Turing was gradually taking over all her time. Not really Turing's fault. Maude herself needed to take action. Set boundaries.

  Take back part of her life.

  Of course, every time she resolved to do this, some looming crisis derailed her. Like this business of Nestor Garcia's credit card. She almost hoped it would be a real crisis, not another false alarm.

  Tim had found the house—at least he'd found a mailbox with the right street number, at the end of a tiny cul-de-sac. A gravel driveway led away from the road. But the house itself was invisible, hidden by the trees and the curve of the driveway.

  Out in the middle of the woods. Not what Tim had expected. Not where he'd hide out if he were a master criminal with a penchant for cybercrime.

  But certainly a good hideout. Would anyone even notice a scream or a shot back there in the woods:?

  His heart beat faster as he strolled down the driveway, draped in his birder's gear, his binoculars conspicuously aimed at the treetops. He was almost disappointed when he spotted the house. Apart from being farther back from the road, it wasn't much different from the other normal-looking houses he'd seen up and down the cul-de-sac. Slightly unkempt, perhaps. The small patch of open lawn beside the house was shaggy and pocked with dandelions. Twigs bearing slightly wilted leaves littered the sidewalk and the front porch, apparently left over from the weekend's thunderstorm.

  His spirits rose when he realized that the house was at least temporarily unoccupied. He decided to ring the doorbell. Odds were no one would answer, and he could inspect the house more closely while he waited. If someone was home he could always ask permission to do some bird watching on their property.

  As he climbed the steps, he saw a small package tucked behind an empty concrete planter, invisible unless you actually came to the door.

  He rang the bell and waited, counting to thirty. No answer.

  He bent down to examine the package. Not addressed to Nestor Garcia. But still . . .

  When no one answered his second ring, he got out his notebook and copied the information on the package label, including the tracking number. Then he pulled out the camera and snapped a few pictures before retracing his steps.

  He reconnoitered the area around the house and discovered an abandoned dirt road that cut through the woods near the house, but was shielded from it by thick shrubbery. The dirt road eventually joined another street half a mile away. If he parked his car along the dirt road, would anyone complain?

  Would anyone even notice? Probably not.

  Access Denied 23

  He returned to his car and headed off to confer with Maude and Turing and then find the entrance to the dirt road.

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON-, 1E:05 P. n -

  I'm not sure whether to feel relieved

  or disappointed. At least Tim's information has proved useful. The package on the Anderson's doorstep was ordered on yet another credit card — not theirs, and not Garcia's. That suggests that Gar-cia's not using the card.

  "Unless, of course, that's what Garcia wants us to think," Maude suggested.

  Are humans really that devious? Well, I suppose they are; Maude thought of it, not me.

  More to the point, is Nestor Garcia that devious?

  I think so, but perhaps Vm too eager to attribute cunning and intelligence to Garcia. To consider him the sinister Professor Mori-arty to my Holmes. Perhaps he is not "the Napoleon of crime. . . the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected" in the growing world of cybercrime. Perhaps Vm not the brilliant sleuth I think I am, and he is merely a greedy, cunning, opportunistic criminal. Perhaps thinking of him as Moriarty merely diminishes my guilt at not finding him and rescuing my clone.

  But even if whatever we've found has nothing to do with Garcia, it's probably a crime. Credit card fraud, possibly identity theft. I should do something about it.

  "True," Maude said, when I shared this. "Doesn't seem as important as the search for T2, though."

  "Not to us," I said. "We'd feel differently if we'd been victimized by credit card fraud. One in every twenty people in this country is every year, and one in every fifty by identity theft — and the numbers are growing all the time. The financial toll's in the billions."

  "I stand corrected," Maude said. "Statistically very important indeed, and with that much at stake as well worth our time as Garcia. We should do something."

  Difficult, when my knowledge of this particular credit card fraud is technically as illegal as the crime itself

  I decided to worry about reporting it later, when I knew exactly what was happening.

  The package Tim spotted on the doorstep of the Andersons' house came from a high-volume, online electronics discounter. Several small but pricey pieces of camera equipment, bought with a credit card belonging to a Ms. Rose Lafferty. Lafferty's card wasn't issued by the same bank as Garcia s and they hadn't used their cards at the same place during the past two years. Not even the same kind of place.

  Two completely different profiles. Garcia's showed trips to Washington. Miami, Los Angeles. Mexico City. Bogota. Nice hotels. Expensive restaurants. And always paid in full, on time — even the charges from his last trip to Crystal City, during which we met him, and after which he stopped using the Nestor Garcia identity. Lafferty used her card for gas. car repairs, discount stores, and cash advances. And made minimum payments, when she paid at all. Ironic that Nestor Garcia, a crook using a fake name, had an impeccable credit rating while the very real and presumably law-abiding Rose Lafferty would have a tough time borrowing anything.

  Hard to see a connection, except that both cards had been used to order goods delivered to the same address.

