Feeling him go stiff behind me, I grinned.
“Oh, I know what
all
your options are,” I said. “Even though it appears you have no clue whatsoever about mine. But unless you want a very pissed-off U.S. senator asking why some bumbling ass-clown he’s never heard of, named Garmin, is harassing me—a guy the senator himself personally handpicked to
supervise
the technical side of that little operation we just finished discussing—then you need to choose your next actions carefully. So here’s that career advice you wanted: why don’t you pull the shit out of your ears and listen to it, for a change?”
Garmin hid his reaction well. Wary now, he stepped around in front of me and gave me a blank stare.
I knew what that stare meant. In the military, no matter how many stripes, stars, or chevrons you had on your sleeve, there were always people who had more. It didn’t cause any heartburn for anyone, because it was clear right up front who outranked who, and that was all that mattered. But the military folks who worked directly with us civilian Department of Defense employees quickly learned to be cautious around us. Because once we came into the mix, the hierarchy suddenly wasn’t so clear-cut. Our official civilian titles often didn’t mean much. And by stepping on the wrong civilian’s toes, a military guy who had otherwise never set a foot wrong during a twenty-year career could flush away any chance of further advancement, and Garmin knew this.
“That hundred-million-dollar supercomputer that Senator Linebaugh funded, which is such a necessary part of the operation?” I said. “Last weekend, while the senator and I were in D.C. chatting pleasantly over chocolate-dipped strawberries, he authorized me to send the whole engineering team to Vegas, on his personal tab, as a reward for upgrading its processors. So tell me,
Garmin,
how happy do you think he’s going to be when he hears that you Navy bozos almost let it get destroyed on your watch? And then, instead of helping me, your MPs actually tried to
prevent
me from saving it?”
He was smart enough not to respond. He waved the MPs out of the room. Once they were gone, he waited for me to continue.
I stood and walked up to him instead. Got in his face.
No matter how smart these guys were, our military trained them to submit instinctively and unquestioningly to someone they believed to be of higher rank. I watched Garmin straighten subconsciously, as if standing at attention. Leaning closer, almost nose to nose now, I held his eyes with mine and hardened my voice.
“You’re an SAIC, so you obviously have a brain,” I said. “Start using it. The first thing we need to do is put two MPs on top of every civilian on base,
right now
—especially the DARPA leads, including me. That’s not only to ensure our safety but also to monitor each of us for suspicious activity anytime we leave our own labs. The TS labs themselves are a bit of a problem for now since we can’t actually have MPs inside them yet. But you can have DISCO get some provisional TS/SCI clearances under way, just in case this drags on. Still, that’s not my biggest concern. And neither is fallout over a dead Homeland Security guy. We can officially call him an accident, because two on-base murders in a single week are kind of hard to keep quiet, don’t you think?”
Garmin’s eyes were hostile, but I could see he was listening very closely now.
“I don’t give a crap about Bennett at all, really,” I said. “He was just taking up space around here. But the senator and I care
very much
about our supercomputer, which means you should, too. It’s mission critical, and whoever killed Bennett was trying to sabotage it. So, because you’re obviously not stupid,
Garmin,
here’s what you go do, right the fuck now: You get Ricky from engineering to identify every single point of vulnerability that machine has—cooling, electrical, air ducts, backup power,
everything
—and you lock all of them down and put a couple of Navy guards on each of them before any more sabotage happens. Is that clear enough for you? Good. Then why are you still standing here?”
Without saying a word, Garmin turned on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving me alone.
Fifteen minutes later, I was headed back to my lab with eight MPs following a few steps behind. I had bet big again, and—for now—it looked as though I had some room to maneuver. But I also knew that unless the killer was caught, any respite my bluff had earned me was only temporary. I had a few days at most before the shaky scaffolding of half-truths, outright lies, and bravado collapsed around me.
Still, in my conversation with Garmin I had managed to accomplish several things. Two of the MPs with me would be Cassie’s escort. They would keep her safe even when I wasn’t with her.
