Son of the Morning

"In the Year of Our Lord1945,the Guardian slew the German beast, and so came Grace to Creag Dhu. "

She remembered the entry, and once again chills roughened her skin. Creag Dhu couldn’t be the password, because the location of the Treasure was what Parrish didn’t know. "Hitler," she suggested.

Again Kris gave her a startled look, but he typed in the name.

The screen filled with words.

She sat back, stunned. It couldn’t be. She hadn’t even considered a connection, despite the document’s warnings about the Foundation of Evil.

"My God," Kris whispered. Hastily he shoved another floppy into the disk drive and copied the file without taking time to read it. Only when the file was copied and the disk safely stored did he slowly scroll downward.

"They really think they can rule the world if they find this so-called treasure," he whispered. What they were reading was nothing less than a manifesto, a declaration of intent. "The papers you have supposedly give the location of it, right? And he’s actually killed Ford and Bryant just because theyknew about the papers?" Outrage and disbelief warred in his tone.

She looked at him. Her gaze was glassy from shock. "They do," she said dazedly. "Give the location, that is."

"Holy shit," he whispered. Then his eyes widened and he looked nervously at the screen. "I guess I shouldn’t say that, huh?"

A door closed in the hallway. They froze. After a split second, Kris hurriedly pulled the lid down so the computer was almost closed, to hide the glow of the screen. There was only a whisper of sound outside the door; whoever it was moved very quietly. But the footsteps moved on without pause, and after a moment came the sound of another door closing in the hallway.

"Wegotta get out of here," Kris muttered. "You got any more ideas on passwords?"

She shook her head. He swiftly exited the file, backed out of the program, and shut off the laptop. Within a minute he had reconnected the other terminal and replaced the manuals in their original position.

He crawled over to the door and poked his head up just enough to peer out the window, checking in both directions. "It’s clear," he whispered, standing up and hurriedly crossing the room.

Grace dragged a chair beneath the access panel and climbed onto the seat. First she stowed the laptop and the disks in the duct, then she levered herself through the hole. Kris assisted with a boost from beneath.

She turned to reach down and grab the collar of his coveralls, half dragging him through the hole. They were both panting as they replaced the access panel and switched on the flashlight. In silence they retraced their path, both of them thinking about what they had read.

"She isn’t coming tonight," Parrish told Conrad, disappointment evident in his tone. "It’smidnight ; she wouldn’t expect me to work this late."

Conrad didn’t reply. He watched the screen as two of the maintenance crew came down the hallway and left by the propped-open door. They appeared to be hurrying, and the woman was carrying some kind of satchel.

She was small, and had frizzy blond hair. The angle of the camera wasn’t good, but something about her jawline was familiar.

A growl rumbled in his throat, and Parrish lifted questioning eyebrows. "That was her," Conrad said, already running when he hit the door.

Parrish was right behind him when he burst out the service door and ran down the short alley to the street. He looked both ways, but the sidewalks were empty. A car went by; the driver was a suited young black man, probably a junior executive who had been burning themidnight oil.

A block or so away, an engine coughed to life. Conrad ran down the sidewalk toward the sound, his shoes slipping on the snowy sidewalk. His breath fogged in the frigid air. He reached the corner in time to see a set of taillights disappear around another corner.

"Did you see her?" Parrish gasped, coming to a stop beside him. "What kind of car was it?"

"I couldn’t tell," Conrad said. "But the woman was Grace St. John. She was carrying a small satchel, perhaps a computer case."

"Computer" Parrish felt his blood pressure rise. "God damn it, the bitch has been in our files!" He and Conrad hurried back to the office, shivering as the cold bit through their clothes. She wouldn’t have been able to get into his password files, but it infuriated him that she had slipped past his guard, that she had been so close all that time and he hadn’t known it. Damn the little bitch, how did she do it?

"Who was her friend, I wonder?" Who could she have found to help her? She wouldn’t contact people who had known her before, because she couldn’t be certain their first phone call wouldn’t be to the police. It had to have been someone she had met afterward.

"Perhaps that is why we couldn’t find her," Conrad suggested. "We have been looking for a woman alone, instead of a couple."

The idea infuriated Parrish. He ground his teeth as they walked swiftly to the computer room and he opened the door. Everything looked normal, except for a chair that was out of place.

Conrad pointed at the ceiling. Directly over the chair, a panel was slightly out of place.

"Find her," Parrish said in an almost soundless whisper. She had been there, so close; she had taunted him, coming there with another man. He didn’t know yet if she had actually found anything of use in his computer system, but just the fact that she had dared invade it made him shake with rage. "Find both of them. And kill them..’

Chapter 16

GRACE’S SECOND SLEEPLESS NIGHT IN A ROW MADE HER EYESIGHT blur, but she couldn’t stop reading parts of the Hitler file over and over, couldn’t get it out of her mind even when she laid it aside. She kept coming back to it, rereading it to assure herself she hadn’t imagined any of it.