Going Grey

by Karen Traviss

  "Before you do, then, we need to know why this leaked when it did, and who leaked it if it wasn't Kinnery. If he wanted to sabotage you, it's a suicide bomber way to do it. He'll take damage too. It's always better to ask questions you already have the answers to."

  "Okay," Weaver said. "Carry on, but don't do anything that might force him into a corner before I get a chance to talk with him."

  "Understood."

  It was the timing that still bothered Dru. Her mind snapped back to those sticky notes that she tried to arrange into a coherent pattern. With the hotline number, the resurrection of a dead project had to be significant.

  What haven't I factored in? The times on the phone log. I need to check exactly when those calls were made.

  "You missed your vocation, Dru," Weaver said. "You really should have gone into investigation. Good work."

  Dru really couldn't read the expression on Weaver's face. She could read the runes, though; he was probably going to lean on Kinnery to do something for KWA to help the merger, and whatever she found would be the blackmail material for that. Weaver had been right. This wasn't a job for Sheelagh. She was risk averse, to put it kindly. Her idea of best practice was not getting sued.

  As Dru headed back to the basement, she thought again about the Seattle number. If it was connected to Maggie Dunlop, calling it again might set off a chain of events that would blow whatever game Weaver was playing with Kinnery. But it could also rule out a connection, provided that she was smarter with her response if someone answered. Either way, she couldn't just leave it.

  She locked the office door and took out her burner phone. All the cocky confidence built by daring to knock on Maggie Dunlop's door was evaporating again.

  Shall I just ask for Maggie? Or Ian? No, that would spook them if there's any truth in this. Weaver wants to confront Kinnery. It's his company, and his property, and if that's how he wants to play it, it's fine by me.

  She still wanted to hear who answered, though. They'd have a hard job identifying a withheld number unless they were the police. She just had to listen. Dru counted to ten before shoving herself over the precipice and keying in the number.

  But the call didn't connect. After a delay, an automated message cut in, telling her that the number wasn't available. There was no voicemail option, either. The number was out of service. Either it was a rare coincidence or she'd rattled someone's bars.

  Another non-existent pattern? No. I can't ignore everything. This is linked somehow.

  Now she had to dig deeper without scaring Kinnery. There were still folders to check and names to add to her paper database. Web searches would now have to wait until she got home.

  Kinnery's not innocent. It's just a matter of finding what he's guilty of. Maybe it's an old child support issue and an unhappy ex. In that case – you go, Maggie. You go, girl.

  As Dru turned into Ridgeway Drive that evening, her usual line of sight to the house was blocked by a car parked outside the Greggs' entrance, close to the bend. As she passed it, her house loomed into view, still intact with no sign of smoke, firefighters, or teen gangs trashing the front lawn. She found Clare in the back yard, sunning herself.

  "Wrinkles," Dru said.

  "Sunblock," Clare retorted. "And I'll never get rickets. You know that people in Britain are getting rickets again? It's so medieval."

  Dru was starting to like Clare again. It was one thing to love and another entirely to like. Love was wired to all kinds of other compulsions and instincts, but liking had to justify itself; Dru knew she'd stopped liking Larry long before she realised she didn't love him any longer. Clare was actually a smart, curious, sensible kid who was simply growing up, which was a lurching and chaotic process. Nature erased the memory of how extreme and desperate things could feel at fourteen.

  I've got a degree in this. You'd think I'd engage that knowledge before I knee-jerk into the Mom from Hell.

  Dru got a couple of sodas from the fridge, mindful of the need not to grab a bottle of wine each evening and accidentally teach Clare that alcohol was the antidote for a crappy job. She handed her a can and flopped down on a lounger.

  "Thanks, Mom," Clare said. "Any more gun-toting rednecks on your trail?"

  The case had started to feel like a shared interest, even if Dru hadn't told Clare the details. It was something to talk about that wasn't centred on battle zones like Larry, the phone, or dating.

  "No," she said. "I still can't work out how this employee stole stuff."

  "Don't they search your bags or anything?"

  "It's not money or paper."

  "Oh, it's something on a disc or a card? Well, copy it and e-mail it out."

