Lock In (29 page)

I smiled at this. “You should meet my partner,” I said. “She was an Integrator who didn’t like people being in her head.”

“We would be like magnets,” Bell said. “Either rushing together or pushing apart.”

“Another interesting image,” I said.

“Tell me about my brother.”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“That’s not telling me of my brother, but I’ll allow it,” Bell said. “We spoke the other day. He wishes to spend time with me Saturday afternoon.”

“And will you?”

“Wouldn’t you make time for your family?” Bell asked. “I know how you would answer so you don’t have to.”

“I would make time for them,” I said, answering anyway. “Will you meet him here?”

“Yes, and also he will be with my body,” Bell said. “He still likes to sing to me, to my ears.”

“Will anyone else be there?”

“He is family.”

“So, no.”

“Agent Shane, now is an excellent time to stop making small talk,” Bell said.

“We believe your brother has had his body taken over by a client,” I said. “This client has considerable technical skill and has been able to change the programming of your brother’s neural network in order to trap him and use the body for his own purposes. We believe he means to use your brother’s body to kill you and then kill your brother as well. It will look like a murder-suicide.”

“And you believe this why?”

“Because he’s taken over other bodies,” I said. “In the same way. He and an associate have both done it. The end result has been three dead Integrators.”

Cassandra Bell looked very solemn, the light from the candle suddenly guttering and flickering before resuming a steady glow. “You believe he is possessed already, then.”

“Possessed,” I said, and I realized that it simply hadn’t occurred to me to think of what happened to Johnny Sani or Bruce Skow or Brenda Kees in that way. “Yes. He is already possessed.”

“For how long?”

“We believe since last Tuesday morning at least.”

“Why has it taken you this long to tell me of it?”

“We didn’t know it was possible until yesterday,” I said. “We didn’t think it affected your brother until today. It shouldn’t have been possible. And because it shouldn’t be possible we didn’t pick up on it until now.”

“Is he dead?”

“Your brother? No.”

“I know his body isn’t dead,” Bell said. “I mean
him
. My brother’s soul.”

“We don’t think so,” I said. “We believe strongly that he is alive, but locked in. Unable to speak or communicate to the outside world. Like … well, like us. But without a threep or liminal space or an Agora. And with his body at the whim of another, doing things he would not choose to himself.”

“He would not choose to murder me,” Bell agreed. “You say you strongly believe that he is alive.”

“Yes.”

“Describe the strength of that belief.”

“Strong as iron,” I said. “Strong as oak.”

“Iron rusts. Oak burns.”

“We can’t be certain,” I said. “But from what we know, the person possessed still exists. The person I saw possessed like this still existed after her client left.”

“You said they all died.”

“She died,” I said. “Her client pulled the pin on a grenade before he left.”

“Who are these people?” Bell asked.

“We’d rather not say,” I said. “For your own protection.”

Cassandra Bell’s candle brightened immensely even as the darkness sucked in more tightly around me. “Agent Shane,” she said. “Do not confuse me for a child. I am not damaged, nor am I incapable. I am bringing hundreds of thousands of us to announce ourselves to the world. I could not do this if I were a coddled
thing
. I do not need
protection
. I need information.”

“It’s Lucas Hubbard,” I said.

“Oh,” Bell said. The candle returned to its original state. “Him.”

“You know him.”

“With the exception of you, Agent Shane, I know almost everyone of importance.” Not a brag, just a fact.

“What is your opinion of him?”

“Now, or before I learned that he’s enslaving my brother in his own body?”

I smiled at this. “Before.”

“Intelligent. Ambitious. Able to speak passionately about Hadens when it is convenient and advantageous for him to do so, and when not, not.”

“Standard-issue billionaire,” I said.

Bell fixed me with a stare. “I would imagine you of all people would know not all billionaires are poor humans,” she said.

“In my experience, there are few much like my father,” I said.

“A pity,” Bell said. “When will you rescue my brother?”

“Soon,” I said.

“There are whole paragraphs lurking behind that single syllable,” Bell said. “Or perhaps you merely meant to say ‘soon, but not yet.’”

“There are complications,” I said.

“I won’t ask you to imagine the terror of being locked in, Agent Shane,” Bell said. “I know you know it all too well. What I would ask you is why you would willingly inflict it on anyone else for a second longer than you had to.”

