Segal laughed. “I just have higher standards for myself than boning the first chick who will have me while I’m on assignment.”
“You two done?” Thor’s finger hovered above the trackpad.
They shut their mouths and joined him at the conference table.
He clicked to start the meeting, sat, and took a sip of his coffee.
A moment later, Tower and Shields appeared on the screen.
“Great work yesterday,” Tower said. “The analyst team has gone over the interviews and yesterday’s events with Barclay, as well as the pages from Dr. Holcomb’s journal. Shields?”
The view switched to Shields. “We can cross Jason Huger off our list. We were able to download the records from Huger’s computer. He was where he said he was that night—hanging out online with his gaming buddies. We can take Dr. Park and Ms. Chang off the list as well. We assess that their answers are authentic. The money deposited into Ms. Chang’s account was part of an inheritance from an uncle.”
That left Lance Barclay, Bai Zhang Wei, and Kazem Hamidi.
Shields went on. “As for Barclay, the journal entries suggest he’s telling the truth. I’m not ready to rule him out as a suspect entirely. He has the skills, and he lied about where he was that night. Also, his jealousy could be a motive. But I’m more interested in Kazem Hamidi. He hasn’t admitted to his aggressive confrontation with Dr. Holcomb, and he still can’t account for his whereabouts.”
“What about Zhang Wei?” Segal asked. “He says he got the nights confused and changed his story to say he worked late.”
“He’s still on the list, too. No one you interviewed remembers seeing him, either.”
Then Tower’s face appeared on the screen. “Dr. Holcomb’s journal confirms that her murder and the attack on the satellite are connected, as the analyst team believed. We know the killer’s motive now. He wanted to silence her. It’s our job to make sure he fails. The question is, what’s our next move?”
Thor had thought about this. “We need to force the killer’s hand, draw him out.”
Tower nodded. “What do you suggest?”
“We can tell everyone that Jones and Segal are flying home with the package, while I’m staying to find the killer. We make it look real—flight schedule, all of it. This bastard wants the package. The moment it’s in the air, he’s lost his chance. He knows that. I’m betting he’ll do whatever he can to get his hands on it before our fictional plane lands. With any luck, he’ll get sloppy.”
Tower considered it. “It’s a risky plan.”
“It is.”
Desperate men were dangerous.
* * *
Samantha watchedthe readouts as the telescope finished observing four sky fields at declination minus forty-five degrees and then moved to the next four. She’d had time to look at yesterday’s observations, the data from all thousand detectors coming together to create an image that was unmistakably an elliptical double-ringed galaxy. The work was a welcome distraction from the chaos that was life on station. This is what she was here to do, not obsess about murderers and hacked satellites and former KGB agents.
Still, her mind kept drifting to Patty’s murder.
On the walk over, she’d told Thor about Vasily and the switchblade, and he hadn’t been happy with her.
“I wish you’d let me know,” he’d said, a grumpy frown on his face. “Vasily is not someone you want to hang with.”
“For the record, I wasn’t ‘hanging with’ him. He came up on me out of the blue.”
Then Thor had warned her not to be alone with Kazem or Bai. He hadn’t given her an explanation, but it didn’t take a doctorate to understand that Cobra must have narrowed their list of suspects and that both men were still on it.
It was hard for her to imagine either of them as a murderer. Both were scientists dedicated to their work. No, Kazem hadn’t taken Patty’s rejection as well as he might have, but he hadn’t done anything violent. And yet someone here—someone everyone considered a friend and colleague—had killed her.
Samantha willed herself to focus, checking each amplifier channel’s output before heading into the back to make more coffee. She reached for the canister and remembered it was empty. She’d used the last of the coffee grounds this morning.
She walked to the hallway and unlocked the door that separated the SPT control room from the BICEP half of the building. She made her way to the shared storeroom for another bag of coffee, Kazem’s and Greg’s voices drifting up from their control center.
“Try rebooting it now.”
“I hope this works.”