“When did you notice?” Scout asked.
“You have any friends?” Moms asked.
“I got you guys,” Scout said.
Everyone glanced at each other nervously.
Scout shrugged. “I’m what you call antisocial.”
“You’re not antisocial,” Doc said. “You wouldn’t have come to the door that first day if you were.”
“My shrink says I am,” Scout said with a laugh.
“He wouldn’t if you weren’t conning him,” Doc said.
Scout gave an evil little grin. “Isn’t that what antisocial is?”
“Antisocial is when you con yourself,” Doc said.
Moms closed the computer lid and tossed the damp towel from around her neck onto the mahogany table.
Scout snatched up the towel. “Miss Lilith would have a fit.”
“See,” Doc said triumphantly, pointing with steepled fingers. “You have empathy for Miss Lilith’s table. Not antisocial. You’re smart and conscientious and trying to survive in what is an alien environment for your personality.”
“More alien than ever,” Scout said as she folded the towel.
Eagle came into the library, his tour on over-watch coming to an end.
“And you’re resilient and can function under stress,” Doc added.
“Well, don’t tell anyone,” Scout said. “I got a rep and I got to live here long after you guys are gone.”
For a long moment everyone got quiet because there were no words to erase what to them was a brutal truth.
“Roland, over-watch,” Nada finally said, because no matter how tired, how fried from action the team was, someone always had to provide security, and Roland would be good for several hours before he came down off the firefight high.
Roland tossed the M-240 over one shoulder as if it were a broomstick and went up one of the two staircases. Which prompted Doc to start arguing with Eagle about which staircase actually was the most efficient to get upstairs to over-watch. Eagle won that one easily by pointing out it would be the one Roland hadn’t taken.
CHAPTER 21
Debbie Simmons woke to the sound of someone pounding on her door.
She found a short terry cloth wrap she used for the complex pool and put it on. The last time she felt this bad it had involved tequila and a bachelorette party. She’d sworn off both after that night: tequila and brides, but unfortunately not vodka. She went to the door and peered through the peephole.
Black suits, dark sunglasses, blank faces. Government, no doubt. Her stomach tightened.
She opened the door, worried and feeling naked and realized that she practically was because the wrap usually covered at least a bikini and it was almost transparent. She couldn’t tell where the men were looking because of the sunglasses, but one of them brushed past her, grabbed an afghan off the back of a chair, and draped it over her shoulders.
So they were looking, but they were gentlemen.
“Debbie Simmons?” one of them asked, as if they might have come to the wrong apartment, but they had an air about them that indicated they didn’t make such mistakes.
“Yes?”
The man who’d asked flipped open a leather wallet briefly showing her a badge, then flipped it shut faster than she could read the ID card below it. “We’re with the government.”
“Is it about the grant?” Simmons asked. A girl had to try.
“No.”
“Is it about that guy who picked up the hard drive?” A girl had to give up in the face of the inevitable.
“Yes.”
Holding the afghan tight around her, Simmons flopped down in a chair and pointed at the narrow couch. The two men sat in unison. They removed their sunglasses also in perfect unison, as if they practiced it. Simmons blinked, not sure she was seeing what she was seeing. The one who’d done the talking and flashed the badge had a solid black left eye, the socket surrounded by scar tissue. He must have been used to the surprise because he reached across his body with his right hand and tapped his left arm, making a metallic sound. “I got a deal on the prosthetics. Black was all they had in stock for the discounted eyes in the package deal.”
Was that supposed to be funny? Simmons wondered.
“So, Ms. Simmons—” Black Eye began, but she interrupted, trying to level the playing field.
“Doctor Simmons.” She usually wasn’t a stickler on that, and technically it hadn’t gotten final approval from the board, but she was half-naked and had just woken up and had a wicked hangover. A person had to hold on to something because she knew this was going to get bad.
Black Eye leaned forward, placing his hands, real and fake, on his knees. Shrink, Simmons thought. That was the universal empathy pose they used. He probably wasn’t even aware he was giving himself away with the movement. Simmons crossed her legs and tucked them underneath her in the chair, then crossed her arms, the universal I don’t want to talk about what you want to hear pose. She stared at him across a wilting hibiscus on the table. He seemed to read her as easily as she’d read him and leaned back on the couch. “Doctor Simmons, my name is Frasier, and good luck on final approval from the board. About the other day with the Courier picking up the hard drive? Can you tell me what happened?”
She succinctly covered the encounter.
The guy who wasn’t a shrink pulled out a small notepad and began writing. Simmons saw a big gun nestled in a shoulder holster and realized the notepad was a charade. He’d wanted her to see the gun. This was going to get very bad.
“And your professor? When was the last time you saw her?” Frasier asked.
“Four days ago. The dean says she’s on sabbatical.”
The two men exchanged glances and Gun Guy wrote something in his notebook.
“The professor’s report is incomplete,” Frasier said. “Do you know why?”
She shook her head.
Frasier got up and went to the sink and brought her a glass of water. She noted it was in his artificial hand, which seemed to be capable of full articulation. You had to look very hard to see it wasn’t real, so that was no yard sale on the prosthetics. She was pretty sure he did the eye for effect.
He handed it to her. “What happened to the professor? She’s not on sabbatical.”
Simmons drank some water and cleared her throat. “I don’t know.”
“Do you know why she scheduled the pickup for the drive a week early?”
“No.”
“Did she schedule it?” Frasier asked.
Simmons squirmed in the chair. “No. When I found out she was gone, I followed the instructions in the binder. I scheduled it.”
“Did you, Doctor Simmons?” Frasier asked, indicating he knew the story was incomplete.
“Debbie.”
He smiled and actually seemed like a human being for a moment. She noticed he had very nice teeth. Government health care wasn’t that shabby, was it? Then she looked at the eye and the arm and realized some of the government people really needed good health care given their job. She wanted to smile back but her gums ached, hell, even her teeth ached. Like she hadn’t flossed in three days. And she knew where this was heading.
“Excuse me,” she said and ran to the bathroom. She heaved into the toilet.
“You okay?” Frasier called out.
She stood straight and washed her mouth out. She pulled the afghan tighter around her shoulders; this would all be so much easier if she hadn’t been naked at the start. She looked at herself in the mirror and started to laugh with a manic edge.
“Simmons?”
She realized she was losing it, so she took a towel and pressed it against her face. Slowed her breathing down. Got control. She walked back out. Frasier was standing near the door, a hint of concern on his face. Gun Guy looked like he could care less.