The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda #1)(48)

“No. He’s not back from basketball practice. Mom and Dad aren’t here either. They had bridge club tonight.”

Jennifer closed the door behind Heather as she entered her room. “Heather. Those men that got killed. You don’t think they were the NSA people, do you?”

Heather shook her head. “No way. Our government agents don’t get into shoot-outs with our own police. The NSA must have already been there.”

“But that poor woman. Someone assaulted her and then people were killed. We got those people killed and those policemen shot.” Tears streamed down Jennifer’s cheeks as she sat down hard on her bed, sending a large, overstuffed floral pillow tumbling across the floor.

“No, we didn’t,” said Heather, trying to convince herself of the truth of the statement. “Those men were bad people, and they caused the situation, not us.”

“But we were the instigators,” Jennifer sobbed. “I’m the one who had the virus pick that machine. I caused all of this.”

Heather sat down beside Jennifer on the bed, hugging her friend tightly, fighting the sinking feeling that continued to assault her.

“Hey, Jen, you in your room?” Mark’s voice echoed down the hallway.

“Just a sec,” Jennifer replied, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

Mark stuck his head in the door. “What’s up?”

“Did you hear what I said?” Jennifer said angrily. “I said to give me a second.”

Mark started to pull back, then, seeing her face, came into the room. “What is it, Sis? What’s the matter?”

Heather repeated the news story they had just heard.

“You’re kidding,” Mark said, slumping into Jennifer’s chair.

“I wish I was. It looks like we probably caused all this. 98.32 percent probability.” Realizing what she had just said, Heather flushed a bright red, although for once, neither Mark nor Jennifer appeared to notice her savant lapse.

“Holy shit!” Mark leaned back in the chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “Jen, I know you’re upset. But how are you coming on the virus that is supposed to hide our trail from the trace?” he asked.

“I’m just about done with it,” she sniffed. “How’s your Russian?”

Mark shrugged. “Passable. I’ve been reading everything I can get to on the web with no problem. Unless it’s some strange local slang, I can probably handle it.”

Jennifer moved toward her computer. “Here. Let me have my chair, and I’ll keep working.”

Mark stood up. “Good girl. I hate to push you, but now that we see what these people are capable of doing, we damned sure don’t want them finding us.”

Heather nodded. “Jen, I’m going to go get my laptop. We probably won’t have longer than about forty-eight hours to get your new virus uploaded and working before they trace the old one back to Los Alamos.”

“I should be able to finish it by tomorrow morning. I’ll just need to run some tests after school. Then we’ll be ready.”

“Okay,” said Heather. “In the meantime, we both have the monitor program on our handhelds and laptops. We can watch the progress of the trace on them. By the way, how’s it looking?”

Jennifer’s fingers blurred across her laptop keyboard. “Fine. Some antiviruses have started nibbling away at the agents, but they’re regenerating. I’d say we have the antivirus companies guessing.”

“Great. I’ll be right back.”

By the time Heather retrieved her laptop and made her way back to Jennifer’s room, trouble had surfaced.

“I lied to you,” Jennifer said, without glancing up from the keyboard. “Someone has a trace on us. I started seeing indications right after you left.”

Heather glanced over Jennifer’s shoulder at the readout on the computer screen, a cascade of equations flashing through her mind.

“Crap. We don’t have forty-eight hours. At this rate they’ll track down the source by this time tomorrow night.”

Mark leaned over Jennifer’s other shoulder. “Looks like tomorrow morning it is, Sis.”

Jennifer switched back to her compiler but did not respond, her mind already locked away in a world of bits and bytes. Heather glanced once more at her friend's face, features tight with concentration and worry, then turned to carry her own laptop to Mark’s room. The pounding of her heart echoed the pounding worry in her head. For the sake of her friends, for the sake of their families, for the sake of their very lives, she hoped she chose better this time.

By midnight, Heather and Mark found a computer location Jennifer could use as a false source to lead the trace back to. Since the best thing they could do to help Jennifer was to leave her undisturbed, Heather went home and, after letting her parents know she was back from the long homework session, went to bed.

Although she was exhausted, Heather found that sleep evaded her. About the best she could manage was a fitful doze. Her dreams were so disturbing that she awoke feeling more tired than when she had gone to bed.

At breakfast her mother fretted over the dark circles under Heather’s eyes. “I don’t think these late-night cram sessions are effective. If you three can’t get an early start on homework, then your grades and your health will suffer.”