I opened the photos of the mystery file from Stacy Adams’s office for the third time, wishing I’d had time to try to get the pages more in focus.
“He swore this didn’t have weapons capabilities.” I wasn’t talking to anyone in particular.
“I’m telling you, it doesn’t,” Kyle said for the third time in as many hours. “At least, not ones anybody would be stupid enough to try to use if they had access to the equipment it takes to produce them. I did a bit of reading on Adams and his thorium salt reactors last night: he’s not totally wrong, but it’s not the superfuel he makes it out to be, either. The irradiation process produces tiny bits of a highly toxic, gamma-ray-emitting compound called uranium-232. No sane person would subject themselves to the toxicity in order to try to make a bomb, and the stuff has to be handled carefully within a reactor to keep everyone safe.” His tone had an edge that I knew meant he was frustrated with the situation, not with me.
“But you can’t use that stuff to make a bomb?” I asked.
He shook his head. “If we’re looking for a nuclear weapon, it’s an experimental take on plutonium, which you still cannot buy at the corner store, no matter what Steven Spielberg said in 1985. But tracing it is proving to be problematic.” He gestured to his laptop. “It seems those records are kept only on triplicate paper forms.”
So we needed another road to our possible mad bomber. For someone to despise a public figure enough to risk handling radioactive material, and be okay with killing a whole lot of other folks as collateral—that was pure. Focused.
I pushed the computer away.
I’d spent the whole weekend looking at everything about this fiasco entirely wrong.
Was my lens right this time?
“That kind of hatred should be easy to spot,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Huh?” Chaudry asked.
“What we know that we know: Lakshmi Drake was attacked in the governor’s office late Thursday night. But the assault was interrupted, and the perpetrator was . . .” My words stumbled to a stop. I glanced over my shoulder. Slumped over in the chair, Joey didn’t look up. My heart twisted itself right around in my chest, my legs aching to move to the side of his chair and cradle his head and let him talk until he didn’t have any more to say.
Later. When we weren’t in a room full of cops and there wasn’t an impending nuclear disaster. And if we didn’t manage to skirt it, it wouldn’t really matter.
I cleared my throat. “And Hamilton Baine is still missing.”
“What about your neighbor?” Chaudry asked. “Do you think she’s telling the truth, about the Baine kid? I mean, that’s a hell of a secret for people to keep for this many years in that sort of a spotlight.”
I shrugged. “Who could make that up? She’s seemed lonely since her husband died, and I feel sorry for her. But she showed me texts from the kid.” I pushed the computer toward him. “Can’t you get to his vital records? She told me the governor’s name is on the birth certificate, but it might be worth checking. Maybe someone found out about Hamilton and is trying to get something from Baine.”
I couldn’t fathom a coincidence this massive, but Kyle said every lead. So better to check this box off.
Chaudry shrugged. “Anyone got a DOB?”
Kyle scrolled through his iPhone screen. “August fourteenth, ’97.”
Chaudry pulled my laptop across the counter and started pecking at the keys.
Scrolled.
Frowned at the screen. Pecked some more.
“What?” Kyle and I asked in unison.
Chaudry ran one hand over his clean-shaven head. “His medical records. The file is big. But it’s locked down so tight even I can’t get in.”
“That’s not typical of politicians and their families?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Let’s assume the old lady is telling us the truth. What did her husband die from?”
“No idea. He was in his seventies.”
Kyle pulled out his phone. “Let me see if I can pull some strings from this side. If Hamilton has some sort of serious medical condition, our sand just started running through this hourglass faster. But knowing what we’re dealing with could help.”
Damn. Was that why the governor was so freaked? Because his son was sick?
I owed the Baine family. I couldn’t keep sitting here rehashing facts with Kyle and his friend if I might be more helpful somewhere else.
I moved to the door, slipping my feet back into my shoes before I grabbed Darcy’s leash.
