Masterminds (12 page)

Pippa brought her hand down. It was shaking.

Her link only brought silence.

Somehow she had thought she would get an immediate response, even if that response was automated. But she didn’t.

She looked at the edge of the bed, the spread wrinkled from her moments of indecision.

She wasn’t going to sit back down there. That was a defeat.

She would wait up here for an hour, and then she would get something to eat from one of the nearby restaurants.

If she hadn’t heard from the Security Office by then, she would contact them again. She would keep doing so until they responded.

No matter how long it took.

FIFTEEN

FLINT TOOK THE
elevator to the top floor of the Security Office. He hated standing in that little box. It made him feel restless.

He was being pulled in eight different directions. He had been trying to get back to his office to investigate the leads he had received earlier in the week, and then he’d gotten derailed by personal events. He had just settled those when Zagrando contacted him.

Now that Flint had spoken to Zagrando, Flint wanted to investigate Zagrando’s (albeit truncated) information. But Flint also felt odd about leaving Zagrando alone with the medical authorities.

It wasn’t so much that he didn’t trust them—although that was a factor. It was that he worried he would lose Zagrando to some Earth Alliance official without anyone ever knowing.

Flint had already asked Space Traffic’s Murray Atherton to keep an eye on Zagrando, saying that Zagrando had information essential to solving Anniversary Day, and he would only give it to Flint. Flint warned Murray that someone might be coming after Zagrando, and under no circumstances was Murray to allow anyone to take Zagrando without contacting Flint first.

Of course, as he did that, Flint didn’t use Zagrando’s real name, but the alias he’d arrived with.

So far, no one had come after Zagrando, either on a space ship or inside the port. Murray had stationed a number of space traffic cops near the port’s medical facility, and some near Zagrando’s room. Everyone in Space Traffic was on alert for a ship that might arrive in obvious pursuit of someone. Flint wanted to make certain that no one followed Zagrando here.

He had looked at the trajectory of Zagrando’s ship once it got close to the Moon; it appeared as if no one had followed him. But Flint knew that only time would tell.

The port was relatively safe—as safe as it could be, given what was going on these days on the Moon. He never thought of the port as a dangerous place. These days, he thought of it as a potential escape route.

He had told Talia that a number of times. If things looked particularly bad in the dome, she was to go to Flint’s ship, the
Emmeline,
and wait for him there. If the dome was being harmed in anyway, she was to take the ship off the Moon.

He had told her that he would let her know when the situation warranted that. He didn’t think anything rose to that level on this day, but he also knew that it could.

Which was why he had decided to ask for Talia’s help with Zagrando. She would be as safe here, with the police protection and the
Emmeline
nearby, as she would be in the Security Office or with him while he was working in his office. Or so he liked to think.

Besides, the help Flint needed with Zagrando was risky in a different way. He could only trust Talia with this particular mission.

He hoped she was up for the task.

She was still in the Security Office. Even though he knew she was doing better, he had worried that the improvement was just temporary. Now, he had to believe what Talia had told him before he left; that she was doing better, and that she was willing to work.

He didn’t contact her on his links. Instead, he had gone directly to the Security Office. As he rounded the corner from the elevators, Popova waved at him from her desk.

“I have a question for you,” she said.

He glanced at the kitchen. He wondered if Talia was still there or if she had moved to a different part of the building.

“Make it fast,” he said.

“Have you heard of a woman named Pippa Landau? She says she’s a Disappeared.”

Flint turned toward Popova so fast that he nearly lost his balance. “She
what
?” he asked.

“She says she’s a Disappeared.”

Flint frowned. “People don’t admit that.”

“I know,” Popova said. “That’s why I thought you might know her. Maybe she has come home after a Retrieval Artist found her or she was in the news and I missed it…?”

Flint shook his head. “In theory, I’m retired. I haven’t watched that kind of news closely since Talia moved in with me.”

“So, you don’t know her.” Popova sounded disappointed.

Flint gave her a wry smile. “Believe it or not, I don’t know every single Disappeared in the Earth Alliance. Why are you asking?”

“Because she contacted me just a few minutes ago, and said she was a Disappeared, and she had important information for me, and she was taking a risk contacting us.” Popova tapped a finger against her desk. “I haven’t responded. I don’t know how to handle this at all. Do you think you could find out if she’s what she says she is?”

“No,” Flint said. “I’ve got much too much to research as it is, and all of it seems to be tied to the Anniversary Day attacks. I will tell you this, Disappeareds never identify themselves that way. Either she’s a fraud or she thinks this information is so important she has to reveal herself to give it to you.”

Popova now tapped all of her fingers against the desk. The drumming sound was arrhythmic, and drove Flint slightly crazy.

“I’m not sure what to do.” Her gaze met Flint’s. He’d never heard Popova say something like that.

“Check out the name she gave you,” he said. “If she gave you her real name, her history should stop at some point in the past. If she gave you the name she’s been using recently, then you should find some kind of record, which should give you a sense of what kind of person she is.”

“And then what?” Popova asked.

“If her history stops, you know she’s telling the truth. If she has an entire lifetime’s worth of history, then you need to judge it on its merits. If you only have a year or two of recent data, ignore her. If you have decades’ worth, and she’s managed to stay out of trouble, then I think you should invite her here under heavy guard, and see what she has to say.”

“What if she’s a bomber or something?” Popova asked.

