Infinity Beach

8

In the morning Kim ate breakfast with Cole, thanked him for his hospitality, checked her bag through to Terminal City, and caught the shuttle to Sky Harbor.

Interstellar maintained its operations division in the lower hangars on the Plum Deck, so called because of the color of the walls. Kim showed up at the service desk and asked if she could speak with Walter Gaerhard. She gave her name and sat down to wait. A few minutes later a muscular man with skin the color of black ivory opened the door and looked in. “Dr. Brandywine?” he asked.

“Mr. Gaerhard.”

He smiled and offered his hand. “You wanted to see me?”

“For a few minutes.”

“I’m not buying anything.”

“It’s nothing like that. Can I take you to lunch?”

He was looking closely at her, trying to imagine why she was there. “It’s early, Doctor. But thank you. What can I do for you?”

“How good’s your memory?”

“It’s okay.” He led her into a side office. “Are you from Personnel?”

“No. I’m not connected with the company.”

He offered a chair and took one himself. “So what did you want me to remember?”

“I want to go back twenty-seven years.”

“That’s a few.”

“You did some repairs on the jump engines of a yacht owned by the Tripley Foundation. The Hunter.”

His features hardened. “Don’t remember,” he said. “Twenty-seven years is a long time.”

“Interstellar must keep records. Would it help to consult them?”

“Not that far back.”

“You don’t recall working on the Hunter? At all?”

“No.” He stood up. “How could you expect me to? What’s this about, anyway?”

“I’m doing research on the Tripley Foundation. The Hunter is a key part of that history. It was Kile Tripley’s personal yacht.”

“I just don’t remember anything that long ago.” He was leaning toward the door, anxious to be away. “Anything else?”

“I’m not the police,” she said. “I’m not suggesting anything’s wrong.”

“I’m sorry to cut this short but I really have to get to work.” And he literally bolted from the room, leaving her staring after him.

The crash that had killed Kim’s parents was one of those anomalies that isn’t supposed to be possible. People died in accidents: they fell off mountains and sailed into storms and got cramps while swimming, but the transportation systems were very nearly 100 percent safe. Very nearly.

Afterward Kim’s aunt Jessica had taken her in, and among the numerous gifts she received from that fine woman had been an appreciation for mysteries. Although it had taken Markis Kane to introduce her to Veronica King.

On the train home, she dived into The Parkington Horror, one of the earlier adventures of that eccentric private investigator. The detective’s Moor Island home base was filled with artifacts from the early years of settlement. The atmosphere was gothic, the dramas played out in crumbling ruins along the ocean or in upland retreats whose sloping dormers and gray windows reflected the madness of their builders.

But Kim wasn’t able to put the interviews with Tripley and Gaerhard out of her mind. The CEO had convinced her that, if anything out of the way had happened on the last flight, he was unaware of it. And didn’t want to know about it.

Gaerhard, on the other hand, was hiding something. She asked herself what secret he could possibly be guarding? And judging from his reaction, it was a secret that would still get him in trouble, even after all these years. The only thing she could think of was that there had been no mechanical problem with the Hunter, or there had been a different problem from the one claimed. And that he had faked the reports. Which meant he’d been bribed. If so, it suggested the Hunter had returned for reasons other than needing repairs. But what might those reasons have been?

Even if Sheyel was right and there had been a contact, why all the secrecy?

The Seahawk settled into a gentle rocking motion and salt air found its way into the cabin. Occasionally a train hammered past in the opposite direction.

She opened a channel to her office.

“Hello, Kim,” said Andra. “How’d the Star Queen go?”

“Out of this world,” she said. “Are you busy?”

“Sure. I’m always up to my ears. You know that.”

“Right. When you get out from under the pile I want you to do something for me. There was an explosion in the Severin Valley in 573. Side blew out of a mountain, lot of people killed. You ever hear of it?”

“Vaguely.” That meant no.

“It happened at Mount Hope. I want you to find everything you can on the event and lay it out for me: media coverage, police reports, whatever. One of the victims, Kile Tripley, was only a couple of days back from an interstellar mission on board the Hunter. Two other members of that crew, two women, vanished at about the same time.” She gave her their names. “Get whatever you can on them, what they did with their spare time, who their friends were, anything you can find. And Kile Tripley too. He was the CEO at Interstellar. And I’d like to know if anybody was ever arrested or charged with anything.”

“Okay. May I ask why?” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.

