"They don't know me. Elena doesn't know me. Why can't I just make an appointment with her to talk about my taxes or something and give her your stuff?"

Spencer shook her head. "She doesn't do that kind of thing. The only people who talk to her about taxes are looking for a plea bargain."

"Well think of something else, then. But you're not leaving, not until I know you're going to walk out of here to someplace safe."

And that was that.

Special Agent Calvin Akers winced when he saw the lighted number on his cell phone. He dreaded the tirade that would start the instant he answered the call.

"This is Akers."

"It's about goddamned time you took my call!"

"I've been in meetings," he lied.

Stacy Eagleton recognized a lie when she heard it, but she had more important nuts to squeeze. "What's the status of Spencer Rollins?"

"We've got her picture out there. I just got the okay to throw in a reward, so unless she's hiding under a rock, we're a big step closer." He hoped that would placate the bitch.

"You better hope so! You and Pollard have a hell of a lot more at stake here than the rest of us."

Akers clicked off the phone when Eagleton ended the call. He didn't need her reminder of what was at stake. Two people were dead at his hand, and every day that Spencer Rollins ran free, he and Pollard were more at risk.

But he was pretty sure they could stand up to scrutiny if she started making accusations. They'd put together a pretty good case: Eagleton's commentary on her paranoia and temper; video of her fleeing the scene; they'd even managed to tamper with the gate log, showing her arriving that night before James. And speaking of James, Pollard had even thought to use one of the kitchen knives from Rollins' apartment.

Yep, she was guilty, and they could prove it if they had to.

"This is all clear to me, Spencer. Really, I understand every word...well, except for the part about calling globals and macros. You might want to spell that out a little bit." Ruth read all six pages of Spencer's typed account, stopping when she got to the attached sheets of code.

Spencer had worked all afternoon at Viv's computer writing down her account of events and her theories about the players. The only link she could imagine that involved federal agents was that they had possibly done background checks for the key personnel executing the contract.

The programmer made some notes in the margin and reread the difficult section.

"That's much better," Ruth agreed. "So all you have to do is put this in Elena's hands, right?"

"Right. I guess I need to go back over to Viv's and do these edits first."

"What if you sent it to the newspaper?"

"I thought about that. Hell, I thought about calling them last weekend. I thought it might protect me if I made it all public, because they wouldn't dare do anything with all of that attention on me. But the problem with that is that they'd get to the evidence and destroy it. If I can't prove they did it, they'll find a way to make it look like I did. And Henry's killers will go free."

"So is there anyone else you can give it to that can pass it on to Elena? Any of her friends?"

"Nobody I can think of, but I'm still working on it." Spencer scooped up her papers and set them aside. "And I think there's something else we should do."

"What?"

"I think we should tell Elena all about you and Jessie."

"Oh, no. I don't think so." No way was she going to confess to being a fugitive to a federal agent.

"If anyone can help you - if anyone will help you - it's Elena Diaz."

"Why would she help me? She doesn't know me from Hedda's house cat."

"But she knows me. And she'd help you because I asked her to."

"I think you're forgetting one very important fact here, Spencer. I'm guilty of a felony. I kidnapped my child and fled across state lines. The feds are looking for me now too. And if she finds out, she may have to turn me in, whether she wants to or not."

"No, she won't. Elena cuts deals with criminals all the time to get a bigger fish. She has the authority to do things like that. She wouldn't turn you in if I asked her not to." Spencer needed to make her see that Elena could fix this. She might be able to look into some things, lean on a few people, throw a little weight around. Ruth shouldn't have to be on the run. She'd done nothing to deserve the way the system had treated her, and that needed to be fixed.

"Fine, I'll do it under one condition."

"What?" Anything.

"You let me take it to her." The brunette started to speak, but Ruth put up her hand. "That's the only way I'll agree to do it."

Spencer was over a barrel and she knew it. If she didn't give in, her hands were tied as far as helping Ruth set things right. She couldn't just go to Elena about the mother and daughter unless Ruth gave her all the information. She needed names, and circumstances, and theories about who might be able to help Ruth back in Maine. If it could be done, Elena Diaz would make it happen.

