Cyber Genius (31 page)

I gaped, strode after the talking metal frame, and tried to
process. Graham couldn’t have an intercom in here. He had to be right here,
speaking to me
in person
. The spy in
the attic was out in public!

I assumed he was actually speaking for someone else’s
benefit, since I didn’t care if privileged patients learned how it felt to go
hungry. I glanced around and saw a couple of salmon-coated workers heading our
direction.

I was having a hard time grappling with the knowledge that
Graham had actually emerged from his techno-cocoon to help me. My brain was a
little slow from shock, but it caught up.

“Room 1140 will complain when he sees that diet,” I said,
flipping pages authoritatively for the benefit of our audience. “Let’s get this
over.”

We rolled the tray rack into the freight elevator as soon as
the doors opened. They closed without alarms screaming.

“Security could be waiting when we get off,” I murmured,
trying to see around the rack concealing my nemesis. Graham wasn’t exactly
invisible in any setting. He needed to stay between the tall rack and wall just
to conceal his conspicuous height.

“I
am
security,”
he murmured back, sending a thrill up my spine. I do love a man with authority
who knew how to use it.

“Mrs. Stiles didn’t think you were,” I reminded him, trying
to keep my attitude while my hormones were reacting to his proximity.

“Louisa only knows what she’s been told. And she’s one of
the reasons I don’t want my cover blown, so let’s try to play this safe. Our
patients are due to be dismissed in the morning.”

I wasn’t lonely anymore. And my hunger wasn’t for food.
Graham was the only man who could distract me with just the sound of his voice.
Knowing that he came to help me gave me a thrill beyond the physical. I wasn’t
used to having reliable back-up. Grasping that I wasn’t out here on my own
would take a while, but I liked the way it felt.

We emerged in a hushed corridor of closed suite doors.
Uniformed security watched us pass without question. I didn’t dare ask Graham
how he had arranged that. As he’d said, he got paid the big bucks because he
had the big connections.

Unlike hospitals I was familiar with, no weeping relatives,
screaming patients, loud TVs, or chattering nurses broke the smothering
seclusion of this private floor. I wanted to rattle aluminum pans and wake
everyone up, except our rack contained carefully wrapped and arranged china on
heating trays.

“Where’s a little fish poison when it’s needed?” I muttered,
consulting my useless clipboard while Graham located the suite we wanted.

I sure hoped Graham had picked the same suspect I had
anyway. It wasn’t as if he’d acknowledged any of my messages. But we’re both
pretty biased against Paul Rose supporters, so I hoped he’d connected the dots.

He knocked politely on a closed door. At a murmur from
inside, I opened the double doors and let the rack roll in. I still couldn’t
see Graham, just his blue scrubs through the shelves. If anyone noticed, they
ought to be suspicious about the rolling frame in a private room, but no one
appeared to complain. Security had to be watching... but if Graham was actually
working undercover security... Wow, just wow.

Feeling truly empowered for a change, I turned my attention
to the patient in the bed. This wasn’t a simple cot but a large, adjustable
mattress. It sat up like any hospital bed except it had a lovely desk that
could be rolled across the patient’s lap.

The last picture of Bob Stark, Macro’s financial officer,
I’d seen had shown a short, balding, rotund man. I couldn’t tell his height
from his sitting position. He was still hair-challenged. But judging by the
space between his desk and his belly, he’d lost a few pounds. He glanced
eagerly at the food tray, so I assumed he was still a good eater despite the
poisoning incident.

Graham remained ominously silent. Despite his prior
diplomatic life, he wasn’t precisely a people person these days. That made this
my show. How the hell did I get this guy to talk?

“Hello, Mr. Stark. How are you feeling today?” I casually
walked to the side of the bed and removed the bell pull from his reach. I took
his laptop off his desk as if I, indeed, intended to feed him. “We need to
talk, if you’d like to put your phone down for just a minute.” I snatched his
very nice smart phone from his hand.

While he shouted a protest, I glanced at the phone screen. A
line of calls to several local numbers without names. I switched on
record
and handed it off to Graham
behind my back. I was hoping the phone numbers were evidence and the recording
legal, but mostly, I wanted answers.