  Another interesting note. . . whoever was behind this had a new base of operations. Two weeks ago. they ordered something with Lafferty's card for delivery to an address in Leesburg. A house not owned by the Andersons, whoever they are. I could find no connection between the two places or their occupants — other than the fact that Rose Lafferty. despite her precarious financial situation, had sent expensive presents to both.

  By studying the UPS and FedEx databases. I found that someone had used four other credit cards to send goods to the Leesburg house during a weeklong period ending two weeks ago — May 21 through May 28. None of these people had any connection to the

  Leesburg house — it's not listed as their address in their credit card records.

  I suspected the thieves were using temporarily vacant houses as drop-off spots. And had probably erred by using the Lafferty card at two houses. For all I knew, they could have been doing this for months without getting caught, taking a small group of credit cards, ordering goods sent to a vacant house, picking up the goods, and then moving on to a new set of credit cards and a new vacant house. The police and the banks' fraud prevention staff might never find them if they stuck to this method. But thanks to that one mistake, I have a better idea what they are doing.

  Of course, I still had only five cases. Six, if I included Garcia's card.

  We needed more help. Tim would have enough trouble simply watching the house by himself, and I wanted to send someone out to check the house in Leesburg, and eventually interview the bilked credit card owners. Yet, I hesitated to take anyone else into our confidence.

  I considered enlisting Casey. Since coming to Alan Grace, Casey had proved invaluable. He could build or fix anything — not only computers but also the cameras and other specialized peripherals on which I'd become increasingly dependent as my eyes and ears to the outside world. But however technically proficient he was, I didn't think Casey had the skills this situation would require.

  "He seems young," Tim had said, when he first met Casey.

  "He's seventeen," I said.

  "Even for seventeen, he's young," Tim said.

  "In this case," Maude suggested, "young means naive and hopelessly lacking the common sense, street smarts, and sense of self-preservation most humans manage to acquire once they begin to accept the reality of their own mortality."

  "Yeah," Tim said. "He probably still thinks life has a 'save game' button."

  Which meant however good he was with hardware, Casey

  Eb Donna Andrews

  wasn't the right human to send into a situation that could require quick thought and decisive action.

  I could enlist the one other PI I knew — Claudia Diaz, the Miami PI who had worked with us before and already knew something about Garcia. If she was free.

  I sent Claudia an e-mail inquiring about her availability to come up as soon as possible to work on a case. And cc'd Maude.

  "Good idea,'' Maude said, a few minutes later. "Tim can't watch the place around the clock."

  "And he certainly can't be in two places at once," I said, shawing her the information about the Leesburg house.

  Claudia must have been doing online research —/ got an e-mail back within minutes. And she must not have had anything important going on.

  "Just booked an early morning flight," the e-mail said. "See you tomorrow."

  Relieved, I called to let Tim know.

  "That's great," he said. "But she's not coming till tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow's pretty quick," I said.

  "It's just that I have something I'd like to do at nine-thirty, if possible. Not that I can't reschedule if you need me to stay here, of course."

  "Tonight's not our last chance," I said. "More packages are arriving tomorrow. Don't burn yourself out. If nothing has happened by nine-thirty, you and Claudia can pick up tomorrow."

  Interesting. If he wanted to go home for some sleep, he'd say so. He wasn't usually secretive about his plans — attending movies or sports events with male friends, for example, or meetings of his PI society. So I suspected he had a date. Humans often behave in a self-conscious and strangely furtive manner whenever sex is involved. And I assumed that if sex was not involved in Tim's new relationship it was at least a strong future possibility, since he had demonstrated the same kind of furtive behavior with increasing frequency over the last four weeks. That suggested that he'd been spending

  Access Denied E7

  time with the same young woman throughout that period. He'd even gotten confident enough to mention her name. Nikki.

  I reviewed the visual images I had of Nikki. I wasn't sure what useful purpose this served, but Sigmund recently told me that hearing the name of a person or place stimulates many humans to recall a visual image associated with the name. Vd tried to imitate this practice to help me better understand human thinking, although I had limited images of Nikki. Primarily her driver's license photo. I hadn't yet decided if humans' vocal dislike of their driver's license and passport photos was genuine or some kind of social ritual, but it seemed universal. So she probably considered it wildly unflattering, but I found it a reasonable likeness of the petite blond woman whose image I'd captured occasionally, looking over Tim's shoulder and waiting with ill-concealed impatience for him to get off the computer. She appeared attractive, by human standards, and Tim seemed to have become quite attached to her in the weeks they'd known each other.

  So why did her name and image stir up such strange, uneasy feelings? Because I was worried about Tim, presumably. But the only reason I could think of for worry was that I knew so little about her. By this time Tim doubtless knew a great deal about Nikki. Maybe I was worried about myself. I wanted my human friends to be happy and lead full, normal lives. But what if that left them no time to be with me? Selfish, perhaps, but I was so dependent on them that the thought of losing them terrified me.

  And in my darker moments, in the middle of the night when my human allies slept, I worried about anyone who approached me or them. Because Nestor Garcia knew who we were and where we were, and we would have no way to identify his allies until too late.

