Joe nodded. “He was. But soon after you left, he was making some noises, and I checked on him. A few seconds later and he was gone. But he did say something.”

“What?”

“He said he was sorry.”

Sandra’s eyes went wide. “I knew it. I knew it.”

“He said he helped Kyle. Put a stick into Lisa Carver’s computer when she got sick, passed it to Kyle. And that allowed Kyle to introduce the virus into the system.”

Sandra was stunned. “He told you all that?”

“Yeah.” Joe’s voice softened. “He never had any idea that it would be this bad, that the cars would become deadly, hunt people down.” Joe shook his head sadly. “He just, he never wanted anything like that to happen.”

Sandra blinked. “How’d he manage to tell you all that in the time I was gone?”

Joe nodded. “You know what I think? I think he knew he was dying and there were things he needed to get off his chest. Fast.”

Sandra looked again at the body of Ruskin on the floor. “He hated her. He hated Lisa Carver. He told me, before you got here. God, what a horrible man.”

Joe grimaced. “I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe sometimes people have good intentions that can go horribly wrong.”

She gave him a sharp look. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly.

Sandra shifted past him and looked at the open laptop. “So where does that leave us? I mean, okay, he said he was sorry, but did he tell you how to make it stop?”

As she looked at the screen, her eyes widened. There was something on it. An Arrival logo across the top. Notes, numbers, fields in which to enter data.

Sandra’s jaw dropped. “Are you in?”

Joe smiled, nodded.

“You got into her laptop?”

“Before Ruskin died, he gave me the password.”

“You’re kidding.”

Joe’s cheek twitched. “No. Like I said, I think he knew it was his last chance to do the right thing.”

Sandra looked skeptical for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay, okay, tell me what you’ve found.”

Joe got into the chair and moved the cursor around the screen. “This is where I tell you I’ve got good news and bad news. I’ve already given you the good news, which is that I got the password.”

“What was it, anyway?”

“Huh?”

“The password. What was the password?”

“Her daughter’s name.”

Sandra took a moment, then said, “Say again?”

“It’s Zenia, but spelled backward. A, I—”

“I get it,” Sandra said. Then quietly, “Ruskin told you this.”

Joe nodded. “She’d change it daily. The name part stays the same but it had to be followed by the previous day’s numeric date.” He shrugged. “So, that worked, and I’m in, but the bad news is, I can’t figure out how to get into the brains of the Arrival system.”