Then he slid it across to her. “Congratulations,” he said. She took the glass and drank. “You successfully lied to her. I’m fairly sure that’s not been done often.”
She slid the drink back, and he sipped and claimed one of the rapidly diminishing supplies of sandwiches. “I don’t know what’s on the thumb drive yet. It’s hard for anyone to spot a lie if you aren’t telling one. We should find out what the thing gives us, Pat.” She started to get up, but he shook his head and tugged her down into her chair again.
“After lunch,” he said. “Unless you can’t finish the beer.”
She smiled, took the pint, and chugged it. “Heresy,” she said, and slapped the glass down. “I’m army. We always finish the beer.”
The thumb drive was encrypted, which to Bryn’s mind didn’t seem to be normal procedure for a janitorial company. Patrick was a lot of things, but apparently he wasn’t a superspy encryption expert, and he ejected it from the laptop within a minute or two.
“Couldn’t we…?”
“Mess with it?” he finished for her drily. “Encrypted files are nothing you can pick with a paper clip. We need an expert or we risk triggering some kind of countermeasure that wipes the device clean. Or my laptop.”
“Worried you don’t have your porn backed up?”
“Would I do that?”
“The porn?”
Patrick raised his eyebrows. “Not backing it up. I am a careful man.”
“So what do careful men do at times like these when you have encrypted files hidden by murder victims?”
The moment of humor was over instantly, and he said, “Call someone who’s even more careful. And paranoid.” He reached for his cell phone and dialed, ignoring her silent question: who? And then sighed after a few seconds. “Authentication Bravo Ten Seven. Call me back.” He hung up.
The question of who was moot. “You called Manny Glickman.” Manny was…well, a bit indescribable, Bryn thought. He was brilliant, no doubt of that, but he was also scared of his own shadow. Not without reason. Manny was ex-FBI, and he’d had bad experiences that had left him with significant psychological…issues. But if you wanted a man to solve a puzzle, particularly a scientific one, he was the one to consult. Like the altered nanite formula running through her veins and keeping her alive.
If you could reach him.
“He’s developed a new habit,” Patrick said. “You call an Internet number and read out the code he assigned to you. Then he calls back from an encrypted number. If he feels like it.”
“I didn’t think Manny could get any weirder. Can’t you just talk to Pansy?” Pansy Taylor was Manny’s girlfriend, lab assistant, and psychological prop, and she was the one who kept Manny from drowning in the deep end of the crazy pool.
“I would, but Manny had some kind of scare, and he’s cut off the cell phones again. So this is the only way to get to him until she goes behind his back and activates them again.”
The wait actually wasn’t very long—two or three minutes, at most, until Patrick’s cell phone rang back. He hit the speakerphone button and said, “McCallister.”
“Glickman,” said the clipped voice on the other end. “Am I on speaker?”
“Just with me and Bryn.”
“I’m still uncomfortable.”
“Deal with it. I guarantee you, it’s safe. I have a job for you—it’s an encrypted thumb drive and I need a jailbreak on the files. Can I courier it to the lab?”
“No,” Manny said. “Send it to this address—” Bryn grabbed a pen and paper and wrote it down. “That’s a mail drop. I’ll pick it up from there.”
“I need it soon, Manny.”
“I run a first-in, first-out system. You know that. And I have about half a dozen jobs ahead of you today.”
“Double pay.”
Manny was silent for a moment, and then there was a rustle as if someone else had picked up the phone. “Hey, Patrick. It’s Pansy. What did you say? Something about double pay?”
“Yes.”“Congratulations, you just jumped the queue. No, Manny, don’t even start. If you want to keep the shelves stocked, sometimes we have to make adjustments. Bryn?”
“Right here.”
“Mark out that address. This is the direct one.” Pansy read it out, and Bryn blinked in surprise.
“You’re in San Diego now?”
“Been here for about a week,” Pansy said. “Come on over. We’ll do lunch and I’ll take a look at your encryption problem. Manny’s taught me a thing or two, and I wasn’t too shabby with that stuff to start.”
Bryn smiled as Manny started swearing in the background about compromised security, and Pansy sighed. “Come soon,” Pansy said. “Or I swear to God I’ll shoot him and hide the body.”
Patrick hung up and said, “Do you feel up to it?”
“Seeing Manny? I’ve had worse today.”
