Encrypted (10 page)

But this damn door
alarm
stopped her
.
What in the hell was this week’s code
?
Why couldn’t they just use retinal scans and DNA sniffers like everyone else
?
But, of course, Quirk disagreed, saying that was way too
techno-geek.
Which meant
that
they used elaborate, obscure, and usually extremely pop culture
-
oriented
passcode
s.
Not geeky at all.

Let’s see…

Okay, the first number was the day
Raiders of the Lost Ark
was released
.
The second was easy
.
The month of Gene
Roddenberry’s
birthday
.
The third
?
Another no-brainer
.
The year
that
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
went on the air
.

Yeah, maybe she shouldn’t let Quirk pick the codes anymore.

At first
,
the pad flashed green, but once she put her gloved hand on the door, the screen turned an awful shade of magenta and began beeping loudly
.
Crap
.
This was a
“
hot
”
day
.
She had forgotten to key in the secondary code
that
they used on nights she was breaking about seventy-five international laws. Quirk took their security seriously
.

If she let go of the metal, the handle would explode before she could get outside the blast radius
.
If she didn’t key in the
correct
code within the next thirty seconds,
several hidden tranquilizer dart guns would shoot her
.

And
,
typical, she had only listened with half an ear when Quirk was picking the backup code
.
Was it Aragorn
?
Spock
?
Han Solo
?
No
.
Ronnie distinctly remembered
that
Quirk was giving up on fantasy
.
He wanted a real man
.
With a real body
.
With real biceps
.

That was it
!
Biceps
.
The scene from
Speed
when Keanu Reeves pulled himself up from under the bus
.
As the
beeping
accelerated, Ronnie typed
in
“
Jack
”
..
.
She could hear the mechanism inside the doorframe getting ready to shoot her with enough tranq
uilizer
s to knock out a horse
.

Her fingers typed
“
Traven
.
”
She didn’t want a repeat of the last time she screwed up a secondary passcode
.
It should have been simple
.
The original airing date of
the best episode of
Enterprise
, but she had typed in the date using the typical format instead of the
Star Trek
standard
S
tardate
format
.
Lo
and behold
,
she had woken up, flat
out, two days later
.

Not fun.

Luckily
,
“
Jack Traven
”
was the correct answer
,
and the alarm pad chirped the theme to
T
he X-
F
iles
as the door opened
.
She rushed into the cold room, just in case those tranq
uilizer
guns were feeling a little twitchy, but two things brought her feet to an absolute stop.

The first was the blast of chilled air. After just running in eighty
-
degree
heat
,
with
100
percent humidity conditions, the room felt frigid
.
Nearly freezing the sweat to her face.

The other was the image on the main screen
.
There
,
in full Technic
olor on the sixty-two
-
inch main screen
,
was Zach’s picture
.
He
had
come for her
.
He was up on a roof, looking skyward
.
Knowing
that
she was looking down on him
.
And by the look on his face, he had just realized her ruse.

Wow, was he was
pissed
.
Even though they had never met, Ronnie had enough surveillance footage of him to tell his mood by the throbbing veins on each side of his temple
s
.
The slight squint of the right eye
.
He only did that when he was totally torqued
.
But could she see a slight upturn at the lips
?
Was he at all impressed
,
or even amused
?
Or did he just want blood?

With great effort, she turned away from the screen to find Quirk meticulously caring for the main computer tower
.
He had to
ever
-
so
-
slowly
warm the delicate electronics back to room temperature
.

“So?” Ronnie asked.

Quirk frowned as he looked back over his shoulder
.
“You mean
,
if he had been pursuing you in the same
ZIP
code
,
let alone the same area code?”

“Duh.”

Her dark
-
haired assistant snorted
.
“He totally would have busted your J. Lo-sized ass.” H
e
raised
his perfectly waxed eyebrow
.
“Which
,
I’m not all that certain you wouldn’t have welcomed.”

