By then I was so shaken that I was tempted to quit with what I had—but I didn’t know when I’d ever have another chance like this one. I turned off his personal camera again and went back to the computer. Shutting it off without exiting properly had made it unhappy; I had to wait an extra five minutes while it examined all its files. While it cycled through itself, I looked around for the tape he’d just made. He’d left it on the bathroom sink. I shrugged and slipped it into my pocket.

Finally I got back to Baladine’s e–mail server and went to his in–box. In June, on the date I’d been in Georgia, I found someone calling himself Shark at AOL reporting on successful drop–off.

Subject out of town. 3 packs of Colombian Gold successfully deployed in location 1, 4 others at location 2.

My stomach so tight that my incision started to ache, I copied all of Baladine’s correspondence with Shark. I logged off the Web and went into his data files to search for any material about me, or Shark. I found his detailed report from LifeStory and reports on the surveillance of my apartment. These files identified Shark as D.L. Not that I needed an acronym to tell me it was Douglas Lemour, but I was pleased that Baladine hadn’t felt a need for real secrecy.

As recently as three days ago, D.L. reported a cruise around my neighborhood to make sure I hadn’t surfaced. He was also looking at Lotty’s place off and on as the safe house the subject usually chooses. I scrolled quickly through the rest of the file and came to an expense report. Five thousand dollars to D.L. for security work. It didn’t seem like enough of a payoff for the amount of misery he’d caused me.

My heart was starting to beat too hard to focus on the screen. I copied the file and shut the system down. It was high time I was gone.

On a shelf in the closet where I’d waited out Alex and Baladine, he kept cassettes from the video monitor. After his byplay with Alex, I was curious to see them. I pulled one from the last month Nicola had worked here, another from six months previously. I peeled off the labels, stuck them on the blank cassettes I’d brought with me, and put the blanks in the empty slots.