The Messiah Code by Michael Cordy

knew that the man had already gone.
    T hree days later Jasmine Washington sat with Tom Carter and Jack Nichols in the GENIUS boardroom at the top of the pyramid, on the floor which housed all the commercial offices, including Jack's. She was shaking her head in disbelief. She had barely come to terms with DAN's prediction on Holly and now this--
    "What I don't understand, Tom, is why didn't your police protection try and catch him?" she asked.
    "Because the police weren't there," said Jack, his powerful hands clasped on the black table in front of him. "Mr. Einstein here decided to give them the slip."
    "Jack, spare me the big brother shit. Okay?" groaned Tom. "I had enough of a lecture from your friends down at the Bureau."
    Jack kept his weather-beaten features impassive. Despite the gray peppering his sandy hair, and the scar on his face, he looked good for a fifty-year-old. Jasmine had known Jack for almost as long as she'd known Tom. As well as being the commercial brains behind the company, the FBI man turned MBA was a "fixer," the pragmatic worrier who bridged Tom's flights of fancy to the real world. Jack had told her once that he saw his role as the protector of their fragile ideas from the "men in suits," as he called the investors. Ever since Tom and he had met twelve years ago at a biotech investment conference in Manhattan, theirs had been a marriage of minds.
    Although GENIUS was already proving a success, Tom had been looking to raise additional money for his Genescope idea without losing control of the company. Jack, fresh out of the Wharton School with one successful year under his belt at Drax Venture Capital, was desperate to find a venture to capitalize--ideally one that would change the world. They talked off and on for thirty-nine hours, ignoring everyone else at the conference. And at the end of it Jack had resigned from Drax and joined Tom. Within three weeks he had not only interested six major Wall Street investors in Tom's venture, but by playing one off against the other, he had graciously allowed three of them to put up the necessary hundred and fifty million--on the condi
    tion that they didn't interfere with the running of the business for at least ten years.
    "So what does the FBI think, Tom?" asked Jasmine.
    Tom stood up, walked over to the glass outer wall, and leaned back against it. Behind him Jasmine could see the skyscrapers of downtown Boston looming in the distance.
    "They think it might be the Preacher," he said.
    Her eyes opened wide with shock. "Jeez," she whispered. "Really?"
    Jack Nichols stroked the scar on his face as he always did when he was puzzled or surprised. "Are you sure?" he asked.
    "That's what the FBI told me last night," said Tom. "I spoke to Karen Tanner down at Federal Plaza and she said the handwriting and the use of the biblical quote are consistent with the Preacher."
    Jack let out a small whistle. "If Karen thinks it's him, then it probably is."
    Jasmine understood why Jack was impressed. Karen Tanner had been Jack's rookie partner about fifteen years ago. She had helped him put away Happy Sam. Jack's wife, Susan, had almost become one of the psycho's victims, before Karen had helped Jack rescue her. He had got badly sliced up in the process. It was then that he had decided to get out, to spend more time with his wife and two sons, and find a different way to make the world a better place.
    And now Karen Tanner was saying that a killer who made Happy Sam look like a Little Leaguer was after Tom Carter. Jasmine wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen the way Olivia had been dispatched.
    Like everyone else, she'd read the stories. Jeez, there'd been enough of them. The Preacher was supposed to be some religious nut on a warped crusade to clean up the world. It was common knowledge that his victims were mainly high-profile, lowlife scum: mob lawyers, drug dealers, heads of the major crime families--generally any slimeball considered beyond the reach of the