control of the doctor. How did you find her?”
“The doctor…”
“Teplova. You had her business card, and you asked Sonya about a mathematical formula for beauty. You’re the one who led us to her.”
“Oh,” he said. “Didn’t think that was going to pan out, to be honest. Potential client of hers was going to meet her about six months ago … bridge went out, he had to turn around, clinic closed before he could ever reschedule. Official conclusion on the bridge was accidental construction explosion … but the case didn’t close for a while because preliminaries had a bunch of signature matches to D.J.’s devices. Thought it was worth a look.” He coughed weakly. “This sounded weird enough for a check, but there’d been so many false leads … hadn’t found much yet…”
So he’d only been at the beginning of chasing down that thread. We knew more than he did at this point about Teplova—and about what D.J. had been doing with her research.
Damn.
“Okay, go back to what happened when they had you. D.J. threatened you, threatened the people you worked with, tried to find out who else might know what you’d been investigating—what else?”
“The person who—D.J., I guess,” Arthur said. “He rambled a lot. I think there’s some plan. To … bomb a lot of places. All at the same time.”
Holy shit. That definitely hadn’t been in the police interview. “What? Why? Is someone paying him?”
He started coughing again, a longer fit this time. I handed him the water, but it still took some time for it to calm down. I wondered if I should worry about straining him.
But hell, he was a grown adult. He could say if he got too tired. And more bombings? Shit, he should have led with that.
“No, I don’t think it’s someone else’s dime. Think it’s more … personal in some way. He wasn’t being real coherent, but he sounded angry. Like this was about fixing something. Don’t know what.”
“Keep thinking, maybe more will come back to you,” I said. “In the meantime, what kinds of places are we talking? There’s no way to stop random terrorism, but high-profile targets will have security—”
“Yeah. I hope so. It was—now I’m thinking about it, the ranting was mostly about US-based stuff, I think. Not real specific, but I remember some things about the Hill and Washington. Big ticket places, some sort of higher cause … dunno, maybe it was just talk.”
That frankly surprised me. And didn’t match the impression I’d had of D.J., but then, it wasn’t like I knew the guy. And if he’d been talking explosions, it couldn’t be anyone else.
“Should tell the cops, right?” Arthur murmured. “Wasn’t sure … but now that Checker’s out…”
“Don’t even think about telling the cops this,” I said. “You do that, they’re hauling us all in for questioning, and nobody’s getting out this time.”
“Someone’s gotta stop him, Russell.”
“Then we’ll do it.” We were on the case anyway. We could add preventing a few high-profile assassinations to protecting Checker and the kids and tracking down D.J. and saving Coach and … fuck me.
“Might only be so much we can do,” objected Arthur. “Russell … might be this is best to pass on to the law.”
“We’re not going to hang our own out to dry just to take a bullet for some politicians,” I said. “That’s not happening.”
“But if we can’t find him—could be we won’t have a choice, you know? I was on his tail for so many months, and nada. We can give it a day or so and see if we’ve got some progress, but after that…”
Arthur and his fucking conscience. And today, in particular, after all the secrets, after his kidnapping, after everything, the constant moral harping crawled under my skin like parasitic worms, chewing me from the inside out. Tell the cops? They’d re-arrest Checker in the first heartbeat, and probably Tabitha, and definitely me—good luck to them there. Then they’d put a bullet in Coach and odds-on end up chasing their tails trying to find D.J. until he set off whatever whole anarchist movement he was gunning for anyway.
That was what you got for calling police. I didn’t know why I’d ever listened to Arthur.
“You wanna tell the cops, I’m disappearing,” I said harshly. I clenched my teeth together, swallowing back bitterness. “You want to know who’s been keeping your whole damn family safe? Me and Rio. If you want to actually find out what’s going on here, let us handle it.”
His face was