Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

“They remind me of spot welds,” she said.

“I thought so as well,” he said. “But I’ve never heard of someone spot-welding a cable before, and it certainly wasn’t attached to anything.”

“Maybe the cutting torch,” she suggested.

“I checked the video,” he said. “Rapunzel cut the cord in one quick move. She held the cable in place with her claw and burned through it with her torch. This section, two feet to the left, was never touched.”

Gamay looked up, intrigued, at least, a bit. “Maybe after Paul is feeling better we can—”

“Gamay,” Dr. Smith said. “We need you to do this.”

“I’m not exactly up for it,” she said.

“Director Pitt talked with the captain this morning,” Smith said. “He wants you looking at this. He knows it’s tough sledding for you right now, but someone’s gone to great lengths to keep us from finding out what happened on that ship, and he wants to know why. These are the only leads we have.”

“He ordered you to make me look at this?” she said, surprised.

Dr. Smith nodded. “You know Dirk. When there’s a job to be done…”

For the first time she could remember, she was actually angry with Dirk Pitt. But, deep inside, she knew he was right. The only hope of finding the people who’d harmed Paul began with figuring out who might want that ship on the bottom and why.

“Fine,” she said, attempting to put her feelings aside. “Where do we start?”

He led her over to the microscopes. “Take a look at the plastic samples.”

She set herself over the first microscope and peered into the eyepiece, blinking until everything became clear.

“Those are shavings from the plastic,” Dr. Smith said.

“Why are they different colors?” she asked.

“Two different types of plastic. We think it came from some type of storage case. The darker plastic is much harder and denser, the lighter-colored piece is also a lighter grade of material.”

She studied them both. Oddly, the darker plastic seemed to be deformed. The color was swirled in places; there were distortions in the material itself.

“It looks like the darker plastic melted,” she said. “But the lighter plastic doesn’t seem to have been affected.”

“My thoughts exactly,” he said.

“That seems backward,” she said, looking up. “Lighter plastic should have a lower melting point, and even at the same temperature would have less ability to absorb heat without deforming because there is less material to act as a heat sink.”

“You are very good at this, Mrs. Trout,” he said. “Sure you don’t want to work in the lab?”

“After what just happened,” she said, “I might never leave it.”

He smiled, crinkles forming around his eyes.

“You’re saving the tissue sample for last,” she noted.

“Because it’s the most interesting,” he said.

She slid over. “May I?”

“By all means.”

She squinted into the microscope, increased the magnification once, and then once again. She found herself looking at cellular structures, but something was wrong.

“What happened here?”