“Uh, baby?” Joey spoke for the first time in hours, looking up at me with a furrowed brow. “I can take her out.”
Kyle put his phone down and opened his mouth to protest that, snapping it shut when I glared at him.
I shook my head at Joey. “Thanks, but Darcy’s my ticket in. I’m going to go ask Mrs. Powers about Hamilton’s medical history.”
29
Mrs. Powers had plenty of dog cookies, plenty of questions, and no idea why Hamilton had a fat medical file, but loads of worry over it after I told her.
Which meant the governor and his family had another big secret—one they didn’t even trust this woman Hamilton treated like family to know.
Joey’s comments about my cops keeping the kid’s name out of the police reports mingled with Governor Baine’s hoarse assertion that Hamilton liked to keep to himself, and the governor had to pick his battles.
What if Hamilton wasn’t physically ill, but mentally? Depression would explain a fat, ultra-secured medical file. But it was obvious Mrs. Powers didn’t know. And I couldn’t tell her—at all, by personal preference, but certainly not without more proof than a file, an interview, and a hunch.
So Darcy munched her fourth peanut butter snap as I sipped coffee and smiled. “I’m sure he’s going to be just fine, ma’am. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She shook her head. “I just don’t understand. He was so agitated when he was here yesterday. Not like himself at all. Kept talking about some girl named Stacy ruining his life—‘blowing everything up,’ the young people call it. I’ve never seen him so mad when he wasn’t talking about his mother—and then he asked me how much cash I had in the house and he just left.”
I sat up straight in the chair so fast it rocked forward. Darcy popped her head up, eyeing me for three blinks before she returned her attention to her cookie.
Mrs. Powers leaned forward. “Are you all right, Nichelle?”
Deep breath. Slow smile. Nothing wrong here.
Hamilton wasn’t a missing person. Not if he was here yesterday crying about his breakup and looking for cash. So where the hell had he been? And why did the governor think he was in trouble?
His work. The governor said he buried himself in his work.
And Hamilton said Stacy was “blowing everything up.” What if his word choice wasn’t hyperbole?
Shit. I liked Stacy. And why not? His save-the-world counterpoint to Grayson’s greedy, suspicious former assistant was guaranteed to build rapport.
Maybe that was the whole point of Wyatt Bledsoe being there in the first damned place.
That black folder flashed in my head like it was swathed in pink neon.
Had Hamilton Baine been suckered into an assassination plot without realizing it until it was too late? Stacy Adams knew Hamilton better than anyone, and he’d spent the whole weekend trying to find out where Hamilton was from everyone he could think to ask—including me. If Stacy was good enough at bluffing to fly under my bullshit radar, he could have played on Hamilton’s mental health issues or even tinkered with his medications to make him think he was imagining things, even get his help without him realizing it. And killing Lakshmi and sticking Hamilton with the blame was pretty good revenge for a jilted lover, too.
“Mrs. P, did Hamilton say anything else about why he was upset, or anything about where he’d been?” My voice was too high, but it was the best I could do. She didn’t seem to notice.
She shook her
head. Paused mid-shake. Raised one finger. “He did say something about all his hard work being a lie.”
Bingo.
“I don’t understand,” she went on, shaking her head. “I read your article this morning, and I know he was seeing that woman. If his girlfriend was murdered, why didn’t he say something about her? And why on earth did Tom go on TV and say you were lying in the newspaper? I was offended by that. You wouldn’t do such a thing.”
I didn’t have time to climb onto that horse. “I’m afraid nothing about this story has been normal, even for me,” I said. “And that’s saying something.” I stood, reaching for Darcy’s leash. “Thank you for talking with me, especially so late.”
She rose to walk me out. “You’ll figure all this out, won’t you, honey? Ham will be okay?”
Lord, I hoped so. If he was trying to stop Stacy Adams from blowing up half the city or selling a weapon that would, I really hoped so was the best I could do.
