Deadly Lover (29 page)

He’d heard whispers that the council had discussed reinstituting the Searcher program with the goal of leaving Earth for a planet they could claim for their own. Could Chak and Tayp be behind such a scheme?

As he stood stiff and straight, bare-chested, he realized, by taking off the tunic he had exposed the tattoo that proclaimed him Searcher. A status and a symbol far more difficult to shed. They definitely had a larger plan and events had unfolded much as they wanted. A clever manipulation. A clever snare with him as the prey.

When had duty become a trap?

A commotion in the hall turned everyone’s attention to the doorway. Bradley walked in, looking like he wouldn’t be vertical for long. His bloodshot eyes were swollen and deeply shadowed. His normally graceful walk had become a jolting shamble. He glanced at Sara and Sean then approached Lily. He pulled her into his arms, but Lily remained stiff and unyielding in the circle of his embrace. She wanted to be a better person, but she hated him in that moment. He smelled like liquor and perfume and she had to blame him for being a terrible husband to her sister. It was only fair—she hated herself for not having been a better sister to her twin.

Bradley eased back. “I’m so sorry, Lily.”

She had no idea whether he meant it in a sorry-for-your-loss way or if he was asking for absolution for all of his sins. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have anything for him. Not absolution. And no desire for his comfort. No desire to offer any to him either.

Bradley went from sorrowful to angry in a lightning speed transformation. “What in the hell?” He was looking over her shoulder.

Lily followed his gaze to see the list Sean had made earlier. The one with Bradley’s name at the top.

Sean walked over, no hurry in his pace, and wiped away the list. “Sorry, Brad. We have to look at all the possibilities. Most women are murdered by someone they know. The husband—”

“Don’t give me that crap.” Bradley’s face reddened and he threw up his hands. “You’d like that. If you could blame it on me.” He stormed up to Sean and got in his face. “I did not kill Rose!”

Sean didn’t flinch. “Relax, man.”

Bradley gulped in air and outrage burst over his features. “Relax? You’re accusing me—”

“I’m not accusing you of anything.” Sean didn’t move. Probably didn’t want Bradley to mistake anything for aggression. “Seriously. Calm down. This isn’t productive and we all want the same thing.”

Bradley’s shoulders slumped. “To find her killer.”

Sara got to her feet and pulled out a chair for him. “That’s right. Now have a seat and we can talk.”

His focus shifted to her, clearly what she’d been aiming for.

Sean returned to his seat and Lily and Sara sat down. Bradley huffed in place for a moment, but finding no target for his anger he went over to the chair. He put his hands on the chair-back and leaned over it, but stayed on his feet. “Do you have any leads? Suspects? Besides me?”

Lily jumped when the war-room door swung open and Brian barged in. Something inside Lily shifted. How long had it been since she’d seen him in person? He was tall and too thin. His ash blond hair brushed against his collar and framed his angular features with a reckless abandon.

His long strides carried him quickly across the room. Lily met him half way. She pulled him into her arms and they both clung for a long minute. When he pulled back to meet her eyes she noticed the metallic glint of a neural implant near his temple. Another step toward joining The Pool? Her relationship with her brother had been strained—like all her family relationships had when Rose married Bradley. No, long before that—when her mother had moved them away. Now Rose was dead and Lily didn’t know how to go forward.

His pale gray eyes seemed to see inside her. “We have a lot to talk about, but first we do this.” He indicated the table with all its grisly images.

She nodded, struggling to find words.

Brian acknowledged Sean and Bradley with a shared glance and then went over and kissed Sara on the top of the head before settling into a chair to join them.

“Okay, bring me up to speed.” Sean laid a palm on the smooth surface of the table. It came alive under his touch. The section around his hand lit with a series of symbols, boxes of running text, a narrow column of code, and a series of miniature views of live vid feeds.

Sean summed up their discussion while everyone listened.

Leaning forward, Brian tapped an image of Simone Rawls. “This woman—” A dozen more images of Simone appeared on the table as Brian spoke. “My contacts put her as a nexus point in the data they were able to get from Deepwater.”

Lily grinned grimly. “So, you got in to their system?”

