The Wrong Hostage

60

ALL SAINTS SCHOOL

MONDAY, 7:31 A.M.

LANE HEARD THE NEW guards arrive, heard just enough of their conversation to know that he was being taken away. He dove for the satellite phone and hit the button that automatically connected him to Faroe.

One ring.

Answer it.

He grabbed his computer and ran for the bathroom.

Two rings.

Be there. Oh, God, please be there!

He locked the door behind him.

Three rings.

He turned on the shower.

Just like always. Nobody but Mom to-

“Faroe,” said a voice.

“They’re moving me,” Lane whispered.

“I can’t hear you over the background noise. Pitch your voice low and don’t whisper.”

“They are moving me,” Lane said, struggling with his voice and his fear.

“When? Where?”

“As soon as I get out of the shower. I don’t know where, but I got it! I cracked that sucker bigger than shit. It was so sweet. I had this old beta tester’s code key and they used it almost verbatim in the 8.0 version.”

In San Ysidro, Faroe put together enough of the rush of words to understand. Lane had hacked the file. “Good job! What’s in the file?”

“A bunch of numbers, bank names, and dollar amounts. Greek to me. Here, I’ll read you some. There’s a January eighth date, then Bank of Vanuatu, a ten-digit number, and the figure, two million three hundred thousand, to Sparbuch…”

Faroe closed his eyes, visualizing the data. Ted Franklin had used a blind overseas account to transship a hefty sum of money, then converted it to an Austrian savings passbook account.

“…followed by another sixteen-digit number,” Lane said. “Do you want me to read the number to you?”

The Sparbuchen were anonymous. Period. Creating new accounts was difficult, but existing accounts were still as protected from money-laundering investigations as they ever had been.

“I don’t need the number yet,” Faroe said. “How many entries are there?”

Lane juggled the phone between his ear and his shoulder while he wiped steam from the shower off the computer screen. “About sixty. No, more like seventy. Some of them look like duplicates.”

He glanced over his shoulder. The guards were shouting for him to come out.

“Give me a minute to dry off!” he yelled back at them in Spanish.

Then he punched a button on the laptop keyboard.

“Lane, what’s happening?” Faroe asked.

The keyboard popped up slightly.

“They’re getting impatient,” Lane said.

Someone began hammering on the door with something harder than a fist.

Lane grabbed the computer’s hard drive.

Wood splintered.

He pushed the hard drive into one of the many deep pockets in his cargo shorts and fastened the Velcro tab.

Wood groaned and popped.

He slammed the keyboard back in and shoved the gutted computer beneath a pile of damp towels. The charging cord stuck out like a flag. He yanked the cord out of the wall and buried it with the computer.

The door shuddered on its hinges.

“I’m coming!” Lane shouted, turning off the shower with one hand and reaching for the bathroom lock with the other.

The door burst open, shoving Lane backward. He tripped and went down. The satellite phone flew against the toilet, then bounced against the shower curtain and into the bathtub.

Kicking, cursing, and slinging punches, Lane tried to get free of the hands reaching for him. Something hit him on the cheek. His head roared and things went fuzzy.

A deep male voice snarled commands. Then the man picked up the phone.

“?Digame!” he ordered.

Faroe didn’t.

“Who you talk?” the guard shouted at Lane in English.

“His name is Ivegot Thedrive!” Lane yelled toward the cell phone.

Something connected with his head.

The world exploded into a nasty shade of red, then faded to the kind of black Lane had never seen before.