The Devil's Code - John Sandford

Jack Morrison, Kidd’s fellow hacker, had been shot to death during a break-in at a software company called AmMath in Dallas. Morrison had sensed that something had been going wrong and sent a message to his sister that if something happened to him, she was to see Kidd.

AmMath had hired Morrison to straighten out the operating software and they thought that he had seen something he shouldn’t. The reader knew from the beginning that the bad guys were the AmMath guys: the CEO and 2 security guys. The same bad guys also spread a rumor about a group of hackers who called themselves Firewall, complete with names of its members, including Kidd’s online name. Firewall later attacked the IRS website, so Kidd and his friends were chased by the FBI.

Kidd had to find a proof that Morrison was innocent, that there was no Firewall, and lead the FBI to the real bad guys.

On the first trip to Dallas with Morrison’s sister, at the airport, Kidd did a spread of his tarot cards. The key card was The Devil, which represented a force of evil, usually from the inside. "He sits on top of you, controlling you, without you even being aware of it". The forbidden file Morrison had opened (while he shouldn’t) was a reference to this. The file’s name was OMS, stood for ‘Old Man of the Sea’, whom Sinbad the Sailor met on his fifth voyage. The Old Man tricked travelers into carrying him on their shoulders while tranporting him to a pool of water, then forcing them to carry him all the time until they died. However, Sinbad got him drunk with wine and was able to shake him off and kill him. This tale was also a metaphor of AmMath’s crime.

There was a scene in a hotel room in Radisson, where LuEllen (Kidd’s partner) and Morrison’s sister watched Emma on HBO and asked the guys (Kidd and the sister’s bodyguard) to shut up. I believe that this is the 1996 version. There was this description: “Emma and her friend were standing under a spreading oak”
Kidd: “That woman’s got a long neck.” --> that’s Gwyneth Paltrow
LuEllen: I don’t think they did a very good job with Frank. They needed to make him more attractive in the beginning and worse in the end, and show why Emma was attracted to him.
Morrison’s sister: I didn’t think he was very attractive at all. I don’t see how he could possibly compete with…
I think Ewan McGregor is attractive enough. He only needed a decent hairdresser in Emma.

EwanMcGregor as Frank Churchill. Worst rival in a romance movie.

The spreading oak in Emma (1996)

Gwyneth Paltrow and her long neck