"They might."

"You think they"ll hurt me to find out more about this project?"

"They could."

"G.o.d," she said, glaring at him. "I thought you were better than Mom."

He let the words hang for a moment. He liked the idea that she had actually thought him better than the woman who had raised her. But he had to address this issue and do it quickly.

"I didn"t mean to do this to you," he said. "I honestly thought it would never come to this-and it might not. We might be overreacting. That"s what I have to find out."

"How?" she asked.

"It"ll take some research. But while I do it, I have to know you"re safe."

"So hire someone to guard me," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Send to me to someone else. See if I care."

He almost smiled. She was still young enough to lack sophistication, not realizing how revealing her words were.

"Ki Bowles had security guards," he said. "One of them died defending her."

"Oh." Talia"s voice got small. She crossed her arms. "So what"re we going to do?"

He liked the "we." "I"m going to keep you close until I find out what"s going on."

"And if it turns out that someone is after you?" she asked.

"And it"s someone I can"t easily deal with?" He shrugged. He didn"t like the answer he was going to give her, but it was the only one he could come up with so far. "We"ll probably have to Disappear."

"You"re kidding, right?"

He shook his head.

"That"s weird," she said, "and scary. When will we know?"

"Soon, I hope," he said. "So I"m going to need your help. You"re going to have to stay at my side and be vigilant. If I tell you to sit still somewhere, you will. I"ll never be more than a few meters from you. But I don"t want you to know a lot about the project that Ki and Maxine and I worked on. It"ll put you in too much danger. So if I tell you I can"t explain any further, you"re going to have to accept that. All right?"

She nodded. "Do I get a weapon or something?" "No," he said. "Then how do I defend myself?"

"With your emergency links and your proximity to me," he said. "This should only be for a day or so. We"ll take it one moment at a time."

She nodded again. Her next question surprised him.

"Can I help?"

He frowned at her. She had great computer skills. She could dig and find information.

"There might be some things for you to do," he said. "But mostly, I need you to stay close. Can you do that?"

"Yeah," she said quietly. Then she turned toward him, that adult expression back. "Dad?" "Yes?"

"You never told me. What happens if you die?"

"You"re taken care of," he said.

"Meaning?"

"You get everything. My business, my home. My money. All of it." But he hadn"t appointed a formal guardian yet. Right now the will simply gave Celestine Gonzalez and the staff at Oberholtz, Martinez, and Mlsnavek the right to appoint someone. Someone he hadn"t approved.

"I don"t want all that stuff," Talia said.

"I"m not planning on dying," Flint said.

"But you just told me your life is in danger," she said.

"My life has been in danger before, and I"m still sitting here."

"This kind of danger?" she asked.

"Worse," he said.

She frowned, clearly thinking about that. "More than once?"

"More than once," he said.

"And you survived." She said that more to herself than to him.

"I"m tough that way," he said.

She was silent for a long moment. He could see how hard she was thinking. It was as if her universe had shifted again.

He hated doing that to her. "So," she said, "the only difference is me." "What do you mean?" he asked. "I mean, you can take care of yourself. You"re afraid for me."

Sometimes he wished he could talk to Rhonda. Sometimes he wished he could ask her how she dealt with such a bright and intuitive child. Sometimes he wanted to ask how he was supposed to deal with her.

"Yeah," he said. "I"m afraid for you."

"And you can"t trust someone else to take care of me," Talia said. "Not just because of Ms. Bowles, but because of the people at that day care center, the ones who were supposed to take care of Emmeline, the ones who killed her."

Out of the mouths of babes. At least he didn"t wince at her cra.s.sness. "That"s right," he said. She was quiet again. He could sense her trying to come up with a solution. "You should give me a weapon," she said. "That just makes things more dangerous," he said. "I"d rather use your brain." "For what?" she asked. "Most of my job is research," he said. "and this might require me to synthesize a lot of information." "I thought I couldn"t know about the project," Talia said.

"But you can help me find out about Ki Bowles"s private life," he said. "Maybe an old boyfriend killed her."

"We can only hope," said his daughter, and the sincerity in her voice-and the fact that he agreed with her-made his heart break.

At her age, his daughter shouldn"t be that cynical. And he was afraid it would only get worse.

23.

DeRicci returned to the raw data from the reports she had been studying. She saw the same pattern the deeper she went into the data-information was missing-but she couldn"t discern its significance.

Much as she wanted to stay ahead of her underlings on security topics, this one was over her head. She didn"t have the technical expertise to examine the raw data here in a way that yielded an understanding of the potential security crisis.

The first report had highlighted information missing from the public records placed on the public net and from the port itself.

