But he trusted Van Alen. She had helped him when no one else had, and she was his partner in the attempted destruction of WSX. So he needed to listen.

First, he had to shut down the system he was running. He glanced at his daughter. She still had her back to him, her arms crossed.

"Talia," he said. "I have an emergency meeting." And she was going to have to come with him. He didn"t dare leave her, especially since he didn"t know how or why Bowles had died.

Although he had his suspicions. He carefully shut down the system, then stood and put his hand on his daughter"s arm. "You"re going to have to come with me," he said. "We"ll finish this later." "I can finish," she said. "I know enough now." He smiled. "Not quite. But thank you." He led her out of the office building into the dust-covered street. It was empty. "Stay close," he said as he double-locked the doors. "Is something wrong?" she asked. Everything Everything, he thought.

"Not really," he lied, and then winced, remembering the promise he had made her just that afternoon. He wouldn"t lie to her if at all possible.

Well, he"d find out what was wrong first, and then he"d decide what Talia needed to know. And he hoped she wouldn"t have to know anything.

15.

Savita Romey stood in the living room of Roshdi Whitford"s house, hands in her pockets, special liners on her shoes and pants. The house smelled of blood. This wasn"t a murder; it was a slaughter.

Romey had caught the case only fifteen minutes before. She"d been about to leave after completing an extended series of reports on the past five cases she"d worked. She"d closed all five in record time, and her boss, Andrea Gumiela, wanted to use Romey"s work habits as an example for the younger detectives in the squad.

It didn"t matter that Romey had argued that her methods were the same as everyone else"s. Nor had it mattered when Romey claimed she wasn"t good at writing reports. Gumiela had given her a choice: Either write the reports or spend the next year training the current crop of detectives.

Romey wrote the reports. She"d hoped for a week off after that. She didn"t lead the rotation, and she hadn"t had a day off in nearly a month. By all rights, she should have been at home in bed by now.

But Gumiela had contacted her on the way. It"s an important case It"s an important case, Gumiela had said. We need it closed fast and we need someone who can be discreet. We need it closed fast and we need someone who can be discreet.

Romey wasn"t sure whether anyone on the squad lacked discretion, but she wasn"t going to say that to her boss. Instead, she programmed the address Gumiela had given her into the air car and found herself here.

Fortunately the techs had arrived first. The victim, Roshdi Whitford, owned the best security company in Armstrong-or what had been known as the best security company in Armstrong. Romey now had her doubts. She had a hunch everyone else in the city would share those doubts when the news of Whitford"s murder emerged.

Romey"s identification chip, like every other chip given to police and emergency services, was supposed to open every door in the city.

But it didn"t open Whitford"s. She had to contact one of the techs to let her inside.

The techs had gotten in courtesy of one of Whitford"s employees who had shown up just before them because his boss wasn"t answering a page. That employee was now in a squad, waiting for someone to question him.

Romey would do that after she got a sense of the crime scene.

The house itself was made of some kind of concrete. The exterior walls were nearly ten centimeters thick, and one of the techs told her that the entire place would survive the collapse of the dome when most other buildings in Armstrong wouldn"t.

There were no windows that she could see, although one had appeared on the door when she crossed the threshold. She"d seen windows like that before-they were formed only when needed. Since she needed to see out all the time, living in a place like this would drive her insane.

The interior walls were about half as thick as the exterior walls, and made of the same materials. With the doors closed, no one could hear what was going on from one room to the next.

But the doors were open, and sound traveled against the concrete walls, echoing down the corridors. She could hear the techs talking in the kitchen as they examined the room. She also could hear the beeps of someone"s link as he asked for help from some security expert in the tech team.

She didn"t need a security expert to know what had happened. Somehow someone had breached this fortress and slaughtered Roshdi Whitford. The place was locked up solid when the employee arrived, but until Romey understood how the security system worked, she wasn"t going to a.s.sume this was some kind of locked room mystery.

Whatever happened here, it was clear that whoever killed Whitford had known how the house"s security worked. Which made it an inside job-unless Whitford was incautious enough to post the specs of his personal system on some kind of database.

She doubted a man with his reputation would be incautious about something like security system specs. Especially when most security companies in Armstrong trademarked their own systems and maintained a proprietary relationship with their equipment-and their customers.

Romey stepped around the most uncomfortable-looking couch she"d ever seen and into the living room proper. Occasional tables were scattered in what seemed like a haphazard pattern. Each table, however, did have a chair beside it, and some kind of lamp built in.

