The Blue Nowhere

custody and that could’ve cost me my job. It’s going to be pretty tough to trust you now, isn’t it? We’ll make do with somebody else.”
    “You can’t ‘make do’ with somebody else—not when it comes to Phate. Stephen Miller can’t handle it. He’s in over his head. Patricia Nolan is just security—as good as they are, security people’re always one step behind the hackers. You need somebody who’s been in the trenches.”
    “Trenches,” Bishop said softly. The comment seemed to amuse him. He fell silent and finally said, “I believe I’m going to give you one more chance.”
    Shelton’s eyes fluttered with dark resentment. “Bad mistake.”
    Bishop gave a faint nod, as if acknowledging that it might very wellbe. Then he said to Shelton, “Tell everybody to get some dinner and a few hours sleep. I’m taking Wyatt back to San Ho for the night.”
    Shelton shook his head, dismayed at his partner’s plans, but went off to do what he’d been asked.
    Gillette rubbed his stinging jaw and said, “Give me ten minutes with her.”
    “Who?”
    “My wife.”
    “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
    “Ten minutes is all I’m asking.”
    “Not an hour ago I got a call from David Chambers at the Department of Defense, who’s about an inch away from rescinding that release order.”
    “They found out?”
    “They sure did. So I’ll tell you, son, this fresh air you’re breathing and those free hands of yours—those’re all just gravy. By rights you should be sleeping on a prison mattress right now.” The detective took the hacker’s wrist. But before the metal of the cuff closed around it, Gillette asked, “You married, Bishop?”
    “Yes, I am.”
    “Do you love your wife?”
    The cop said nothing for a moment. He looked up at the rainy sky then put the cuffs away. “Ten minutes.”
    H e saw her first in silhouette, lit from behind.
    But there was no doubt it was Ellie. Her sensuous figure, the mass of long, black hair that became wilder and more tangled as it reached toward her lower back. Her round face.
    The only evidence of the tension she’d surely be feeling was the way she gripped the doorjamb on the other side of the screen. Her pianist’s fingers were red from the fierce pressure.
    “Wyatt,” she whispered. “Did they . . . ?”
    “Release me?” He shook his head.
    A glint in the shadow of her eyes as she looked past him and saw vigilant Frank Bishop on the sidewalk.
    Gillette continued, “I’m just out for a few days. Sort of a temporary parole. I’m helping them find somebody—Jon Holloway.”
    She muttered, “Your gang friend.”
    He asked, “Have you heard from him?”
    “Me? No. Why would I? I don’t see any of your friends anymore.” Looking over her shoulder at her sister’s children, she stepped farther outside and pulled the door shut, as if she wanted to separate him—and the past—firmly from her present life.
    “What are you doing here? How did you know I was . . . Wait. Those phone calls, the hang ups. They came up ‘call blocked’ on caller ID. That was you.”
    He nodded. “I wanted to make sure you were home.”
    “Why?” she asked bitterly.
    He hated her tone. He remembered it from the trial. He remembered that single word too. Why? She’d asked that often in the days before he went to prison.
    Why didn’t you give up your goddamn machines? You wouldn’t be going to jail, you wouldn’t be losing me, if you had. Why?
    “I wanted to talk to you,” he said to her now.
    “We have nothing to talk about, Wyatt. We had years to talk—but you had other things to do with your time.”
    “Please,” he said, sensing that she was about to bolt back inside. Gillette heard the desperation in his voice but he was past pride.
    “The plants’ve grown.” Gillette nodded toward a thick boxwood. Elana glanced at it and for a moment her façade softened. One balmy November night years ago they’d made love beside that very shrub while her parents were inside, watching election night results.
    More memories of their life together flooded into Gillette’s thoughts—a health food restaurant in Palo Alto they ate at every Friday, midnight runs for Pop-Tarts and pizza, bicycling through the Stanford campus. For a moment Wyatt Gillette was hopelessly entangled in those memories.
    Then Elana’s face hardened once more. She gave another glanceinside the house through the lace-covered window. The children, now in their pajamas, trotted out of