Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan) (14 page)

“You told me to shut up.”

“Did I ever tell you what we used to call you out in Texas?” she snarled.

“You didn’t have to. I heard all about you dubbing me Sucks.”

Breezy as always. The jerk. “Look, Sykes, I don’t do
banter
. Would you just tell me about the case?”

He nodded. “Sure, let’s go inside out of this heat.”

“I’m waiting for my partner.”

He stiffened, staying right where he was. “Oh.”

“I’ve already heard the good news about our partnership,” she said, sounding droll, figuring he was worried about how she’d react to having her partner yanked away from her and this case.

“I had nothing to do with it, Veronica, I swear.”

“As if I really thought you could pull those strings to get him reassigned,” she said with a disbelieving grunt. “I understand the reasoning behind it. But Daniels doesn’t deserve to be totally shut out. He’s an outstanding detective and we can use his help.”

“Agreed. So let’s let him do what he does best while we handle the O.E.P. device evaluations.”

Surprised he’d agreed so readily, she couldn’t help eying him suspiciously. Sykes was being very nice—very agreeable. She didn’t entirely trust that. She’d seen the man work his charm on people, usually getting whatever he wanted out of them, and couldn’t be entirely sure he wasn’t setting her up for something. “What do you want in return?”

“Jesus, woman, you really have a suspicious mind,” he said, sounding half-rueful and half-offended.

“Where you’re concerned, I do. I haven’t forgotten the way you manipulated your way right into the lead position of every damned training exercise in Texas.”

“You just haven’t learned the art of playing nice yet. Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar?”

“Sure. And I asked her why on earth anybody would want to catch flies when it’s so much easier to just swat them,” she retorted.

Laughter escaped his lips, deep and masculine, and despite herself, she found herself warming to the sound.

“Oh.
You’re
here.”

She flinched, hearing her partner’s voice. Daniels had finally returned from parking the car and he looked none too happy to see Sykes sitting with Ronnie, his arm draped across the back of the bench, nearly touching her shoulders.

“Glad you could join us, Snoopy,” Sykes muttered.

Her partner puffed out his chest. Sykes, if anything, sunk a little more comfortably onto the bench beside her.

God, she didn’t need this macho boy garbage. She wasn’t the damn cheerleader torn between the football player and the motorcycle riding stoner. Right now, they were both getting on her nerves tremendously.

“Let’s go,” she snapped, immediately rising to her feet.

She wished she hadn’t. Her equilibrium was off and she swayed. Sykes launched up beside her, putting a hand in the small of her back to steady her. “Easy Sloan.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

“Do you think we should get her a wheelchair?” Daniels asked, his animosity disappearing as real concern took over.

“No way are you putting me in a wheelchair,” she said, not even wanting to consider the possibility of the two of them joining forces against her. “I just stood up too fast. I’m fine. Now let’s go inside and get to work.”

Not sparing either of them another word or glance, she shook off Sykes’s hand, pushed past Daniels, and walked steadily into the building, using every ounce of will she had to avoid letting them know that her entire world was spinning just a tiny bit off its axis.

Although the Tate Scientific Research Center was a secure site, where experiments of a top secret nature were performed, security wasn’t too bad. It only took a few minutes to go through the metal detectors, explain a few resulting beeps, show her I.D., tell who she was and why she was here, then she was through.

Sykes and Daniels were still jumping through the hoops, at two different ends of the security checkpoint, as if they couldn’t even stand to be in the same line together. She’d have thought it would be an easy matter for Sykes to come back in, since he’d obviously been here a while, but they made him go through the whole procedure again.

For the first time since she’d found out, she decided it was probably a good thing Daniels had been temporarily reassigned while she worked with Sykes on this case. Cops were used to having one partner. They trained that way, to work as a pair, to think as a pair. Throwing a third person in the mix was a professional triangle she didn’t want to tackle.

As far as a personal one? Well, that she didn’t even want to consider in the realm of possibility. Daniels was her partner, friend, and surrogate big brother, sometimes seeming like a pseudo replacement for the two she’d lost. Sykes was a cocky competitor who attracted her and confused her too much for her own good. So both of them were best steered-clear of.

Steering clear, of course, was impossible. She needed them both. While she was less than 100% well, she couldn’t possibly rely on her senses and judgment alone to examine the data from the murder victims’ downloads or O.E.M. chips. Sykes had to be involved. Yes, she’d rather just keep working with Daniels, but he wasn’t trained the way Jeremy was. So if she wanted to be involved with this case, it didn’t seem like she had any other choice. She
had
to work with Sykes.

Still, she mentally reaffirmed her decision to call on Daniels whenever she could, both because it was the right thing to do, and because she knew she could count on him. This case might be important to the O.E.P., but it was also important to the D.C.P.D. And while computer imaging and high-tech video capture might help, nothing beat good old-fashioned detective work, and Mark Daniels was the best detective she knew.

