"I'm sorry. I need to take this call. Would you care to wait in the conference room? I'll have your coffee brought there."
The vista from the seventh floor had already worked its magic on Cleo. Settling into one of the chairs lined up around the massive conference table, she waited while Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and drank in the stunning view of the harbor and the Atlantic beyond.
She drank in his posterior view. She couldn't help but note the way his sport coat molded a set of linebacker's shoulders. And the way the back vent parted to display his nice, tight butt. Recalling how many weeks had passed since she'd skimmed her nails over those iron buns, she cleared her throat.
"So how's the debrief going?" The question brought him around. His gaze locked with hers across the acre or so of mahogany. "We finished the debrief three weeks ago."
She was damned if she was going to ask why he hadn't bothered to call her. The question hung between them, though, like a hot-air balloon hovering right over the conference table.
"I was going to hop a plane to Dallas," Jack said slowly.
She lifted a polite brow. "But?"
"But my ex-wife called. From the Cincinnati PD drunk tank."
The little knot of irritation Cleo had toted around for the past several weeks eased. She didn't know much about Jack's ex. He'd never talked about the former Mrs. Donovan.
The OSI was like one big frat house, though. Good news worked its way slowly through the ranks of agents, but dirt got passed around at the speed of light. Well before Cleo and Jack had worked their first op together, she'd heard that his marriage was on ice.
Rumor had it the bust-up had been painful and long in coming. Ditto the reconciliation that had lasted less than a year. From the sound of it, Donovan's ex was still reaching out to him.
"Bad scene, huh?"
"Yeah, bad scene."
Both the tone and the shrug said "end of discussion." Cleo took the hint and didn't probe. The timely arrival of a fresh-faced assistant with their coffee gave them both the chance to fall back and regroup.
"So what's up with you and Marc Sloan?" she asked, reaching for the sleek stainless-steel carafe. "Or can you tell me?"
"I'm here to talk to Sloan about the oceangoing cargo vessels he retrofitted for the air force."
"Huh?" The carafe stopped in midair. "Since when does the air force have ocean-going cargo vessels?"
"Since it got heavy into the APR The Afloat Prepositioning Program," he added at her blank look.
Cleo vaguely recalled hearing about the program during her air force years. She knew it involved supersize cargo ships packed with military equipment and placed on station in the Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean. That was about it, though.
"I thought the navy ran the APP"
"The navy's Military Sealift Command acts as executive agent. But we manage the three ships dedicated to air force use. They're handled by the Ogden Air Logistics Center."
Hooting, she thumped the carafe back onto the tray.
"That's what I loved about the military. Nothing like designating a logistics center smack in the middle of landlocked Utah to manage a fleet of ocean-going cargo vessels."
The rigid set to Jack's shoulders relaxed. An answering grin tugged at his lips. But before he could issue a defense of military logic, the door to the conference room opened again and Sloan strolled in.
With a single assessing glance, Marc took in the sight of Cleo tipped back in her chair, laughing up at the man she'd tumbled into bed with in Santa Fe.
Marc didn't slow his stride. His smile remained easy. But Cleo suspected that the primitive instincts of a male on the hunt were razoring through his gut.
"Hello, Donovan. Sorry I kept you waiting."
"Hello, Brown Eyes. How did your meeting go? The one you told me about at breakfast?"
It didn't take a Dr. Phil to interpret Jack's reaction to the cozy shared-breakfast bit. His facial muscles didn't so much as twitch, but the air in the conference room suddenly got heavy.
"The meeting produced some unexpected results," Cleo replied into the charged silence. "I'll brief you after you finish your business with Jack."
"Whatever that business is." Sloan turned to Donovan with a look of cool inquiry. "I assume it has to do with whatever information you've managed to extract from Alex's assailant."
"Actually, it has to do with the Afloat Prepositioning Program. I need to verify when you last accessed the APP database."
The engineer's eyes narrowed. Cleo could see he was trying to make the leap from the person who'd put a bullet into his brother's skull to an ocean-going resupply system managed by an air logistics center in Utah.
"Are you conducting an official inquiry concerning the APP?"
"It's still just a preliminary verification of facts at this point."
The distinction didn't appear to reassure Sloan. He was a former naval officer. He knew how the military investigative services worked. Preliminary fact-finding was only a step away from the real thing.
