Nolan said, "He's a cracker. That means he's an organized offender. He's not going to be pitching out junk mailers with his address on them while he's staking out a victim."

Ramirez continued, "Tim's still pounding the pavement with some troopers from HQ but nobody's seen anything at all."

Bishop glanced at Nolan, Sanchez and Gillette. "Okay, secure the boy's machine and check it out."

Linda Sanchez asked, "Where is it?"

The assistant principal said he'd lead them to the school's computer department. Gillette returned to the room where Jamie was sitting and asked him which machine he'd used.

"Number three," the boy sullenly replied and continued pressing the cloth into his eyes.

The team started down the dim corridor. As they walked, Linda Sanchez made a call on her cell phone. She learned – Gillette deduced from the conversation – that her daughter still hadn't started labor. She hung up, saying, "Dios."

In the basement computer room, a chill and depressing place, Gillette, Nolan and Sanchez walked up to the machine marked NO. 3. Gillette told Sanchez not to run any of her excavation programs just yet. He sat down and said, "As far as we know the Trapdoor demon hasn't self-destructed. I'm going to try to find out where it's resident in the system."

Nolan looked around the damp, gothic room. "Feels like we're in The Exorcist… Spooky atmosphere and demonic possession."

Gillette gave a faint smile. He powered up the computer and examined the main menu. He then loaded various applications – a word processor, a spreadsheet, a fax program, a virus checker, some disk-copying utilities, some games, some Web browsers, a password-cracking program that Jamie had apparently written (some very robust code-writing for a teenager, Gillette noticed).

As he typed he'd stare at the screen, watching how soon the character he typed would appear in the glowing letters on the monitor. He'd listen to the grind of the hard drive to see if it was making any sounds that were out of sync with the task it was supposed to be performing at that moment.

Patricia Nolan sat close to him, also gazing at the screen.

"I can feel the demon," Gillette whispered. "But it's odd – it seems to move around. It jumps from program to program. As soon as I open one it slips into the software – maybe to see if I'm looking for it. When it decides that I'm not, it leaves… But it has to be resident somewhere."

"Where?" Bishop asked.

"Let's see if we can find out." Gillette opened and closed a dozen programs, then a dozen more, all the while typing furiously. "Okay, okay… This is the most sluggish directory." He looked over a list of files then gave a cold laugh. "You know where Trapdoor hangs out?"

"Where?"

"The games folder. At the moment it's in the Solitaire program."

"What?"

"The card game."

Sanchez said, "But games come with almost every computer sold in America."

Nolan said, "That's probably why Phate wrote the code that way."

Bishop shook his head. "So anybody with a game on his computer could have Trapdoor in it?"

Nolan asked, "What happens if you disabled Solitaire or erased it?"

They debated this for a moment. Gillette was desperately curious about how Trapdoor worked and wanted to extract the demon and examine it. If they deleted the game program the demon might kill itself – but knowing that this would destroy it would give them a weapon; anyone who suspected the demon was inside could simply remove the game.

They decided to copy the contents of the hard drive from the computer Jamie had used and then Gillette would delete Solitaire and they'd see what happened.

Once Sanchez was finished copying the contents Gillette erased the Solitaire program. But he noticed a faint delay in the delete operation. He tested various programs again then laughed bitterly. "It's still there. It jumped to another program and's alive and well. How the hell does it do that?" The Trapdoor demon had sensed its home was about to be destroyed and had delayed the delete program just long enough to escape from the Solitaire software to another program.

Gillette stood up and shook his head. "There's nothing more I can do here. Let's take the machine back to CCU and-"

There was a blur of motion as the door to the computer room swung open fast, shattering glass. A raging cry filled the room and a figure charged up to the computer. Nolan dropped to her knees, giving a faint scream of surprise.

Bishop was knocked aside. Linda Sanchez fumbled for her gun.

Gillette dove for cover just as the chair swung past his head and crashed into the monitor he'd been sitting at.

"Jamie!" the assistant principal cried sharply. "No!"

But the boy drew back the heavy chair and slammed it into the monitor again, which imploded with a loud pop and scattered glass shards around them. Smoke rose from the carcass of the unit.

The administrator grabbed the chair and ripped it from Jamie's hand, pulling the boy aside and shoving him to the floor. "What the hell are you doing, mister?"

The boy scrambled to his feet, sobbing, and made another grab for the computer. But Bishop and the administrator restrained him. "I'm going to smash it! It killed him! It killed Mr. Boethe!"

The assistant principal shouted, "You cut that out this minute, young man! I'm not going to have that kind of behavior in my students."

"Get your fucking hands off me!" the boy raged. "It killed him and I'm going to kill it!" The boy shook with anger.

"Mr. Turner, you will calm down this instant! I'm not going to tell you again."

Mark, Jamie's brother, ran into the computer room. He put his arm around the boy, who collapsed against him, sobbing.

"The students have to behave," the shaken administrator said, looking at the cool faces of the CCU team. "That's the way we do things around here."

Bishop glanced at Sanchez, who was surveying the damage. She said, "Central processor's okay. The monitor's all he nailed."

Wyatt Gillette pulled a couple of chairs into the corner and motioned Jamie over to him. The boy looked at his brother, who nodded, and he joined the hacker.

"I think that fucks up the warranty," Gillette said, laughing and nodding at the monitor.

The boy flashed a weak smile but it vanished almost immediately.

After a moment the boy said, "It's my fault Booty died." The boy looked at him. "I hacked the passcode to the gate, I downloaded the schematic for the alarms… Oh, I wish I was fucking dead!" He wiped his face on his sleeve.

There was more on the boy's mind, Gillette could see once again. "Go on, tell me," he encouraged softly.

The boy looked down and finally said, "That man? He said that if I hadn't been hacking, Mr. Boethe'd still be alive. It was me who killed him. And I should never touch another computer again because I might kill somebody else."

Gillette was shaking his head. "No, no, no, Jamie. The man who did this is a sick fuck. He got it into his head that he was going to kill your principal and nothing was going to stop him. If he hadn't used you he would've used somebody else. He said those things to you 'cause he's afraid of you."

"Afraid of me?"

"He's been watching you, watching you write script and hack. He's scared of what you might do to him someday."

Jamie said nothing.

Gillette nodded at the smoking monitor. "You can't break all the machines in the world."

"But I can fuck up that one!" he raged.

"It's just a tool," Gillette said softly. "Some people use screwdrivers to break into houses. You can't get rid of all the screwdrivers."

Jamie sagged against a stack of books, crying. Gillette put his arm around the boy's shoulders. "I'm never going on a fucking computer again. I hate them!"