“Yes!”
She returned to her side of the building and brewed a fresh pot of coffee, carrying the steaming mug back to her desk, her thoughts drifting again.
None of this made sense to her. How could the killer possibly think he could get away with it? They were all here for the duration of austral winter in a closed environment. Under normal circumstances, no one came, and no one left. That meant the pool of suspects was small and static.
But what if the bastard hadn’t planned it—or at least hadn’t thought it through? Methanol poisoning was slow and easy to expose. All she’d needed was the bottle of wine and a lighter. Surely, the killer had understood that the autopsy would reveal…
Chills skittered down her spine.
Under normal circumstances, Patty’s body would still be here. She’d be frozen solid somewhere in the service arches below the station, waiting for a flight home in austral spring. There would have been no autopsy until November, and by that time, no one here would have remembered what had happened that night. An investigation would be almost impossible.
Maybe the killer believed hecouldget away with it. No one on station had imagined that the Pentagon would risk sending a team of operators to retrieve components for the satellite. Or that Patty’s body would go home on their plane. Or that those operators would take on a murder investigation.
The killer hadn’t planned for any of that.
He hadn’t planned for Cobra.
“Shit.” She needed to tell Thor.
She picked up her radio but hesitated. He was probably busy. It’s not like she had new evidence for him. This was nothing more than a few connected dots. It wasn’t the kind of thing that would unmask the killer.
“Samantha?”
She gasped, dropped the radio, and turned to find Kazem standing behind her in his snow pants and a long-sleeved shirt. She must have forgotten to lock the door to the walkway when she’d returned with the coffee.
Shit.
She would have picked up the radio, but dropping it had broken the plastic casing, and the batteries had rolled beneath her desk.“Damn it, Kazem!Why the hell did you sneak up on me like that?”
“I’m sorry. I did not mean to scare you. I hoped we could talk.”
She held up a hand. “Hang on a second. I was just about to call in.”
“Okay.”
She picked up her station-issued radio. “Charli, Charli, this is Samantha out at the Dark Sector Lab.”
“Charli here, Sam.”
“Hey, Charli. I’m here in the lab talking with Kazem.” That was Samantha’s insurance. “Can you please let Thor know I need him to come out here?”
“Will do. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, I think so. Tell him it’s urgent.”
“Got it. Over.”
It would take Thor fifteen minutes to make it here, which meant she was alone with Kazem until then. But now Charli knew he was here. If anything happened to her…
Samantha set the radio aside, gestured toward Patty’s chair, and did her best to look like she wasn’t unnerved by Kazem’s presence. “What’s going on?”
He stayed where he was, his expression crumpling into misery, a pleading look in his eyes. “Please help me. I didn’t kill Patty, and I didn’t hack the satellite. They think I did it because I am from Iran. But it wasn’t me.”
Samantha didn’t know what to say. “Did you tell them this?”
“Yes, but they do not believe me because I have no proof. You must talk to them. Explain to them that I would never hurt her.”
“Kazem, you’re going to have to do that yourself. I don’t know where you were or what you were doing that night. They’re not interested in anyone’s opinion. They just want facts.”