me, her eyes wide, like she wanted to say something but didn’t want to interrupt. The brother who’d been with her before hovered behind her. I got a good look at him for the first time—skin a few shades darker than Tabitha’s, a JPL T-shirt, and a deportment that was equal parts awkward, shy, nervous, and determined. They looked to be about the same age, or maybe Juwon was a little older, though Tabitha was taller.
I tried to ignore them and get started, but Tabitha ventured, “Ms. Russell?”
“You want me to find your dad, right?” I said. “Then go away and let me work.”
“We will, in a second, but, um. We wanted to say. If we can help at all—”
“What did I tell you about ‘helping’?” I said, not looking up.
“It doesn’t have to be important help,” piped up Juwon. “We can get you coffee, or breakfast, or run errands or—I know Tabitha makes people think otherwise, but we’re actually very good at following directions. Very good.”
Tabitha tossed her head. “When I want to be.”
Her brother elbowed her.
I closed my eyes for a moment and scrubbed my hands through my hair. Food. I did need food.
“Coffee,” I said. “Black and as strong as you can make it, for Rio and me both. And something high in protein.” What Checker didn’t know about me eating over his computers wouldn’t hurt him. He might even give it a pass, considering the circumstances.
Tabitha and Juwon almost tripped over each other in their rush back into the kitchen, as if what I’d asked them for was a matter of life and death. The smell of coffee and the sizzle of breakfast frying followed a few minutes later, in between bangs and a loud argument over whether they should bother me again to find out how I wanted my eggs and whether there was a possibility I was vegetarian.
I let them get on with it and concentrated on the computer.
Checker reported that he’d finally gotten his hands on the police reports for both the bombing at my place and the smaller explosives at Arthur’s office, and both, he relayed with some resignation, had sported D.J.’s signature. Apparently, even bombers who were as mercurial about their explosives materials as D.J. could be tracked through the way they crimped wires, strung components, or wrapped electrical tape—law enforcement could even match tool marks and soldering style. Taken together, it was almost as unique as a written signature.
D.J.’s involvement definitely wasn’t theoretical anymore. But law enforcement had no more intelligence than we did on his whereabouts, so Teplova’s more secret files were still far more promising for granting us some actual progress. Checker and Pilar had been steamrolling through the doctor’s hidden research with the force of a crusade.
it’s clear someone else’s paws were all up in here, Checker scribbled in the chat window. WG agrees, not ET’s style at all, this is what we want. do ur thing
The minute I started working my way down the directories, I could see exactly what he meant. In the easier parts of the system to access, Eva Teplova’s style had been meticulous, bordering on strict. All her research had been dated and categorized, all her file names prefixed and suffixed according to topic and chronology, with nary a text document out of place.
The more hidden records were … not that. The structure was the ghost of the same system, but then it was as if someone had trampled through with a keyboard throwing a coked-out party all over her organizational tidiness.
These changes, I wrote to Checker. All in the past six months?
yuppppppppp, he responded.
So this was not only what D.J. and any of his cohorts had been after, but they’d worked within Eva Teplova’s own computer system while they’d kept her under their thumb. Forcing her to surgically modify animals and people and then eventually murdering her.
Maybe she’d figured out how to fight back. Maybe she’d finally been about to get the upper hand, but they’d gotten to her first.
In any case, Checker was right. Our enemies had left muddy digital tracks through all of this. It was the best lead we had.
Anger against Willow Grace surged in me again. She could have put us on this path hours ago.
I shoved down the emotions and concentrated on what I knew Checker wanted from me. My math abilities made me capable of becoming a human cross-referencing machine, mentally rewriting regex on the fly as I processed the data for every new criterion.