Alex looked in her rearview mirror. There was a battered green car behind her, old and rusted, a first-generation electric by the look of it. She had seen it in the NJSC parking lot. It must have left at nearly the same time she did. It was following her.
“Alex? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Can you come home as soon as you can? I don’t know what to do.”
“Mom, I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Please, Alex. I know it sounds crazy. But Sandra’s on shift, and I need you. I’ll explain it all when you get here.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t. In fact, I’m not going to be able to call for a while, either. I’m sorry.”
“Where are you?” her mother said. “What’s wrong? Are you in trouble?”
“Listen, when the police call… I didn’t do what they say I did.”
“Oh, Alex. What happened?”
“I have to go. I love you.”
“Alex!”
Alex disconnected. She felt panicky. She needed her father, and he wasn’t there. She didn’t know what her mother was talking about, but she couldn’t think about that right now. She needed a place to go, and a new car, and new clothes.
The green car was still behind her. Whoever it was had no subtlety. Besides which, the little electric wouldn’t be able to keep up with her modern engine if she wanted to lose it. It couldn’t be a cop. She stepped on the accelerator, quickly picking up speed. The green car accelerated, too, but not enough to keep up. Instead, it started honking at her.
She thought for a moment it might be Tequila, but Tequila was driving a rental, a midsized silver sedan. She slowed down again until she could see the driver in her rearview mirror, an obese man in rumpled clothes. It was Ryan Oronzi.
What did he want? He clearly wanted her to stop. Maybe he had some evidence, something that could prove that it hadn’t been her fault. A recording with a good shot of Secretary Falk’s face, for instance. If he wanted to turn her in, he could have done that already. And he was hardly going to overpower her in a fight. The best thing to do was to stop and see what he wanted.
Alex took the Broad Street exit into the city, and the green car followed. She pulled into the first parking lot she saw, a Dunkin’ Donuts. Oronzi claimed the parking spot next to her. He hauled himself up out of the driver’s seat.
She strode around her car to face him. This was the genius of Lakehurst, the man who had invented the Higgs projector. Under normal circumstances, she would have been awed to meet him. Now, she just felt impatient and annoyed. “What do you want?” she asked. “Why are you following me?”
“You’ve seen it before.”
“What?”
“The thing that took over Secretary Falk. I could see it in your face. You’ve seen it before.”
“Are you here to help me? Because if not, I need to go.”
“I want to know what it is. Where it comes from. What it can do.”
This was a bad idea. She was wasting time. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m in a little trouble right now. I can’t just sit down for a little chat over a cup of coffee. The FBI and the Secret Service and the whole US military are probably out looking for me now, so if you don’t mind, stop following me. Just leave me alone.”
She stalked back around toward the driver’s door of her car and wrenched it open.
“I can help you,” Oronzi said.
She stared at him over the car roof. “How?”
“I can make you disappear.”
She gave her head an angry shake. “What are you, international man of mystery? How are you going to do that?”
His eyes narrowed and darted back and forth before coming to rest on her again. “I can. Trust me.”
Alex sighed. She didn’t trust him. Even if he meant what he said, she didn’t know if he could deliver on his promise. But neither did she have any good options of her own. She threw up her hands. “Fine,” she said. “Make me disappear.”
CHAPTER 7
Sandra took the results to Angel first. She messaged him on her way back up I-95, and he met her on the stadium site in the same place they had spoken before. He understood the equations immediately. “Genius,” he said. “Sandra, this is incredible. It all works. What is this, some kind of new technology? A quantum weapon?”
“I don’t know.” She thought about taking credit for the solution herself, but that wasn’t fair. “My father’s a physicist,” she said. “He used to work at the big collider, over in New Jersey. Now he just teaches. He’s the one who figured it out.”
She took Angel along to see her lieutenant, who made a few calls. An hour later, far sooner than Sandra expected, they were ushered by an aide into a nearby building to see the Inspector in charge of the entire disaster scene. The building was an office structure for the sports teams, one of several commandeered by the command staff to run operations. The FBI was on site as well, poking around and applying pressure, but they hadn’t yet taken over. Sandra’s stomach turned over; she had never spoken to anyone this senior in rank.
Inspector Gallagher was a study in black and white. Dark glasses framed a pale face under close-cropped gray hair, and his crisp, white uniform shirt was marked only by the silver leaf insignia of his rank. He invited them to sit, which they did. Gallagher himself did not. He peered down at Sandra with his hands clasped behind his back, and said, “Officer Kelley. I understand you’ve brought some intriguing information to your supervisors.”
“I hope so, sir.”
“Where did you get this information?”
“The raw data came from Angel here. He has a squad of quadcopters that he uses to—”
“I’m familiar with Mr. Gutierrez’s work and data,” Gallagher said. “What I’m interested to know is how you, Officer Kelley, came to be in possession of data that the department has paid Mr. Gutierrez to collect—even before it was submitted to us, I might add—and how you came to the conclusions you did.”
Angel blushed. “She was interested. I thought, since she was police, there was no harm—”
Gallagher raised a hand without looking at him, and Angel closed his mouth. Gallagher’s eyes never left Sandra’s face. “Are you in a relationship with Mr. Gutierrez?”
Now it was her turn to blush. “I only met him last night.”
He stared at her, impassive.
“No,” she said. “No, I’m not in any kind of relationship with him.”
“Do you have any relationship, formal or otherwise, with the Turkish government?”
“What? No!”
“Did you promise anything to Mr. Gutierrez in return for this data?”
This meeting was not going at all how Sandra had envisioned. She had expected, if not praise, at least a pat on the back. The information she brought had the potential to crack the case wide open. “No,” she said. “I made ten minutes casual conversation with him. He sent me the data as a courtesy, and I looked into it out of curiosity. And yes, I admit it, with the hope that maybe I could discover something important, something that would help the case.”
“And did you pass this highly confidential data on to anyone who is not a member of the Philadelphia Police Force?”
“Yes,” she said, not hesitating. I showed it to my father. He’s brilliant at that kind of thing, and I thought he might find something I couldn’t.”
“Did you pass the data to anyone else? Any reporters, perhaps?”
“No! Of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
Sandra felt her respect for this man’s rank slipping away. “I don’t understand what’s going on here. I brought this information thinking you would be pleased. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have shown it to my father without permission, but have you seen his conclusions? It makes sense of the patterns; it may even pinpoint the exact location the explosion originated from.”