covered a yawn with his huge tight-end-sized hands.

“You, too?” She gave him a warm smile.

He swiveled toward the sound of her voice, a smile replacing his yawn. “Yeah. It's hard to sleep after three people threaten you with bodily harm.”

“My parents and my granddad won't hurt you if you behave yourself.” She stepped from behind her desk and walked his way. Something grabbed her foot, sending her stumbling ahead. A power cord.

Josh's arms reached for her.

She grabbed him to keep from falling and now stood with her cheek planted against his big chest.

His strong arms around her held nearly all her weight.

With her arms hugging him, too, Katie was in no hurry to move.

“I'm behaving myself, Kate. But look at us. Your mom would kill me, or your granddad would turn my head into an asteroid, and—”

She muted his lips with her fingers. “You kept me from falling, Josh. That's not misbehaving.” When she turned her head up, his brown eyes peered into hers, and his lips were only a few inches away. “This…is misbehaving.” She kissed him softly, sweetly, slowly pulling her lips from his, and returning her cheek to his chest.

I can't believe I just did that.

Oh, yes you can.

Great! Now she had a schizophrenic argument going on inside her head. What did she think she was doing? She hadn't thought at all. It was an impulsive, stupid…wonderful, exciting thing to do.

Somehow, in Josh's presence, the girl, Katie Brandt, seem to disappear, replaced by a woman whom Josh called Kate. Katie, she knew and understood. A comfortable existence. But Kate was mysterious and seemed bent on taking her far from her comfort zone.
Admit it, girl, you are a romantic schizo who needs help.
Katie blew off the accusation from her left brain, took a deep breath, and released it, trying to slow her racing heart and mind.

The drumming in her ear, coming from Josh's chest, said one deep breath wasn't going to cut it here. Soon, she needed to have a serious talk with Josh about
them
.

“After they kill me, Kate, promise me you'll clear my name. Convince them that I was innocent.” Josh's voice bordered on a whimper.

She stepped back, placing her hands on his broad shoulders. “Let me take a good look at you.” Though he hadn't initiated the kiss, what she saw in Josh's eyes was more than enough to convict him. “I think we're both guilty. But I promise not to tell if you won't.”

“Me…tell? You've got to be kidding. I don't have a death wish. Your mom is scary.”

“But I know how guys are. They brag among themselves. After some of the things I've said to other guys in the department to discourage them, if word ever got out that I kissed a fellow geek, I'd never live it down. So, please, promise me you won't tell.”

“I promise. And you, Kate?”

“I won't say anything.”

“Should we seal the deal with another—”

“No, Josh. We should get to work on tracking down some people who are a lot scarier than my mom. And here's how we need to proceed.”

 

****

 

At 5:30 PM, Josh decided to call it a day.

After he walked out of the lab, the door clicked shut leaving Katie alone with a heart filled with loneliness. Something she hadn't felt in six years. She stuffed her feelings. She would deal with them later.

As she had planned, Katie worked on into the evening. She wanted to complete one task, a bit of programming that would enable her to display her findings graphically to the FBI.

At some point, all research must be justified by showing the results to the customer, usually politicians. With them, a picture was worth a thousand bucks…maybe a hundred thousand.

Katie opened a Perl script in her programmer's editor and quickly appended a second script, cobbling together a CGI program that would display graphically, on a world map, the communication between the IP addresses she and Josh had logged and inserted into her database.

After a short command-line test, she dragged and dropped her script into the CGI directory of her web server and pointed her browser at the appropriate URL.

A map of the world displayed. It was quickly annotated with the location of each IP address, showing connecting lines between communication points and the number of transmissions along each line. Perfect.

A door creaked behind her in the lab. She whirled and looked for the source of the noise. If anyone else was in the lab, surely she would've known. The click of the cipher lock usually got her attention.

Four small offices and one restroom lined a short dead-end hallway at one end of the lab. Except for the server room, the rest of the computer lab was a single large bay with a few five-foot-high partitions sectioning it off into cubicles.

The restroom door stood partially open.

The whole lab was drafty because of the air conditioning equipment which kept the area at a cool sixty-eight degrees. The air conditioning fan was running. It probably had sucked the restroom door open when it came on. Maybe, the ducts had made the creaking noise. Regardless, she should check it out. Keeping the lid on her current work was important for several reasons.

Katie walked past the first two offices in the short hallway, closed the open door, and turned around.

A thump came from the office on her right.

She shivered as a tingling sensation ran up the back of her neck.

This was silly. There was a cipher lock on the lab door to keep unauthorized people out. But she remembered watching others key in the cipher. Unless their body blocked her view, she could read the numbers from several yards away. Once a person got inside the Computer Science Building, an unauthorized entry to the lab was fairly easy to pull off.

Katie wanted to look in the office on her right. But doing so with some kind of weapon in her hand would ease her mind a bit. The computer lab wasn't exactly ripe with weapons for the picking.

Keeping her eyes focused on the suspicious room, Katie backed to Dr. Scoggins door, the last office on her left. He kept an assortment of external drives on his shelves.

She listened. No more sounds.

Katie turned and scurried around the desk to the shelves behind it.

Outside, a door creaked.

She whirled toward the sound.

Rapid footsteps in the hall.

Panic drove her heart into high gear.

In the doorway, across the desk from her, a hooded figure stood holding a hypodermic needle in one hand.