“Then she was caught seriously off guard.”
“I’ll say. So, specific target, specific location and time, personal and professional connections. Add one more element, and I think it matters. Whoever killed Buckley didn’t kill Carolee Grogan when it would’ve been easier, more expedient and even to his or her advantage to do so.”
“Leaving her body behind. More confusion,” Roarke agreed. “A longer identification time on the blood pool. A killer with a heart?”
She tossed back the rest of her wine. “It’s more that a lot of people with a heart kill.”
“My cynical darling.”
She rolled her eyes. “Let’s see what we’ve got so far.” She jerked a thumb toward the console.
Roarke walked back behind the command center, sat. Then, smiling at Eve, patted his knee.
“Please.”
“And thank you,” he said, grabbing her and tugging her down. “There now, this is cozy.”
“It’s murder.”
“Yes, yes, on a daily basis. Now, see here, we’re through several levels on HSO, but then, I’ve been through that door before.” He brushed his lips over her cheek. “And making some progress on the others. They’ll have done some code shifting and housekeeping since my last visits, but see there, we’re rerouting with them.”
“I see a bunch of gibberish, numbers and symbols flashing by.”
“Exactly. Let’s see if we can nudge it along.” He reached around her, began tapping keys. “There are all sorts of tricks,” he continued as the codes zipped by on the screens. “Realignments, firewalls, fail-safes, trapdoors and back-doors. But we keep updating along with them.”
“Why? Seriously, why do you need access to this stuff?”
“Everyone needs a hobby. What we want here are eyes-only personnel files, their black ops consultants. And verification if the device rumored to exist does indeed exist. Eyes-only again, but the trick would be to find where it might be tucked and by whom. Ah well, bugger it. Let’s try this way.”
Assuming from the oath and his increased tapping that he’d hit a snag, Eve wiggled away. “I’m getting coffee, and I’m going to run some data of my own.”
When his answer was a grunt, she knew playtime was over. It was time for serious work.
Seven
Using an auxiliary computer, Eve initiated her own search for any mention of a device such as Roarke had described. She found several articles on medical sites detailing the memory suppressive drugs and tools used during routine surgeries, others edging toward hypnotherapy in both medical studies and gaming.
She also found a scattering of fringe blogs raging about government mind control, enslaving of the masses and the ever-popular doomsday warnings. A nation of human droids, forced experimentation, personality theft and human breeding farms were on their top-ten list of predicted abominations. This led her to others claiming to have
been abducted by aliens in league with the shadow forces of government.
“I’m surprised the government has time to, you know, govern, when they’re so busy working with aliens and their anal probes or pursuing their mission to turn the global population into mindless sex droids.”
“Hmm,” Roarke said, “there’s government, then there’s government.”
She glanced over to where he sat, fingers flying, eyes intent. “You don’t actually believe this crap? Alien invasions, secret bunkers in Antarctica for experimentation on human guinea pigs.”
He flicked his glance up. “Icove.”
“That was . . . Okay.” Hard to argue when they’d both nearly been killed when dismantling a subversive and illegal human cloning organization. “But aliens?”
“It’s a big universe. You should get out in it more often.”
“I like one planet just fine.”
“In any case, I have your victim. No, don’t get up.” He waved her back. “I’ll put it onscreen. Data, wall screen one. This is from HSO, but the data matches what I’ve got from the other sources.”
“Dana Buckley,” Eve read. “With her three most common aliases. Same age as her current ID. But with the biographical data you had.”