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His brow furrowed as he tried to imagine living in such ignorance. It was almost beyond him, this child of the computer age. “I guess television would’ve given them a real spasm, huh?”
“Especially if they saw a talk show,” she muttered. “Now there are some evil spirits.”
Kristian giggled, sending his glasses slipping down his nose. He pushed them up again and squinted at the screen. “Did you find what you want?”
“No. I’m looking for mention of one particular Templar—at least, I think he was a Templar.”
“Any cross-references you can check?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know his last name.” Niall of Scotland. She had already found his name several times in the portion of the documents written in Old French. Why wasn’t his surname recorded, in a time when family and heritage were so important? From what she had gleaned from her translations so far, he’d been a man of immense importance to the Templars, a Knight himself, which meant he was well born and not a serf. Part of the documents were also in Gaelic, strengthening the unknown tie with Scotland. She’d read up on Scotland’s history in her encyclopedia, but there hadn’t been any mention of a mysterious Niall at all, much less one in the time frame of the Templars’ existence.
“Dead end, then,” Kristian said cheerfully, evidently deciding they had wasted enough time on someone who had died even before the age of analog. His blue eyes sparkled as he moved his chair a little closer. “Want to see this cool accounting program I’ve worked up?”
“I don’t think the words cool and accounting go together,” Grace observed, keeping her expression deadpan.
Shocked, Kristian stared at her. He blinked several times, making him look like a myopic crane. “Are you kidding?” he blurted. “It’s the greatest! Wait until you see—wait. You are kidding. I can tell.”
Grace’s lips curved as she deftly tapped keys, backing out of the university’s library system. “Oh, yeah? How?”
“You always tighten your mouth to keep from smiling.” He glanced at her mouth, then quickly looked away, blushing a little.
Grace felt her own cheeks heating and carefully glued her eyes to the screen. Kristian had a tiny crush on her, based mostly on his enthusiasm for her expensive, powerful laptop, but on a few rare occasions he had said or done something that bespoke a physical awareness of her as well.
It always disconcerted her; she was thirty years old, for heaven’s sake, and was certainly not a femme fatale by any stretch of the imagination. She considered herself very ordinary, with nothing about her to inspire lust in a nineteen-year-old—though God knows, almost anything female and breathing could inspire lust in a nineteen-year-old boy. If Kristian was the stereotypical image of a computer nerd, she’d always thought she looked the typical shy academic type: dark brown hair, impossibly straight, which she had long ago given up trying to coax into curls and now wore pulled back into a single thick braid; light blue eyes, almost gray, usually framed by reading glasses; no makeup, because she didn’t know how to apply it; sensible clothes, tending toward corduroy slacks and denim skirts. She was hardly the stuff of an erotic dream.
But Ford had always said she had the most kissable mouth he’d ever seen, and it flustered her that Kristian had looked so pointedly at her lips. To distract him, she said, “Okay, let’s see this hotshot program.” She hoped the Chevelle would work its macho magic soon, and lure into Kristian’s orbit some smart girl who appreciated both horsepower and multitasking.
Looking grateful for the change of subject, he opened a plastic case and removed the diskette, then inserted it into the disk drive. Grace scooted to the side, giving him better access to the keys. He directed the computer to access the disk in the A drive, there was some electronic whirring, and a menu appeared on the screen.
“What bank do you use?” Kristian asked.
Grace told him, frowning as she scanned down the menu. Kristian zipped the cursor to the item he wanted, clicked on it, and the screen changed again. “Bingo,” he crowed as a new menu appeared, this time of bank services. “Am I slick, or what?”
“You’re illegal, is what you are!” Appalled, Grace watched as he chose another item, clicked on it, then typed “St. John, Grace.” Instantly a record of her checking account transactions appeared on the screen. “You’ve hacked into the bank’s computers! Get out of there before you get in big trouble. I mean it, Kris! This is a felony. You told me you had an accounting program, not a back door into every bank in the area.”
“Don’t you want to know how I did it?” he asked, clearly disappointed that she didn’t share his enthusiasm for the deed. “I’m not stealing or anything. This lets you see how long it takes each check to clear, so you can establish a pattern. Some places only deposit once a week. You can get a better handle on your cash flow if you know how long it takes for a particular check to clear. That way, if you have an interest-bearing checking account, you can time your payments so your average balance doesn’t dip below the minimum.”
Grace simply stared at him, amazed at the wiring of his brain. To her, money matters were a straightforward affair: you had X amount of money coming in, and you had to keep your expenses below that amount. Simple. She had long ago decided there were two types of people on earth: math people, and non-math people. She was an intelligent woman; she had a doctoral degree. But the intricacies of math, whether it dealt with finance or quantum physics, had simply never appealed to her. Words, now… she reveled in words, wallowed deliriously in the nuances of meaning, delighted in the magic of them. Ford was even less interested in math than she was, which was why she took care of the checkbook. Bryant tried; he read the financial section of the newspaper, subscribed to investment magazines—in case he ever had enough money to invest—but he didn’t have a real grasp of the dynamics. After fifteen minutes of wading through one of his investment magazines, he was tossing it aside and reaching for something, anything, on archaeology.
But Kristian was a math person. Grace had no doubt he’d be a billionaire by the time he was thirty. He would write some brilliant computer program, wisely invest the profits, and retire happily to tinker away at more innovative programs.
“I’m sure it’s a real boon to depositors,” she said dryly, “but it’s still illegal. You can’t market it.”
“Oh, it’s not for public knowledge, it’s just goofing around. You’d think banks would have better security programs, but I haven’t found one yet that’s much of a challenge.”
Grace propped her chin on her hand and eyed him. “My boy, you’re either going to be famous, or in jail.”
He ducked his head, grinning. “I’ve got something else to show you,” he said enthusiastically, his fingers darting over the keyboard as he exited the bank’s accounting records.
Grace watched as the screen changed rapidly, flickering from one display to another. “Won’t they be able to tell you’ve been in their files?”
“Not with this baby. See, I got in through a legitimate password. Basically, I put on an electronic sheepskin, and they never knew a wolf was prowling around.”
“How did you get the password?”
“Snooping. No matter how coded the info, there’s always a back door. Not that your bank has very good computer security,” he said with obvious disapproval. “If I were you, I’d consider moving my account.”
“I’ll think about it,” she assured him, with