  "What if you can't do that?"

  "Swallow it. Or put it – well, you know. People smuggle all kinds of stuff in pretty gross places." Clare pulled a disgusted face. "Did you see the movie about the guy with the chip in his brain? He's on the run with secrets on the chip and the bad guys try to kill him to get it out. I mean, that's asking for trouble. Put it just under the skin, like a microchip on a dog. It's way safer if they catch you."

  So what do you do if you're smuggling DNA? They can't cut it out. And you can't just hand it back.

  Dru hoped she was simply ignorant of some brilliant new drug that identified specific DNA and flushed it out. She was pretty sure it didn't exist. But Weaver was very good at buying cooperation; he'd managed to get Kinnery to discuss returning, after all. No chips were going to be gouged out of brains or anything distasteful like that.

  "Anyway, how was your day?" Dru asked.

  "Oh, we went bowling. Rebecca's got a thing for one of the guys there." Clare got up and opened the back door. "Was that blue Kia still parked on the bend when you drove in? Rebecca thought the guy was watching her."

  Dru hadn't really noticed colours. She remembered the dumb-ass parking, though. An uncomfortable thought crossed her mind a little too late. She'd set a private investigator on Charles Kinnery. It wasn't impossible to imagine someone doing that back to her.

  "Maybe. Hang on."

  She walked down the drive to take a look, but the car was gone. Her own guilty conscience was probably making her overreact. Who knew she even existed, let alone where she lived? Kinnery certainly didn't.

  "Nobody there now," Dru said. "If the car comes back and I'm not here, call the cops. You know how to do all that. You just need to be situationally aware."

  "Oh my God, Mom, have you joined the CIA or something?" Clare burst out laughing. Dru felt like an idiot. The phrase had just slipped out. "We got his licence plate. You think we're dumb? Well, Rebecca's still in ditzy mode, but I know how to take care of myself."

  Clare tore a sheet off the notepad by the phone and handed it to Dru. It was a licence number. It might come in handy some day. On the other hand, maybe this was karma. If you spied on others, sooner or later all you did was look over your own shoulder at imagined boogeymen.

  "That's my girl," Dru said, pocketing the paper.

  VANCOUVER

  AUGUST.

  Kinnery knew this would be one of the worst decisions of his life. And he had no choice but to obey Leo and make it.

  Returning to KWA didn't top the list of disasters, but it was already hurting. The news about the ranch had just cemented it. He knew he'd never let anything slip. He could safely assume they'd acquired the phone numbers illegally, but he hadn't worked out how they were getting the rest of the information.

  Who even knew Maggie existed? Shaun must have gone back forty years to dredge this up.

  He paced up and down the hall, waiting for the airport taxi and crushed by the prospect of shuttling between Vancouver and Michigan for the foreseeable future. With stopovers, it took longer than a flight to Europe. Jesus H. Christ, he was getting too old for all that.

  Then one of his phones rang. He felt in his pockets and took out the burner.

  "Glad I caught you," Leo said. "Any progress?"

  "No. The source has to be someone wh
o knew Maggie, because her family had that ranch for years, but how I can't work out how they identified her in the first place. I agree that the phone number gave them a break. But someone's got more than the call logs."

  "Well, they might not have confirmation that there's any connection at all. Play it by ear. You know they've acted illegally. But keep your powder dry. Goodbye."

  Leo rung off as abruptly as he'd opened the conversation. It was to reduce the length of the call, Kinnery knew, but he also detected that whiff of disdain. He now had a long flight via Portland and Detroit and an overnight stay to rehearse his responses before he had to face Shaun.

  At some point he was going to have to square his exit with the university, too. Automatically, he thought in terms of playing the age card and explaining to the head of faculty that he simply couldn't cope health-wise. The truth was a theoretically noble thing, but never respected, appreciated, or acted upon; it was lies that kept society stable. Lies were gentler and easier fit around you. The truth never put anything right, and most people didn't much like it.

  So how would I have traced Maggie?