With so much of his company's work defense-related, Sloan had to cooperate or risk becoming the subject of a formal investigation-not a good move if he hoped to pull down other lucrative government contracts.
"I'll have to check my computer log," he said, all business now. "As best I can recall, the last time I accessed the APP was a month or so ago, when the Navy Sealift Command requested an updated set of schematics for one of the cargo ships we retrofitted for them. May I ask why you need this information?"
"Because the DNA signature on file for you was used recently to gain access to a highly classified portion of the database."
Sloan's brows snapped together. "How recently?"
"Yesterday."
"That's impossible. I didn't go into the APP yesterday."
"Someone did, and they used your DNA signature to get in."
"You'll have to give me a little more to go on," the executive bit out. "What portion of the database was accessed, and at what specific time?"
Donovan countered with a question. Another standard investigative technique. Find out what the suspect knows, but tell him as little as possible.
"How familiar are you with the APP operation at the Ogden Air Logistics Center?"
"I know it manages the three cargo ships dedicated to the air force. Their computers track every weapon-five-hundred-pound bombs, air-to-surface missiles, cluster bombs-shipped to the loading facility just north of here."
Surprise had Cleo popping out a question. "The ships are loaded here in Charleston?"
"About a hundred miles north, in North Carolina. At the
Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal."
Sloan's mind was obviously racing ahead of his words. Frowning, he drummed his fingers on the conference table.
"The exact breakdown of the munitions packages loaded onto each ship is classified. As you might expect, the military doesn't particularly want outsiders to know what mix of armaments they have floating around on the high seas."
Particularly, Cleo thought on a swift breath, if that mix had been specially packaged to support an upcoming operation or incursion.
She began to appreciate the scope of the problem. She also understood why the air force had dispatched one of its top agents to investigate a possible breach of the APP database.
"Was that what was accessed?" Sloan asked. "The current air force packaging?"
"Possibly."
The noncommittal response tightened Sloan's jaw "When, specifically, did this unauthorized incursion take place?"
That Jack answered. "Last night, at 6:12 Ogden time."
"Which would be 8:12 eastern time. It wasn't me, Donovan. I was otherwise occupied at the time."
"You have a witness who can confirm that?"
"Yes, I do."
"And that would be?"
Uh-oh. Cleo braced herself. She suspected Donovan wouldn't appreciate the candlelight-and-shrimp scenario any more than he had the cozy breakfast bit.
To her surprise, Sloan didn't jump on the opportunity to score more points. Instead, he took control of the interview. Or tried to.
"I'll supply the witness if and when it becomes necessary. At the moment, I'm more concerned with how someone obtained the DNA signature I filed for access to the APP."
"Right," Jack drawled. "Let's talk about that. You and your brother are identical twins, which means your DNA profile is also identical. Therefore you couldn't use your own DNA when you applied for access to the APP. The system requires a strand that can't be matched or duplicated by another living human."
"You've done your homework."
"Yes, I have. What I couldn't determine from the records, though, is exactly whose DNA you supplied when you established your signature."
"I used the general's. General Sloan's."
"Let me make sure I have this right. The DNA you supplied Ogden in your initial request for access to the Afloat Prepositioning database belonged to your dead father?"
"It belonged to the man who adopted Alex and me," Marc corrected. "Neither of us has any idea who our real father was."
Donovan pulled out a pen and notebook. "What was the exact sample source? Hair? Teeth? Fingernail clippings?"
"In accordance with the general's express wish, his remains were cremated immediately after his death. Neither Alex nor I saved any body parts as personal mementos."
"You saved something." The pen clicked. Once. Twice. "What was it?"
When the silence stretched, the trained investigator in Cleo zoomed into high gear. There had to be a reason for Sloan's reluctance to admit to the source of the DNA. Her first thought was he'd collected a vial of his father's blood, voluntarily or otherwise. Her second, that he'd preserved a urine sample. Or possibly excrement.
She could think of a dozen reasons why he would save a DNA sample, besides the one presently under discussion. Maybe the Sloan brothers had anticipated a legal battle over the general's estate, if he'd left one. Maybe they thought the volumes he'd published on ancient warfare would put him in the same category as Thucydides or Machiavelli one of these days, thereby making his DNA a scholarly treasure.
