High Country Nocturne - [23]

Part of that might even have happened if I hadn’t said another word.

Instead, I said, and I said it very carefully, lightly, trying to avoid a vowel of accusation in my voice, “Please tell me you weren’t hacking the Peraltas’ financial data, Lindsey.”

After a pause, her voice was smaller but had an edge. “I talked on the phone with Sharon. Want to tell me what’s wrong, Dave?”

And so I did.

All the way home, I had rehearsed a way to discuss our mess in a conversation that would be careful, nuanced, calm, and fluent. All that preparation deserted me the more I began to speak.

It took about fifteen minutes to get it out and by the end I was talking too fast and too loud.

Her perfect ankles and feet withdrew and she sat at the other end of the sofa, her arms wrapped around her legs.

“You don’t buy any of this, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“What else did he tell you I did in Washington?”

That was the leading question from the depths of hell.

I hadn’t told her that he had mentioned her affairs. I didn’t now, looking straight at her and lying convincingly, or so I thought. Her blue eyes darkened, never a good sign.

After a searing pause, Lindsey finally spoke, her voice as hard as, well, a diamond.

“He’s using you, Dave. He’s trying to scare you and he’s trying to use me to get what he wants.”

She walked off to the kitchen and began cleaning up, loudly banging pans.

Of course, he was using me. I was a fool on a hundred fronts but I knew this much. I walked to the kitchen and stood in the doorway.

“What should I have done?” I said. “I can look at the file. It can’t do any harm.”

She stared into the sink and scrubbed harder. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child, Dave.”

That came out of nowhere and I started feeling the same anger that was motivating her manic kitchen cleaning.

She dried her hands with a striped dishcloth and turned. “You should have called me. We should have made this decision together.”

“There wasn’t time.”

“Why not?” Her tone was sharp. “Did he have an arrest warrant?”

I struggled to find a response. She was right, of course.

I said, “I couldn’t let him throw you to the wolves.”

She smiled with cutting false sweetness. “Aren’t you the white knight?”

Everybody has an interior jerk. Mine was about to lash back but I stopped it. For a long time the house enclosed us in a tense quiet.

She made a lithe move across the room and I stepped aside. When I followed, I found her sitting on the wide starting step. The staircase led to a door, then a walkway that spanned the interior courtyard to the garage apartment. She put her head in her hands. I touched her shoulder.

“And you’re a deputy sheriff again. Working for this racist pig.”

“It won’t last,” I said. “I wanted to buy time.”

She turned her shoulder to avoid my hand. I sat in the leather chair and pressed ahead.

“We need to talk to a lawyer. This is serious stuff, Lindsey. I’m worried.”

When she spoke again, the sarcasm was gone. “I was loaned out to an interagency unit, CIA, NSC, DIA, that’s the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

She looked up. “Did you think I was in D.C. dealing with Nigerian email scams? My God, you’re naïve.”

“I guess so. You told me it was a temporary job at Homeland Security.”

“Look, Chinese hackers got a bunch of information on the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35, by penetrating a British contractor. That’s not news. You can find stories about this on the Web, at least the defense press.”

“So you don’t have to kill me if you tell me?”

She didn’t laugh and I regretted interrupting.

After a moment, she continued. “The efforts to steal information didn’t stop there. Our job was to find out who were the bad guys, how big the breach was-what had they learned? Then the task was trying to feed them false information, flawed design elements. I also created a back door into their network and a malware bug that would have rocked their world, but they wouldn’t let me use it. Said it was shot down by the White House.”

I wasn’t surprised her work would attract attention in high places. She was so damned smart and good at what she did.

She sighed. “The damage was much worse than the brass feared. They stole design elements and critical systems information involving not only the F-35 but the F-22.”

“Did you find out who they were?”

“Unit 61398. No surprise, probably.”

When she saw the My-God-you’re-naïve expression on my face, she explained.

“It’s one of the most important hacking groups of The People’s Liberation Army. The Internet is a battlefield.”

I let out a long breath.

“So why would Melton have his story backward? Why did he say I needed to buy you some time because you had given the Chinese information?”

“Because he’s evil. Because he’s using you!” Her shoulders stiffened and she used both hands to whip back her hair. She stood and walked past me to the picture window, staring out on Cypress Street.

She whispered, “My God, you believe him!”

“I do not.” I said it forcefully. And I meant it.

I stood up and embraced her from behind. She pulled away.

“Part of you believed him when he was telling you about…whatever he told you went on with me in Washington. I could see it in your face, Dave. I know you.”