“Those aren’t very nice words,” I told him when he stopped
cursing and started to climb out of the bed after his precious phone. He was
wearing starched blue pajamas. How cute.

He grabbed for me. I caught his arm, twisted it, and pinched
my fingers into the pressure point at his elbow, nearly bringing him to his
knees. Then I shoved him back in the bed. I’d brought down bigger men. This one
was still too weak to put up a fight. “Talk is all I want to do. Unfortunately,
that isn’t all you did to Wyatt Bates, is it?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He rubbed
his arm and glared but he wasn’t stupid enough to think he could overpower me.
This was a man accustomed to paying others to do his dirty work for him. He
yanked his covers back over his designer pajamas. “Who are you?”

“I’m usually just an observer, but mostly, I seek the truth.
Wyatt Bates had a creative mind, but he wasn’t particularly smart, was he?” I
liked to lead my victims down the garden path until they were so lost in the
maze, they panicked.

“Why are you asking me? He didn’t get poisoned. I did. Are
you saying he was the one who poisoned us?” His gaze shifted from the window to
the door, as if hoping Superman would rush to the rescue. The tray rack nicely
blocked the doors and this was the top floor. No one was entering without heavy
weapons or a helicopter.

“I’m thinking initially, Henry Bates poisoned everyone.”
Unwittingly
went unsaid. I just liked
seeing the shock on his face.

He looked upset enough not to have known. “You’re kidding
me! Henry was a straight arrow. Why the hell would he do that?”

“Because Wyatt tricked him into it. You didn’t know that?” I
really wanted the timeline here, but I didn’t have a lot of experience at
interrogation.

“Wyatt was Henry’s brother! Why would he poison him?” He was
shocked, all right, but he was frowning in thought and still not looking me in
the face. Starks was not a stupid man. He knew more than he was saying.

“I’m waiting for you to tell me,” I said casually, “Or I’ll
have to call the cops and let them ask the questions.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Get out of here or I’ll yell for the
nurse.” He crossed his arms over his plump chest and looked like an angry bald
elf.

“You do realize that Wyatt is lying in a pool of blood back
in MacroWare’s conference room, don’t you?” I asked, watching his reaction with
interest.

He flinched. “Wyatt? Why would anyone kill that overgrown
puppy?”

He was a very bad liar. And he’d quit threatening to yell
for the nurse as proof. “You know why, don’t you? I’m guessing the police won’t
let you go too far.” I sat at the foot of his bed and tried to look helpful.
“If you’ll just give me the bare details, I’ll arrange to have your accomplices
rounded up before you get out of here. Less retaliation that way, don’t you
think?”

He turned on his side to reach beneath his pillow.

Graham broke cover and probably broke Stark’s arm in the
process.

Stark screamed as if he’d been stabbed and struggled to
escape Graham’s grip. Undeterred, Graham strong-armed the patient off the bed,
letting Stark dangle in the air while I removed a pistol from under the pillow.
Nothing said paranoid like a gun in a hospital bed.

Despite the screams, no one came running. Nice soundproofing
or Graham had paid everyone to disappear. Given that I’m not in favor of
violence, that last possibility was a little discomfiting.

“Shame on you. Weapons aren’t allowed in here!” I said in a
tone reserved for naughty schoolboys as I snatched the gun.

I hated guns, but I knew how they worked. This was just a
small semi-automatic. I removed the bullets and flushed them down the toilet. I
stuck the empty pistol in the back of my skirt, beneath my jacket.

Graham growled unhappily at my disarmament—he would have
liked me to hold a gun on Stark, but I’d seen too much blood in my lifetime to
consider spilling more.

Reluctantly, my personal bodyguard played nice and dropped
our patient back to the bed. Graham’s Hulk performance was almost as erotic as his
James Bond diamond-cufflink routine. He needed to go back to hiding behind the
rack so I could keep my head focused.

Stark yanked the covers around him and glared at the
towering, broad-shouldered “kitchen worker” who’d so easily manhandled him.
Graham wore a cute paper hat over his distinctive thick black hair. He had it
pulled half way down his forehead to hide the burn scars. His blue smock
couldn’t conceal the muscular build he worked hard to maintain.