“In and out without tripping any alerts.” A smile ghosted across his lips. “She came up on a list of people with access to information on Deepwater’s Ormney research and development data, the Ormney training program.” Brian turned his gaze on Sean. “And the aftermath of the accident that nearly killed Lily.” He didn’t look at her when he said it, but all traces of his smile had disappeared. “When we realized Rawls had disappeared weeks ago, that brought her to the top of our focus list.”

Bradley snapped his attention from crime scene photos to Sean. “If it’s data about the R&D you need, I’m sure I can apply pressure to get whatever you need. Part of our agreement with Deepwater was a full disclosure clause.”

Sean shrugged. “Will take whatever you can get.”

Brian pursed his lips. “It would be more helpful if you had and files already copied from them and stored on your own systems. Somewhere they couldn’t have gotten to it to tamper with it in any way.”

Bradley pulled his com out of his pocket. “I’ll see what I can get.”

Sara tapped one of her files and shot a look to Brian. “Were you able to find out if Deepwater is testing or manufacturing derivatives of the drug used in the training accident?” As she spoke, Sara pulled up a display of the lab reports on the various forms of the drug that had been used to instigate Ormney attacks.

“No.” Brian shook his head. “As far as we can tell, Deepwater’s only interest in the drug is in developing a countermeasure they could provide to any future Ormney agents they can recruit.”

Sara leaned back with an exhausted sigh. “If Rawls was working on the chemical derivatives on her own, she’d need a lab. Was there anything like that in her flat?”

“No,” Lily answered. “But Deepwater had already cleared the place out when Jolaj and I found it.”

Lily had no luck keeping her thoughts from turning to the Ormney Law Keeper who’d broken a very important law for her. Where was he? What were they putting him through? What price would he pay for staying with her when she needed someone? Needed him.

Brian pulled up a copy of the Deepwater internal report listing the items that had been removed. “Nothing here.”

Sara wouldn’t back down. “Well, she had to be working on it somewhere.”

Sean studied the list then glanced up at Brian. “Did you find any more data on Rawls?”

“Gigabytes, but so far, nothing relevant.” Brian shrugged. “She definitely wasn’t just a tech. Had agency training for clandestine field work. Real spy stuff. Fairly good at hiding her tracks. We’ve been looking mostly at her Deepwater activities, but I’ll run a cross search with local labs and med centers, the university. See if I can find where she did her work.”

Brian pulled up a file that Lily recognized as coming from her own notes. “Now that we know about Rawls’s activities at the docks,” he said. “I’ve put Snow on surveillance vid and security logs. We’ll get more there, but it’ll take time.”

Sean shifted in his seat. “You’ve been in contact with your hacker since you got here?”

Brian frowned. “I have a line open, yeah. We need The Pool and Snow is totally legit and completely reliable. You have my word on that.”

Sean raised a hand to Brian, in a calming gesture.

Brian had always been the quiet easygoing one, but time had given him more confidence. The changes in him reminded Lily of everything she’d given up when she’d joined Deepwater.

“How long,” Lily asked, “before you get anything back from Snow?”

“Hard to say. Lots of data to sift through. Snow will start with the vid surveillance using facial recognition algorithms. Snow is crazy hooked into the metro grid. Once we narrow it down, it’ll require eyes on hours of vid and that takes time.”

Bradley leaned forward. “We have about a dozen interns at the OA office. Just say the word.

Brian frowned. “We can’t distribute that work out unless we’re prepared to go public with whatever we find.”

Sean shook his head. “No, we can’t afford to alert the killer.”

Brian pushed a hand through his hair. “That’s the conclusion I came to. Snow is on it for now and I’ll pitch in when we’re through here.” Brian looked around the room. “What else have we got?”

Sean pulled up a map of the city highlighting the crime scenes and the known EFE related addresses. “Aside from the EFE member we arrested and the presence of other EFE members living in the area, we have nothing tying into anyone with a strong motive, no one with obvious opportunity, no one with connections to the drug. A lot of hours of cop work leading nowhere.”

“Maybe we should walk through what we do know,” Sara suggested.