“Not sure myself yet, Andra. Can you get everything together this afternoon?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Please. And send it to my place. I’ll be going directly home. And Andra—?”

“Yes?”

“There’s an archeologist at Wheeling Bay. Her name’s Kane. Tora Kane. See if you can arrange for me to stop by there tomorrow and see her.”

Kim leaned back, the e-book resting on her lap, and closed her eyes. A shiver of excitement rose up her spine.

When she got home she found a note from Matt congratulating her on what was, “from all reports, an outstanding effort.” She also had a three o’clock appointment next day with Tora Kane at something called the Colson site, along with a code locator for the cab.

Other than Kane’s ex-wives, his only known relative, and the only person with whom he’d maintained a close relationship, was his daughter Tora. Tora Kane had been quoted in the record to the effect that her father had never been the same after the Mount Hope event, that he had tried to stay on at Severin Village, hoping the town could rebuild. But everyone had given up. Too many bad memories. And then the news had arrived that the dam would have to come down.

The ex-wives had all built other lives for themselves. They seemed to harbor no ill will toward Kane, but it was evident that all had made a clean break after the marriages had expired.

She was watching visuals of the daughter when the files on Emily and Yoshi and the Mount Hope event arrived.

Kim collected a dinner of cheese and fresh fruit, and carried it into the living room. She set it on the coffee table, went back for wine, and told Shepard to begin.

Most of the information Andra had gathered about Emily was well known to her, of course. Where she’d gone to school, that she’d written some articles, that she’d been a junior executive for Widebase Communications Systems before landing with the Foundation.

But as she read the articles, looked at the pictures, glossed over comments about her by her colleagues, she began to realize that she’d never been close to understanding the real Emily Brandywine.

An extract from one typical essay revealed the depth of Emily’s commitment:

Somewhere, other eyes than ours watch the stars. Let there be no doubt about that. Were it not so, we would have to confess there is little point to our existence, other than to eat, drink, and procreate. We have come to life on the shore of an infinite sea. Whatever power has designed this arrangement surely intended that we not be alone, that we set out to map its currents and its deeps, explore its islands, and ultimately embrace whatever other sailors we encounter.

Unfortunately, the islands are farther apart than we could have imagined. Many among us suggest we should simply give it up and stay home. Be content under our own warm suns. Hang around on the beach. But I would suggest to you that if we take that course, we will lose that part of us which is most worth preserving: the drive to push into the unknown. If we are true to ourselves, the day will surely come when we lift wine in the company of brothers and sisters born beneath strange suns.

It was a little overwrought, but there was no doubting her sincerity. Emily had not been trained as a scientist, so she tended to draw conclusions based on emotional need rather than on evidence. The human race could not be alone because the universe was so big. Because we needed to have someone to compare notes with.

The reality, of course, was that the appearance of life on Earth seemed to require a set of circumstances so unusual and so fortuitous that it might very well have been a unique event. It was quite possible that the human race was the only intelligent species in all those billions of light-years. In the dark of the night, Kim suspected that was precisely the true state of affairs. She would not have admitted it, not even to Solly. She’d been riding point for too many years, trying to engender enthusiasm for Beacon, which was the only Institute project that seemed to have the capacity to get people excited.

Yoshi Amara had left no written work behind, save her doctoral thesis, which dealt with atmospheric thermodynamics. She was still in her early twenties when she joined the Tripley team. Her flight on the Hunter, as far as Kim could determine, was the first time she’d been away from the home world.

She ran some videos of Emily urging the Algonda Chamber of Commerce to get behind a public funding for elderly citizens; conducting a leadership program for managers at All-Purpose Transport; speaking to the class of ‘71 at Mellinda University, saying all the things one usually says to graduates; participating in a symposium on the topic “Where Do We Go from Here?”—which was about population loss and not space exploration—and arguing strenuously for a concerted effort to persuade people to have more children.

She switched over to her Tripley file and watched Kile at the charter meeting of the Foundation, trying to explain why it was essential to pursue the search for celestials. It never seemed to occur to him that they might not exist. He struggled a bit. It was, after all, not an easy argument to nail down. Someone in the audience commented that we all know how humans behave and if there are celestials out there and they operate the way we do, maybe finding them wouldn’t be such a good thing. Let them be, he said.