“Ha!”
s
he responded
,
closing the distance
.
“Not only would I have escaped, I would have still bagged the two billion bucks.”

Quirk turned back to his work
.
“You just keep telling yourself that.”

“Did you see me out there
?
I
rocked
!”

The youthful hacker’s tone sounded unimpressed
.
“Did you see the gun barrel pointed at your head
?
It was there
,
because I
taught
the kids to simulate Hunt and the other agents
’
movements
exactly
.” He pointed to the smaller bank of screen
s
as he typed
.
“Look
at
screen three if you don’t believe me.”

But when Ronnie glanced
at
the screen
,
there was a plague report
.
Great
.
Quirk would be using a magnifying
glass
to
look for boils on his skin for the next six months
.

“Sorry, go to four,” Quirk said. “I’m
Tivoing
three’s feed.”

Of course he was
.
Then he would drop the show down to DVD and play the “Six Signs of the Plague” report every morning to add to his daily “health checklist.”

“Now watch,” he ordered.

Screen four split in two
.
The left half showed Zach and the
FBI
’s movements,
and
the right showed the kids
.
As the chase neared a close, the two screens merged so that a cartoon Zach was the one who captured Ronnie, cuffed her
, and
then pulled her into a passionate kiss.

“Freak,” she said to Quirk as she pulled off her gear, throwing the thoroughl
y soaked equipment onto a table filled with dozens of “beta” devices.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Quirk shouted as he ran over, picking
the discarded items
up as if
they
were
the
crown jewel
s
.

“Hey, hey, hey,
yourself
,” she said
.
“You promised me seamless, real-time infrared
-
to
-
normal spectrum integration in case of a bright flash.”

Quirk was still busy picking out the equipment, drying each with a dust-free cloth
.
“And how many times did those fireworks go off right by you
,
and
voi
là
, no white-out
?
”

“Hello
?
Blinding snow as I went to jump.”

“The video feed took less than zero point one four seconds to kick in.”

“Yeah, well, zero point one four seconds is a long time
in
midair,”
she answered as she tugged off her damaged gloves.

“Then join a freaking gym rather than leaping from tall buildings.”

Ronnie chucked the gloves across the room
. U
nfortunately
,
they landed palm
-
side down, popping a few more beads
.
Worse
, they
landed on one of her assistant’s “proto-types.” And
,
given the fact that Quirk was
a huge fan of classic sci-
fi
,
many of the items either looked like something out of
Flash Gordon
or
a future issue of
Scientific America
n
.
No matter. These were
h
is “babies.”

Qu
irk rushed
over
to his workbench
.
“Oh
!
You are an evil, evil, evil woman.”

Ignoring her assistant, Ronnie took one of his precious no-dust rags to wipe the clinging sweat from her face
.
“Fund redistribution complete?”

“Down to the penny,” he said without looking up.

“Our cut?”

“Eleven point six two
two
percent
of the total take.”

Ronnie smiled
.
Even beside himself with grief, Quirk knew his numbers
.
“For a grand total of?”

“A cool two hundred forty two million, two hundred thousand dollars,” Quirk said as he surveyed all the equipment
.
“But I’m not even sure that covers the damage here.”

Once on a roll,
not
a lot could divert Quirk, so Ronnie turned her back while he
e
numerated each and every single, tiny component and what it was going to cost to
get
it repaired or replaced
.
Besides, she had a download to finish
.
Rapidly logging on
to one of the auxiliary computers, Ronnie didn’
t find the Panic
!
A
t
T
he Disco bootleg
, but the new Band of Horses cut
was
an adequate substitute.

“Well, for once
,
you’re right,” Quirk said from behind her.

Given the unusual admission from her assistant, Ronnie swiveled her seat around
.
She had to see this to believe it
.
“About?”

Quirk nodded
toward
the mega-screen at Zach’s image
.
“He’s even hotter when he’s pissed.”