Or maybe Sloan's reasons were more macabre. His few references to his father had suggested anything but a loving relationship.
Cleo's fertile mind was conjuring up all kinds of potential uses for a dead father's DNA, not excluding high-tech voodoo dolls designed to keep a soul writhing in hell for all eternity, when Sloan abruptly invited them into his office. "I keep the DNA source in my safe." Ugh! The mere possibility he might store fifteen-year-old excrement in his office safe put the suave executive in a whole different light.
7
Z?ince Donovan didn't invite her to butt out, Cleo tagged along when the two men adjourned to the inner sanctum. Her pupils took a moment to adjust to the dazzling afternoon sunlight streaming through the angled glass panels.
Her mind took a moment longer to make sense of Sloan's actions when he crossed his office and slapped a palm against one of the floor-to-ceiling panels. To Cleo's astonishment, the window retracted to reveal another room beyond.
"What the heck…?"
"I had the windows in this inner office specially manufactured to refract the light," Sloan explained. "They were also placed at angles to produce a one-way, mirror-type effect. Essentially, this room is invisible from both the interior of my office and the outside of the building."
He had that right. Squinting through one of the other windows, Cleo saw nothing but sunlight and glass reflected back at her.
"What is it?" she asked. "Some sort of corporate safe room?"
"Exactly."
Cautiously, she slid a foot over the threshold. With glass on either side of her, she couldn't shake the eerie sensation of stepping into a chamber suspended in midair. The boats chugging along in the harbor directly below only added to the sensation.
When two well-muscled males followed her into the room, Cleo fought the impulse to throw out both palms and brace herself against the glass wall. Her rational mind told her an engineer of Sloan's obvious abilities wouldn't design a safe room that would plunge earthward with the addition of another four hundred or so pounds. Her not-so-rational mind screamed for a parachute.
"There's an elevator behind that panel," Sloan indicated with a nod to a side wall.
"Let me guess," Jack said. "The shaft doesn't appear on any architectural plans or building specs."
"Correct."
Considering the number of disgruntled employees who brought Uzis to work these days, Cleo figured an escape hatch was probably smart of Sloan.
Then again, a hidey-hole like this would come in handy if a man wanted to dally with the hired help. Or slip out of the building unseen by said help. "How many folks know about this safe room?" she asked.
"Only a handful of my top security personnel. And Diane, of course. Her infrared-heat signature will also activate the release. It won't, however, get her into the safe. Excuse me a moment."
Another palm slap, another panel, another hidden room. This one was a mere closet and lined floor to ceiling with steel-encased strongboxes. The second glass panel slid shut behind Sloan.
He re
appeared some moments later with a small, pod-shaped case. To Cleo's relief, he carried it onto terra firma. Donovan followed, and she sort of crabbed her way out. With a silent glide, the glass slid into place behind her.
"I gave this to the general for Christmas one year," Sloan said. "It's the only possession of his I retained after his death."
Sloan's voice was even and his expression flat. He flicked the small brass latch on the leather case, revealing a pipe with an ivory bowl carved to resemble the head of some Greek god.
"He fired it up twice, but it didn't draw as well as his old Briar. So he gave it back to me and told me to return it and try to recoup my money."
Cleo wondered how old Marc had been when his father had been so callous.
"The DNA came from the saliva residue in the stem," he informed Donovan. "I'm sure you'll find plenty left to run it against the signature used to access the database."
Cleo's mind sped off in another direction. "Just out of curiosity, how long does old saliva hang around in a pipe stem?"
"Forever, I would assume."
Her glance zinged to Jack. He responded with a wry grin that told her he was thinking the same thing she was. His current boss-the same general who had strongly suggested Cleo turn in her OSI shield years ago-collected pipes. Some of them were centuries old. The Old Man smoked 'em, too.
Lord, she'd love to be a fly on the wall when Jack told General Barnes he might be sucking in DNA from some scurvy-ridden eighteenth-century sailor or pox-ridden London merchant!
To her delight, it turned out she would be there, in print if not in person. Before Jack took possession of the pipe nestled in the felt-lined case, he produced a plastic evidence bag, a property receipt and a chain-of-custody log.