Ali sent off an immediate reply.

The more the merrier. Invite her to come here. Will she be coming from Seattle, or will she be coming with you? Please let me know so I can make suitable travel and room arrangements for you.

After punching send, Ali reached over, absently picked up one of Bryan Forester’s thumb drives, and held it in her hand. She had fallen asleep the night before while still wondering what to do about them. Now that B. had cleared the way, Ali felt she could risk looking at them on her own computer. If there happened to be another computer virus lurking in the background of Morgan’s files, Ali could be reasonably sure that she wouldn’t be putting B.’s equipment at risk. And since there was no love lost between Bryan Forester and B. Simpson, it was a relief to Ali that she wouldn’t have to ask for B.’s help in dealing with the Foresters’ situation.

She was about to insert the drive when the doorbell rang. Company? she thought. At six-thirty in the morning?

Except what she found waiting on her front porch wasn’t company at all. It was Leland Brooks, lugging a humongous carpet-cleaning machine. “What are you doing here so early?” she wanted to know.

“Sorry,” he said apologetically, wrestling the machine through the front door. “I thought I mentioned it to you last night. It turns out everyone else is trying to get ready for Thanksgiving company, too. They told me I could use this today on the condition that I have it back by nine A.M., when it’s booked to go out again.”

Sam took one look at the load of equipment and bolted for the relative safety of the laundry room, where she would no doubt squeeze herself behind the dryer and then need to be coaxed out with offers of food. For right now, however, it was a good place for her.

Chris emerged from his room dressed for school. He paused in the kitchen long enough to fill his coffee cup. “Good morning, Leland,” he said. “I hope you’re not planning on doing any cleaning down in my studio.”

“Let’s see,” the butler said. “Would your studio happen to be the source of all the metal filings and BBs I vacuumed out of the carpet yesterday afternoon?”

Chris’s metal sculptures did leave behind a certain amount of debris. He looked slightly crestfallen. “Yes,” he admitted. “I suppose so.”

“In that case,” Leland replied, “since I expect to do a thorough job of cleaning the carpet, you can also expect that I will clean your studio. There’s not much sense in doing one without the other. You can also rest assured that I’ll put everything back where I found it, which won’t necessarily be where it belongs.”

It was a statement that brooked no disagreement. “Right,” Chris said, backing down. “I’ll get out of your way, then.”

Ali concealed a grin behind her coffee mug. She had already learned that when it came to cleaning, Leland Brooks was not to be denied. Chris was coming to that same conclusion.

“Why don’t I get out of your way, too?” Ali offered. “I’ll get dressed and go have breakfast with my parents.”

As someone accustomed to taking full advantage of other people’s lax computer security measures, Peter Winter was surprisingly blasé about his own. His dealings with Singleatheart were concealed through multiple layers of identity that protected him. For his personal computer, he employed a sophisticated encryption routine, but for the most part, he didn’t worry about it. People like Matt Morrison and his ilk were nothing but chumps, and Peter was willing to bet this Ali Reynolds woman was the same-stupid beyond bearing.

By five A.M. on Thursday morning, after a restless night, Peter took his cup of coffee over to the desk and sat down at his computer. The little notes people sent back and forth to their friends and relations often gave away much more than they knew. And that was where he went-straight to Ali Reynolds’s computer and her e-mail records.

The moment he tried to log on to Ali’s e-mail account, however, something strange happened. The egg timer showed up and stayed there. After a moment or two, he tried control/alternate/delete, but nothing happened. The egg timer wouldn’t go away. And that was when he knew he’d been hacked. His computer froze up. He knew that even unplugging the damn thing would accomplish nothing. As soon as the power was restored, the inevitable destruction would continue. For the next three minutes, unable to stop the slow but inexorable process, he sat and watched helplessly to the end, until the words FATAL ERROR flashed across his screen.

Full of impotent fury, Peter watched his computer’s death throes and worried that his whole house of cards was about to tumble down around him. It wasn’t just his computer. He could replace that. Though it would take time, eventually, he’d be able to reconstruct the passwords and most of the files. But he couldn’t do it right then. What left him feeling half sick was that someone-a woman, no less-had been smart enough and had gotten close enough to him to do this kind of damage. And she’d had balls enough to hit him where he lived. Yes, Peter hacked in to other people’s systems all the time, most recently, that hopeless asshole Matt Morrison’s. But to Peter’s knowledge, this was the first time anyone had ever hacked him. Turnabout definitely wasn’t fair play.

Who the hell is this bitch? he wondered. How dare she do this, and what makes her think she can get away with it?

Slamming away from his desk, Peter headed for the shower. Trying to harness his outrage, he stood under the stream of hot water and considered the problem. Nothing Peter had read about Ali Reynolds had indicated that she was any kind of computer genius. In order to take on the unassailable Peter Winter, he knew she must have had help of some kind-talented and very capable help. That detective friend of hers, maybe? What Peter found most disturbing was that the woman had made no effort to conceal her identity, although clearly, the attack had come from her. What did that mean? Was she letting him know she knew everything? And what if she and her helper had somehow managed to gain access to his files or break his encryption code? That would spell utter disaster.

By the time Peter stepped out of the shower, he had settled on a course of action-he’d have to go to Sedona and find her and her helper, too. Fortunately, even without access to his computer, Peter had a good idea where to start looking. He had scanned through a surprising amount of Internet-based Ali Reynolds material the day before and had read about her restoration project on Manzanita Hills Road, which also happened to be where he had located Bryan Forester’s truck. If the house was under construction, she probably wasn’t living there at the moment, but with any kind of luck, Peter thought he’d be able to decoy her into coming there-alone.

And once he found her? It was pretty clear to him that he’d have to put her out of her misery. After that, it would be time for Peter Winter to exit stage left. He’d had that game plan set up and waiting for a long time, along with several suitable alternate identities. The problem was, he hadn’t intended to make use of any of them yet.

Moving deliberately, he dragged two suitcases out of the hallway closet. He packed one with nothing but computer gear-the still-working laptops as well as the dead one. In the other bag he packed clothing, and not much of that, either. Depending on where he ended up, he’d buy whatever he needed. Right now it was important to travel light. He opened his briefcase and made sure he was fully equipped with gloves, scrubs, and duct tape. The last items he placed in the briefcase were the several vials of Versed that he kept at home and at the ready. Experience had taught him that unconscious victims were far less troublesome than those who were able to fight back.