“To save others from that same fate,” I said. “And to punish Hubbard in a way more complete than mere capture. And to keep your brother safe.”

Bell looked at me, stony. “If we move on him this second, we have enough to charge him for and punish him for,” I said. “But he’s not stupid. He’s almost certainly planned for the contingency of being caught. He’s rich and he’s got more lawyers than some countries have people. He’ll tie things up for years, cut deals, and introduce doubt. And the very first thing he’ll do is cover his tracks however possible. That includes getting rid of the single person who can account for every moment of Hubbard’s movements over the last week.”

“My brother,” Bell said.

“Your brother,” I said. “Hubbard’s smart, but his intelligence and ambition are also his blind spot. He believes he’s covered every angle and every contingency. But we propose that there are a couple of angles he can’t see.”

“Because they are in his blind spot.”

“Yes.”

“Promise me my brother,” Bell said.

“I promise you I will do everything I can to save him,” I said. “I promise we will do everything we can.”

“Now tell me how you plan to capture Hubbard.”

“He intends to kill you,” I said.

“So you say.”

“I think we should let him try.”

Chapter Twenty-three

S
AMUEL SCHWARTZ WAS
not in the least pleased to see us on a Saturday morning but invited us in nevertheless. He sat us in his home office, in front of a desk festooned with pictures of two small children. “Yours?” Vann asked.

“Yes,” Schwartz said, sitting down behind his desk.

“Adorable,” Vann said.

“Thank you,” Schwartz said. “And to forestall the next set of questions, Anna and Kendra, ages seven and five, by way of seminal extraction and in vitro fertilization, the mothers are a married couple of my acquaintance, one of whom was a law school classmate, yes, the children know who I am and yes, I am an active part of their life. In fact I need to be at a soccer game almost immediately. I assume you’re here about Nicholas Bell.”

“Actually, we’re here about Jay Kearney,” Vann said.

“I’ve already talked to your fellow FBI agents about Jay,” Schwartz said. “I’ll tell you what I told them, which is that at no point in our professional or personal relationship did Jay ever reveal or even hint at his plans or his association with Dr. Baer. And as for my whereabouts that evening”—Schwartz nodded toward me—“your associate here can confirm my presence at Marcus Shane’s home that evening. We were at the dinner table when the Loudoun Pharma bombing happened.”

“Our labs tell us Kearney—or Baer—created a car bomb made out of ammonium nitrate,” Vann said.

“All right,” Schwartz said. “And?”

“It’s probably nothing but I’ll note that Agrariot is an Accelerant company. They make dehydrated and frozen food, cattle feed, and fertilizer.”

“Accelerant is a multinational conglomerate that wholly owns or has significant investment in nearly two hundred different companies, Agent Vann,” Schwartz said. “You are correct that it’s probably nothing.”

“Agrariot does have a warehouse in Warrenton,” Vann observed. “Right down Route 15 from Leesburg. And it’s missing several pallets of fertilizer from its inventory. I checked yesterday.”

“Then I hope you informed those associates of yours more directly involved in the investigation,” Schwartz said.

“We have,” Vann said.

“I understand Accelerant made an offer on Loudoun Pharma,” I said.

Schwartz turned to me. “This is the first I heard of it,” he said. “You might not give credence to rumors.”

“I don’t know that it’s a rumor if it comes directly from the CEO,” I said. “I spoke with Mr. Buchold yesterday afternoon.”

“Mr. Buchold was indiscreet,” Schwartz said. “There have been discussions, but nothing serious.”

“I also recall at dinner Lucas Hubbard being pretty negative about what Loudoun Pharma was doing,” I said. “Interesting that he would be considering buying the company now, especially after it’s been turned into a crater.”

“Lucas is interested in keeping jobs in Loudoun County,” Schwartz said. “Loudoun Pharma has products that fit into our portfolio.”

“Sure,” Vann said. “And one that you’d probably like to keep off the market.”

“Neuroulease,” I said, helpfully.

