Black List

CHAPTER 18

TEXAS

Nicholas probably shouldn’t have brought her back to the ranch. In fact, he shouldn’t even have let her into his SUV, but the picture she had removed from her purse and pressed up against the window had changed everything.

It showed her hugging her older sister, Caroline, and the two of them laughing. But it wasn’t just the picture that had changed his mind, it was the look on her face. She was absolutely terrified. It wasn’t a show, it was genuine, and so he had unlocked the Denali’s door and let her in.

Nina had the same high cheekbones and deep green eyes as her sister, but her hair was jet black, probably dyed, Nicholas figured, and she wore a tiny stud through her left nostril.

Exiting the garage, he began a long SDR to make sure they weren’t being followed. Right away, Nina began talking, but Nicholas stopped her. It wasn’t safe. Not yet.

He asked if she had any electronics with her. All she had was a cell phone; she took it out and showed it to him. As they passed the Donna Reservoir, he had her pull the battery and throw all the pieces out the window into the water. She did exactly as he asked while he continued to drive.

Just before the Rio Grande, he changed direction and headed west, and shortly afterward changed direction again and headed north up through Las Milpas and back toward the Three Peaks Ranch.

As they drove, they talked, or more specifically Nina talked, and Nicholas interrupted from time to time to ask questions.

She explained how a package from a D.C.-area lingerie shop had arrived and that in it were a couple of bra and panty sets, a tiny flash drive, and a recordable greeting card with a message from her sister.

The message warned Nina not to plug the drive into any computer but to wait until she found Nicholas, and then Caroline quickly explained how to contact him. There wasn’t a lot of recording space, so she had to be fast. She told Nina that she was in trouble and that she loved her. That was it.

Nina tried repeatedly to contact her sister after receiving the message, but to no avail. Very soon thereafter, she had a bad feeling that she was being watched, both at her apartment and at work, and so decided to go to ground.

After calling in sick, she had holed up at the home of a wealthy Mexican family for whom she pet-sat from time to time. They were back in Reynosa until at least Christmas and had left their Hide-A-Key in the usual spot. She knew from past experience that they never bothered to set the alarm.

She was a sharp woman with good instincts, and Nicholas was impressed. He was equally impressed when she glanced back again at the dogs and said, “Ovcharkas, right?”

“How did you know?”

“I’m a vet tech.”

“Do you see a lot of Caucasian Sheepdogs in south Texas?” he had asked.

Nina’s mood seem to brighten, if just for a moment, as her thoughts were distracted from her concern over her sister, and she smiled. “Not really,” she replied. “I just like dogs. Especially big ones.”

After ascertaining that she had burned the greeting card, per Caroline’s instructions, and watching as she pulled the flash drive from the left cup of her bra to show to him, he decided to keep their conversation light for the rest of the drive.

He asked personal questions in an effort to help keep her mind off her sister. It worked for a while, until he ran out of things to ask. He wasn’t as socially skilled as he would have liked and felt awkward not being able to come up with anything else to talk about.

They fell into an uncomfortable silence that lasted the rest of the way back to the ranch. He was relieved when they finally arrived at the property and suspected that she was too.

At the guesthouse, he gave Nina her pick of the remaining bedrooms and placed a call to Maggie Rose asking if she could bring over some additional women’s size 6 clothing.

Fifteen minutes later, Maggie dropped off a small bag, smiled, and left Nicholas alone. She didn’t ask who the clothes were for or who was in the far bathroom taking a shower. He appreciated her professionalism.

Nicholas placed the items in Nina’s room and then retreated to the kitchen. They tried to open the flash drive right away, but it was encrypted. Despite working with Nina for several hours trying to come up with the password, they had no luck. He needed a break.

∗ ∗ ∗

Cooking was one of his greatest passions, providing a Zen-like experience in which he could lose himself. In fact, when Nina emerged from the guest room and entered the kitchen, he didn’t even notice she was there.

Standing on a stepstool with his eyes closed and his nose in a glass of recently opened chardonnay, he was like nothing she had ever seen. For several moments, she just watched him. Finally, she asked, “Blackberries, apricots, or green apple?”

“Excuse me?” Nicholas replied, surprised to find her standing there.

“Somebody once told me that if you wanted to sound like you knew about wine, all you had to do was say you found a hint of blackberries, apricots, or green apples when you breathe one in like that.”

Nicholas smiled and set his glass down. “I hadn’t heard that.”

“Oh, yeah. Then you roll out the gardening terms.”

“Gardening terms?”

Nina thought for a moment and then gave him her list. “Grassy, oaky, mossy, or peaty.”

“I think those last two are for scotch.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Nicholas affirmed.

“I’m obviously not an expert.”

“Do you like wine?”

“Yes.”

Picking up the bottle in his tiny hands, he poured a glass for her. “That’s all that matters,” he said as he placed the bottle back on the counter, slid the glass toward her and then picked his back up. “To Caroline.”

