Free Tall, Dark and Lethal by Dana Marton

blind.
    “Anything else?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “Zak accidentally deleted a couple of my programs when he was here. I’ve been meaning to call someone to fix it.”
    Odd that she wouldn’t ask him, since as far as she knew, he was a computer programmer. Or maybe not so odd, given their history.
    “Did Zak use your computer a lot?”
    “Only twenty-four seven.” She gave a rueful smile. “He’s a good kid. He’s going through a tough time.”
    “What can be so tough at sixteen?”
    She hesitated, drew a deep breath and shrugged. “His mother recently left. He’s had some clashes with his dad. That’s my brother.”
    That had to be hard on the kid. Cade thought back to the sullen looks the teenager had given him every time they’d run into each other outside. Had he resented being shipped off to his aunt? Could be he’d felt like his parents had got him out of the way while they were making decisions about their family’s future. Without him.
    Cade had been shuttled around between various relatives in his younger days, his mother always dealing with one emotional crisis or another. He could sympathize.
    He looked at her. Her arms were wrapped around her waist as she stared off into space.
    “You’re worried about him.” From what he’d been able to see, she’d taken good care of the kid while he’d been with her.
    She looked up, chewing her lip for a second before speaking. “You know that plane that went down en route to Madrid a few weeks ago?”
    He nodded.
    “I could barely get him out of his room after that. I think it really freaked him out.”
    The crash and the FAA investigation that followed had been top news for the first part of the month. “Was anyone he knew on it?”
    She shook her head and looked away. “My brother lives in Lower Manhattan.” Her gaze returned to his. She blew some air out, and it ruffled the hair on her forehead. “When the twin towers went down, Zak was there,” she said, with visible reluctance, her eyes dark. “He saw people jump, saw the bodies, saw the buildings collapse.” She shook her head. “He was nine.”
    “Pachaimani.” The name left his lips before he could stop himself.
    “What?”
    He drew a slow breath. “A brave little kid I used to know. Far from here.” So Zak, too, had been traumatized. What kind of species did this to their children? Bailey’s words made him see the brooding teen in a different light—he wished he had known while the boy had been there. “There’s nothing to tie the Madrid flight to a terrorist act.”
    “I know. But we were watching the news and the pictures came on of the plane burning. And it was like…I can’t explain it. Like he went into some lockdown mode. He went to his room and barely came out after that. And then he went home early. He was supposed to spend the whole summer with me.” Her voice was barely audible over the rain as it drummed on the roof.
    He’d been happy about Zak’s going. The kid had hacked into his wireless system and tried to snoop around his files. But he hadn’t gotten very far. Cade’s laptop was beyond secure, his protection designed by Carly Tarasov, the SDDU’s computer expert, the best of the best.
    Which meant it wasn’t likely that the FBI could trace anything back to it. Whatever they traced to the house had probably come from Bailey’s PC. He couldn’t picture Zak involved in domestic terrorism any more than he could picture Bailey, although there was no limit to the trouble a smart kid with nothing to do could get into just through sheer dumb luck. He could vouch for that.
    But whatever the information was could have come from outside the house just as easily as from within. There were ways to remotely hijack someone’s system. And there were ways to trace such an intrusion back to the source. Definitely worth a look.
    “Want me to help with the food?” he asked her, noting the dejected slope of her shoulders. He liked her better when she had that