Sean moved over to the timeline he’d started earlier and displayed the principal stills and stats for each crime scene and attack. “After Rawls disappeared,” he started. “We have a few weeks of no related activity that we’ve identified. Then Jennifer Richardson was attacked. The only thing that marks her as out of the ordinary is her apparent friendship with the Ormney male who attacked her.”

Sara pulled up an autopsy image of Lanyak. “The drug was introduced using an air dart to the back of the neck.”

“We think through the open window of her apartment,” Sean added.

Sara nodded. “My team has given Sean a list of possible darts and dart guns.”

“I had our data techs look at her com and link logs,” Sean said. “We’re following the threads out from there. So far nothing pops.”

Brian pulled up a refugee identification file for Lanyak. “What about the Ormney that attacked her? All I’ve got is an image and vitals.”

“Lanyak was one of the Searchers before The Crossing.” Lily carefully weighed what she could tell them that might help. “According to the neighbor, Jennifer met him in the market and they struck up a friendship.”

“Jennifer survived the attack initially, but died later.” Sean added a note to the file he was working in. “Lanyak died on scene.”

Lily let the guilt of that day roll over her then shoved it aside. “Not twenty-four hours later, Mary Santini was murdered by someone who tried to make it look like an Ormney attack. She let her killer in shortly before her Ormney coworker was scheduled to arrive to walk her to work. We don’t know if he was targeted too, but it seems likely.”

Sara shrugged. “The drug panel we ran didn’t find any sign of the drug in his system.”

Sean nodded. “He’s not a serious suspect either. Without a chemical influence, he had opportunity but no motive.”

Brian studied the files. “Any tie between Jennifer Richardson and Mary Santini?”

“Other than living in the same neighborhood, no,” answered Sean. “They would have used the same glide-rail stops. They could have passed each other on the street or bumped into each other at the local market. Nothing that seems to pop as a real connection.”

Sara pulled up stills from the autopsy vid. “I did notice both girls had recently had scar tissue repair. Jennifer on her right shoulder, Mary near her collarbone. The tissue repair didn’t appear in either girl’s med file.”

Sean called up the contents file for Jennifer Richardson’s apartment and scrolled to the lav. “An injury clicks with Dermamend found in her med supplies. Also quick-heal spray. Either she was accident prone or she let her clients get rough.”

Or she was having sex with an Ormney. Lily remembered Jolaj’s mouth on her shoulder. His claws scraping against her SafeSkin tank. “Tie LeRoue, Jennifer’s neighbor mentioned taking her for medical treatment, said she’d been bitten. I think he said they went to a clinic.”

The panels in front of Brian scrolled through data too fast for Lily to catch. “I don’t see a record of it in any of the clinics in The Mixer or at the local med center.”

“I can ask Tie for more info,” Lily offered.

Sean lifted a shoulder. “Seems like a long shot but I can follow up with Mary’s mother.”

Brian looked to Lily. “Anything connect you to these women or the Ormney that are tied in?”

Lily shook her head. “Nothing.”

Sean’s thumb tapped the table as he spoke. “So far, this tissue thing Sara found and the fact that both women associated with an Ormney is our only link tying them together.”

Brian said, “If the point was making the Ormney look like the bad guys maybe the women didn’t matter.”

“The attack yesterday took place in a public med center.” Lily pulled up her notes from that incident. “No way they could be sure the damage would be limited to a specific human target. I definitely think making the Ormney appear threatening is a big part of this.”

“So that takes us back to the anti-Ormney orgs,” said Sean. “The team I assigned to work that angle has been drowning in possibilities and running short on solids. There are a few big orgs everyone knows about but they’re probably our least likely bet. There are dozens of small orgs, on and off book. Beyond that we could be looking at an individual with a beef.”

Sara made a hmm noise. “There are strong feelings over the limits in place on med tech exchange. Yesterday’s attack might go more to the heart of it. Somebody with a loved one that had a medical issue that might have been saved if the Ormney would share more information.”

Brian pushed back in his chair. “But how does any of that tie back to Lily?”

“Simone Rawls.” Lily blurted it out. “She is the only thing that ties into me.”

Brian looked grim. “Then that’s where we have to look.”

Sean’s com-link trilled. He excused himself and stepped over to the windows to take the link.