It had taken a lot of argument from Jaxon and a personal call from Captain Brogan himself, but Reese hadn’t gone to work. She didn’t even have to take one of her accrued vacation days because of an incident policy, the same policy that had paid five months of recovery. The CORE took care of its own.
Except last night the men who attacked her carried her enforcer image on a receptor, so there had been a breach somewhere. She knew she should worry more about that, but all she felt was relief. Her best friend was back in her life, and he hadn’t recognized her sketch of the man who’d been at his house and was somehow connected with his mother’s death. With Jaxon at least, she wouldn’t have to struggle to fit in or to mask signs of the sketches she received.
Did he really have glimpses of the future? She believed it. It certainly wasn’t any more farfetched than her flashes of someone else’s experience.
On the night stand, her iTeev buzzed with a message. She lunged for it, forgetting her side, but the pain was negligible this morning. With the weekend starting tomorrow, she’d have three days to recover until she had to face work again. Not that she’d spend it in bed. An idea had begun in her head last night and had grown with intensity, but she’d need help from Jaxon, and she was glad to see the message was from him.
Jaxon: Meet at your place after work? The twins can make it.
Reese: I’ll be there. What about the names?
Jaxon: Hammer’s been out this morning.
Reese: Let me know.
Jaxon: Will do tonight. Gotta go.
Reese suspected his ending the conversation was due more to his worry about being monitored than any business at division, but she was happy enough to end the conversation. Delicious aromas had begun seeping into the room, and she wanted to find the source.
Theena looked up from the old-fashioned cooktop as Reese entered the kitchen. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”
Reese laughed. “You always used to say that.”
“Never seen a kid sleep so much.”
“I’m the only kid you ever lived with.”
“There is that.” She gestured to the table. “Have a seat. I made you an omelet. The eggs came from my own chickens.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Look outside.”
Reese went to the window, and sure enough, part of the back yard had been fenced off and a small chicken coop stood inside.
“That’s right. I got tired of those tasteless ones from the market, and when my neighbor mentioned her son had been told he needed to decrease the amount of chickens he had, I took in a couple. Now I won’t go back. Neither will you after you taste these.”
“I don’t think I’ve eaten any eggs since I left here,” Reese confessed. “I usually just shove in a readymeal. Total nutrition and all that.”
Theena shuddered. “Nasty stuff.”
Reese didn’t answer. Readymeals had been a staple of her life except for the decade she’d spent under this roof. No, they couldn’t compare to Theena’s cooking, but they were easy and familiar, and for the most part, Reese tolerated them. A couple, she even liked.
Theena set a plate of eggs and ham in front of her, decorated by a few slices of some kind of melon that likely came from a neighbor’s garden. Fresh fruit was something Reese desperately missed, and she dug into that first without care that the eggs were growing cold.
Theena sat back in her chair and watched, letting Reese almost finish before handing her a cup of coffee. “So, are you going to tell me what really happened last night? Don’t think I didn’t notice how you were walking funny or the fresh bandage on your partner’s forehead.”
Reese nearly choked on her drink, scalding her tongue slightly. She hadn’t been able to hide much from her aunt during the time she’d spent here. What made her think now would be any different? She had kept the secret of why Jaxon’s mother had died and of her own part in the murder, but her aunt knew about her ability and the accompanying compulsion. It was she who had taught Reese to mask her ability, and had encouraged her to enter the enforcer academy when her gift left her feeling helpless to correct wrongs she inadvertently stumbled on while talking to others.
Still, telling her aunt everything now would only endanger her safety.
“I can’t tell you the details,” she said, “because it’s an active case, but we were attacked, and I ended up in the hospital.” She arose and slowly pulled up the lower edge of the frilly, flowered pajamas her aunt had left on the bed last night.
Theena’s eyes widened at the bandage on her side. “That’s a gun—?”
“Knife. But I’m okay. They used the latest lasers so it should heal fast. It’s already not giving me much pain.” Reese busied herself drinking so as not to spill out the rest.
Theena’s lips thinned as she shook her head in disapproval. “Your first day on the job? And I thought coming here would keep you safer.”
“We share a border with the fringers here; how could it be safer? We don’t have to deal with fringers in New York at all.”
“Are they responsible for this then?”
Reese thought a moment about the missing scientists and the body at the Fountain. Fringers could be behind all of that, but the only connection with the attack on her was that Jaxon had been looking for the girl. But it was Reese’s picture and not his that the thugs had left behind.
What if there had been another receptor they hadn’t dropped? What if he had been the target and she had gotten caught up only because she was his partner, or because he’d seen that vision and come to her apartment?
“Reese?”
Her eyes refocused on her aunt. “Sorry. I don’t know yet. We’re working several cases, and they could be connected to the attack and to the fringers.” She pressed her lips together, sure she’d said too much already. “Look, I have to go see if the landlord finished moving my things.”
“You need help?” Theena looked ready to battle both fringers and errant apartment managers.
