looked out the window. Finally he looked over at her. “We’ll go to
Boston together and then we’ll talk about it. If you still want to
split up then, so be it.”
While Sidney sat outside in the van, Patterson went in to rent a car.
When he came out a few minutes later and walked over to the van, Sidney
rolled down the window.
“Did you rent a car?” Sidney asked.
Patterson nodded. “They’ll have it ready in about five minutes. I got
us a roomy four-door. You can sleep in the back; I’ll drive.”
“I love you, Dad.” Sidney rolled the window back up and drove off. Her
stunned father ran after her, but she was quickly out of sight.
“Christ!” Sawyer peered out the window into near-zero visibility.
“Can’t we go any faster?” he yelled through the window to the trooper.
They had already seen the devastation of the Patterson beach house and
were now desperately looking everywhere for Sidney Archer and her
family.
The trooper yelled back, “We go any faster, we’re going to end up dead
in some ditch.”
Dead. Is that what Sidney Archer is right now? Sawyer looked at his
watch. He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.
Jackson was looking at him. “Damn, Lee, don’t start smoking in here.
It’s hard enough to breathe as it is.”
Sawyer’s lips parted as he felt the slender object in his pocket. He
slowly pulled the card out.
As Sidney headed out of town, she decided to keep her emotions in check
and let longtime habits take over. For what seemed like forever, she
had been merely reacting to a series of crises, without the opportunity
to think things through. She was an attorney, trained to view facts
logically, look at the details and then work them into an overall
picture. She certainly had some information to work with.
Jason had labored on Triton’s records for the CyberCom deal. That she
knew. Jason had disappeared under mysterious circumstances and had sent
her a disk with some information on it. That, also, was a fact. Jason
was not selling secrets to RTG, not with Brophy in the picture. That
also was clear to her. And then there were the financial records.
Apparently Triton had simply handed them over. Then why the big scene
at the meeting in New York? Why had Gamble demanded to talk to Jason
about his work on the records, particularly after he had sent Jason an
e-mail congratulating him on a job well done? Why the big deal of
getting Jason on the phone? Why put her in an impossible situation like
that?
She slowed down and pulled off the road. Unless the intent all along
was to put her in an impossible situation. Making it appear as though
she had lied. Suspicion had followed her from that very moment.
What exactly had been in those records in the warehouse?
Was that what was on the disk? Something Jason had found out?
That night Gamble’s limo had whisked her to his estate, he had obviously
wanted some answers. Could he have been attempting to find out if Jason
had told her anything?
Triton had been a client for several years now. A big, powerful company
with a very private past. But how did that tie in to all the other
things? The deaths of the Page brothers. Triton beating out RTG for
CyberCom. As Sidney thought once more of that horrible day in New York,
something clicked. Ironically, she had the same thought Lee Sawyer had
experienced earlier but for a different reason: A performance.
My God! She had to get in touch with Sawyer. She put the van in drive
and got back on the road. A shrill ring interrupted her thoughts. She
looked around at the interior of the van for the source until her eyes
alighted on the cellular phone resting on a magnetized plate against the
lower dashboard. She hadn’t noticed it until just that moment. It was
ringing? Her hand went instinctively down to answer it and then pulled
back. Finally she picked it up. “Yes?”
“I thought you weren’t interested in playing games.” The voice was