  Kinnery put the resignation issue to one side for the journey and spent the next eleven hours working his way through a mental list of everyone he knew who'd also known her. He could only think of friends at Lomax University. If she was in touch with anyone after graduation who also knew him and had left a trail that had persisted for all those years, then she'd never mentioned it, and Maggie was the ultimate destroyer of trails and clues.

  That's one of the reasons I chose her.

  Kinnery rehearsed every possible confrontation with Sean, his chest sporadically hollowed by palpitations that made him think the next heartbeat would never come. By the time he arrived in Lansing that evening, he was ready to drop and in no mood to take any crap. But whatever Shaun had unearthed, he'd never find Ian. Kinnery still had the advantage.

  Despite that, he woke before five the next morning and paced the floor of his hotel room, trying out different personas – the weary Kinnery, the curious Kinnery, the flattered Kinnery, whatever act was appropriate to explain why he'd decided to take Shaun's invitation seriously after such a long, cold exile. When his taxi dropped him at the KWA building later that morning, he set his shoulders a like a man who had every right to be there.

  And I do. I made all this possible. Don't forget that, Shaun.

  Coming back to the building felt like returning to high school and finding it was a smaller and meaner stage for life's dramas than it had seemed at the time. Kinnery walked in unrecognised. But the offices were actually much bigger than he remembered, with a couple of extra wings built since his day. The receptionist on the front desk asked him to spell his name.

  "Kinnery, as in Kinnery Weaver Associates," he said pointedly. She looked more baffled than impressed.

  Shaun came down to greet him. He looked older than Kinnery had expected, but it was probably a mutual assessment.

  "You know the way," Shaun said, showing him into the elevator. "You never forget these things."

  "Oh, I forget a lot these days." Kinnery walked into Shaun's sumptuous office and looked for the prime seat, the best spot on the fattest sofa, the one he thought Shaun would regard as his territory. The extra creases in the soft leather confirmed his choice. "I'll have a coffee, please."

  Shaun pressed the intercom and held down the key. "Cream, no sugar, yes?"

  "It's touching that you remember." Kinnery took out his cell and made a show of switching it off. But there was a hair's breadth between disabling the phone and starting a recording for his own insurance. "Any cookies? Chocolate chip?"

  Kinnery had thought he'd feel at least awkward about lying on this scale, but now that he was here, he actually felt no shame at all. His brain had done a wondrous thing. The awareness of what he'd created had been sealed behind a bulkhead, quite separate from the game he was playing with KWA, in which he now felt he was the wronged party. What he knew and what he felt had split off into two equal realities.

  It intrigued him, because if he understood it, then he could recreate it whenever he needed to. He'd repeated the lie in his mind so often that his brain had started to airbrush his actual memory. His outright lies had evolved into excuses and finally into valid reasons.

  One part of him now believed himself. He'd been minding his own business, nobly serving a virtual life sentence in academia for his hubris, sacrificing a life of wealth to recompense Ian, and his wicked ex-partner had begun spying on him, seeking commercial gain when what mattered was doing the best for the boy. The other part of him, the objective mind, stopped at the top of this deluded hill to look back down the valley at the frightening path he'd taken. Kinnery knew that when the entirety of him believed his cover story, and not just the emotional side that needed to cling to it, he'd be truly dangerous.

  "Do you want to clear the air first?" he asked. Someone who'd been wrongly accused would be indignant and want some kind of apology before he was prepared to talk terms. There was a lot to be said for throwing the first punch. "Anything you want to tell me or ask me?"

  Shaun didn't blink. He was still standing by the window, seeming lost now that his sofa throne had been taken. He slid into the chair at his desk and settled behind it as if it was a wall of sandbags.

  "Come on, Charles, I needed to know if there was even a grain of truth in the story," Shaun said. "I know I've pissed you off, but we're at a delicate stage with Halbauer. It was the last thing I needed. I didn't even know if it was sabotage."

  "So I build a functioning shape-shifter, tell nobody for God knows how many years, then suddenly decide to leak it to the lunatic fringe media instead of publishing a paper from the safety of some country that wouldn't extradite me. Does that cover the keynotes?"