By midnight she’d concluded that Emily’s companions on the Hunter–Tripley, Amara, and the pilot, Kane—were everything they purported to be. It might be true that all but Kane edged into fanaticism, including Emily, but there was no doubt that, had they succeeded in their attempt to find evidence of other civilizations, had they actually encountered something alive beyond St. Johns, they would have broadcast it to the world.

That meant Sheyel was wrong. Had to be. Yet there was a good chance the shoe from the villa had belonged to Yoshi.

And Gaerhard was hiding something. He’d done what the records indicated was a routine repair job almost three decades ago. And when she mentioned it he knew immediately what she was talking about.

Andra had provided several hundred accounts of the Mount Hope explosion and its aftermath.

Kim studied pictures of the area before and immediately after the explosion. The crater was there, of course, a kilometer and a quarter wide, looking as if someone had dropped a nuke. Trees for vast distances had been scorched and blown down. The valley had been decimated.

There were literally hundreds of pictures of the destruction, buildings wrecked, fires burning, rescue workers pouring in, dazed survivors wandering through the carnage.

Investigators had estimated the yield at several kilotons. But there was no radiation. A government commission had finally labeled the incident “due to cause or causes unknown.”

No record could be found of a vessel that had lost fuel cells, or of improper disposal of spent units. Of course it would not have been in a perpetrator’s interest to get caught, and records were not difficult to falsify.

Authorities pursued independent investigations of both the disappearance of the women, and of the explosion. Neither ever came to anything.

The Mighty Third Memorial Museum was dedicated to the exploits of the Third Fleet during the brief but bloody war with Pacifica. Theory had once held that interstellar war would never happen because of energy consumption limitations, the problems inherent in subduing a planetary-sized hostile population, the impossibility of bringing an opponent’s interstellar force to combat should they wish to avoid it, and the fact that nothing one might steal was worth the effort to carry it off.

All this reasoning broke down because it assumed war was a rational exercise, carried on for rational purposes.

Historically, few leaders have calculated a cost-benefit ratio before plunging into combat. Kings often provoked conflict for the sole purpose of feeding their troops at someone else’s expense. Or to get tens of thousands of malcontents out of the country and pointed somewhere else, as happened during the Crusades, and again on Tigris during the Andrean Wars.

Historians were still arguing over details of the slide sixty years before into the war between Greenway and Pacifica, the only one ever fought between star systems. It was a war that neither side wanted. The critical factor seemed to have been everyone’s conviction that armed conflict was impossible. Both governments therefore had felt free to engage in threats and posturing.

The shooting began when a PacForce destroyer mistook a cruise ship for an intelligence-gathering mission and fired on it, killing 212 passengers and most of the crew. When they refused to apologize—the liner apparently had been off course—the steps to war had followed swiftly one after another.

The conflict eventually raged for eighteen months. There were several major battles. Embargoes were placed on third parties, raids against military targets spilled over and killed tens of thousands, and electronic warfare had constantly shut down power grids and computer systems.

Markis Kane became one of the celebrated names during the war. He began as an escort captain and ended as the commanding officer of a squadron of destroyers. He was decorated half a dozen times. He avenged the worst atrocity of the conflict, the terror attack on Khatalan, which killed sixty thousand people, by destroying the battle cruiser Hammurabi, which had led the assault. His best-known exploit, however, was at Armagon, where his squadron disrupted an attacking line of destroyers. His own vessel, the escort 376, had been badly damaged and was for a time thought lost. He brought it back full of holes, its guidance systems gone, its weapons blown out, half its crew dead. But it had arrived in home skies with all flags flying.

The exploit had entered story and song. Books had been written, and there were few children on Greenway who had not played at being Markis Kane on the 376.

The Third Fleet had been Greenway’s principal attack arm. It had won most of the victories, and absorbed most of the casualties. Its commander in chief had risen to the premiership on the strength of his performance, and its veterans still gathered in meeting places around the world.

The Mighty Third Memorial Museum was located on a peaceful hilltop on the western edge of Seabright, where, according to tradition, women and men from Earth had made their first landing on Greenway. The site looked down on a reflecting pool and a carefully cut green lawn and a series of walkways. Landing pads accommodated hundreds of visitors daily.

Kim stepped out of her cab and strolled up a gravel path that wound beneath a clutch of ancient oaks. Two of them were supposed to have been planted by the crew of that first lander, launched by the Constellation. But the descent had been six hundred years ago and the oaks couldn’t be more than half that old. Nevertheless it was a pleasant legend and no one bothered to dispute it.

