Part 21 (2/2)

He was staring at a series of injunctions and as he did, he realized that Talia was right; they were extremely technical. It took him a while to figure out that they were injunctions, not just against Bowles, but against InterDome.

Someone hadn't liked an investigation that Bowles had been conducting.

Several someones in fact.

He had thought there might be a couple of people who wanted Bowles dead. He just hadn't expected there to be so many of them.

And he hadn't even gone through the nonhara.s.sment, nonstalking, noninjunction cases. ”We need separate screens,” he said to Talia.

”What for?” She apparently was thinking that he was going off to have another private conversation, leaving her alone again.

”There's too much material here, and we haven't even gotten to the public records. We have to go through all of it.”

”All of it?” Talia asked. She seemed intrigued now.

He nodded.

”You think this stuff is important?”

”Until just now, Van Alen and I a.s.sumed that Bowles's death had to do with our case. But that's closing our eyes to all of this.” He shook his head. ”The woman had more enemies than anyone outside of politics.”

Talia let out a small sigh of relief. ”Does that mean we're safe?”

Flint looked at her, feeling the urge to lie, and realizing that it would do nothing more than make him feel better.

”It means we have a chance at being safe,” he said. ”But let's make sure before we relax our guard, okay?”

Talia flopped back against the booth. She tapped her fingers on the table.

”Okay,” she said, as if this was all his fault.

Which, he suddenly realized, it was.

31.

The Whitford Security offices were housed in one of the newest sections of the dome. The dome had been rebuilt here after a bombing almost three years ago. The building looked new, too, even if it was yet another concrete monstrosity with no windows.

The building had been locked down for most of the afternoon. Street cops and police security bots ringed the building's outside. A handful more guarded the parking lot.

Savita Romey parked her own car on the street in front of the building-if the street could truly be considered in front of the building. Even the building's doors were hard to see. The concrete exterior had some kind of weird paint or surface covering that made it reflect the colors being filtered through the dome.

Since the dome was still in Dome Daylight, the building itself looked yellow and Moon brown with just a hint of the blackness of s.p.a.ce.

”Front door?” she asked one of the street cops. He handed her a small device that she could press her fist into before he answered. The device confirmed her ident.i.ty.

And like a good cop on security detail, he actually looked at the device before he pointed her to a corner of the building.

She thought she had seen the outline of the door near the end of the sidewalk, but his point was nowhere near that faint outline.

Still, she followed the man's gesture, and realized what she'd been seeing as she got closer. What she had taken for the door's outline was really that, an outline etched into the concrete surface. She would wager there were two or three other outlines on other sides of the building.

She'd heard about the idea, but she'd never seen it in practice. Theoretically, a visible door outline at the end of a sidewalk would distract a perpetrator, and give whoever was inside a chance to either get away from him or secure the existing doors.

It wasn't until she reached the building's corner that the door revealed itself. Its outline appeared in the concrete, surprising her by covering the corner itself.

She shoved her fist against the identification node that opened at waist level. Lights revolved around the exterior of the node, a kind of wink-wink acknowledgment that the identification process was working. But if it had been working properly, the door would have opened for her by now. What was really going on was that someone inside had seen her identification and had to approve the opening of the door. Finally the entire corner moved away from her, revealing blackness inside.

For the first time since Nyquist had told her that he wasn't coming with her, she felt uncomfortable. Before she'd been elated that she was working on her own again.

But now she was going into a strange building with a dark interior, filled with angry security personnel. She stopped, turned, and beckoned two of the street cops to join her.

They looked at each other, clearly surprised.

She was about to send a message to them on their links, along with a reminder that the detective controlled the scene, when they both ran toward her.

They were both men, both much larger than she was, although she would have wagered that the man on her left didn't have half of her strength.

”Sir?” asked the one on her right, clearly awaiting instructions.

”It's Detective Romey,” she said, hating the whole sir designation. ”You two are going to back me up. Have someone fill that hole you left in the perimeter.”

The guy on her right started to head back, obviously to tell someone to take his place, when she caught his arm.

”Via your link, Officer . . . ?”

”Zurik,” he said. ”And this is Officer Novello.”

He nodded toward the big guy still standing on Romey's left.

”Pleasure,” she said in a dry tone. She hadn't meant for a full-fledged introduction. ”Just follow me, keep an eye out for trouble, and do what I tell you.”

”Yes, sir,” Zurik said.

”Detective Romey,” she said again. ”Call me sir one more time and I'll put a notation on your record.”

”Yes-” He caught himself before the ”sir.” She could see him try to subst.i.tute ”ma'am” or some other honorific before he settled on-”Detective.”

She nodded once and stepped inside.

The air smelled faintly of mint, which she knew was supposed to have calming properties. She found that interesting. The place was set up like a fortress and designed to repel an attack, no matter how small. The street cops followed her, and the door closed behind them. At that moment, the lights came on full. So the darkness was a twofold security design. It put the guest off balance and it prevented anyone standing outside the building from seeing in and noting the layout.

Paranoid. But smart.

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