“No, I’m wrong,” Lucy decided. “You look better, maybe even better than the first time we met eight years ago when you had two more skyscrapers several blocks from here. When I’m flying the helicopter and the skyline first comes in view, it still looks like the city’s had its two front teeth knocked out. Then along the Hudson at maybe eight hundred feet and I pass Ground Zero, and it’s still a hole.”

“It’s not something to make light of,” Berger said.

“I’m definitely not making light of it. I just wish it would change. You know. So I don’t keep feeling like the bad guys won?”

Berger couldn’t recall ever seeing Lucy in anything but tactical wear, and the tight threadbare jeans and black T-shirt she had on wouldn’t hide any type of weapon. The way she was dressed didn’t hide much at all, least of all that she had money. Her wide belt was crocodile with a Winston sabertoothed tiger buckle handcrafted of precious metals and stones, and the thick chain around her neck and its turquoise skull pendant was a Winston as well, and considered fine art and as expensive as such. She was remarkably fit and strong, and her mahogany hair with its shades of rose gold had been cut quite short. She could easily pass for a pretty boy model were it not for her breasts.

Berger said, “Terri Bridges’s laptops.”

She pointed to a table near the closed door, to the package wrapped in brown paper and neatly sealed with red evidence tape.

Lucy glanced at the package as if its presence couldn’t have been more obvious.

“I assume you’ve got a search warrant,” she said. “Anybody looked to see what’s on the hard drives yet?”

“No. They’re all yours.”

“When I find out what e-mail accounts she has, we’re going to need legal access to those as well. Quickly. And likely others, depending on who she was involved with—besides the boyfriend at Bellevue.”

“Of course.”

“Once I locate her e-mail hosting provider, check out her history, I’ll need passwords.”

“I know the drill, believe it or not.”

“Unless you want me to hack.” Lucy started typing.

“Let’s refrain from using that word, please. In fact, I never heard you use it.”

Lucy smiled a little as her agile fingers moved over the keyboard. She began a PowerPoint presentation.

Connextions—The Neural Networking Solution

“My God, you’re really not going to do this,” Berger said. “You have any idea how many of these things I see?”

“You’ve never seen this.” Lucy tapped a key. “You familiar with computational neuroscience? Technology based on neural networking? Connections that process information very much the way the brain does.”