"Something stinks here, Chad." Agent Diaz slumped uninvited into the leather chair across from her boss's desk, her hands clutching a manila folder. All of their conversations about the Spencer Rollins case took place in his office because hers was bugged by the FBI.

"I sympathize, but what can I do? She's called you twice already." Chad Merke had been none too happy with the FBI's request to monitor his agent's communications, and he was downright pissed about the van outside that shadowed her every move. But his hands were tied thanks to a favor he owed the Bureau when he'd convinced them last year to trade a collar for testimony in a drug case.

"No, I mean really stinks. It's bad enough that they probably listen to me pee, but I think there's more to this than just a fugitive on the run."

In the eleven years they'd worked together, the supervisor had learned to trust this woman's instincts. She was dogged when it came to investigation, and she had a nose for sniffing out trouble. "You got something in that folder?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "I've been doing some digging on my own, and I came across something pretty interesting for one Special Agent Michael Pollard." That was the agent who had approached her boss.

"What are you doing poking around in Pollard's business? Just because he's working this case? We don't do things like that, Agent Diaz. You know better," he scolded.

Yes, she did know better, but something about this case wasn't right, and it wasn't just because Spencer was their prey. "Chad, this is not a case of me abusing my authority. It's about me having my own suspicions. Isn't that what you pay me for, to play my hunches and catch the bad guys?"

"You're stretching it, Elena." He folded his arms defiantly across his chest. "So what have you got?"

"Agent Pollard is pulling down about $115 thousand a year, but he and his wife are pretty extended. They've got four kids in private school, and a mortgage on a five-bedroom house in McLean."

"So?"

"So they just bought a vacation home in Eastern Shore, about $150 thousand...for cash."

"Cash?"

Elena nodded.

"So this Pollard, he's still working this case?"

"Yes, he is. In fact, I think he's sitting out in the van. You want me to go get him so we can ask him how he got his hands on that much money?"

Merke leaned forward and rested his chin on his hands, intrigued by the information she offered, but stopping short of considering it as evidence. "So I gather that you think his new house and his interest in Spencer Rollins are related?"

Elena sighed, closing the folder and tapping it rhythmically on her knee. "I know it's a stretch, Chad, but hear me out. First of all, Spencer didn't kill Henry. They were best friends, but even if she had hated his guts, Spencer wouldn't have done something like that. I know her, and you know what I just said is the absolute truth. Second, she tried to call me twice to tell me what was going on. Both times, the calls were cut off, like whoever was pulling the strings didn't want me to hear her side of the story. That's pretty desperate if you ask me, and it happened before those assholes ever got a warrant to tap my phone. Third, if she didn't kill him, who did and why? You know as well as I do that the answer in a case like this usually comes back to one thing: greed. And I don't like it that one of the agents who wants her caught, who wants to keep her from talking, just paid cash for a vacation home."

Ruth and Spencer managed to get through the evening without talking about the code, about Elena, or about Ruth's running away with Jessie. The words were just beneath the surface, but without a resolution, there was no need to keep beating a dead horse. Spencer stridently refused to allow the young mother to make the delivery unless she came up with a foolproof plan for getting her in and out without risk of being caught.

When the dinner dishes were done, Jessie brought out her new dinosaur puzzle and spread the pieces on the floor. Since Ruth was doing the laundry tonight, Spencer sat down in the floor to help. "Helping" a four-year-old with a puzzle meant grouping pieces by color and giving lots of hints. Ultimately, Jessie would be the one to place each piece.

It was a wonderful feeling for Ruth to see her child nurtured by someone else. Neither Skip, nor his parents, nor her own had ever spent much meaningful time playing with Jessie, reading to her, or teaching her things. It suddenly washed over Ruth just how much she liked Spencer, and how much she enjoyed having her around.

When the puzzle was finished, Jessie was ushered to bed. Ruth returned to the living room to find the programmer scribbling into her tablet.

"So what's next?"

Spencer shook her head and sighed. "Would you take me to the Franconia-Springfield station tomorrow morning?"

"You're going to see Elena." It was a statement, but she hoped her friend would deny it.

Instead, she nodded. "Yeah, if she isn't expecting me, maybe they won't be either."

"You're just going to walk into her office?"