Nina stood where she was. “They killed her, didn’t they? She had the lingerie store mail me the package and then she ran out of the mall and got hit by a car. It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

Nicholas had no idea. They had talked about Caroline’s death multiple times since he had picked her up in McAllen, but he just didn’t have enough information.

“They aren’t going to stop until they kill me too,” Nina continued.

“No,” said Nicholas. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I promise. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. Okay? I know it’s hard, but you need to stay positive.”

She didn’t respond, so the little man repeated his toast.

Slowly, she reached for her glass and said, “To Caroline.”

They each took a sip.

Nicholas waited a beat and then asked, “So?”

“So what?”

“Blackberries, apricots, or green apples?”

A reluctant smile spread across her lips. “I don’t know, green apples?”

“Definitely green apples,” he agreed.

Whether it was the wine or the fact that he was in his element in the kitchen, Nicholas was much more successful at keeping their conversation upbeat this time. He talked about two of his favorite things, food and wine, and Nina seemed genuinely interested. Before she knew it, dinner was ready.

Nina helped serve and they sat down to a meal of roast chicken with thyme and garlic mashed potatoes. Comfort food, something she was sorely in need of.

After dinner, they returned to the flash drive and Nicholas opened another bottle of wine to “help him think.” He was throwing every tool in his toolbox at it, but the damn drive wouldn’t open.

Convinced the answer was staring him in the face and he just wasn’t seeing it, it was well after midnight when he staggered into the kitchen for a third bottle of wine and it hit him.

Rushing back into the master bedroom, he climbed up into the chair at his desk and began clicking away at the keys. Nina, who had lain down on his bed and fallen asleep, was awakened by the flurry of activity.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“How much do you know about what your sister did for a living?”

“She was a programmer for a company in Maryland called ATS. They do a lot of government work. Why?”

“And before that?” asked Nicholas as he continued working.

“She worked at some big Wall Street bank writing trading software or something.”

“How close were you?”

“Caroline’s fifteen years older than me. She was a sophomore in high school when I was born. Same mom, different dads.”

“So you weren’t that close,” stated Nicholas.

“By the time I was two, she’d already left for college. I saw her over the summers a little bit and most of the holidays, but that was it.”

“Did she ever tell you why she left the bank?”

Nina could tell this was headed somewhere, she just didn’t know where. Propping herself up on one elbow she replied, “She said she got sick of all the pressure. She also said she hated living in Manhattan.”

“She told me that too. Then I learned the real story.”

“What do you mean the real story?”

Nicholas turned so he could look at her and replied, “Your sister was fantastic with computers and wrote some amazing software. Like every other programmer in the world, she crafted an insurance policy, a way she could slip back inside the bank’s software if she ever had to. Call it a back door. The only problem was that her back door conflicted with someone else’s on the system. And that someone else used it to screw your sister.”

“How?”

“Another IT person was stealing the bank’s client data and selling it on the black market. He rigged it to make it look like your sister had done it.”

“She never mentioned any of this,” said Nina.

“It gets more interesting. As I said, this other IT person, some guy named Sanjay, framed your sister in a very clever way. That said, Caroline was able to point out several inconsistencies that argued for her innocence. Nevertheless the bank fired her anyway. Two days later, she launched an attack on their system and knocked all of their ATMs off-line for a week.”

Nina shook her head and smiled. “Ever since we were kids, she’s always had a serious temper.”

“Well, her serious temper got her into serious trouble. It didn’t take long for the authorities to show up on her doorstep. Within two days of the ATMs going down, they picked her up.”

“Wait a second. You said she had knocked the ATMs out for a week.”

Nicholas now smiled. “She did, but no one could figure out how to break the program she had written and get them back online. They threatened to lock her up and throw away the key, but she refused to give in. It was a Mexican standoff. Finally, the bank blinked. They apologized for firing her and offered her a severance package. The authorities, though, were another matter.

“A crime had been committed and they had no intention of letting your sister walk. They wanted to throw the book at her, or so they said.”

“What did they want?” Nina asked.

“They wanted her. And seeing as how no bank was ever going to hire her after what she had done, she took them up on their offer, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, of course. That’s how she wound up at ATS. They’re basically the IT people for the entire U.S. government.”

“She never told me any of this.”

“It took me a while to get it out of her, believe me,” said Nicholas.

“So what does this have to do with Caroline’s flash drive?”

Turning back around, he made several more keystrokes. “I think your sister built one of her back doors into this flash drive.”

“You do?” replied Nina as she got off the bed and walked over to the desk.

“I do. And if I can find it, I think I can get us in.”

Nina watched over the next ten minutes as Nicholas continued to type in strings of code into his computer.

Suddenly he hung his head and then shook it slowly from side to side.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Nicholas smiled.

“You found it?”

“I did. There’s a back door, but you’ll never believe what the password is.”

Nina put her hand on his shoulder and gave it an excited squeeze. “Tell me.”

Nicholas pointed at a small box on the screen and then typed the six-letter code that opened up the drive: S_A_N_J_A_Y.