"But I guess he did know, didn't he?" Gillette responded. "Otherwise how could he blindside you and get your weapon?"

"It seems to me," the agent said slowly, "that you somehow got this idea he was going to come here. You wanted a weapon and helped yourself to mine."

"Well, that's not what happened," Gillette said then glanced at Bishop, who cocked an eyebrow in a way that suggested that the agent might not be completely wrong. The detective, though, said nothing.

"If I find out that it was you-"

Bishop said, "Hey, hey, hey… I think you ought to be a little more grateful, sir. There's a good argument to be made that Wyatt here saved your life."

The agent tried to stare down the cop but gave up, walked to a chair and sat down in it gingerly. "I'm still watching you, Gillette."

Bishop took a phone call. He hung up then reported, "That was Huerto again. He said they got a report from Harvard. There were no records of anybody named Shawn who was a student or working at the school around the same time Holloway was. He checked the other places Holloway worked too – Western Electric, Apple and the rest of them. Negative on an employee named Shawn." He glanced at Shelton. "He also said it's getting hot and heavy with the MARINKILL case. The perps were spotted in our backyard. Santa Clara, just off the 101."

Bob Shelton gave an uncharacteristic laugh. "Doesn't matter whether you wanted a piece of that case or not, Frank. Looks like it's dogging you."

Bishop shook his head. "Maybe, but I sure don't want it around here, not for the time being. It's going to pull off resources and we need all the help we can get." He looked at Patricia Nolan. "What'd you find at the hospital?"

She explained how she and Miller had looked through the medical center's network and, while they found signs that Phate had cracked into the system, she couldn't find any indication of where he'd been hacking in from.

"The sysadmin printed these out." She handed Gillette a large stack of printouts. "The log in and log out activity reports for the past week. I thought you might be able to find something."

Gillette began poring over the hundred or so pages.

Then Bishop looked around the dinosaur pen and frowned. "Say, where is Miller?"

Nolan said, "He left the hospital computer center before me. He said he was coming straight back here."

Without looking up from the printouts Gillette said, "I haven't seen him."

"He might've gone over to the computer center at Stanford," Mott said. "He books supercomputer time there a lot. Maybe he was going to check out a lead." He tried the cop's cell phone but there was no answer and he left a message on Miller's voice mail.

Gillette was scanning through the printouts when he came to a particular entry and his heart thudded with alarm. He read it again to make sure. "No…"

He'd spoken softly but everyone on the team stopped talking and looked toward him.

The hacker looked up. "Once he seized root at Stanford-Packard, Phate logged into other systems that were connected with the hospital's – that's how he shut the phone system off. But he also jumped from the hospital to an outside computer. It recognized Stanford-Packard as a trusted system so he waltzed right though the firewalls and seized root there too."

"What's the other system?" Bishop asked.

"Northern California University in Sunnyvale." Gillette looked up. "He got files on security procedures and personnel information on every security guard who works for the school." The hacker sighed. "He also downloaded the files of twenty-eight hundred students."

"So he's got his next pool of victims all lined up," Bishop said and dropped heavily into a shabby office chair.

Someone was following him…

Who was it?

Phate looked in his rearview mirror at the cars behind him on the 280 freeway as he fled from CCU headquarters. He was badly shaken that Valleyman had outmaneuvered him again and was desperate to get home.

He was already thinking of his next attack – on Northern California University. It was less challenging than some targets he might've picked but the security at the dorms was high and the school had a computer system that the chancellor of the school had once declared in an interview was hacker-proof. One of the more interesting features of this system was that it controlled the state-of-the-art fire alarm and sprinkler systems throughout the twenty-five dorms that provided the bulk of student housing.

An easy hack, not as challenging as either the Lara Gibson or St. Francis one. But at the moment Phate needed a victory. He was losing this level of the game and that was shaking his confidence.

And fueling his paranoia: Another glance in the rearview mirror.

Yes, someone was there! Two men in the front seat, staring at him.

Eyes back to the road, then he looked again.

But the car he'd seen – or thought he'd seen – was just a shadow or reflection.

No, wait! It was back… But now it was being driven by a woman alone.

When he looked a third time there was no driver at all. My God, it was a creature of some sort!

A ghost.

A demon.

Yes, no…

You were right, Valleyman: When computers are the only life that sustains you, when they're the only totems that ward off the deadly curse of boredom, then sooner or later the borderline between the two dimensions vanishes and characters from the Blue Nowhere begin to appear in the Real World.

Sometimes those characters are your friends.

And sometimes not.

Sometimes you see them driving behind you, sometimes you see their shadows in alleyways you're approaching, you see them hiding in your garage, your bedroom, your closet. You see them in a stranger's gaze.

You see them in the reflection of your monitor as you sit in front of your machine at the witching hour.

Sometimes they're just your imagination.

Another glance in the rearview mirror.

But sometimes, of course, they really are there.

Bishop pushed END on his cell phone.

"The dorms on the Northern California U campus have typical university security, which means it's pretty easy to get through."

"I thought he wanted challenges," Mott said.

Gillette said, "I'd guess he's going for an easy kill this time. He's probably pissed off we've gotten so close to him the last few times and wants blood."

Nolan added, "This might also be another diversion."

Gillette agreed that that was a possibility.

Bishop said, "I told the chancellor they should cancel classes and send everybody home. But he wasn't inclined to – the students start finals in two weeks. So we'll have to blanket the campus with troopers and county police. But that'll just mean more strangers on campus – and more of a chance for Phate to social engineer his way into a dorm."

"What do we do?" Mott asked.

Bishop said, "Some more old-fashioned police work." He picked up Phate's CD player. The detective opened it up. Inside was a recording of a play – a performance of Othello. He turned the machine over and jotted down the serial number. "Maybe Phate bought it in the area. I'll call the company and see where this unit was shipped to."

Bishop started making phone calls to the Akisha Electronic Products Company's various sales and distribution centers around the country. He was transferred and put on hold for an interminable period of time and was having trouble getting through to someone who could – or was willing to – help.

As the detective argued with someone on the other end of the line Wyatt Gillette spun around in a swivel chair to a nearby computer terminal and began keyboarding. A moment later he stood and pulled a piece of paper from the printer.