The day was gorgeous, full of sunlight and the smell of the sea. Kids, tourists, and students were everywhere. She went inside, checked the guide, and walked into the east wing. An entire section was given over to the 376 and to Markis Kane.

There were photos of the hero, parts of the ship itself, and a mock-up of the flight deck. The actual command chair was encased behind a glass wall. One of the ship’s laser cannons pointed down a hallway. Personal articles of the crew were laid out, including a jacket that had belonged to Kane. The original logs were there, contained on two disks that gleamed like diamonds on the arm of the command chair. Copies were on sale in the museum store. And there was a strip of bloody cloth that the ship’s engineer had used to tie down the fuel leads after the 376 had taken a hit.

Kim read a copy of a letter sent to the parents of one of the crew killed on the mission.

She entered the VR tank and went through the flight, watching everything through Kane’s eyes. She emerged shaken, impressed by the courage and tenacity of the man.

Kane could not possibly have been part of a hoax. Not under any circumstances she could imagine. Therefore, if he’d told Sheyel nothing had happened, that should end the matter. And yet—

“Ah, Kim.” She turned and looked into the amiable features of Mikel Alaam, the museum director. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Good morning, Mikel.” She embraced him and offered her cheek for a kiss. “How’ve you been?”

Alaam wore his hair shoulder length. He had the sort of professional aloofness one usually finds in museum directors, fiction writers, and morticians. “Quite well, thank you. What brings you to the Mighty Third?”

“I’m interested in Markis Kane.”

“Ah, yes. He’s a fascinating man. He was here for the dedication. Even functioned as an advisor when we put the exhibition together.” They had pictures from the event: Kane drinking coffee with a couple of the technicians, Kane wielding a boltlight, Kane laughing with somebody’s kids.

“Really? When was that?”

“Oh, a long time ago. I was only an intern then, but I actually got to meet him. In fact I shook his hand.” He gazed soulfully at his palm.

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Not much. He was a friend of Art Wescott, who was the director at the time. I thought he seemed embarrassed by all the fuss. But we were delighted to have him. That was when they’d just dedicated the museum.”

“So it was—?”

“Around, what, 575. Sure, that was our first year.” He looked at the flight deck mock-up. “Yes,” Alaam continued. “He walked around, talked to everybody, signed autographs. Decent man. Not like some of these people—”

The room was bright with sunlight. Like Kane’s reputation.

Kim’s cab moved north up the coastline through a gray sky.

Ahead, Mount Morghani stood directly astride the shore line, overlooking Wheeling Bay. Morghani had provided a string of dictators with a natural fortress during the long years of their rule over the island empire. Esther Hox had carved from its slopes the Black Hall, a stronghold from which she directed military operations against the bands of rebels who tried unsuccessfully for four decades to unseat her.

Today, Morghani and its fortifications and the harbor it guarded provided Seabright with a stunning backdrop. The Black Hall was a major tourist draw. And a prime archeological site.

The structure was four hundred years old, built during the dark age that had followed hard after Greenway established itself formally as an independent political entity. Guns, lasers, and missile launchers were still in place in the surrounding mountains, and the control room from which Hox personally oversaw defenses was still visited annually by tens of thousands.

The Black Hall had become one of the prime symbols of that age, and therefore, in an inexplicable manner, of the romance of the period. Kim loved the place, which was maintained by the Seabright Historical Union. Much of the old fortress was off-limits because it wasn’t safe. But troops in the uniforms of those bygone years were still marshaled twice daily in the main courtyard. The imperial quarters were also open to visitors, as were the art gallery and the library. Hox and her successors had commissioned much and stolen more. Today, it was all on display.

At the foot of Morghani, the ocean was restless. The surf pounded the rocks, gulls moved in everlasting circles, and along the stony beaches, children collected shells.

The cab crossed the face of the Black Hall and sailed in over the bay. Here, piers and docks pushed into the water, and warehouses lined the shore. Civilization had moved south after the wars, so the structures were crumbling and largely unattended. Some of them were built atop ruins that dated back half a millennium. Vandals and thieves had been at work for centuries, but teams of archeologists were now trying to retrieve details of everyday life during the age of the dictators.

The vehicle dropped low toward the water, skirted the shoreline moving west, and set down finally among a cluster of modular shelters beside a couple of battered flyers carrying the markings of the Seabright Historical Union. Kim opened the hatch and dropped down onto a surface of hard-packed clay and sparse grass. A damp, cold wind blew in off the sea.