Reese leaned over to give her a hug. “No. I can do it. You taught me well.” A rush of love rolled over her for this woman who had opened her door to a lost ten-year-old orphan. She didn’t know what would have become of her if Theena hadn’t taken her in. She had been incredibly lucky.
JAXON WAS WORKING in his office when Hammer knocked on the door. He made the closing hand signal to shut off his Teev’s holo feed that hovered above his desk, relieved to take a break from the dead ends he kept hitting—and to take his mind off his worry about Reese. He’d messaged with her several times since taking the shuttle to work and sending it back to her aunt’s, so he knew she was okay, but he still worried about their attackers finding her.
“Please tell me you have a lead,” he said to Hammer, indicating the other chair in his office.
Hammer settled on the chair, his presence making the room seem suddenly crowded. “I’ve had time to thoroughly examine all the evidence at the Henderson crime scene. There are no hairs, no skin flecks, nothing under his nails. No mud or speck of dirt that tells us where he’s been or where the murder happened. I’ve never seen a body so clean, not even the guy who slipped and died in the shower last year. Remember him? The one who used water instead of sonic cleansing.”
“I remember.”
“Anyway, it’s unnatural not to find something. I can’t help but think he was purged by another forensic team before he was dumped. The only interesting thing I found was in his apartment.”
Jaxon perked up. “Is this what you were tracking down yesterday?”
“Yes, but I didn’t want to say anything before I was sure. His Teev has clean spots. Or had them would be the better terminology, but we’ll get to that in a moment.”
“Clean spots?” Jaxon’s mind whirled. Clean spots represented times a Teev was turned on but the programs it broadcasted or the sites a user surfed were not recorded. By CORE law all Teev usage was logged to prevent conspiracies and subversions like the ones that had brought about Breakdown, but somehow Philo Henderson had
circumvented millions of credits of careful programming to surf the Teev unobserved. That wasn’t supposed to be possible, not even with black market devices that hacked into the Teev feed. “That’s very interesting.”
“Henderson wasn’t trained as a software engineer, but he was techno savvy, so it’s conceivable he figured a way around the monitoring.”
“But we didn’t see any clean spots on the Teevs of the other missing people, did we?” Which meant no apparent connection.
“Wait until you hear the rest.” Hammer pulled his chair closer and leaned forward, his voice lowering. “Standard protocol is to secure any Teev database related to a crime scene and bring it in before it gets stolen or compromised, but while the boys tore into his apartment and you and Garrett questioned his family and neighbors, I had a little time on my hands, so I checked out his Teev and found three clean spots, each a week apart. I immediately disconnected it from the projector and put it in with the evidence.” He paused and took a breath. “The team had bagged his iTeev already at the Fountain, so I couldn’t see if there were clean spots on it too—there ended up being none—but the point became moot when I got back here and couldn’t find any indication of a clean spot on his Teev. Not one single second was unaccounted for.”
Understanding came like the jab of a knife. “Between Henderson’s and here, someone tampered with his Teev database.”
“Impossible—I had it the entire time, and it was off. It could have only been accessed remotely through the Teev connection itself when I turned it on here.”
Jaxon didn’t know how to respond to that. Though the CORE had access to records of all Teev usage, it was generally assumed the information would only be accessed if online actions or searches determined a person might be involved in seditious acts. But what would it mean if someone erased the information that a now-deceased Teev user had gone incognito?
“Of course, I thought there had to be a mistake.” Hammer sat back, leaving Jaxon more space. “But I was sure enough about what I saw that I ended up doing an entire diagnostic on both the software and hardware, calling in several favors from people I know in the industry. The diagnostic just finished, and I expected to see signs of tampering—anything at all. But there was nothing. So I was about to make an addition to my report saying I’d been wrong when I realized the time I’d turned on the Teev at Henderson’s was also missing from the logs. It now registers during that time as being off, but I know I turned it on. That means someone changed the record and deleted that time, and if they did that, they must have deleted the record of the clean spots as well.”
Jaxon couldn’t help coming to the same conclusion. “But why would anyone delete clean spots? I mean, I could see if it had been Henderson while he was alive, making sure he wouldn’t be caught, but why would someone go to the trouble of hacking in to hide a clean spot on the Teev of a dead man? It’s not like we could ever discover where Henderson had been.”
“Not yet, we can’t. But one of the programmers I talked to said it was theoretically possible. I mean, they’re employed by the CORE to make sure everything is recorded, which means they had to learn how to create clean spots before they could prevent them. My thought is if we had a device that could prevent a Teev from accepting commands from the feed, no matter where they came from—so no one could remotely delete the clean spots—I could try out the mirroring technique my contact talked about.”
Jaxon’s excitement dimmed. “That’s an awful lot of ifs.”
“There is that.”
“Let’s add one more. If we could come up with a device, we’d still have no way to prove there’s a connection until . . .”
“Until the next person goes missing.”
They stared at each other for a long moment without speaking.
“Let’s think about this and talk later,” Jaxon said.
Hammer came to his feet. “All right, but I’ve decided to leave it all out of my official report. For now.”
Jaxon raised his brows. “I’m not asking you to do that.”
“I know.”