  Not that Nikki seemed plausible as a danger or a Garcia ally. But still, I worried.

  She had been foolish enough to use her social security number on her driver's license, instead of requesting a randomly generated customer number, as Virginia's Division of Motor Vehicles now permits.

  So I could do a rather thorough investigation of her. I hadn't. I decided it would be a violation of Tim's trust.

  But I was tempted. Especially since I couldn't really discuss Nikki with Maude. Maude had never mentioned Nikki to me, nor had Tim mentioned her in front of Maude, so as far as I knew, Maude was unaware ofNikki's existence. I would feel more comfortable if Maude knew and approved of Nikki. Maude was a good judge of character.

  So was Tim, usually, but under the circumstances, other considerations might override his normal reactions.

  Another benefit of enlisting Claudia. While she was here, she might encounter Nikki. And Claudia would not be shy about expressing her reaction.

  I felt better already, just knowing Claudia was coming.

  Tim squirmed in his seat again. His

  delight at finding such a perfect observation post was fading. In fact, it had long since vanished. Probably because there hadn't been a whole lot to observe.

  Turing and Maude seemed pleased with his morning's efforts, and after fortifying himself with a pizza and a six-pack of soda, he took up his observation post at 12:30.

  The charm of bird watching had begun to pall by 1:30.

  At 2:19, a brown UPS truck arrived, deposited half a dozen packages of various sizes on the porch near the FedEx package, and departed.

  After that, nothing happened.

  By 4:30, Tim was antsy enough to venture out to the mailbox, where he confirmed that unlike UPS and FedEx, the post office had skipped the Andersons that day.

  On his way back to the car, he went up to the porch and quickly snapped pictures of the boxes—close-ups showing the tracking numbers.

  Back in the car, he loaded the pictures into his laptop and used the wireless modem to send them to Turing.

  His cell phone vibrated. When he saw Nikki's number on the caller ID, he scrambled to answer.

  "So where are you, anyway?" Nikki asked.

  "On surveillance," he said.

  "Why are you being so secretive?"

  "I'm on a case," he said.

  "So who are you watching, and where, and why?" Nikki said. He could hear that she was pouting. "What's the big secret?"

  The big secret, Tim realized, was that this case involved Turing. He hadn't told Nikki anything about Turing, so how could she possibly understand what the surveillance was about and why it was so important?

  "I can't on a cell phone," he said. "It's not secure."

  "You're so paranoid," she said. "You can tell me all about it tonight then. Bye."

  He winced.

  He wasn't looking forward to that conversation. Why couldn't Nikki understand that his PI work was just that, work—not some kind of adventure she could live vicariously?

  And that he couldn't completely set his own hours, he thought, stifling a yawn. Nikki had kept him up talking until three a.m. last night, even though he told her he had to work today.

  For the first time he allowed himself a few doubts about whether this thing with Nikki would last. About whether he even wanted it to last.

  He backed away from the thought. Not something he wanted to deal with right now.

  He wished he could think of some female friend to ask for advice. Not Maude. He wanted to postpone having Maude and Nikki meet. He didn't think they'd like each other, and he'd find it difficult to explain how he'd become such good friends with a rather severe and sharp-tongued

  woman thirty years his senior. At least not without mentioning Turing, and it was way too soon for that. He couldn't ask Turing for advice about Nikki, either. She'd be sympathetic, but he wasn't sure she knew any more about human psychology than he did. Then there was the whole embarrassing fact that for the first six months he'd known Turing, he'd had a major crush on her, sight unseen.

  He tried to push it out of his mind, and couldn't.

  Another hour to go. Though maybe if nothing happened in that hour, he should call Nikki and tell her he had to work late after all.

  He liked the idea. And for that matter, maybe it was his responsibility.

  Yeah. If nothing happened in the next hour, he'd call and cancel.

  "I've noticed an odd fact about these stolen credit cards," Turing said, as Maude was packing to leave.

  "What?" Maude said.

  "They're all relatively local."

  "Like the drop-off sites?"

  "Not quite that local," Turing said. "The two drop-off sites are within ten miles of each other. One credit card holder lives in Richmond, one in Maryland, and the rest in northern Virginia. But all within a very small area, relatively speaking. And that's odd."

  "Yes," Maude said, frowning. "Local drop-off sites seem logical—the thieves wouldn't want to travel far to pick up their loot."

  "But most online vendors will ship anywhere, so why choose only local card holders to rob?"

  "Actually, I'd have thought local card holders would be

  the last people they'd choose," Maude said. She stopped shoving papers into her briefcase and straightened up.

  "Why?"

  "What if I checked my credit card online and found out the thieves had used it to send goods to the Andersons' house? I could go over there and check it out. Report them, follow them, confront them. Hard to do that long-distance."

  "Would anyone actually do that?" Turing asked. "Wouldn't most people just call the issuing bank and report an unauthorized use?"

  "Most people would," Maude said. "But some people might not know how to report the problem. And a few hotheads might want to provoke a confrontation. A small chance, but not one they'd have to take at all if they just stole cards from people farther away from their drop-off sites."