Flint reached over and took her hand, stopping the tapping. “That’s why I’m suggesting she come here. She doesn’t need to come to this floor. Meet her in the lobby. She has to go through more security to get into this building than she has to go through almost anywhere else in Armstrong. If she’s carrying something or she looks suspicious, then don’t let her up here. Trust the guards downstairs and the systems inside the building. You’ll be fine.”

Popova squeezed his hand. Her fingers were cold and a little clammy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There are days when nothing seems easy. This is one of them.”

He understood, but he felt that if he said that, he was patronizing Popova.

“Talia still in the kitchen?” he asked.

“She’s moved to the room you two sometimes use. She asked for a tablet. I gave one to her. Is that all right?”

Flint was cheered to hear that news and worried at the same time. He had no idea what Talia would be working on.

“Thanks,” he said, pivoted, and headed the other way down the hall. Behind him, he heard a chair squeak as Popova sat back down.

The empty office he and Talia had used in the past was just beyond the elevators, around the corner. The door was open. Talia sat in her usual chair—although Flint wasn’t exactly certain about that as a definition of sitting.

She had her knees over one of the chair’s arms and her back propped against the other arm. She rested her head against the top of the chair. The tablet was propped against her thighs.

When she saw him, she grinned. “I’m setting up so that I can help you with whatever you need.” She sounded just a bit too cheerful, as if she were compensating a bit too much. But he would take it at the moment. “I decided to start with finding Detective Zagrando’s history. He’s listed as dead in every database you know.”

“I know,” Flint said. That disturbed him, but Zagrando had said it was all complicated. And the fact that the man had worked undercover for Earth Alliance Intelligence might have explained the subterfuge.

“Is it him?” Talia asked, clutching the tablet to her chest.

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure it is.” Flint felt the need to leave at least a small margin of error.

“Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Flint said.

Talia hugged the tablet harder. Her eyes were big, her expression solemn.

“Do the databases say how he died?” Flint asked.

“It’s weird,” Talia said. “That’s why I was digging into it. He was called to Valhalla Basin’s port on some case, alone, and then he got murdered in a room by some perpetrators. They all got caught, but he died pretty horribly. His body was recognizable, though.”

Flint frowned. “If that had happened here, the body would have been autopsied.”

“It was,” Talia said. “There were some strange things.”

“You read the report?”

She smiled a little and shrugged.

He almost smiled in return. His daughter had come back to him. He had missed her.

“What’s strange?” he asked.

“His weight, for one thing. Standard VBPD procedure. A monthly health check, including weight and height and general fitness. His general fitness was less when he died, although his heart was stronger and some of the health problems his enhancements had compensated for were gone.”

Flint wanted to grab the tablet and look at the results, but Talia kept it close. Apparently, she wanted to watch him as she told him the news.

“But his weight was way off. Like forty pounds off. And he would have had to lose that in two weeks. That kind of weight loss usually means an illness, not an increase in health, at least that’s what my poking around this afternoon told me.” Talia’s gaze met Flint’s.

He knew the look. It meant she had a theory.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“They ran the DNA,” Talia said. “Standard test, just to make sure, even though he still had his badge in his palm and all of his enhancements and stuff, plus his face was recognizable.”

“But…?” Flint asked.

“But there are all these weird aspects to the death. He didn’t put up much of a fight. He had a weapon and they disarmed him. Plus, he went into this room without backup, and he’d been the one called to be there. Like it was a set-up.”

“That happens,” Flint said.

“I know it does,” Talia said. “So I looked at the standard DNA tests that VBPD runs. It’s pretty cursory in cases like this.”

“What are you saying?” Flint asked.

“The body’s gone, so we can’t recheck. But think about it, Dad. He’s thinner and his heart is healthier and he doesn’t have some of the problems that his enhancements were designed to compensate for and he goes into a trap without backup and he loses his weapon right away—I remember him. He was older than the guy who found me in that closet, and he was
sensible
and sturdy and I had the sense that he never did something without thinking about it.”

Flint had had that sense of Zagrando too. In fact, Zagrando had made Flint uncomfortable on Valhalla Basin because Zagrando had the kind of gaze that took nothing for granted. Zagrando had known more about Flint in ten minutes than Flint had ever found out about Zagrando.

“He wouldn’t have gone into that room alone,” Talia said. “I’m convinced of it. And he wouldn’t have lost forty pounds in that short a period of time. Not even enhancements allow for that. If they do anything, they make you look thin until you
are
thin.”

Flint knew that as well. “You’re saying…what, Talia?”

“I’m saying they killed the clone,” Talia said. “The real guy is here. The clone wouldn’t have known about us, Dad. We’re just a case in his past. We’re not something just anyone would know.”

Flint frowned. In his haze, Zagrando had muttered,
They used a clone to kill me. You know that? It’s why I’m dead. Should’ve been a clue.

And now, Talia had found things that indicated Zagrando had spoken the truth.

Flint felt odd. He had his daughter back, and he also felt uncomfortable with what she had found. He sat down in a nearby chair. “The simplest thing to do is to check this man, see if he’s a clone.”

“I know,” Talia said. “But you can’t ask anyone to do that, Dad. Not right now. Everyone is crazy about clones.”

There was sadness in her voice. She had run into that with her therapist, and it had been ugly. Flint had had a terrible conversation with the man. Flint hoped that Talia’s conversation hadn’t been quite as nasty.