I nodded as she opened the door. “Goodnight, ma’am.”
I clicked my photos open before I got to the foot of the steps, pulling up the file folder I’d found in Adams’s office.
Kyle said uranium-232 wasn’t weaponizable.
But that black folder label didn’t say 232. It said 233.
I hadn’t even noticed it earlier.
Kyle said we didn’t have time to chase the production goose. What we needed to know wasn’t how the weapons were made, but who to track down to stop one from getting near the president. He and Chaudry could work backward from there, after disaster had been averted.
He’d studied this thorium thing for days now and I was jumping in for a crash course, but the little nagging voice in the back of my brain kept getting louder. Stacy Adams was hiding something.
I opened my browser and typed uranium-233.
Google, don’t fail me now. My fingers trembled as I hit “Enter.”
Google never disappoints. I clicked the top result.
Read ten words.
And dropped my phone.
I was out of breath by the time I got home, rushing up the mostly empty driveway into the kitchen and kicking off my shoes before I’d made it past the table.
Where the hell did they all go?
“Anyone home?” I called, charging toward my bedroom.
Joey appeared in the doorway. “Miller said to tell you to wait here for him to call. Their phones went crazy and they took off.”
He wouldn’t look at me.
I unclipped Darcy’s leash, dropping it on the dresser before I put one finger under Joey’s chin and turned his eyes to mine. “I’m not mad at you. But I’d like to hear what happened. From you.”
I don’t think I’ve ever meant a handful of simple words more. And I wanted to know how Kyle knew about this and didn’t have Joey in some basement cell somewhere, but for the moment I was content to be thankful for that, especially in the face of impending national disaster.
He shook his head, his lips shrinking into a thin line as he leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. “It’s going to sound so stupid, but I don’t really know. It’s kind of a blur. I remember the meeting. It was late, after midnight by the time we were done, because . . . well. Because I don’t go to the capitol for meetings during the day.”
He’d told me he had a business thing Thursday night. I nodded.
“I was on my way out, and I stopped in the restroom, and then I got turned around coming out, all the long hallways in that place, and then I heard a scream. Not even a scream. More like . . .” He raised a hand to his temple, his eyes falling shut. “More like a high-pitched whimper, and it just cut off so suddenly. I doubled back and when I opened the door, I got an eyeful of some guy’s bare ass and started to shut it again. Didn’t want to interrupt. You know?”
I nodded again. I would’ve thought the same.
I put a hand on his arm. “It’s really okay.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. “No. I don’t think it will be. But it is done, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Hell. I don’t know that I’d do it differently if I could go back and see it more clearly. I just remember seeing her leg kick in the air before I got the door shut, and she whimpered again, and the guy said—” He paused. Waved his bandaged hand. “Not important. He sort of snarled something I won’t repeat to you at her and pulled his fist back and punched her. I heard his knuckles connect with her face, a sort of muffled cracking sound followed by another yelp. I didn’t even know it was Lakshmi until . . . until after. I ran—the room is pretty big—and I grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.” He shook his head. “This guy’s face was twisted up into something that didn’t even look human. Ugly, deep red, even before I hit him. And then I hit him, just four times.” He held up his bandaged hand. “But something went wrong.”
Jesus. What he had done here—certainly, it was wrong. But looking at his face, pale and pained, I didn’t think he meant to kill the guy.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said, like he could read my mind. “I just wanted to stop him. Put him on the floor for long enough to help the woman on the desk. But I caught his nose wrong with my ring, Miller’s coroner friend said.” His eyes went wide, his hands closing around both of mine as best he could with the bandages. “I’ve done some things I’m not proud of, Nichelle, but this . . . I didn’t mean to. And they moved me out of the room so fast I didn’t know what happened to Lakshmi after that. So yesterday when you said she was dead, I thought I’d done it for nothing. And I wanted to tell you, to help you, but Miller told me to keep my mouth shut. Watching you try to figure this out and knowing what I knew has been a special kind of hell the past few days, but I was too selfish to risk losing you.”