Not waiting for them, she walked toward the reception desk, a broad expanse of black marble which extended across the entire width of the lobby. Several uniformed workers stood behind it—security guys and administrative types—and they all smiled pleasantly as she approached. She hadn’t even reached it, though, before she heard someone calling her name.

“Detective Sloan!”

All those people behind the reception desk snapped to attention, their vague smiles becoming wide, their obsequiousness undeniable. The boss had arrived, stepping out of a nearby elevator as if he were Jesus coming down from heaven in a boxcar.

“You poor dear, I heard about what happened, what on earth are you doing here, child?”

Phineas Tate, looking like a skinny, overprotective grandfather, hurried to her side.

“I’m fine, sir, thank you.”

He shook his head, tutted and clucked over her, insisting on pulling her hair out of the way so he could see her wound. He poked and prodded, clucking a little. Christ, she felt like she had when she was a kid and her mom would spit on a napkin to clean her face.

“I still can’t believe you’re here when you should be home in bed.”

“I really am okay. We have a case to solve, Dr. Tate, and it would take a lot more than a whack on the head to keep me from solving it.”

“Well said,” he told her with an approving nod. When Sykes and Daniels joined them, he greeted them both by name.

“Good to see you, sir,” said Sykes, extending his hand. “I’ve just come from Detective Sloan’s precinct and have the files from the victim’s data dump.”

Ronnie cast him a suspicious look.

“I said I haven’t examined them,” he insisted. “They refused to send them electronically since they’re evidence, so I stopped by and picked them up to bring them here, figuring this is where you’d come first.”

She could probably have accessed the files remotely, though it might not have been technically above-board. And Sykes was all about being above-board…at least, so she assumed. She guessed she would find out for sure in the coming days.

“And you, Detective Daniels,” said Tate, “has any of this excitement caused you to have any second thoughts regarding your involvement in this…experiment?”

“You mean, as a detective?”

“No.” Tate lowered his voice, though no one was nearby and all of Tate’s staff were busy trying to look occupied. “I mean as an implantee.”

Daniels shook his head once. “Not a bit. In fact, after Ronnie was attacked the other night, I sent over my own downloads in case the device caught anything my eyes missed.”

“I know. Thank you for that. We did have an in-house person look at them and he found nothing.” Tsking, Tate turned to lead them toward the bank of elevators. “Do you have any other leads?”

Daniels shook his head, taking up the rear as they entered a huge, mirrored elevator. “Like I told Ronnie, our friend’s a damn ghost. I don’t know how he’s getting around without being seen.”

“I can’t stop thinking about those old tunnels,” Ronnie murmured. “They were supposed to be completely demolished during reconstruction. But you know, it’s always possible there could still be access to one. There’ve been stories about secret tunnels involving the White House and the Metro system going back to the Truman era, maybe they overlooked something. ”

Her partner nodded. “Right there with ya. I’ve requested another meeting with Jack Williams, of the Phoenix Group, of course he hasn’t called me back. I also have a call in to the lead architect in charge of the White House and he’s even harder to reach. But I’ll keep pushing until I’ve got everything they have on the project.”

“Are they stalling?” Tate sounded shocked.

She found that refreshing, that someone could still be surprised about the ass-covering that went on in a situation like this one. Tate obviously lived in his lab and didn’t know a whole lot about how the real world worked.

Daniels merely smirked. “Like an old gas-guzzler on the freeway.”

“That’s shameful,” Tate said.

“Maybe they didn’t overlook anything,” Ronnie mused. “Just because they
said
the tunnels would be destroyed—because that’s the way the public demanded it—doesn’t mean it’s what actually happened. They could have secretly rebuilt one or more of them.”

The government was all about secrets these days. She could definitely see that happening. The country didn’t want the reminder of how vulnerable they’d been; but since the president would never actually live in the White House, mightn’t the CIA, the Secret Service, or somebody have fought to preserve the historically significant pre-10/20/17 tunnels? Not just for security, but perhaps as some weird, twisted kind of memorial to be used sometime in the future.

She could almost see it as a tourist attraction.
Here, ladies and gentleman, was where a team of terrorists detonated the first high-tech device; the one that turned the Oval Office into a round pile of cement and rebar, burying President Turner and three members of his cabinet.

Yeah. That’d bring in the lookie-loos.

“That would certainly explain how a head could have remained out of sight for twenty-four hours,” Sykes speculated. “And how our unsub could be getting in and out without anybody knowing about it.”

Daniels for once seemed to agree with Sykes. “I’ve pulled maps of the old tunnel system—it woulda been easy for somebody to get out and blend with the crowd pretty quickly on the 4
th
.”

