Page 13 of Jacob

She drew in a deep breath. “First of all, I need to know whether any contract we sign contains a confidentiality clause. What I have to talk about is serious. If I am wrong, a good man’s name and reputation will be shot. But there are also national security implications as well. I need to know that what we discuss will be confidential.”

There was no question of signing a contract. Every resource of Black Inc. was at her disposal and would be forevermore. He met her searching gaze. “Not one word of what is said in here will be repeated to anyone you don’t want knowing.” He meant every word and she saw that.

Alex nodded. “Okay. I’ve tried to put together a cohesive narration of my concerns and I think the best thing to do is to tell you things in chronological order.”

“Start at the beginning. Always a wise choice,” he said and she glanced at him sharply, to see whether he was being ironic. He wasn’t. He’d given hundreds of debriefs and it always worked best when you started at the beginning and went on from there.

“Okay.” She clenched her hands together so tightly the knuckles whitened. Jake would have given anything for the right to put his hand over hers. His hand itched to cover hers. But she wouldn’t allow it. “At the beginning. A colleague of mine is missing. He’s been missing for three days. I’m really worried.”

Fuck. Colleague. What the hell didcolleaguemean? Jake kept his face still, but inside he was boiling.

“A colleague,” Jake repeated, voice neutral.

Her face tightened. “Your man Dylan asked what the colleague was to me. You don’t have the right to ask that.”

He did. He absolutely did have the right. It was vital information to the case because… because. But Jake knew when to step down.

“By colleague, you mean he works at the CDC?”

Alex nodded. “Yes. In the Office of Infectious Diseases.”

“Your office. There are about thirty people in that office, right?” He shrugged at her sharp glance. He’d made a special study of the CDC since Alex started working there. As a matter of fact, he’d set up the Atlanta office of BI when he heard that Alex had been recruited to work there. The fact that he’d made a lot of money from CDC business was a bonus. “We work with the CDC. I know the structure pretty well.”

“OK. There are thirty-two of us. But people are seconded to our department all the time for special projects. And at any given moment people from our department are out in the field.”

“This colleague—has he been in the field a lot lately?” He’d probe around the edges of this.

“Some. Not any more or any less than any of us. But he did go to a conference in Budapest a few months ago and came back… changed.”

“Changed how?”

Alex kept silent, breathing quietly, eyes probing his. Finally, she spoke. “This is the thing. My colleague is, like me, in mid-career. Like me, he has worked hard to get where he is. We both work in highly specialized fields. Apart from the private sector, there are very few government jobs in our area of expertise and we both hold the best job possible, given our talents and education.” She stopped, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “I—I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Okay.” Jake leaned forward until his elbows rested on his knees, hands clasped. Relaxed, non threatening. He watched her face carefully. “Let me see if I can guess. That way you haven’t told me anything. Your conscience will be clear.”

She nodded jerkily.

“Your colleague went to this conference in Budapest and came back a different man. I’m guessing he came back… emotionally different?”

“How—how do you mean?”

“Maybe a little euphoric, like he’d discovered a wonderful new world. Or else a little paranoid. Maybe frightened. Which one was it?”

Alex blinked. “Euphoric.”

Uh-huh. Jake knew exactly what had happened. “And his lifestyle changed, too, didn’t it?”

“Lifestyle?”

“Or standard of living. Let’s call it standard of living. Did he buy a new car? Have better quality vacations? Better clothes? Eat out often in fancy restaurants?”

Alex’s hands were shaking. “Yes. To everything. I didn’t notice at first. We all earn excellent salaries. You’d have to run your own lab to make more, but most of us don’t want to do that. It would be more admin than science. We certainly earn enough to live well. To tell the truth, many of us don’t even have time to spend the money we do earn, like me. But Elias—my colleague, Dr. Elias Field—he started going crazy. He bought two new cars. One a BMW and the other an SUV. This, for a single man who basically lives in the lab. He usually wore the CDC outfit, the one all the men wear. Khakis, cotton shirt, cotton sweater in the summer, wool sweater in the winter. In all shades of beige, from ecru to taupe. And then after Budapest, Elias bought himself several Ermenegildo Zegna suits.”

Jake must have looked blank because she sketched a smile.

“An Italian brand of menswear. An expensive one. The suits go for about eight thousand a pop. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have noticed except he started wearing colors, which he never had before. Salmon and canary yellow shirts.”

New car, new clothes. Yep. Good old Elias—and what the fuck kind of name was Elias anyway?—was ticking all the boxes. “Vacations? Restaurants?”

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