I shook off his hands and looped my arms around his neck, pulling him close.
“I trust you,” I said, burying my face in the starched cotton shirt covering his chest. “You’re not going to lose me. And we will figure this mess out later. I swear.” I managed to avoid choking on the words. One panic attack at a time. I had spent considerable time and energy in the past two years trying to make sure Kyle and Joey’s worlds didn’t intersect any more than necessary. And once the immediate crisis was contained—I hoped—Kyle would be right in the middle of a manslaughter investigation, at the very best. Jesus, if they’d taken prints, who knew what he’d found already?
Nope. I couldn’t.
Not now.
“But right now, I gotta go.” I planted a kiss on the tip of his nose and turned back to the mess at hand, my brain thirty steps ahead of my feet.
I grabbed my gym bag off the chair in the corner and pulled out my sneakers, then looked around for socks as I wriggled out of my sweater. Two layers of form-fitting tanks and a hoodie later, I was lacing up my Nikes when the bed dipped under Joey’s weight. “You’re going to the gym? Now?” His brow furrowed when I turned my head to look at him.
I only wore those shoes to the gym. Ever. It was a fair assumption.
And for a split second I considered letting him continue to assume it. I didn’t have time to explain, and he would just freak out and try to make me stay out of it, anyway.
“Where did Kyle go again?” I answered Joey’s question with one of my own.
I’d sprinted home intending to rally Kyle and Chaudry for a nuke-finding expedition. Stacy Adams said the reactor he wanted to build would power the whole city, and that the donated land was twenty miles from any home or school. When I’d seen that in my notes halfway through hour two of our brainstorming session, I’d checked the requisite distances. Zoning records told me there was almost exactly four square miles of land close enough to town that fit the distance requirements Adams mentioned. Tax records revealed that a large plot of it was owned by SAE Limited. Chaudry and Kyle had dismissed it, because his reactor was a theory, not an actual device. My entire life—and maybe a lot of other people’s—currently rode on my guess that Stacy was boring enough to name his shell company with his own initial
s, hadn’t waited to build his reactor, and had somewhere in that black folder that a tweak in his process would produce uranium-233. A tiny bit of that stuff makes a big blast, Google said.
Federal agents or no, I was going out there for a look.
Joey shrugged. “He doesn’t exactly keep me in the loop on what he’s doing. They left together. If someone’s really trying to kill the president here in town, I assume every cop in a hundred miles is up to their neck in that until tomorrow night.”
Probably not, actually. Federal agents aren’t exactly known for their loose lips. Now that he mentioned it, Kyle and Chaudry talking so freely in front of Landers was downright weird. It just hadn’t stuck out in the parade of unbelievable that had been my day.
And it wasn’t important enough to worry with now, either.
I stood. “If he comes back, tell him I went . . .” I clicked zoning photos up on my phone and flipped the screen around. “Here.”
Joey leaned closer, squinting at the screen.
“Tell Miller you went to a vacant field in the middle of the night in your running clothes. Why do I need to do this?” His gaze shifted to my face. “What is that? Where is that?”
I turned for the door. “I’m going to drop a location pin on the map when I get there and I’ll send you the coordinates,” I said. “I am betting it is not an empty field. Anymore, anyway. But the only way to find out is to go look, and I’m the only one free, so I’m going to go look.”
“By yourself? Like hell you are.” He stood, jaw set and eyes hard. “You know what I did and you’re still here. Damned if I’m letting you out of my sight again before this is over.”
He had a point. He also had a gun, somewhere. Which really would make me feel safer, especially since he knew how to handle it. But I didn’t want to drag him into something that might be dangerous, either.
The look on his face told me there was no dragging about this.
I nodded. “I can fill you in on the way out there. Bring your handgun?” I flashed a smile I hoped was reassuring. “Just in case.”
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