“Perhaps I can assist you,” said Tate. “If the lead architect is not being forthcoming, I can put in a call to the president. I imagine he would know the truth of the matter and order the full details of the reconstruction be made available.”

Daniels, eyes wide and more than a little impressed, slowly nodded. “Uh, yeah, if you could do that, I’d appreciate it.”

“Let’s go up to my office and I’ll call right now.”

When they reached the private floor on which Tate’s offices and personal labs were located, they all followed the scientist out of the elevator. Just as she’d been the first time she’d come here, she found herself a little turned-off by the obvious grandeur and opulence of the place. Though a high-tech scientific facility, the center boasted some incredible décor that seemed like it would be more appropriate for a gallery or a five-star hotel.

She spotted several pieces of artwork, including a few paintings that looked like genuine Monets—stuff people might have actually gotten to see at the National Gallery in the old days. The carpeting beneath her feet was thick enough to sleep on and the entire exterior of the building was glassed so walking down the hallway toward Tate’s office felt like being inside a fishbowl big enough to be seen from space.

There was tasteful, and then there was overdone. This place went a tiny step beyond overdone, venturing into pretentious territory, and she strongly suspected Philip Tate had been the one responsible. Phineas just didn’t seem like the type who’d give a damn what hung on the walls as long as he had the best electron microscope in the world. 

Inside Tate’s office, Ronnie stood in a comfortable seating area, eschewing the plush leather couch. She felt a little too much like a guest and what she wanted was to forget about all the trappings and get into the lab. Still, this side trip would serve one purpose. Neither she nor Daniels had said anything out loud, but they both knew that Sykes’s presence here meant there really was no legitimate excuse for him to stay, other than to serve as her chauffeur. And she could just as easily call for someone from the precinct to come up and get her. Or, hell, cab it. So Tate helping her partner get an entrée to do more detective work would be an excellent note upon which they could split up for now.

She, Sykes and Daniels all watched, ears open and mouths closed, as Tate sat behind his desk and reached for the handset of his video phone. He pushed a button.

Twenty seconds later, a face appeared on the monitor.

Holy shit. The guy really
did
have the president of the United States on speed dial. That was him, wearing a T-shirt and a golf cap, having a video conference with Dr. Tate. Bizarre-o.

Their discussion was brief, but cordial. Though she couldn’t hear everything the president was saying from across the room, it was easy enough to make out Dr. Tate’s side of the conversation. He explained the situation, answered a few of the president’s questions, then nodded and hung up.

He laced his fingers together on top of his desk and smiled at Daniels. “You can proceed directly to the Phoenix Group’s offices at your earliest convenience, Detective. The president will make sure that Jack Williams is available to you, and will instruct Williams to bring in any other project supervisors or architects you wish to consult.”

Daniels walked over and extended his hand to the scientist. “Thank you very much, sir, you’ve saved me a lot of legwork.”

The older man shrugged off the thanks. “Partly selfish of me. I want this project to succeed, of course, and will not stand for obfuscation or territorialism blocking this investigation.”

“It won’t,” Daniels promised. Then he returned to face Ronnie. “I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.”

“You gonna be able to play nice without me around to referee?”

He snorted. “Since when do you play nice?”

“Good point.”

“Call me when you’re ready to leave and I’ll swing back up and get you home.”

“That’s not necessary,” Sykes said, “I’ll take her.”

“I brought her up here,” Daniels said, his face reddening a little bit.

“Look, I’m not anybody’s prom date,” she snapped. “I’ll get a damn cab.”

“I’d be happy to have my personal driver on standby to take Detective Sloan wherever she wishes to go,” said Tate, his tone holding the tiniest bit of reproof.

Ronnie thanked the man, shot her partner a last quelling look as he headed for the door, then said, “Okay, where do we work?”

“Let’s go to the lab and meet Eileen,” said Tate. “She’s expecting you and has a work area all set up for you.”

Falling into step on either side of the old man, Ronnie and Sykes pressed him for the latest information on the program. Though this was the first real case either of them had worked, there were plenty of other investigators in other major metropolitan cities, so theirs could hardly be the first one altogether. Hearing that theirs were the first test subjects who’d been murdered wasn’t a huge surprise. So far, the only other cases being worked around the country had included robberies, petty crimes and domestic abuse. A few test subjects had died, but of natural causes, not murder.

“So it appears you two are the only ones working an active murder case,” Tate concluded.

Which just turned up the heat on the stove on which they sat. The pot was already simmering, the longer it took to solve this thing the closer they’d get to boiling over.

“Lucky us,” she mumbled.

“Now,” said Tate as they reached the elevators and he punched the call button, “tell me about this second victim, Agent Sykes. I have been given only the sketchiest of details.”