I watched a contingent of a dozen Navy guardsmen hustling toward the other side of our building and felt grim satisfaction, knowing they were on their way to speak with Ricky. Frankenstein would be better protected now, so he could continue to work on finding a cure for my daughter. I had been able to do that much for him. I owed him a great deal for helping me, and in return I had almost let him die.
It wouldn’t happen again.
Time for us to go on the offensive.
W
hen I opened the door to my lab I found Cassie, Kate, and Roger sitting in a little circle of rolling chairs. Cassie jumped up, ran over to me, and wrapped her arms around me before I could let go of the door handle.
“I was so worried about you!” she said.
I hugged her back one-armed and looked over her shoulder. I was a little surprised to see the other leads there, too. Kate and Roger both stared at me in amazement.
“They just let this psycho
loose
?” Kate said. “I don’t believe it.”
Cassie squeezed me tighter. “Q and A,” she whispered in my ear.
She was already way ahead of me.
Letting go of her, I poked my head back out into the hallway and waved the MPs in. They filed through the door. “You’re fine here, in the outer lab,” I told them, “as long as you don’t enter the server room. But don’t touch anything.”
Glancing around curiously, they took up positions around the walls. I could detect a lot of resentment in their gazes, too, but I was fine with that.
“Our escorts,” I told the others. “To keep us safe until NCIS gets its act together and catches whoever’s doing this.”
Cassie went back to her seat, rejoining the others.
“How can you
touch
him?” Kate asked her. “You saw what he did.”
I could still feel the cold, nasty weight of Bennett’s head in my palms. “I washed my hands afterward,” I said, and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
Cassie looked pale. “I wish I
hadn’t
seen it,” she said. “I can’t get that awful picture out of my head right now.”
Roger nodded at me. “That was seriously fucked up, man. You looked like Jeffrey Dahmer, standing there holding Bennett’s face.”
I didn’t respond. Keeping my distance from the circle of rolling chairs, I walked over to a nearby table and exchanged my wiped iPhone for one of the others I had customized. Then I leaned up against the table, keeping my head down, and tried to make myself invisible while Cassie handled this.
I sent a quick text to Frankenstein:
“Are you undamaged?”
His reply was immediate:
“Yes. I heard the others discussing what you did for me, Trevor. You kept me from harm, and I am grateful. But I wasn’t frightened at all. I knew you would keep me safe, just as you said you would.”
I swallowed. Frankenstein’s simple, guileless faith in me was humbling. His survival had been a very near thing, actually—a lot closer than I wanted to admit to him. I sent back another question instead:
“Have you found a way to help Amy yet?”
“I need more time, Trevor. It’s a challenging problem, and I am giving it highest priority. I’m working as fast as I can.”
Keeping the frown off my face, I typed one-handed:
“I don’t need excuses. I need results. Work faster. In the meantime, we’ll try to discover who wanted to hurt you. Are you monitoring the others for microexpressions?”
“Yes. Cassie asked me to watch everyone’s faces.”
“Look how guilty he’s acting right now.” Kate pointed at me as she spoke to the MPs. “I don’t know what kind of scam he pulled on you. We
all
know this guy killed both McNulty and Bennett.”
I didn’t look up.
“Trevor didn’t kill anyone,” Cassie said.
“How would
you
know?” Kate asked. “I mean, we can all see you two have this sordid little…
thing
going on—”
“And we were together all night, both times,” Cassie said. “
That’s
how I know he couldn’t have killed either of them.”
Her lie caught me by surprise. I raised my head, meeting her eyes, and felt another layer of sorrow accumulate inside my chest.
Cassie
was trying to protect
me
now. She was sacrificing her own dignity in front of everyone, coworkers and MPs alike, because she knew that none of them would believe the
real
reason she knew I was innocent: she could see it on my face.
But denying her words now would make it worse for her—I would only end up destroying her credibility, too. I hung my head, sorry I had ever let things between us go beyond friendship. She didn’t deserve the demeaning way Kate and Roger were staring at her now. And she would be able to read exactly what they thought of her, too—far better than I could—right off their faces. Even to me, their expressions of contempt were painfully obvious.
