Honor (41 page)

“Easy there.” He laughed. “It’s only a party. College football, I guess.”

She looked where he pointed and glimpsed part of someone’s back deck crowded with guests. The bluish light of a television she couldn’t see flickered over their watching faces.

They continued on, matching Beebee’s pace. He stopped now and then to sniff favorite spots, then kept on moving. Orange streetlights came on, but there was nothing warm about their odd glow with so few leaves on the trees to soften it.

The silence seemed to thicken, until the sound of running footsteps behind them made her move closer to Norm. She realized he was on alert too, looking quickly around.

A jogger passed them, white earbuds preventing him from hearing their hello or saying one of his own.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m kind of jumpy.”

Norm sighed. “You have reason to be.”

“I wish I didn’t think so much about—something happening.”

She figured he would understand what she didn’t say. Carol had told her a little about his years on active duty and how long it took after that for him to feel halfway normal.

“I guess it depends. Once you get scared deep down, the feeling stays with you. Doesn’t take much to start it up, either.”

Kenzie nodded. She took his arm and he patted her hand.

“Give it time, Kenzie.”

“How long?”

“I can’t say, not for you. For myself, well—my war ended before you were born.”

C
HAPTER
21

L
inc padded barefoot across the threadbare carpet of his motel room, cup in hand. The new coffeemaker he’d bought worked okay. Throw in a milk cow and a sandwich machine and he’d be set for another day of slogging on his laptop.

Superheroes had all the luck, he thought. Swinging on spiderwebs, saving the day with a few punches, and wrapping it all up in thirty action-packed pages. Plus the love interests tended to be easy to impress. Unlike Kenzie.

He put down the cup and slung his long frame into his chair.

He had to tighten the parameters to keep on searching. Gary Baum had inadvertently given him a tip that should help. SKC upper management was mostly ex-military or former military contractors once deployed overseas, according to the reporter. That meant he could pull up a lot of information.

The Department of Defense issued Common Access Cards to allow authorized military personnel and certain civilians access to its computers and systems worldwide. Whether they were still entitled to use them didn’t matter.

The Active Directory recognized his laptop. It shouldn’t take him too long to get into the mother lode of data—the CAC database—and get to work. Linc had never done it, but he was counting on his high-level security clearance. If he was denied access, he could call Dana Scott and ask her to patch him in.

Gee whiz, Mike Warren would be proud. Linc didn’t have to hack into SKC servers.

Common Access Cards had photos for general ID, so sharp that the eyes on the enlarged original could be matched to an iris scan. They were packed with encrypted data for each holder. And there were a lot of them—he had one—with about three and a half million active and unterminated cards in circulation.

Piece of cake.

He had copied a company phone list from Christine’s computer to obtain names, company titles, and departments. He’d start with Melvin Brody, her boss, and check every name in her department.

Compare names to faces, and faces to the drawing Kenzie and Harry Cowles had come up with. The only part of the stalker’s face she’d seen clearly every time was the guy’s eyes.

Linc found his photocopy of the police sketch and propped it up next to his laptop.

Then he headed into the CAC database and got through the SSL handshake to verify his identity. The security clearance confirmation took longer. That didn’t rely on passwords.

In fifteen minutes, he was in. Linc entered Melvin Brody’s name in the search slot and sipped his coffee.

He looked at the face in the photo. Too old and too heavy. Brody had jowls and a tired look. His eyelids drooped and his eyes were watery blue, with none of the intensity of the sketch.

His bio seemed routine. A stint right out of college in the National Guard, never called up, but then there had been no need. A veteran of manufacturing management jobs around the Midwest, with better titles and salary boosts as the years went by. Married, divorced, no kids. He didn’t live too far from Christine or Kenzie. Employed by SKC since the company was founded at twice the money of his last job. A step up for him.

Linc clicked out of Brody’s file and entered the next name on the phone list for the same department.

Nothing panned out. Not everyone had a CAC card, though. Christine Corelli didn’t. The military connection seemed to be limited to higher-ups.