“That’s it,” Vann said. “Don’t want a bunch of Hadens unlocked. That’d cut into the profit margins of a whole bunch of Accelerant’s companies. And you need them cranking out revenue for the next several years at least.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about Neuroulease,” Schwartz said, rising. “Now, as I said, I have a soccer game—”

“Do you know much about Salvatore Odell, Michael Crow, Gregory Bufford, James Martinez, Steve Gaitten, or Cesar Burke?” Vann asked.

“I don’t know these men,” Schwartz said.

“They’re the janitors killed when Loudoun Pharma went up,” Vann said. “They only just managed to get them dug out the other day. They’re doing the memorial ceremony for them today.”

“Right now, just about,” I said.

“That so,” Vann said, to me, and then turned back to Schwartz. “Our med people tell me that a couple of them died when the building blew up, but the rest survived the explosion. They died from being buried under four stories of concrete. Pressed them flat. Crushed.”

“Memorial is closed casket,” I said.

“It would be,” Vann said.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Schwartz said.

“Are you,” Vann said.

“I think that’s all the time I have,” Schwartz said.

“How close are you to Lucas Hubbard?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Schwartz said.

“I mean, I’m remembering at dinner the other night when Lucas asked you a question and you blanked out on the answer,” I said. “Hubbard reached over to reassure you after you blanked and patted your hand. I’m not a slavish follower of gender roles, but that seemed pretty ‘not guy’ to me. You don’t strike me as the sort to need reassurance, and Hubbard doesn’t strike me as the sort to offer it to you. You’re his corporation’s chief lawyer, not his girlfriend.”

“I think you’re reading too much into it,” Schwartz said.

“And there was the moment I was talking to you about your threep, and you looked at me like you had no idea what I was saying,” I said. “Hubbard answered for you then, too. I remember you reading us the riot act when we had Bell in the interrogation room. I don’t think it’s like you to let someone else speak for you.”

“Maybe it wasn’t him not speaking,” Vann said.

“Maybe not,” I said, looking at Schwartz.

“You and I did speak,” Schwartz said. “I remember very clearly in your father’s trophy room we spoke about the fact I was using a woman Integrator.”

“Brenda Rees,” I said.

“She’s dead now,” Vann said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Opened fire at a café and then blew herself up with a grenade.”

“I was there for it,” I said.

“So was I,” Vann said, and motioned to her arm, in its sling. “She shot me.”

“Me too,” I said.

“It’s strange,” Vann said.

“Being shot?” I asked.

“Yes,” Vann said, and pointed at Schwartz. “But I was more thinking about Mr. Schwartz here having two Integrators blow themselves up in the same week.”

“That
is
strange,” I said.

“I mean, what are the odds?” Vann asked me.

“Pretty slim, I’d say.”

“I’d say pretty slim too,” Vann said. “Maybe not as slim as these Integrators being eaten by bears or falling into a wheat thresher. But still, overall, pretty remarkable coincidence.”

“Agent Vann,” Schwartz said. “Agent Shane. We are d—”

“She says you weren’t there,” I said.

“What?” Schwartz said, distracted.

“Brenda Rees,” I said. “She told me that you weren’t there at dinner. She says you were gone.”

“Right at the time Jay Kearney was doing his thing,” Vann said.

“Jay Kearney was integrated with Dr. Baer,” Schwartz said. “Baer said so on that recording of his.”

“Well, no,” I said. “Kearney’s
mouth
said it, and we assume that Baer was speaking it because Baer was in the background. But we have an alternate theory.”

“It goes like this,” Vann said. “You integrate with Kearney and go to Baer’s apartment. He’s expecting Kearney. You drug Baer so he passes out, make the video, shove a knife into his temple, position the threep to make it look like suicide, and then take a quick trip to Loudoun Pharma with Kearney.”

“And are back with us in time for dessert,” I said. “If we had dessert. I wasn’t there for that part.”

“No, because Loudoun Pharma blew up,” Vann said.

“You just accused me of murdering Baer,” Schwartz said.

“Yes,” I said.

“And the six janitors,” Vann said.

“And Jay Kearney,” I said.

“Eight total,” Vann said.

“I’m done speaking to you two,” Schwartz said. “I’m not going to say any more to you without a lawyer. If you plan to arrest me, do it now. Otherwise, get out of my house.”

“Mr. Schwartz, one more word,” Vann said.