She flipped to the next report. It showed the same kind of lost information. Only this time, it was hotel records and banking statements-things that shouldn"t have been on the public nets, anyway. She understood why those had vanished. Some bank or hotel had probably protested, and she was about to turn away from the report when she realized that this information had originated at the same time as the information about the port.

Little more than fifteen years ago.

She frowned.

The report told her that the banks in question as well as the hotels had lost their records for that period. The hotels really didn"t care-fifteen-year-old records of payment and who had stayed where didn"t matter all that much.

But the banks were in a panic. They had approached a security consultant who was on retainer with DeRicci"s office. He was supposed to bring anomalous information to the attention of low-level a.n.a.lysts. It had been his find-the missing bank records-that had started a wider investigation. Not every bank in Armstrong lost its records. Nor did every hotel. And it wasn"t all records for that time period.

It was the transaction records, specifically in the case of the banks, the records that accessed off-Moon accounts.

Now DeRicci was starting to get worried. When she combined the information from reports one and two, something ominous started presenting itself.

Records of trips into and out of Armstrong had vanished, as well as hotel records and banking records from the same period.

If the information weren"t so old, she would immediately issue a low-level emergency notice to law enforcement throughout the United Domes.

But the information was fifteen years old.

She wasn"t sure how it mattered.

Except that someone had decided in the last few weeks that this information needed to be purged from the records.

Why was information fifteen years old worth tampering with?

More importantly, why was that fifteen-year-old information relevant now now?

She didn"t know. And she wasn"t sure how she was going to find out.

24.

Before Flint had left Van Alen"s office, she had discovered that the lead investigator on the Bowles murder was Bartholomew Nyquist. She"d had to trade a few favors to get that information, but it had worked.

And the information pleased Flint.

He and Nyquist had worked on a couple of cases-not together, exactly, but in concert. They"d developed a kind of rapport. Nyquist had treated Flint well in a case in which Flint had been a suspect. Nyquist had nearly died working on that case. And Flint had been with DeRicci when they discovered Nyquist"s battered body. Together they had worked to save his life.

Flint had even paid for Nyquist"s medical treatment, mostly as a favor to DeRicci, not because of any special fondness for Nyquist. And, if the truth be told, Flint had been impressed with Nyquist"s survival skills. The man had used his brain to survive against a Bixian a.s.sa.s.sin.

To Flint"s knowledge, Nyquist was the only human ever to survive a Bixian attack.

Flint considered all of this as he drove to Dome University"s Armstrong campus with Talia in the seat beside him. He pinged Nyquist"s links several times, with increasing frequency. He didn"t want to leave a message that he had information on the Bowles killing, but he might have to, given that Nyquist hadn"t yet contacted him back.

Talia was monitoring the news nets. So far, no one had reported on Bowles"s death. And that was unusual. The woman was well known throughout Armstrong. Reporters should have been flocking to the story.

So far, Chief Andrea Gumiela had somehow managed to keep this death quiet.

That wouldn"t be the case for much longer. Flint had to get to Nyquist before the news broke. "What"s at the university?" Talia asked.

"Open research nets," Flint said. "We can do a lot of un-traceable work there."

He preferred a place called the Brownie Bar, but he hadn"t been there much since Talia had joined him. The place served marijuana in its baked goods, and although it was perfectly legal for Flint to enjoy a brownie while Talia sat at the table, he didn"t want her anywhere near that venue.

"Can"t we just go back to your office?" Talia asked.

"We can," he said. "But I would rather make the research look general."

"I thought nothing can get traced back to you from your office," she said.

"That"s the theory," he said.

"You don"t believe it." Talia looked sideways at him.

"Let"s just say it hasn"t been tested to my satisfaction yet," he said.

He landed the car in the lot next to the university"s law school. Over the years, he had acquired the special seal to park here. Although he wasn"t going to tell Talia how he got that seal since it, like so much in his life, wasn"t entirely on the up-and-up.

"What"s this?" Talia asked.

She was looking at the law school, a black and chrome building to the side of campus. The building was one of the most structurally diverse on a campus filled with experimental buildings.

"They have a great research facility in there," he said as he got out of the car. Talia got out, too. She shoved her hands in her pockets and made a slow three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn. She was looking for threats.

He felt guilty and relieved at the same time. She had taken his words seriously.

"Before we go in, let me try one thing." He walked a few meters away from the car and leaned against a signpost that announced the schedule for special lectures being held in the auditorium. He sent a message to Nyquist: I know about Bowles and I have some information to trade that you might not get anywhere else. Contact me immediately.

He marked the message urgent, and then turned to Talia.

She was leaning against the car, her arms crossed. She kept looking nervously from side to side. His best-laid plans for her were ruined.

He never again wanted her to feel the kind of fear she"d felt when her mother was kidnapped. He"d planned on protecting her from as much as he could, including fear of physical harm.

Now he"d reintroduced that into her life.