He decided to do the same thing with them. The problem was that SKC had a lot of chiefs of this and vice presidents of that.

After a few hours of reading dutifully through their data, he was losing hope. Linc checked the phone list. There were only ten top execs left.

His cell phone rang. Restricted number. Linc picked up.

“Linc Bannon.”

His boss said hello in a dry voice. Not Chet. His lady boss.

“Dana! Pleasure to hear from you.”

She ignored his attempt at manly charm. “Do you plan on visiting Fort Meade ever again?”

“Yes.”

“I mean in my lifetime, Linc. It’s been days. Project 25 can’t move forward without your input.”

“Nice to know I’m needed.”

“I don’t have to pat you on the head, you know. I can fire you.”

Linc tried to think of a reasonable, logical way to stall her. There wasn’t one. Dana was smarter than he was anyway. He gave up.

“When do you want me back?” he asked.

“Right now, actually. Don’t forget your pencil case.” Dana hung up.

He walked through a Fort Meade building, feeling somewhat ill at ease. He really hadn’t been gone that long, but the orderliness of the place seemed unfamiliar to him.

Here, he had defined responsibilities and a measure of control over the project he’d been assigned to. In the real world, trying to protect Kenzie and Christine from the crazy who was stalking them both, he had neither.

He took a moment to compose himself before he knocked on the door of Dana’s office.

“Come in.” The voice was distant but authoritative. That was Dana.

Linc put a hand on the doorknob and turned it. “Here I am.”

She peered over the top of her monitor. “Guess what I’m looking at.”

“I don’t know.”

Her finger stayed on a key. He could see the scrolling screen reflected in her eyeglasses. “The ballistics report for those vests. It’s twenty pages long.”

“Is that why you wanted me to come in?”

“That’s one reason,” she conceded. “Also because you are paid to be here. Your permission to work online, outside, is now, um, up for review.”

“You told me to take as much time as I needed.”

“I don’t remember that.”

He was pretty sure she had said something along those lines, but he didn’t want to argue the point. Linc took a seat. “So what did the report say?”

“That some of the SKC vests are faulty. Some are apparently fine. The fiber is different in the faulty ones.”

“Did they figure out why?”

“The chemical analysis isn’t complete. A lot of things can degrade bullet-resistant material. Bleach. Humidity. Ultraviolet light. Age—none of the stuff lasts forever.”

“So I understand.”

“The preliminary conclusion is that some of the fiber was defective to begin with. The problem began with the manufacturer. SKC buys the raw materials in lots. One lot apparently was garbage.”

“Sounds conclusive to me.”

“It isn’t. Not yet. The problem is picking it all apart. There was some debris in the box, by the way.” She looked at him questioningly. “Not vests. Chunky stuff.”

He remembered what he’d thrown in. “That was part of a target dummy. I think there was a bullet in it.”

Dana made a note of that. “I’ll let the lab know. I don’t want anything to compromise the report.”

“Sorry. I just tossed it into the box. My methods are not exactly scientific.”

She raised an eyebrow. “But your suspicions have been confirmed. I’m not sure how you stumbled onto this, but it’s important.”

“That’s why I bothered.” He was leaving Kenzie out of it.

Dana continued. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the vest design per se. The side clasps release as they should. The camo material and webbing straps meet army standards. The problem is figuring out which vests have the defective fiber inside.”

“What about the armor plates?”

“The lab reached similar conclusions, although that’s totally different material. Some—not all—of the ceramic-type armor plates showed microscopic inclusions that could cause them to shatter, even from small arms fire.”

“They’re supposed to protect against rifle shots.”

“Some do.”

She looked at him.

“And some don’t,” he said. “What’s the percentage?”

Dana returned her gaze to the screen. “Remarkably consistent and statistically significant. Fiber or ceramic, the fail rate is about ten percent.”

One in ten. The medic had guessed as much, and so had he.

“So where does that leave us? What can we do?”

“It’s enough to issue an official request for more information. I contacted the right agency.”

“That’s not good enough.”