"Is the security system shut down?" she asked one of the techs as he pa.s.sed by.

"No, ma"am. We haven"t figured out how to do that yet."

"Figure it out." She didn"t want to broadcast the details of their investigation to whoever could hack into the security system. "And tell Central that they need to establish a security system of their own. I"ll brief them later as to what kind we need."

Certainly she wouldn"t do so in front of whatever recording equipment existed in this house.

Blood spattered along the tile floor. She would have expected carpet-easier to hide more security doodads. But the floor itself had some kind of mosaic pattern. It took her a minute to realize that not everything that looked like blood was.

Some of the red and black that she saw was a pattern in the tile. A design that caused an optical illusion and, if she stared at it long enough, made her dizzy.

Maybe she had been wrong about the tile and the carpet.

"Make sure," she said to the tech even though he was now leaving the room, "that whatever security team looks at this system looks at the tile as well."

A pattern that fine could hide anything: cameras, chips, money, information. She wanted everything from this house, and she wanted it as quickly as possible.

She checked the clock on her internal system. She"d already been here half an hour. She"d promised her son she"d be home in time to share dinner with him and his little brothers. She hated to renege on that. She wondered how she"d be able to supervise this crime scene and manage a dinner with her family. That was the problem with this job. She had taken it for the intellectual and financial promotion, but it was costing her in the one place she couldn"t afford: time with her kids.

At least, at fifteen, her oldest could handle most of the emergencies that came up.

She"d give the scene another half hour, then she"d grab some takeout and run home for a quick dinner. She needed to touch base with the boys maybe more than they needed time with her. She"d be back on scene before anyone got a chance to miss her.

The body itself was sprawled in the middle of the tile. No furniture was anywhere around the body and, oddly, none of the haphazard pieces looked like they"d been moved to accommodate it, either. If Whitford had fallen where he stood, shouldn"t he have hit something other than the floor? Or did his terrible interior decorating skills somehow make him decide that a big gaping bit of nothingness in the middle of his living room somehow made up for the dozen occasional tables scattered around the edges?

He had landed on his back, his arms up near his face, his legs twisted, but open. He had been slashed in several places-all arteries-and judging by the blood flow, the killer had hit at least two arteries on opposite sides of the body at the very same time.

Just from the way that the slashes were made, Romey was guessing that there was more than one a.s.sailant or the a.s.sailant was using a kind of weapon that she was unfamiliar with. Of course, that was if Whitford"s killer had been human. If the killer wasn"t human, all bets were off. Even a windowless concrete bunker couldn"t keep certain types of aliens out. Some of them might not even trigger perimeter alarms.

But she wasn"t going to make any suppositions about the species of the killer. Not yet. Nor was she going to guess what exactly had killed Whitford.

To her knowledge, no one had seen his back. No one knew whether or not the body"s position-and the blood-had been staged.

"When you"re done with him," she said to another tech who was working the far end of the room, "make sure you get excellent recordings of what"s underneath him."

"Underneath?" the tech asked. "Don"t you think it odd that there"s no furniture in the middle of the room?" "I think this whole place is odd," the tech said, and returned to her work.

That about summed it up. The whole place was odd. And Romey had only seen the foyer, one of the corridors, and this living room.

And the grounds. Which had more security than all of the government buildings and the port combined. She"d had to respond to dozens of alerts in her own internal systems just to override the estate"s commands to shut off her links.

She crouched next to the body, careful not to touch it or the blood spatter near him. "You gotta wonder," she said softly to him as if he were still alive to hear it, "if all this paranoia about the perfect security system is what actually got you killed."

She waited. Of course, there was no response.

Then she stood.

Whatever had killed him had done so with all the security in place. Would it have been easier to kill him without the security? Or did the killer like a challenge?

She had a hunch she"d find out.

16.

Flint made it to Van Alen"s office in record time. Two squads blocked the entry, so he parked in the lot and took the back elevator. On the way, he told Talia that if he caught her touching any computers in Van Alen"s office, he would tell Van Alen.

"So?" Talia said defiantly.

"So you don"t want to go head-to-head with Maxine Van Alen," he said.

"She won"t get mad at me," Talia said as the elevator doors opened onto the main floor, "she"ll get mad at you."

Then she stepped into the large reception area. Flint smiled at her back. She was probably right. He kept forgetting the way other people perceived children-the way he used to perceive them before Talia had come into his life.