  Shaun set his elbows on the desk, hands clasped. "Well, that's the full-tar version. Seeing as we're being frank, the thought that struck me was a little less ambitious but equally interesting."

  "Do tell."

  "That you refined what was needed and made a little progress elsewhere."

  "How? Took it down to my dank basement and got out my Big Boy's Chemistry Set and Tesla coil? Please. You're not a layman. I'd have needed the backing of a fairly conspicuous laboratory."

  "I would have understood if you'd used a viral vector on yourself."

  "Well, I didn't. I'll give you a good portion of buccal cells and hair before I leave so you can check out my DNA to your heart's content."

  "Maybe it was a volunteer, though."

  Kinnery wasn't sure if Shaun was just fishing or working up to something else. "I'm flattered you think anyone would trust me enough to risk their health for that kind of favour."

  "You can see how I could put two and two together and come up with ten. You don't just fall off the edge of the world for no reason."

  "I had a lot of personal issues. I needed a gentler pace of life. And Vancouver isn't exactly a wasteland."

  "Charles, even if you'd ripped off the research or broken every FDA regulation in the book, I'd still beg you to come back and work with me. Not despite that. Because of it. I want to wheel you out to Halbauer and say that you're so keen on the possibilities that you've given up your cosy tenure and lovely Vancouver to work with KWA again."

  It was, as someone once said, a trap, and not a very good one. Kinnery knew he was good at his job, but Shaun was trying to keep his enemies close. So it was pure poker, all bluff and counter bluff, neither of them knowing what hand the other held. Kinnery found it thrilling for a moment before it slipped back to a desperate need to call off the dogs once and for all.

  "You know how old I am, Shaun."

  "Only slightly older than me."

  "I want you to be realistic about the useful years you'll get out of me."

  "Come on, you're not a bricklayer. We both know people in their eighties who still contribute to the field. Wasted genius is going to feel pretty painful on your deathbed."

  Shaun was a
lot more adept at twisting the knife than Kinnery remembered, but then he'd had years to polish his technique. Kinnery hoped his cell was picking up all this. Leo would enjoy the finer points. Maybe it wasn't such an inept trap after all.

  But that was irrelevant. Kinnery had his orders. "Okay," he said. "Let's talk."

  "Do you mind if I bring in my HR adviser?"

  "Go ahead." Kinnery reached into his briefcase and took out his notepad. I'm going to take the offer, so I might as well treat the numbers seriously. "I'll have to run it past my attorney, obviously."

  Shaun went to the door and gestured to his secretary rather than using the intercom. The coffee finally appeared, minus cookies. Kinnery was stirring the cream and making idle chat with Shaun about property prices in Vancouver when the door opened again and a woman walked in: fortyish, business suit and name badge, one of many who wouldn't stand out in a crowd.

  "Charles, this is Dru Lloyd from HR," Shaun said.

  Kinnery could just about read her badge from where he was sitting. Dru. How many Drews or Drus were there generally, let alone working for KWA? Suddenly she wasn't forgettable at all. If this was the woman who'd shown up at the ranch, she knew she'd given at least part of a real name to Maggie's neighbour, and she'd be expecting Kinnery to hear about that pretty damn fast if he and Maggie were connected. She'd be looking for a reaction. He wasn't sure if he'd given her one.

  You bastard, Shaun. You brought her in here to shake me down.

  Well, my phone's still recording. I'll pick this over later. And you still won't find Ian.

  "Nice to meet you, Dru," Kinnery said. "How's my KWA pension fund doing?"

  She gave him a look he couldn't fathom, but it didn't matter. This had to be the same woman. Maybe Rob Rennie could identify the voice and confirm what Kinnery was already sure he knew.

  "I think it's doing very well, Dr Kinnery," Dru said. "I'll just take notes to make sure Mr Weaver's giving you accurate information about benefits packages."

  They talked about time commitments and retainers and shares, but Kinnery wasn't concentrating. He was waiting for the sting. Dru – and probably Shaun – must have known that he realised his phone records had been accessed. They were probably still guessing about Maggie, but the phone was a known quantity, and the poker game was back on. If he said nothing, then they knew he was playing too.