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so far,” Chris said.
    Terry ticked off on the fi ngers of one hand. “I’ve copied all the activity logs to my workstation and I made hard copies. We can go over them later. I checked for outside connections but L.A. BYTES 39
    couldn’t fi nd anything suspicious, so I think your call that it’s all coming from inside is right.” Terry guzzled coffee.
    “Where is the workstation now?”
    “In my offi ce.”
    “Can you round up another computer similar to it that we can use for the next few days?”
    Terry wiped his hands on a napkin, shredding it before he stuffed it into the take-out bag with the rest of the garbage. “It’s an older model, up for replacement this quarter. If memory serves me we’ve already replaced some on the other fl oors...”
    Chris rounded up the rest of the leftovers and grabbed his laptop case. “Let’s go check it out.”
    In Terry’s offi ce they found a technician hunched over a keyboard, tapping away with a classic hunt and peck method. He straightened when the door opened, his bearded face twisting into a scowl. Light from the monitor bounced off his hairless head.
    “Yuri,” Terry said. “This is Chris, he’s helping us out for a bit, too.” He nodded at the ranks of glowing monitors. “Anything up?”
    “Nada.”
    Chris glanced at the monitor Yuri was scowling at. A helicopter zoomed into view and a rain of fi re traced its fl ight.
    The helicopter vanished in a fi reball. Yuri cursed. So much for due diligence. Terry seemed too distracted to notice his assistant was gaming instead of working.
    “Where are those PCs we swapped off the fi fth fl oor?”
    “They’re in the work room. What do you want them for?”
    Terry glanced at Chris. “What do you want it for?”
    “We clone the workstation,” Chris said. “That way we don’t damage the original fi les. If we catch the guy you’ll need them intact to prosecute.” Being married to a cop had its advantages.

    40 P.A. Brown
    Yuri nodded absently. Fishing a red stick of licorice out of a package he chewed on it while he tried to move his online character to safe ground.
    Chris and Terry left Yuri to his game. They grabbed a cart and loaded the third fl oor machine onto it.
    “Where we going?” Chris asked.
    “Second fl oor storage room just down the hall. We stage new equipment out of it, and decommission old stuff while we wait to ship it.”
    They rolled the cart into the storage room, which Chris was happy to see had a properly set up staging area for several computers to sit side by side while techs worked on them. It took the two of them only a few minutes to wrestle the machine into place and fi nd a matching computer among several sitting on a skid in the far corner. Chris hooked monitors onto the two systems and cabled them together.
    Chris opened his laptop and sorted through his software. He powered on both computers and slid the disc into the third fl oor machine. Within minutes he had the cloning process running.
    “That’ll take about an hour,” Chris said. “You want to keep looking over those logs?”

CHAPTER SIX
    Tuesday 6:25 pm, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles Martinez dropped David off at home. “I don’t want to see your face until Friday”
    David didn’t argue. Exhaustion rode him like a too tight shirt; even breathing was an effort.
    Chris’s car was gone. A single light burned over the small courtyard. The house was dark. The interior air cooled his heated face. Sergeant greeted him with glee, leaving David exhausted by his enthusiasm. He slipped his shoes off in the tile foyer and padded into the kitchen. The dog followed. He knew he needed to eat, but the thought of food roused only dull nausea.
    A shower might help.
    After taking the dog out for a ten-minute run, he crawled into the shower. A half hour later he managed to down a couple of pieces of toast and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice.
    The phone rang. Chris? He gingerly picked up, expecting a blasting.
    It