Several people were working around the edges of an excavation pit, from which they’d hauled timbers and broken concrete and steel beams. A couple of the males looked up, appraised her, and exchanged approving glances.

A young man, probably a graduate student, had been brushing earth from a piece of electronic equipment. He broke off and came over. “May I help you, ma’am?” he asked.

“I’m looking for Dr. Kane,” said Kim.

He punched a button on his link. “Tora,” he said, “you have a visitor.”

A female voice responded: “Be right there.” Moments later a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat and coveralls came out of one of the shelters and walked toward her. The grad student accepted Kim’s thanks and went back to his brush.

“Dr. Brandywine?” the woman asked, holding out a hand. “I’m Tora Kane.” The hat, Kim noticed, carried a Glory logo. Tora followed her gaze. “The Arbuckle,” she said.

The Arbuckle was a freighter that had gone down on Glory almost five centuries earlier, making it one of the oldest artifacts in the system. Kim knew that the crash site was a preserve, and that only certified scholars were allowed to go near it.

Tora was about Kim’s height, with auburn hair drawn back, full lips, full breasts pressing against the coveralls. She had her father’s dark, intense eyes. Looking into them, Kim could almost focus down, eliminate everything else, and believe she was seeing the old starship captain. “I appreciate your making time to talk to me,” she said, taking the outstretched hand.

“My pleasure.” Tora glanced from Kim to the taxi. “Have I won something?”

A gust of wind blew across them. “I was wondering if I could ask some questions about your father,” said Kim.

“Ah,” she said, as if she should have realized. “May I ask what your interest is?”

“Emily Brandywine was my sister.”

Muscles worked in her throat. “I should have recognized the name. And the face.”

“I’d like very much to find out what happened to her.”

“Of course.” Tora turned back toward the bay entrance and Kim could not see her expression. “I wish I could help. But I just don’t know anything. When they came back on the Hunter, my father stayed on board to see to the entry procedures. The other three got off, and he never saw them again.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but may I ask how?”

“Because he told me. Don’t you think he was upset by it all? Everything happened at the same time, the disaster at the village, the loss of Tripley, the missing women.” The wind tried to push them toward the excavation. “Why don’t you send the cab away and come inside?” she said.

Kim did and Tora led the way back to the shelter. “It’s not very comfortable,” she observed, “but it’s out of the cold.” She opened the door, and Kim stepped into a flow of warm air.

It was musty and cramped. One room plus a washroom. Maps of the waterfront area covered the walls. Two tables were stacked with jars, electrical artifacts, coins, tools, candles, toys, small pieces of statuary. “How’s it going?” asked Kim.

“Not bad. We think we’ve uncovered Gabrielli’s private residence.”

“Gabrielli?”

“One of Hox’s advisors. If it’s true, we may finally be able to find out why they had Rentzler murdered. Well, you don’t care about that.” She held a heated cloth to her face, offered one to Kim, and sat down in a canvas chair. “Kim,” she said, her tone suddenly regretful, “we all lost people in that business. I won’t pretend that what happened to my father and me compares to losing your sister the way you did, but his life disintegrated too.”

“In what way?”

“A lot of people were dead. There was talk about antimatter. Everybody else who’d been on the mission vanished. It all sounded like a conspiracy. And people like to have someone to blame. He was the only one left alive, at least the only one they could find. So they blamed him.”

“It doesn’t appear in the record.”

“His friends got cold. People he’d known for years backed away from him, looked the other way when they met on the street. Some tried to get up a lawsuit but there was no proof. Eventually he left the valley, but it followed him. Forgive me, but people like you would show up asking questions. No accusations, but the implications were always there.

“My father was a decent man, Kim. He’d never hurt anybody, and he wouldn’t have been part of any of the things that were being talked about.”

“Like stealing fuel cells.”

“Yes. Like stealing fuel cells.” Tora got up, poured a couple of cups of coffee, and held one out to Kim. “I’m afraid I just don’t know anything that would help.”

Two people came in, got introduced, went back out. Kim said: “You don’t think there’s any connection between the return of the Hunter and the Mount Hope event?”

“I don’t. I can understand why people want to tie them together. But they checked the Hunter. All the antimatter that should have been there was there. Everybody forgets that. My father did nothing wrong. He had everything he wanted in life. He had no reason to steal fuel cells. Or anything else.”

“So what do you think happened?”