Usually the reception area was full of junior a.s.sociates, a.s.sistants, and young successful lawyers hurrying from one important case to another. People were constantly talking, and constantly moving. But not now. The human receptionist-an affectation that Van Alen insisted on-was the only one in the large area.

"Mr. Flint," she said as she stood. "Ms. Van Alen is in a situation."

Not with a client or in a meeting. Flint found that to be an interesting choice of words. "I have a meeting with her," he said like he was supposed to, "and I think I"m a few minutes late."

"I don"t recall. . . ." The receptionist bent over the clear screen that rose from part of her desk. "Oh. You"re right. It"s marked urgent. I"m to send you right back."

Flint nodded as he headed toward the back. Talia walked beside him until they reached the reception desk.

The receptionist put her hand out. "I"m afraid only Mr. Flint can go back there."

"She"s my daughter," he said. "She comes with me."

The receptionist"s eyes widened just a bit. She apparently had no idea that Talia had come into Flint"s life.

He tried to remember if he had ever brought Talia here before. Probably not. He usually came while she was in school. He didn"t want her to know about this part of his life.

He didn"t want her to know about a lot of his life and his work. She didn"t need to. It put her in danger. The back, which usually bustled as much as the front, seemed calm as well, but in a different way. Attorneys, a.s.sistants, and some clients stood in the corridor, arms crossed, staring down the hallway.

A man"s voice echoed through the normally quiet area.

"Ms. Van Alen, please. Tell them. They can"t arrest me. I didn"t do anything wrong."

Then there was silence. Flint couldn"t tell whether that was because Van Alen was answering or someone else was speaking.

Talia looked at him. Flint put a hand on her back and propelled her forward. "Sir," one of the attorneys said, "I don"t think you should go back there." "Maxine"s expecting me," he said. He continued to walk past the a.s.sociates. They all looked nervous. A few stepped aside as he pa.s.sed.

The corridor narrowed before it opened into the waiting area that was exclusively Van Alen"s. Four police officers stood near the corridor, and more were inside Van Alen"s office.

A man Flint didn"t recognize stood near Van Alen"s desk. He was beefy and red faced, and he looked scared.

Van Alen stood near the waiting room couch, staring into her office. Two more officers stood inside. They looked like street cops. Flint didn"t see a detective, which surprised him. He would have expected to see one, given what Van Alen had told him.

"You can"t arrest me," the man was saying. "I"m in a law office."

"That doesn"t give you immunity," one of the officers said. "Especially when the office is the one who called us."

"Is that true?" The man looked at Van Alen. "I came here as a favor to you."

She didn"t say anything. Flint couldn"t read her face. She seemed calm, but she often put on that demeanor when she was the most nervous.

Talia glanced up at Flint again, as if he should do something. He let his hand drop from her back and stepped around her.

"Maxine," he said as he walked into the waiting area.

Van Alen looked over her shoulder. For a brief second, he thought she seemed relieved. "Miles." "I came for our meeting."

"We have a situation," she said.

"I can see that." He wasn"t sure what she wanted him to do. Everyone faced him, though, as if he were the authority in the room.

The officers seemed uncomfortable. They probably weren"t used to being in a law office. Considering their training, they probably weren"t certain what to do. They knew how to handle problems on the street and in other businesses, but they had been taught to give too much respect to lawyers.

"I used to be a detective with the Armstrong P.D.," Flint said to Van Alen, even though she already knew that. He knew the cops didn"t. "Do you want me to see what I can do?"

One of the officers said, "No offense, sir, but if you"re no longer with the department, then we"ll have to ask you to step back."

But Flint continued to look at Van Alen. "Maybe I can mediate. It seems like you"re at an impa.s.se here." She looked from the officers to the man in her office.

"Give us a minute," she said to the police.

They stepped back. That, too, was part of the training and Van Alen clearly knew it. She went into her office and nodded at the officers. They walked out.

"Stay here, Talia," Flint said.

"Da-ad." She looked frightened. She had no idea what was going on and he wasn"t going to tell her. "The officers will keep an eye on you."

"But-"

He didn"t listen to her protest. Instead, he stepped into the office with Van Alen and the man from Whitford Security.

"I don"t need a mediator," the man said. "I didn"t expect a lawyer to call the cops."

"Doors down," Van Alen said. She stood close to the doors, though, as if she didn"t want to get near this man.