Dana regarded him calmly. “Do you have a personal stake in this?”

“Maybe.”

She frowned. “Keep it to yourself, please.”

“Will do.”

“You should know that an official letter went out—on our recommendation but not from us. It ought to stop the next shipment.”

Should. Ought
. He didn’t like the qualifiers, but this wasn’t his call. “Good. Thanks. Is that all?”

“Hold it, cowboy. You’re not going back to whatever it was you were doing at the—” She consulted a memo next to her. “At the D-Light Inn. Is that really the name of the place?”

“In neon. The e is missing.”

“Not a chain, is it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I see that it offers hourly rates.” She glared at him. “Linc, this has to stop.”

“Ah, I’m paying by the week.”

Dana pushed aside the laptop. “I’m giving you one more week. After that you are expected to be back in Fort Meade, keeping normal hours.”

“Okay.”

“We’re getting somewhere.”

Kenzie had driven up to Fort Meade to meet him. “Sounds good,” she said absently.

They were in a restaurant. Kenzie had headed straight for the back booth despite the hostess politely trying to guide them to an open table. Linc pretended he was only along for the ride and let Kenzie do what she wanted.

Her instincts were right.

At some point he stopped recounting the story of his meeting with Dana Scott, distracted by the way Kenzie drank through a straw. The cold soda made her lips wet. He fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers.

“Does she know about me?” Kenzie asked, slurping up the last drops.

“Not by name.”

“Good.”

“You wouldn’t have to worry either way, Kenzie. She’s a cool lady.”

“Well, I’m glad to know she’s concerned about the X-Ultra vests.”

“More than concerned. She took the investigation to a level that we can’t.”

“Does that mean we should stop what we’re doing?”

Their burgers arrived. Kenzie extracted a slice of pickle and nibbled on it thoughtfully. Then she helped herself to a french fry.

“Ah, Dana didn’t say that,” Linc hedged.

“Okay. I can keep on risking my life.” She pointed the french fry at him. “That is a joke.”

“Yeah, well—it’s not that funny.”

Kenzie shrugged. “I signed up for this. I’m committed to it.”

“So am I, but—”

She picked up the burger and held it between them like a shield.

“Linc, I know you’d like to take over, but I won’t let you. And you can’t follow me everywhere.”

Kenzie took a big bite. He upended the ketchup bottle and whacked the bottom.

She finished chewing. “You might want to take the cap off.”

“Oh—right.” He did and gave his burger a liberal dollop of ketchup. “The thing is, this guy isn’t giving up.”

“I noticed that.” She finished her meal and he got a good start on his. Several minutes went by before either of them spoke.

“What I meant was—” he began.

She interrupted. “I don’t know what stalked women do. You can’t just kill the guy, right?”

“If your life has been threatened, you can get a permit for a concealed carry.”

“Takes ninety days in Maryland.”

So she’d looked into it. And her comment underlined the fact that she wasn’t going back to her apartment in Virginia. Linc started in on his french fries. He sometimes wondered why he bothered to give her advice.

“Mike will vouch for the threat to you, pull some strings—he’s got your back on this. He can push it through if you decide that’s what you want.”

“I’m not sure.”

A waiter came over and offered dessert menus.

“I’ll have the double chocolate cake,” Kenzie said.

“Coffee for me,” Linc told the man. He watched until the man was out of earshot. “You’re hungry today.”

“Yup,” Kenzie said. “Life is short. I want cake.”

He had to laugh. He waved to a busboy who came over to clear the booth’s table, making short work of the task before heading away.

“Anything else on your mind?” Linc asked.

“Christine had a nightmare.”

“Oh?”

“It was about the accident. She had one before. The details aren’t that clear.”

“Tell me.”

Kenzie looked in her purse and took out a folded piece of paper. “I wrote down what she said. You can share it with Mike if you want.”

She unfolded it and read aloud. “Christine was driving my car. Her hand was covered with blood. The other car came closer. The man behind the wheel had no shirt on. His upper body was covered in tattoos. Twisted black thorns, red drops of blood.”