Deadline

“On it.” Mahir produced a handheld reader from inside his coat and walked around to offer it to Dr. Wynne. “The information you’ll want to see is presently up on the screen. Read carefully. The implications can be rather unpleasant.”

“When I sent Dr. Connolly to you, I expected you to disappear immediately,” said Dr. Wynne, running one big hand through his thinning hair as he looked at the screen. “It would have been the smart thing to do. If you’d dropped off the grid as soon as she got there, you could have been safe.”

“You know we’ve never worked that way,” I said, surprised by the apologetic note creeping into my tone. I really was sorry. If we were wrong, and he only wanted to protect us—

Shaun, said George. Shaun, stop a second. You need to stop.

Dr. Wynne nodded as he scrolled through the material we’d collected. “This is some very good work. How difficult was this to find?”

“Not terribly,” said Mahir, before I could speak. He looked at Dr. Wynne neutrally, and added, “It’s amazing how much of this was out there, floating around, and simply needed to be put together in the correct order.”

Shaun—

“Wait a second, George,” I said softly, watching Dr. Wynne’s expression. He was frowning with concentration, studying the data. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

“Was any of it commissioned?” Dr. Wynne glanced up. “Is there anything here that you needed a lab or special access to find?”

All Dr. Abbey’s research was conducted in a lab, and I didn’t know how much of it was available to the general public. We’d released some of it in the process of getting the rest of the data, but not everything, and not in a collected format. I opened my mouth to tell him that… and stopped, frowning.

George spoke into the silence: He lost track of Kelly as soon as the building blew and destroyed her ID—the ID he gave her. He never questioned her death. He must have known. Shaun—

“I know,” I whispered. And I did know, suddenly, and without room for argument: Dr. Wynne ordered the destruction of Oakland. Dr. Wynne killed Dave.

“Know what, son?” he asked.

“Nothing.” I swallowed my revulsion, forcing my face to stay neutral. “Is Kelly the last living member of her research team?”

Dr. Wynne hesitated before nodding. “Yes. That’s why I knew I needed to get her out of here. I was worried that something might happen to her if she stayed.”

“So you sent her to us?” He would have known her arrival would bring us all in from the field; he couldn’t send her out with false data—she’d know; she’d been on the research team too long for him to slip that by her—and the real stuff was more than enough to keep us stationary for hours. We were all home when Kelly got there. Even if we hadn’t been, I would have called anyone who was out on assignment and demanded they come in. Let her get there. Wait a few hours. And then unleash the hounds, knowing we’d all be in one place.

“I knew I could trust you.”

“Huh. Okay.” I raised my gun again, aiming it at him. Mahir and Kelly blinked at me, looking startled. “See, I would have sent her to Canada. Or maybe to one of the unsanctioned labs, the ones where they’d know what to do with the stuff she had. We were grateful for the story we couldn’t break and all, but it wasn’t the best use of your illegal resources.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at, Shaun,” said Dr. Wynne, looking up. His eyes widened when he saw the gun. “What’s that for? We’re all friends here.”

“I’m starting to not be so sure about that.” Becks stepped up next to me, raising her own gun into firing position. “Why did you send her to us? What the hell made us so special?”

“You were dangerous,” said Kelly, and gave the dry-erase board another glance before looking toward Dr. Wynne. “That was it, wasn’t it? You sent me to them because they were dangerous.”

Dr. Wynne said nothing.

I gave Kelly an amiable nod. “I think that means yes. So what screwed you up, Dr. Wynne? Did somebody read the time wrong?”

Dr. Wynne frowned. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“We checked the Doc real carefully for trackers, but there weren’t any after we trashed the ID you gave her,” I said. “If there had been, I don’t think we’d have made it out. Somebody cared enough about killing us that they were willing to blow up half of downtown Oakland—”

“I think you’re exaggerating a bit there, son,” said Dr. Wynne.

“—but they lost track of us after that, didn’t they?” I kept my gun trained on Dr. Wynne, watching his face as I spoke. “Why do you care where we got our research, Dr. Wynne? Shouldn’t it be enough that we got it? If we can do it, anybody can.”

“No, Shaun, not anybody.” Dr. Wynne shook his head, smiling a little as Mahir snatched the reader away from him. “You’d need some pretty specialized resources. People with inside data.” Kelly paled. “People who aren’t bound by American law.”

Mahir’s eyes narrowed, expression going suddenly dangerous. “Are you saying, sir, that we were a perfect testin ground for the spread of information?”

“I’m saying I expected you to run,” said Dr. Wynne. His tone was reasonable enough, still the warm, Southern-accented voice of the man who’d been there to welcome me and George back from the dead when the CDC took us off the highway. He ran a hand through his thinning hair, looking at me steadily. “I never gave you much credit for brains, Shaun—that was your sister’s department, God rest her soul, and if she made any errors in judgment, it was in trusting you to watch her back—but I still thought you were smarter than this.”