“Don’t mind Tommy,” I said cheerfully, warmed by Graham’s
scowl. “He’s just here to make certain I don’t hurt anyone.”

I thought I heard Graham snort, but maybe I imagined it.
“Now, back to the subject—why don’t you just tell us what you know and let us
take it from there?”

Graham crossed his bare arms over his massive chest and
glowered more fiercely. Stark shrank back against his pillows. Amazing how
cowardly the Wizard of Oz was once he was exposed.

“I’m only the numbers guy,” Stark protested weakly.

“Who sold all his MacroWare stock right after the hole in
the beta program was reported,” I added, so he knew we weren’t bluffing. Much.
“Insider trading.”

My knowledge deflated his arrogance, and he sighed in defeat.
“They were supposed to patch the breach at the first hint of discovery, but no
one expected
Stiles
to find out first!
In just one day, he’d dug out a list of people involved and wanted canned. The
stupid ass didn’t care that mass firings almost guarantees the media would pounce.
Stiles wouldn’t listen to reason.”

Looking overwhelmed and gray—my guess was that Stark really
hadn’t recovered his health—he glanced longingly at the phone Graham had shoved
in his smock pocket. Graham faded back behind the tray rack again, out of reach.

If I knew him at all, he was performing magic with the
phone’s insides. I hoped he didn’t mess with the recording. Just in case, I set
Tudor’s to record. I held it up and said “Record” aloud so I could say he’d
been warned. I didn’t think Stark was really connecting to reality, but that
was his problem.

At my steely glare, Stark sighed. “After Stephen learned
about the leak in the beta program, Henry admitted that he’d had it created to
measure how the program was being used,” Stark said. “The company was anxious
to get the new release right. The government was threatening to take bids on Peanut
machines instead of ours if we screwed up the new system. We’d lose half our
customers and most of our profit if they switched to Peanut instead of MacroWare.
We couldn’t afford to take the hit.”

“Right,” I said, wanting to get past the obvious. “And since
the government that you love to hate started getting cranky about mortgage and
banking fraud as well, your personal stress levels had already skyrocketed and
you couldn’t take more, right? So you thought you’d use that handy hole for
more than market analysis.” Brick by brick, I built my cynical case. I hope the
cops appreciated this when we handed the phones over.

He shrugged and looked unrepentant. “My family’s mortgage
firm hasn’t done anything illegal. The financial committee’s legislation is simply
government harassment. We just wanted to know which way the wind blew so we
could act accordingly. If Henry was helping Wyatt make government contacts, why
shouldn’t my family get a little benefit?”

Ha, he’d just admitted what I’d suspected. This was no
criminal mastermind, just a greedy man who protected his own—even if it meant
screwing everyone else. Had to love that attitude.

“To clarify—” I said with only a touch of sarcasm. “You
needed to know when to sell off all your underwater loans to government
entities before they went bad, got that. The spyhole into the banking committee
was just a security measure.”

“My family doesn’t make bad loans,” he said stiffly. “It
would be bad business.”

“No, you just offer loans as favors to good buddies; I
totally understand. So instead of just sending the holy software—” Sarcasm
laced my tone. “—to beta testers, you arranged for the beta program to go to
banking committees, the
NSA
, and who
knows who else.”

“I did not authorize giving the program to anyone in the
NSA,” he said stiffly.

Interesting. More fingers in the pie, but I’d already known
that. Rose’s cabal wouldn’t miss a lucrative opportunity like a spyhole. “How
did Wyatt Bates fit into the picture? He’s little more than a software
distributor, but the mortgage your family gave him is seriously underwater.”

Stark put on his stubborn face. “He’s a good company man
with a good salary who needed a mortgage, and he was Henry’s brother. Henry
simply suggested that Wyatt use Goldrich like everyone else in the company. My
family gives favorable terms to MacroWare employees because they know we pay
well.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “I’ve seen the numbers. You
loaned more than they could possibly pay, collecting
interest
in the form of favors. Again, I understand, so let’s not
be coy. Spell it out for me in simple words. Did Stiles know that you asked
Wyatt to give
government entities
beta programs containing a spyhole?”