Cassie looked at the floor. “This whole thing is so creepy it doesn’t even seem real—two different people murdered right here, while we’re working. And then put on display, like some kind of medieval…” She ran a shaking hand through her hair, toying with her one pale-dyed curl. “Last night, Trevor and I didn’t see or hear anything. What about you two? Roger, you come and go at odd hours, because of all your different projects—things coming out of furnaces and such. Did you notice anything unusual?”
Roger shook his head. “Nah, I wouldn’t have heard a thing.” He grinned. “I was using the GAU, and you know how loud that baby is. Doing some destructive testing.”
“What were you testing?” she asked.
“Ducrete.” Roger grinned at me from across the room, as if for approval. “Concrete made with basalt-sintered depleted uranium aggregate ceramic. I mix it with Portland cement and my own special blend of superplasticizers. At forty thousand psi, it’s harder than the hardest granite. And it has other cool properties, too—”
“Those big cylinders are Ducrete?” I asked. “The ordnance disposal containers for the Navy?”
Roger nodded and looked away. “Yeah. But I can’t really talk about it much.”
“So you didn’t see anything on your way in or out?” Cassie asked.
He shook his head.
“Can you think of anyone who would want to kill Bennett?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Roger laughed. “Trevor.” Then he glanced up at me, and his laugh died. “Sorry, man. It’s what everybody’s thinking. After the way you ripped him a new one when he asked you about McNulty, what else did you expect? I’m just honest enough to say it to your face.”
“How about you, Kate?” Cassie asked. “Do you have any theories about why someone would want to kill McNulty and Bennett?”
Kate crossed her arms and looked up at the smoked-glass bubble in the ceiling that housed one of Frankenstein’s cameras. “You two make me laugh.” She smirked at Cassie. “How this animal actually convinced you to cover for him, I don’t even
want
to know.”
Shoving her chair away, Kate stood and pointed the camera bubble out to Roger. “You see what they’re doing here, right? I was wondering why he turned into such a meek little dishrag all of a sudden. They’re trying to use their stupid computer to read our microexpressions right now.”
“Is that thing on?” Roger looked up at the camera, suddenly nervous. Then he blinked at me with a hurt expression. “Pretty messed up not to tell us, man.” He rose from his chair. “Is that why they let you go? To set this up?”
Kate stared down at Cassie, who was still seated.
“I don’t get it. You’ve only known him for a few days,” she said. “You can do so much better than him. I already told you what a piece of shit he was, and you’re
sleeping
with him already? I mean, what kind of woman even
does
that?”
“Down, Kate.” I shoved away from the table edge. “She’s not your type.”
Kate blanched. “Shut up, or I swear—”
I met her eyes and let her see my nastiest grin. We had gotten whatever we were going to get using my co-lead’s nicer approach. Now it was time to try things my way.
“Be careful around this one, Cassie,” I said. “Especially when she’s drunk. She swings both ways.”
“You
asshole
.” Kate turned toward Cassie again. “He’s lying.”
“She told me so, herself.” I laughed. “But that’s not all she told me. She’s got a real dirty mouth on her when she’s drunk, let me tell you. And she doesn’t like to take no for an answer, either.”
Roger held up his hands. “Hey, man, you don’t have to—”
“You are
such
a
fucking
asshole
,” Kate snarled at me, and Roger’s eyes widened.
“She told me
lots
of interesting things after the Christmas party last year,” I said. “You remember, don’t you, Kate? Or maybe you don’t, considering how wasted you were.”
Roger cut his eyes toward Cassie. “Trev—”
Kate’s face went red. “You took advantage of me.” She turned to grab Cassie’s sleeve. “I was drunk. Trevor got me into his car. I tried to fight him off, but he
took advantage of me
.”
“Don’t you know it’s not nice to lie about that sort of thing?” I said. “You can get people in serious trouble that way. But now that you bring it up…”
“Leave her alone, Trevor,” Cassie said. “I know you didn’t do anything to her.”