Free Fault Line by Barry Eisler Page A

that talk.
    He went through Hilzoy's file and was unsurprised to find no information on family. All right, he'd put Alisa on this. Contact the ex-wife and figure out who were the closest relatives-the likely beneficiaries under a will, or the most likely to inherit if Hilzoy died intestate.
    Finally, the technology itself. Hilzoy always left a backup DVD of the latest version with Alisa when he visited the office. Alex went out and retrieved it, then popped it into the bay of his laptop. When the program booted, Alex was surprised to hear music coming from the laptop's tiny speakers. He didn't recognize the tune-something instrumental. He listened for a minute, then found a command to turn it off. It was creepy, imagining Hilzoy listening to it while he worked on Obsidian. Maybe it was one of his favorites.
    He started performing the various applications, describing them as he worked, pretending he was talking to a VC. Did you see how fast Obsidian encrypted a five-gigabyte video file? Well, it scales, too. We've tested it up to five terabytes, and we think it can go further. And not just video, of course not. Any data. Any platform. And the decrypt process is just as quick. Watch this
    He kept at it for an hour, immersed, lost to the outside world. He had to be able to do this. He had to.
    There was a knock on his door. He called out, Yeah.
    The door opened and Sarah walked in. Hey, she said, her tone and accompanying expression suggesting she was not entirely pleased.
    What is it? Alex asked, startled to see her, his mind still more than half occupied by Obsidian.
    She sat down and looked at him. Has it not occurred to you that other people might be concerned about what happened to Hilzoy?
    Alex frowned. Why couldn't she just act like a first-year associate was supposed to? She couldn't just barge in here, plop down in a seat like his office was her second home, and start interrogating him.
    Look- he started to say.
    She leaned forward, her elbows on his desk. You blew out of here and went to the police station yesterday. What was that all about?
    Alex forced himself not to glance down at the alluring bit of dEcolletage he sensed in his peripheral vision. All right, maybe she had a point. He was murdered, he said.
    Suddenly her expression was soft again. Oh my God, I can't believe it.
    He thought he should just tell her he was busy. Convey his displeasure with her failure to show him the appropriate deference. He'd always been deferential when he was a first-year. What was wrong with her?
    Instead, he said, There was a bunch of heroin in the trunk of his car. Some kind of drug deal, they think.
    Heroin? Hilzoy? Come on, he was a geek. That doesn't make sense.
    I guess you can never tell.
    She leaned back as though she intended to stay awhile. The police called you because they thought you might know something?
    For a moment Alex hesitated, and then he surrendered. Hilzoy, then Hank it was so weird, he just needed to talk to someone. He told her about the cell phone connection that led the police to him, about the Q&A at headquarters, even about the DNA test. He hadn't been planning to say so much; in fact, he hadn't planned on saying anything. He sensed that in doing so now he was taking a chance, the risks of which he didn't fully understand and certainly couldn't control. The feeling made him feel slightly dizzy, almost nauseated.
    Have you told Osborne? she asked, when he was done.
    No. He's in Bangkok until tomorrow. I'll tell him then.
    Won't he want to know right away? You could send him an e-mail.
    Alex laughed. If it's not his client, Osborne could give a shit, believe me.
    The moment the words were out, he wished he hadn't said it. He always knew to be tight-lipped about that kind of thing-you never knew how something innocuous could get distorted and amplified in the retelling. He hated that she could have this effect on him.
    But Sarah only smiled sympathetically. So, what's going to happen to the patent?
    Alex