"Yeah...you know, I was thinking that maybe I should do what you said and write a letter to the Washington Post and leave it with you. And if you don't hear from me again, you should drop it in the mail or something."

"I don't believe this! Do you hear how ridiculous that is? A letter to the paper isn't going to mean a goddamn thing if something happens to you. It's too dangerous for you to go. I'll take it."

"No! I'm not going to let you do that."

"But they aren't looking for me. Not these guys, anyway. I bet they couldn't care less about Karen Oliver."

Spencer shook her head in frustration. "She wouldn't even bother to see you unless you" Spencer stopped herself, her mind racing with a new idea, "unless you told her you had information on Roscone. That would get her attention."

"Who's Roscone?"

CHAPTER 19.

ELENA DIAZ RESISTED the urge to make an obscene gesture, waving instead toward the gray panel truck, parked illegally on Constitution Avenue for the last five days. The boys inside had been watching her building and monitoring her phone and internet account all week. Despite her outrage at the intrusion, she was stuck with the surveillance, as the FBI was almost certain that Spencer would contact her again.

Flashing her ID to the guard at the desk, the towering woman bypassed the elevator in favor of the steps, just as she did every day. Three flights of stairs were nothing given her usual exercise routine. Each day, the 37-year-old agent pushed herself to her physical limit, and then pushed a little more, always reaching to be stronger, faster, better. She was as tough as any field agent at the IRS, and to her infinite delight, she was often taken too lightly, adding to her advantage.

"Morning, Elena."

"Hi, Thomas." No one was more underestimated than Special Agent Thomas Fennimore, her bespectacled assistant of the last three years. It took Elena almost a year to realize that Thomas's bumbling demeanor was but part of his incredible savvy, and she eagerly took him on when other senior agents balked at what they perceived as ineptitude.

"I found something I think you're going to like," he offered, following her into the windowed office. He waited in the doorway expectantly until she bought a clue and followed him back out.

"I could use some good news." Automatically, the two exited the office area and went back into the stairwell where they could talk without fear of being overheard.

"It's about Pollard and that other guy, Agent Akers. I ran a little query on work logs, and they were the agents assigned to do the background checks for the Kryfex contract."

"The what?"

"Kryfex. Margadon developed it for the Dawa virus, and the US is shipping it to Ethiopia in return for an air base. And since it's a big contract, they did background checks."

"Do you know who they talked to? Did they ever talk to Spencer?"

"I don't have that list yet. I can start pulling it today, though. I doubt Spencer would have been interviewed. They usually only do the higher-ups."

"That's good work, Thomas. Go ahead and follow up. Did you find a money trail for Akers?"

"Not yet, but I'm working on that too."

"So what was the judge's name?" Spencer was typing the story of how Ruth and Jessie had come to be on the run.

"The judge's name? You really think that's relevant?"

"I don't know what's relevant. I just want to give Elena as much information as possible. Maybe she can talk to him about the facts."

"What facts?" Ruth grumbled. "His name was Howard...Malcolm Howard."

Spencer typed that into the account and reread the whole document aloud from the screen.

"Is that everything?"

"As far as I know."

"Okay, here it comes." She hit the print key. "Are you ready to go call?"

They had agreed that it would be best for Ruth to go alone and place the call from a payphone somewhere in Reston. Calling from Manassas might raise a few eyebrows, especially since they'd found Spencer's bike in the woods.

"Ready as I'll ever be."

Without a word, Thomas dropped a fresh folder on his supervisor's desk. His cocky grin told her that he'd gotten some dirt, and the tab read "Special Agent Calvin Akers."

The report documented plane tickets to Las Vegas, hotels in Atlantic City, even a trip to the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Calvin Akers had a gambling habit. That's why there was no money to be found. Cool!

The phone interrupted Elena's joy, and her eyes went at once to the digital display: a payphone in Reston. A lot of her information came from payphones because tipsters liked their anonymity, but every call she got these days made her think of her friend on the run.

With no small measure of sarcasm, she announced, "There's the phone, boys. Got your tapes in? Ready...set...go! Hello, this is Special Agent Elena Diaz with the Internal Revenue Service. How may I help you?"

"Uh...Agent Diaz...I...uh...."

"Yes?" It wasn't Spencer, she realized with a mixture of relief and regret.