Photo finish to doomed relationship While Roger waited for Beth at Clock Bar in the Westin St. Francis, he tried solving a long-division problem in his head to calm his nerves. The kiss on the Alcatraz ferry had confirmed that, and those feelings hadn't diminished - even after he'd figured out that the Capp Street hostel might not be on the up-and-up. Roger wouldn't believe anything ill of Beth until he heard it from her, and he'd picked a low leather sofa in an isolated corner so they could really talk. On one of the Old World pillars in the bar, the time in Paris appeared fleetingly on a revolving digital clock: 2:01 a.m. He thought of Forever Steffi and winced with regret. Roger wished he could tell her, but he needed to break off all contact to keep her out of harm's way. It was Roger who was wanted by Hitchhiker, probably a U.S. government agent, all because of Roger's association with a hacker hostel on Capp Street, where Beth lived. Suddenly, Beth appeared in the doorway, looking as calm and poised as he always pictured her, with a small smile just for him - a Mona Lisa - oh God, he was in trouble. Roger knew that she was nose to the grindstone, working on her lens project and helping her mother, whose troubles with the law seemed to greatly disturb her - hardly the reaction of someone accustomed to hard crime. Roger prayed that no one else in the house, especially Beth, knew of Peyton's activities, which had been discussed in some of the unencrypted e-mails that Roger had intercepted from the sloppy spooks. Something - fear or annoyance - crossed her face as she shuffled through the photos of her roommates and her. Most of the shots were of Peyton at the Capp Street house, but some were of Beth at fancy restaurants, dining with venture capitalists whom Roger had seen but could not remember by name. Why had Beth never mentioned such high-profile meetings? [...] he should run away from her as fast as possible, so he wouldn't get into any more trouble. Computer game titan Roger has taken an interest in the guarded Beth, who lives with fellow hackers at the A T 101 hostel in the Mission and works secretly as an escort to make ends meet. Beth has kept those problems from Roger, but armed with new knowledge from his investigation into his own Wi-Fi breaches, he is preparing to ask her some tough questions.
Reported by SFGate 10 hours ago.
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