He handed her the thumb drive, but didn’t let go of it when she pulled. “You’re still in shock and full of adrenaline right now,” he said. “I know you probably don’t know it, or feel it, but what happened is inside you, and it’s going to come out. Get back here as soon as you can.”
She shook her head. “I’ll take this to them, and then I need to go in to work, Patrick. And I’m fine. Really.”
He said, “I know you think so. When you need me, I’m here.” He let go of the thumb drive, and she leaned over to kiss him, just a quick, soft brush of lips. For some reason, she didn’t want to go further with it, not now. She needed to move.
In fact, she practically jogged upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, and paused in the doorway of Annalie’s room to look inside. Liam was sitting in the armchair, reading a leather-bound book; his handgun was sitting on the table beside him, as was a glass of wine. He adjusted his reading glasses and looked at Bryn over the top of them.
“She’s still quiet,” he said. “She woke for a moment, but didn’t fight the restraints. I believe she’s improving. We’ll know better tomorrow when she finishes the treatment course.”
Bryn nodded. “I’m going out,” she said. “To Manny Glickman’s. I’ll be back after work.”
“You’re going to work?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“I should think the reasons would be obvious.”
And of course, he was right. Annie, the early-morning panic of Patrick’s injury, the events at Graydon. It had been a very full twenty-four hours already. Calling in sick would have been more than logical.
But it wasn’t only that. She sensed it in him, as she had in Patrick: concern. She supposed she ought to be pleased they were so worried, but they were assuming she had some residual trauma from the day, and she didn’t.
She felt great, actually. The nanites had done their work, flesh and bones were strong and knitted, and there was no trace at all of the damage she’d sustained.
Nothing to be traumatized about.
Bryn changed into a business suit and higher heels, fixed her hair and makeup, and was out the door in record time. She descended the stairs faster than usual and found that she’d left her sedan conveniently parked just around the curve.…She didn’t remember parking at all, somehow, or driving home. Opening the door of the sedan, she smelled smoke, and a faint, rusty tang of blood. Hers. There was an old sweatshirt discarded on the backseat, and she used it to wipe down the seat. It came away smeared and dirty, and for a second something in her wobbled unsteadily until she forced it to stand still.
Then she got in the car and drove away, windows open to clear out the smell.
Manny’s new laboratory was located across town; as usual, he’d chosen a warehouse, but this one looked new and very secure indeed. The chain link was ten feet high around the property, and there were dozens of security cameras; the whole area was posted against trespassing, a legal nicety that meant it’d be much easier to shoot intruders, or arrest them. She found the one entrance, pushed the red button, and stayed still for the security cameras until the gates rumbled open. A sign she passed said PLEASE TUNE RADIO TO AM CHANNEL 720. She pushed buttons until she got the frequency, and heard a cool, professional voice saying, “This property is strictly monitored for security purposes. Do not deviate from the approved route or police will be immediately notified. Have your identification ready to present at the next station. No weapons of any kind may be brought into the facility. Be prepared to undergo standard security sweeps of your person and any belongings you may bring with—”
The voice cut off, and Pansy’s cheerful voice said, “Hey, Bryn? Keep coming straight. You’ll see a metal garage door ahead—it’ll come up for you. Park inside. Oh, and get out with your hands raised, okay? Follow the signs.”
That would have seemed strange anywhere else but here, Bryn thought. The broadcast returned to the droning, severe voice telling her that all security measures were strictly enforced to the limit of the law.
She took that to mean death.
As the door slammed down (faster than was strictly comfortable) behind her car, Bryn parked in the warehouse and slowly exited the vehicle, hands up. There was an eye-in-the-sky camera on the ceiling. The downstairs was one big, empty room that could easily have held twenty or thirty large trucks. It was spotlessly clean, and mercilessly bright from rows and rows of overhead lights.
Bryn stared up at the camera and waited until the automated voice said, “Please lower your arms. You are now cleared to proceed to the elevator. Place your palm flat on the scanner for access.”
The elevator was in a thick concrete block about fifty feet away, and there was a separate, shiny built-in scanner on the wall big enough to accommodate a palm twice her size. She watched the light skim down on the other side of the glass, and a tone sounded from the speakers as the doors opened. She stepped in and looked for buttons. There were none. It was a nondescript metal box without any controls at all, but when the doors slid closed, it moved smoothly upward.