Cody Walker's Woman

Stop! her dream self said. There was something wrong with the slide show memories. She knew it. She’d missed something. Something important. A small thing, but crucial.

She restarted the slide show from the beginning, examining each frame minutely. No, nothing wrong with the first one. Nor the next, nor the next, nor the next. Back up, her dream self said. Back up to right before the elevator. And then she knew.

Cody had locked his computer with his personal password. That was standard procedure in the agency—you logged on to the agency network with a password, and you locked your computer for security with that same password whenever you were going to be away from your desk. She’d done it herself right before going to pick up the printouts from the printer, the ones she was going to show Cody.

Password?

Callahan suddenly appeared in her dream, holding a blood-stained key in his hand. It sounded something like center or centaur, but I can’t swear to it.

Center...centaur... A computer password? Could it be that simple? If so, where was the computer? What did it have to do with the bloody key? And what about veni, vidi, vici? Cody had wondered if it was some kind of code, but that didn’t make sense. Tressler had to have known he was dying—why would he speak in code? The answer was right there, just out of reach. What had Callahan said?

He was a decent kid—stereotypical computer nerd, but likable nevertheless.... He was always playing those online war games. He didn’t say it, but I suspect he joined the militia for the thrill of it, thinking it was like one of his computer games. He just didn’t realize it wasn’t a game.

Online war games...

Veni, vidi, vici...

No, not a code...an online video game...

Chapter 18

Cody woke from an erotic dream of Keira. She was torturing him with her mouth and hands; her soft little moans of pleasure joined by the ragged sounds torn from his throat as she—

“Trace,” he heard Keira say in an urgent whisper. “Trace!”

No, that’s not right, Cody thought, disoriented for a moment. Keira was supposed to be calling his name, not her partner’s name. He sat up abruptly in the upper bunk, almost hitting his head on the ceiling before he realized where he was and that the woman of his dreams was kneeling beside the lower bunk bed, shaking McKinnon’s arm.

“Keira? What’s wrong?” McKinnon was instantly awake.

Cody slid lightly from the upper bunk to the floor, saying at the same time, “What the hell is going on?”

Startled, Keira caught her breath in a gasp that was loud in the quiet room. “Cody! I didn’t mean to wake you.” She was fully dressed.

“What time is it?” he asked her.

She wasn’t wearing her watch, but she said, “It’s early—maybe four-thirty?”

Cody grabbed his jeans from the back of the chair he’d laid them on last night and donned them hastily. As he zipped up, then turned on a lamp, he heard Keira say to Trace, “I have to ask you something. When you and Callahan searched Tressler’s cabin, did you find a computer?”

McKinnon shook his head. “We found a box for a laptop in the garage,” he said, “and there was a DSL line in his living room. But no laptop. That was one of the first things we checked.”

Keira tapped a fingernail on her teeth as she considered this. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t think so.”

“No what?” Cody asked.

“Callahan said Tressler was a gamer,” she explained. “Gamers usually prefer desktops because the graphics processors necessary for high-detail, high-resolution gaming are a lot more expensive in a laptop than a desktop. Not to mention the RAM. Tressler might have had a laptop for other uses—although I doubt it—but for gaming, I’m betting he had a desktop.”

“How do you know all that?” McKinnon asked.

Keira chuckled softly. “I don’t have four older brothers for nothing,” she replied. “Every one of them went through the video gaming phase.”

“Well, if Tressler had a desktop computer,” McKinnon maintained, “whoever killed him took it, because there wasn’t one.”

“Maybe.” Keira didn’t look convinced.