Hammer turned to go, but Jaxon stopped him. “Look, there’s one more thing.”
“Yes?”
Jaxon opened a drawer on his desk and pulled out a data square. “I have some names, and I want to run them through the database without the search being flagged.”
“Flagged?”
“Is there a way? Internally, I mean. Here at division. I’m not talking blind spots or the like, which wouldn’t get us past the firewalls anyway. I just mean a way to maybe go in the back door and check a few names without the search being connected to us. You’re good with software. Do you know a way?” Jaxon explained about the five classmates from Colony 6 turning up dead and the names Reese had written in her old sketchbooks. “I just want to know how many are still alive.”
Hammer looked uncomfortable. “You’re thinking this could be related to the attack and the receptor with Reese’s image.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Hammer blew out a long breath before taking the data square. “Yes, I can do it, and it’s not even illegal but not exactly protocol.”
“I know. Thanks, buddy. I’m meeting with Reese tonight and some others from Colony 6. Do you think you can check the names before then?”
“Why not? I’ll do it now. It’s not like I have any evidence from the Henderson case to process.” Hammer strode to the door.
“I owe you one!” Jaxon called after him.
He watched his friend leave, but the big man didn’t shut the door behind him. Jaxon understood why as Garrett appeared in the doorway.
“Owe him one?” Garrett asked, smiling a greeting.
“He’s checking some names for me. I’ll let you know if it’s anything that pans out. It’s probably a dead end.”
“Like all the others, huh? Well, something’s got to break soon.” Garrett took Hammer’s vacated chair, sitting back and extending his feet with a sigh, his hands resting on his abdomen. “So how are you feeling? You look better than when you came in this morning.”
“I do feel better. It’s just a little cut.” He pushed gently on the bandage at the top of his forehead.
“And Reese? You hear from her today?”
“Yeah. She’s worse off than me, but she’ll be back on Monday.”
“Good. Look, that receptor Hammer found is a worry. But I’m thinking it’s connected with the Underground here, or the Kordell Corp in Estlantic. I’ve been researching the company since you told me about Reese’s connection with them. They’re really bad news. Everything we already knew about them seems to be only the surface of what they’re involved in. At least according to rumor. Besides the guy Reese helped send to enhancement, there hasn’t been enough proof for any action against them.”
Which was strange, given the tight control the CORE had on businesses. They had dismantled more than one company during Jaxon’s time in Estlantic simply because they were growing too large. “Any sign of KC in Amarillo city? Because I sent messages to all my contacts, but nothing’s turned up.”
“Nothing for me either. Which is why I also suspect our local Underground, especially since right before the attack you were trying to find that girl Reese drew.”
“How would either of them get that receptor? They’d need someone on the inside.”
Garrett frowned. “Don’t worry. Between the two of us, we’ll figure it out.”
With everything that had gone on, Jaxon hadn’t told him yet about the sketch Reese had made from the girl’s memory, but he needed to if his partner would be of any help. “Look, there’s something else, but I want to keep it under wraps until I know if it’s a real lead.”
“Oh?”
Jaxon swept both hands across his desk and up, bringing his Teev holo feed back to life. “I need to show you this.” A couple taps brought a copy of the image Reese had drawn of the Special Forces dumping the body.
“What’s this?” Garrett said, heaving himself
to his feet and stepping closer to the desk.
“Reese drew it after talking to the girl. It’s what she might have seen.”
“No wonder you were so hot on finding the kid. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jaxon had never lied to his partner before, and he trusted Garrett with his life, but this involved Reese’s ability—and by extension, his own. That made it all new territory for them. Maybe this time a half-truth would be enough. “I wanted to check it out first. It could be a lie. The uniforms could be fake. I just don’t want to get everyone here upset without reason.”
“They’ve got to be fake,” Garrett said, leaning forward for a better look.
“Probably. The girl is connected to El Cerebro and the Underground, so they might have put her up to describing dumping the body.” This part was the lie, because he believed Reese had sketched the image from the kid’s mind. “And as you said, they could be behind the attack on us last night.” He paused a few seconds before adding, “We have to find out before whoever it is takes another run at Reese.”
“You like her, don’t you?” Garrett’s sharp eyes didn’t miss much.
“She was my best friend during a difficult time,” was all Jaxon was willing to say. Garrett knew he was from Colony 6, of course, but Jaxon hadn’t talked much about that time.
“Well, I don’t know what she was like before, but she’s grown up quite nicely.”
Jaxon vividly recalled how he’d wanted to kiss Reese at her aunt’s. “Believe me, I’ve noticed.”
Garrett laughed. “Good. It’s about time.”
“What about you? You ask that girl out from the restaurant yet?” Jaxon still worried about his partner, who had been digging himself out of a depression for the past six months since his ex-wife married a banker five years younger, twenty pounds lighter, and completely bald.
“Not yet, but I’m close.” Garrett patted his substantial belly. “You can tell I’ve been eating there far too often.”
“Why don’t we go there now?” Jaxon said, closing his holo display and standing. “It’s past lunch time.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
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