Son of the Morning

"Iknow it was." She stared out the window, which was fogging up from their breathing. "I translated them. I know :; exactly why he wants them."

" Kris clenched his hands into fists, staring at her delicate profile. He wanted to take her somewhere and feed her, he wanted to tuck a blanket around her, he wanted-he wanted to punch something. She looked so frail. Yeah, that was it. Frail. Grace had always been a special person to him; he’d known her most of his life, had a crush on her since he was seventeen. She had always been so nice to him, treating him as an equal when most adults didn’t. Grace was a genuinely good person, smart and kind, and her mouth, oh her mouth made him feel all hot and dizzy-headed. He’d dreamed of kissing her but never worked up the nerve. It was lousy of him, but when she had called the day before, he had thought again of kissing her, and even thought that it would be okay now because Ford was dead. But looking at her he knew it wasn’t okay, might never be okay. She was quiet and sad and distant, and that mouth didn’t look as if it ever smiled. He pulled himself away from his thoughts and reached into the backseat to grab a computer printout. "Here," he said, placing it on her lap. He might not ever kiss her, but he would do what he could to help her. "It’s a blueprint of the building where the Foundation is headquartered."

Grace pulled off her sunglasses and put them on the dash. "Where did you get this?" she asked in surprise, flipping through the pages.

"Well, it’s a fairly new building," he explained. "A copy of the plans are on file with the city planners, I guess in case of emergencies and stuff."

She gave him a sideways glance. "So you went to city hall and got a copy?"

"Not exactly. I got it out of their computers," he said " blithely.

"Without setting off any alarms, I hope." "Ah, please," he scoffed. "It was a joke." There was no point in scolding him about it; after all, she was asking him to commit a much more serious crime than computer hacking. "Getting into the Foundation’s computers won’t be as easy," she warned. "No, but I’ve already got it figured out. Your idea about the maintenance crew was great. We steal a couple of the uniforms, waltz right in. But all we need is to get into the building, we don’t need to actually get into the Foundation’s offices. Look," he said, pointing to the blueprint. "Here is the service elevator. We take it to the floor below, then use this access panel in the ceiling to get to the electronic panel. I tap into a line, pull up a file list, and we go from there."

"What about alarms?" "Well, it’s a self-contained system, so they don’t have to worry about anyone hacking in; certain files may be security-coded, but not the system itself. My job is to get the coded files."

He made it sound so easy, but she didn’t expect the Foundation’s files to be as vulnerable as the city’s. Parrish was too smart, too wily, and he had too much to hide. "There has to be a list of the passwords for any coded files, but it could be anywhere. Parrish may keep it in his house, or there could be a safe in the offices where it would be kept. Either way, we won’t be able to get it."

He shook his head, grinning. "You’d be surprised how many people keep a list of passwords in their desk. It’s worth a look, anyway, once we’re certain everyone has gone home."

"I have some ideas about the passwords," she said. "We’ll try those first." She shuddered at the idea of going into the empty offices and finding they weren’t empty after all, but that Parrish had worked late. Hearing his voice on the telephone had been bad enough; she didn’t think she could bear actually seeing him. Still, if it became necessary to break into his private office, she would do it. Kris would be willing, but she wasn’t willing to let him; she had already involved him enough.

"Okay," he said, practically twitching in his enthusiasm. "Let’s go." "Now?" "Why not?" Why not, indeed. There was no reason to wait, not if they could manage to liberate a couple of uniforms from the maintenance service. "Do you have your laptop?" she asked.

"In the backseat."

She shrugged. "Then we might as well give it a try. We’ll go in my truck."

"Why?" He looked a bit affronted at her reluctance to travel in the Chevelle.

"This car is a little noticeable," she pointed out, her tone dry. A grin broke across his face. "Yeah, it is, isn’t it?" he said, giving the dash a fond pat. "Okay." He got the laptop out of the backseat and took the keys from the ignition. Grace grabbed her sunglasses. They got out and locked the doors, and they trudged across the slippery parking lot to her pickup.

They were silent as Grace drove. She tried to come up with some feasible plan for getting the maintenance uniforms, but none occurred to her. And there was still security at the building after office hours; perhaps the maintenance service had a key to the rear service door, perhaps not. After cleaning houses for six months, she knew some people without thought turned over a spare key to the cleaning service so they wouldn’t be inconvenienced by having to be at home when their houses were cleaned. Grace was always amazed at their lack of caution. Still, it happened. Unless Parrish owned the entire building, the chances were fifty-fifty the maintenance crew could enter without ringing for a guard. If Parrish owned the building, no way; he wouldn’t care if the crew had to wait, or that a guard had to trudge from wherever he was in the building to let them in. He wouldn’t even consider their inconvenience in the security scheme.

With what she had learned in the past eight months, Grace had to admit he was right. If you had something worth protecting, you protected it, and you didn’t compromise security by fretting about whether or not the maintenance crew had to wait a couple of minutes. Of course, a sophisticated system would use closed-circuit cameras to identify the crew, and the door would be opened by remote control