“I don’t have a theory. I know my father was ruined by it all. He never piloted another ship. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” she said. “I did.”

“With Tripley dead, the Foundation halted its flights, and nobody else would hire him. Oh, they didn’t mention Mount Hope. Just don’t need any captains right now, thank you.

“Look, Kim, I know it hurts. But if you want my advice, let go.”

“You had a call from Dr. Flexner, Kim.”

She took off her jacket and dropped it over the sofa. “Okay, Shep. See if you can reach him.”

“It was just a few minutes ago. He was in his office.”

She picked up a glass of apple juice and slipped into her commchair.

“He seemed upset,” Shepard added.

“In what way?”

“Irritable. Angry. Anyway, we have a connection.”

The walls vanished and she was sitting in Matt’s office. He did indeed look a trifle mussed. “Hi, Matt,” she said.

“Hello, Kim.” He was seated behind his desk, writing. “I’ve got a question for you,” he said, not looking up but putting the pen down.

“Go ahead.”

Now his eyes rose to meet hers. “What did you do to Benton Tripley?”

“What do you mean?”

“I got called in by Phil this morning. He apparently got a call from Tripley. Tripley is in a rage.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t exactly clear why. But it has to do with you. When you were making the presentation, did you ask him about the Mount Hope incident?”

“We talked about it.”

“Did you imply that his father was involved in criminal activity?”

She tried to remember the conversations. “No,” she said. “Why would I do something like that?”

“That was going to be my question.”

“It didn’t happen.”

“Good. Because whatever benefit we got from giving him the Morton Cable Award, we’ve more than lost.”

“Matt—”

“Did you really break into his house?”

“No!”

“He says you did.”

Kim felt her temper rising. Take a deep breath and don’t lose control. “I looked at the property in the Severin Valley. But it’s not his place anymore. That whole area’s abandoned.”

“Are you sure about the details? Did you check out the ownership before you went in?”

“No—”

“That’s what I thought. The director had to apologize to him this morning.”

“Apologize?” Tripley’s image took shape in her mind. He was smiling. “What for? Whatever the paperwork says, the place is abandoned.”

“Tripley thinks the Institute’s sticking its nose into his business.” Matt sighed. “Kim, we’ve assured him there’s a misunderstanding somewhere, and that the matter is ended. I don’t know what this is all about. But it is ended, right?”

“Matt, this is something I’ve been doing on my own.”

“No, Kim. You don’t do anything on your own. You’re a representative of the Institute. For God’s sake, you speak for us a couple of times a week.” His gaze hardened. “You will back away and not go near any of this again. Do you understand?”

She returned his stare. “Matt, I talked to one of the Interstellar technicians yesterday. About the repairs made on the Hunter after they came back. He lied to me.”

“How do you know?”

“I could see it in his face.”

“Good. That’ll hold up if anybody questions you—”

“Listen, if there’s nothing to any of this, why is Tripley so bent out of shape? What’s he hiding?”

“That’s easy. A lot of people died out there. In the explosion. If it were to be shown that his father was in some way liable, there’d be a hundred lawsuits against the estate.”

“After all these years?”

“I’m not a lawyer. But, yeah, I’d say he stands to lose quite a lot if you were to find something that makes his father culpable.”

Somebody apparently entered the office. The interruption was behind her, so she couldn’t see who it was. But Matt glowered over her shoulder at the visitor. She heard the door shut, and his attention returned to her. “Matt, I don’t see how I can just walk away from this.”

He cleared his throat. “Kim, I have a pretty good idea what this means to you—”

“Matt, you have no idea what it means to me—”

“All right. I’m sorry. I hear what you’re saying. But the problem is there’s no proof anywhere to support an investigation. All that’s going to happen if you persist is that the Institute will get burned, you’ll wind up out on the street, and nothing will have been accomplished.”

She took a minute to get control of her voice. “How do we get evidence if we don’t look?”

He looked pained. “I don’t know, Kim. But you have to realize that you represent the Institute. Round-the-clock. Whatever you do reflects on us.” He braced both elbows on his desk and set his chin atop his clasped hands. “I understand that we’re not being fair to you. But you have to understand there’s just too much at stake.”

“Money.”

“A lot of money.”

She let her eyes close. “Anything else?”

“No. That’s about it.”

“Thanks,” she said. And broke the connection. Her living room re-formed around her. She got up, retrieved the jacket, and walked out onto the deck.

The sea looked cold and gray.