Ralph and I each carried the oversized laundry bags we’d scavenged from the police headquarters gym to our cars. I had the real device, Ralph’s bag was weighted to look just like mine.
Just in case anyone was watching us, we each chose a different route to Dr. Rigel Osbourne’s house, and after making sure we hadn’t been followed, we carried our bags to the door.
“How do you want to play this?” I asked him.
“Cassandra Lillo is dead. Anyone implicated in her abduction will be tried for murder.” He knocked on the door. “Improvise.”
“Have you sent a car to Cassandra’s place yet?” I heard footsteps from the other side of the door. “It’s possible Melice will go after her, to finish what he started.”
“Already done,” he said.
A moment later, the door opened and Dr. Rigel Osbourne stared at us through the crack. “Yes?”
Ralph put a hand on the door and pressed it open, sliding Dr.
Osbourne to the side. “FBI,” Ralph said with a quick flip of his badge. “You don’t mind if we come in, Rigel? We just need to ask you a few questions.” Ralph and I both set the laundry bags on the floor, then I swung the door shut behind us.
“Who are you?” Osbourne’s eyes were twitchy. His lower lip looked like it was used to being chewed on. “What’s this about?”
“A shark researcher,” I said.
“Found dead,” said Ralph ominously.
Osbourne’s face grew pale. “I don’t know anything about a dead shark researcher.” He wet his lips several times and began to eye the door. Neither Ralph nor I spoke. “How… how did she die?”
“We didn’t tell you the researcher was a woman,” I said. This guy was obviously not used to interrogations. I hoped that would help us find out everything we needed.
Ralph busied himself with opening one of the laundry bags and removing the device. “It’s a federal offense to lie to an FBI agent.”
Osbourne was watching Ralph pick up the device and lay it on the couch. “I just assumed, I mean… I didn’t know. Where did you get that?”
“Doctor Osbourne,” I said. “We’re here to find out everything you know about this device. We don’t have a lot of time, and neither of us is in a very good mood.” Then I nodded in Ralph’s direction and lowered my voice. “Especially not him.”
Dr. Osbourne shook his head. “He told me it was destroyed.
He told me-”
“Who told you?” asked Ralph.
“Victor Drake.”
Was Drake Shade?
“I’ll go get him,” said Ralph.
“Wait.” I pulled him aside and whispered, “We need everything we can get on Drake first. Let’s finish with Osbourne, then we’ll go talk to Drake. You know how it works: the more evidence we have when we get there, the more evidence we’ll have when we leave.”
Ralph considered that, then nodded and said to Osbourne, “All right. Talk. This is your only chance. And if I don’t like what I hear, I’m taking you in as an accessory to murder.”
“Murder! I didn’t… I don’t know-”
“Listen to me,” I said. “Let’s just take it slow. Start at the beginning. Tell us everything you know.” General Cole Biscayne rolled to a stop in the driveway of his sister’s beach house, and sighed.
Ever since the PROC meeting earlier in the day, he’d been fielding phone calls from the State Department, the Pentagon, and even the White House, trying to assure them that the prototype had been destroyed. After all, the fire had completely consumed Building B-14, nothing was found at the scene or on the shore, and the police reports confirmed that the arsonist did not have the device with him when he threatened the federal agent and was subsequently stopped by means of lethal force from attacking her. So, it looked like the satellites’ development might be pushed back, but in the long run things would work out.
Cole’s sister Beverly was working late but had told him to make himself comfortable, to grab whatever he wanted out of the fridge, and that she would see him about ten o’clock. He was glad for the space. It’d been a long, tedious, stressful day. He needed some time to relax and unwind.
The evening had cooled, and the general’s windbreaker snapped to attention around him as he stepped out of the car. Out of habit, he glanced at the shadows lurking around her house, remembering the form he’d seen outside his home in New England.
But there was no one there in the shadows. Of course there was no one there. This whole business with Sebastian Taylor had gotten blown completely out of proportion. Taylor had been on the run for almost four months. If he were going to make a move, he would have done it by now.
And so, General Cole Biscayne reassured himself with these thoughts as he walked up the stony path to his sister’s home and slipped a key into the lock.