“Was it a hard adjustment?” I asked. “To move here?”

She bent her head to the side, a thin sheet of her gold-spun hair falling on a shoulder. “Yes, I suppose. I mean, it’s so different here than New York, but in a good way. The hardest thing was realizing that we were here for good, while most of my family live in Connecticut now. I missed my sisters a lot. Still do. But this is my family now.” She gestured around her vast kitchen. “You know how it is.”

“Sure.”

Lucy was so easy to be with. She had a tinkling laugh that made you smile, and she had such an uncomplicated and sweet air about her.

But as we finished our sandwiches any ease I’d experienced evaporated, and I started dodging glances at my watch. Assuming I could get into DeSanto’s hard drive, which I had no real confidence about, the duplicate would take at least an hour, possibly two, to complete. I had to get in that office and on that computer now.

When Lucy stood to clear our plates, I grabbed my bag. It was heavy with the equipment Mayburn had loaded into it.

“Can I use your bathroom?” I pointed in the direction of a powder room that was just outside Michael’s office door.

“Sure, and I’ll go check on the kids.”

“Thanks.” I hoped desperately that Kaitlyn hadn’t defaced a painting or taken apart a stereo.

I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. Nervous, I looked at myself in the mirror, struck by how little I’d changed over the last week. My hair was still red and curly and fell past my shoulders. My eyes were still large and green. I didn’t look older, although I felt ancient. I didn’t look jaded, although the loss of innocence was palpable.

My heart rate started to ratchet up as I looked at myself. How in the world had I gotten here? Last week, I would never, ever have agreed to hack into someone’s computer, particularly someone who, as Mayburn had explained, might have some significant mob affiliations, but here I was about to do it.

Ignoring the hard thump, thump in the veins in my neck, I pulled latex gloves from my bag and tugged them on. I turned off the powder-room light and opened the door as quietly as possible. I stuck my head out. I couldn’t hear anything, which, hopefully, meant Lucy was still downstairs with the kids. My bag over my shoulder, I began stepping on my tiptoes in the direction of Michael’s office. I gave myself five minutes until Lucy might come looking for me. Five minutes to dismantle a computer and start downloading the hard drive.

The computer was off, just as Mayburn had said it would be.

“How am I going to turn on the computer?” I had asked him. “Won’t he have a password?”

“Oh, absolutely. And it’s probably encrypted with a fingerprint swipe to get on. That’s why you’ll leave it off.”

I unplugged the laptop and turned the thing over. It was a heavy one. The back had a number of panels screwed into place. I heard Mayburn’s words, Don’t try to decipher the panels, just unscrew them all.

I took out the set of screwdrivers he’d given me. My hands began to shake as I tried to match drivers to the different screws on the laptop. Finally, I found the right ones and unscrewed the four panels on the back. I got a shot of excitement, thinking I’d gotten to the hard drive, but all I found underneath was a sheet of metal, affixed with more screws.

Dammit. I shuffled through the screwdrivers again, finally unscrewing and lifting off the metal sheet. And that’s when I recognized the hard drive-it was square and made of aluminum. Four more screws held it in place. I unscrewed those, but now I had to detach the flexible cables that held the hard drive to the computer, pulling them apart from the motherboard. But the space that held the hard drive was cramped and my fingers felt as big as sausages. The thing wasn’t coming out.

“Okay,” I said under my breath. “You can do this.” I looked quickly over my shoulder. I heard nothing from the hallway or the kitchen. I looked at my watch. I’d been in there at least five minutes already. Should I return to the kitchen and try to get back to the office later? What if I didn’t have a chance?

“Go, Iz,” I said to myself, again under my breath.

I forced my fingers deeper into the bowels of the computer, gently twisting the hard drive from its place and, finally-Yes!-I extract the thing. It was surprisingly heavy-at least a pound in weight.

I rustled in my bag until I found the Logicube, a handheld hard-drive duplicator. It was blue with black sides and about the size of a large cordless telephone-roughly seven inches tall and four inches wide. An LCD screen covered the top of the device. At the bottom was a keypad.

I plugged the Logicube into the hard drive.

Don’t turn it on yet! I remembered Mayburn saying. If you turn that thing on before you attach the Write Blocker, we’re screwed.

You mean I’m screwed, I retorted in my head. I was the one sneaking around this house and breaking in to this computer. I was the one who’d littered the desk with a constellation of little screws. The pulse in my neck began tapping louder against my flesh. It felt like a drum in my throat.

Suddenly, I heard Lucy in the kitchen, singing a kids’ song softly to herself. I drew in a sharp breath, swiveling my head and looking over my shoulder again. Go, go, go! In minutes, she’d be down the hall to ask if I was all right.

“You can do this,” I whispered to myself.

I pawed through my bag until I found a box that looked like a black cigarette case.

The Write Blocker, I heard Mayburn say. It prohibits any change in the appearance of DeSanto’s data, so he’ll never detect you were on the computer.

I attached the Write Blocker to the Logicube and then, lastly, pulled from my bag a silver box, similar in size to the Write Blocker. An external hard drive.

Fix that to the Logicube, I heard Mayburn say. But then I froze. Where was it supposed to attach? I couldn’t remember. Frantically, I turned the Logicube this way and that, bumbling the hard drive and the Write Blocker in the process, cords twisting everywhere.

“C’mon,” I muttered.

“Izzy?” I heard Lucy’s sweet voice trill from down the hall.

My drumming pulse began beating wildly. I turned the Logicube over and over in my hand. Finally I spotted the open USB port at the bottom right side. It had been covered by a cord. I shoved in the attachment for the external hard drive.

Mayburn insisted that I run a series of checks before I turned on the Logicube, but he was crazy if he thought there was time.

I heard Lucy say again, “Izzy?”

I hit the Power button for the Logicube and watched as the LCD screen came to life. Downloading, it said.

“Yes,” I whispered.

I jumped up from the desk, grabbed my bag and hurried down the hallway, pulling my gloves off and shoving them in my pockets. It would have been helpful if I could have hid the components and the mess I’d made of the laptop, but I had no time. I would have to keep Lucy occupied and away from that part of the house for at least an hour.

She was stepping from the kitchen into the hallway. “Hi,” she said tentatively, her eyes concerned. “You okay?”

I patted my stomach. “Sorry I was gone for so long. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so well.”

“Oh, I hope it wasn’t the sandwiches.”

“No, no. I’ve been feeling off, almost nauseous, for a few days.” This was absolutely true. Since Sam left, nothing in my body felt right.

“You’re not pregnant?” she said jokingly.

“God, I hope not.” The words shot from my mouth, from me and not my cover. There was no way I could fake wanting a pregnancy, even for Mayburn.

She laughed and led the way back into the kitchen. “You and Grady wouldn’t want one of your own?”

“Kaitlyn is handful enough.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said. “She found the chest with Michael’s Notre Dame memorabilia.”