The Blue Nowhere

much?”
    “No.”
    “What’s he do at night?”
    “Usually stays at home.”
    “Never goes out?”
    Bishop reluctantly replied, “No.”
    “That’s hacker behavior.”
    “But I’ve known him for three years.”
    “Social engineering.”
    Bishop said, “Impossible. . . . Hold on—there’s another call coming in.”
    While he was on hold Gillette peeked through the curtain. He could see what looked like a military troop carrier parked not far away. There was motion in the bushes across the street. Policemen in camouflage clothing ran from one hedgerow to another. It seemed that there were a hundred officers outside.
    Bishop came back on the line.
    “Pac Bell’s got the location where Shawn’s cracking into the FBI from. He is in San Jose Computer Products. I’m almost there. I’ll call you when I’m inside.”
    F rank Bishop called for backup and then parked the car out of sight in the lot across the street; San Jose Computer seemed to bewindowless but he wasn’t going to take the chance that Shawn would get a look at him.
    Crouching, moving as fast as he could despite the terrible pain in his temple and the back of his skull, Bishop made his way to the warehouse.
    He didn’t believe Gillette’s conclusion about Bob Shelton. And yet he couldn’t help but consider it. Of all the partners Bishop had had, he knew the least about Shelton. The big cop did spend all his nights at home. He didn’t socialize with other cops. And while Bishop himself, for instance, had a basic knowledge of ISLEnet he wouldn’t have been able to get inside the system and track down that information about Gillette the way Shelton had done. He recalled too that Shelton had volunteered for this case; Bishop remembered wondering why he’d wanted to take this one rather than MARINKILL.
    But none of this mattered at the moment. Whether Shawn was Bob Shelton or someone else, Bishop had only about fifteen minutes before the federal tactical team began their attack. Drawing his pistol, he flattened himself against the wall beside the loading dock and paused, listening. He could hear nothing inside.
    Okay. . . . Go!
    Ripping the door open, Bishop ran down the corridor, through the office and into the dank warehouse itself. It was dark and seemed unoccupied. He found a bank of overhead lights and flipped the switches on with his left hand, holding his pistol out in front of him. The stark illumination shone down on the entire space and he could see clearly that it was empty.
    He ran outside again to look for another building that Shawn might be using. But there were no other structures connected to the warehouse. As he was about to turn back, though, he noticed that the warehouse looked considerably larger from the outside than it had on the inside.
    Hurrying back into the building, he saw that a wall appeared to have been added at one end of the warehouse; it was a more recent construction than the original building. Yes, Phate must’ve added a secret room. That’s where Shawn would be. . . .
    In a dim corner of the pen he found a knobless panel on hinges and tested it quietly. It was unlocked. He inhaled deeply, dried the sweat from his hand on his billowing shirt and pressed the panel again. Had his footsteps or flipping on the lights warned Shawn of the intrusion? Did the killer have a weapon trained on the doorway?
    It all comes down to this. . . .
    Frank Bishop pushed inside, gun up.
    He dropped into a crouch, squinting for a target, scanning the dark room, chill from the air-conditioning. He saw no sign of Shawn, only machinery and equipment, packing crates and pallets, tools, a hand-operated hydraulic forklift.
    Empty. There was—
    Then he saw it.
    Oh, no . . .
    Bishop realized then that Wyatt Gillette and his wife and her family were doomed.
    The room was only a telephone relay station. Shawn was hacking in from someplace else.
    Reluctantly he called Gillette.
    The hacker answered and said desperately, “I can see them, Frank. They’ve got machine guns. This’s going to be bad. You found anything?”
    “Wyatt, I’m at the warehouse. . . . But . . . I’m sorry. Shawn’s not here. It’s just a phone relay or something.” He described the large black metal box console.
    “It’s not a phone relay,” Gillette muttered, his voice hollow with despair. “It’s an Internet router. But it still won’t do us any good. It’d take an hour to trace the signal back to Shawn. We’ll never find