Page 19 of Once a Killer

He pursed his lips, as if thinking. Finally shook his head. “I could make a case for any of them, for different reasons. No obvious red flags with any of them.”

“You must have some suspicions,” she pressed. “I’m not going to hold you to anything, but I’d like your sense of who in the group would be willing to sell you out.”

“Well, Brogan would be an obvious choice. She came here very late in the process. And she’s contemptuous of me. She doesn’t respect me and doesn’t try to hide it.”

“Anyone else?”

He shrugged. “Maybe Rivers. Because he’s not doing well, and it’s always easier to blame someone else rather than yourself. But again, no proof. No red flags.”

“Okay, that’s helpful. I’ll talk to all of them over the next couple of days and give it some thought.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Then what?”

“Let’s get through my interviews, then we’ll figure out the next step.”

Chapter 7

By nine that morning, all four of the other engineers had shown up at the lab. Jameson introduced her as Bree Jones, a reporter for a Seattle e-zine who was doing a story on the lab. She wanted to talk to all of them, and he would appreciate their cooperation. She’d promised she wouldn’t take too much time away from their work.

Rivers sighed. Scowled. “I’m sure she doesn’t want to talk to the lab’s loser,” he said as he walked over to his workstation.

Bree hurried after him. “Stu, right?” she asked

He nodded.

“Of course I want to talk to you. I want to feature everyone working in this lab. So if you could make some time to talk to me in the next few days, I’d appreciate it.”

He scowled. He didn’t say anything, but she didn’t budge. Waited patiently until he shook his head. “I’m not one of Jameson’s success stories.” He shuffled some papers. Replaced a book on the bookshelf. “So why would you want to talk to me?”

“I want everyone’s perspective,” she said. “Just because you’re stuck right now doesn’t mean you won’t have a breakthrough tomorrow. Right?”

He laughed, and it sounded bitter. “Anything’s possible.”

“Let me know when you have some free time to talk,” she said, waiting for him to respond.

She suspected he intended to ignore her, but she waited patiently. Finally he shoved some books to the side. “Fine,” he scowled. “Tomorrow morning.”

“Great,” she said, pumping up the volume on eager and delighted. “I’ll talk to you then.”

She let her gaze drift over the other workstations. Jameson was in his office, working on his computer. McKay, Lewandowski and Brogan were busy, but Brogan watched Bree out of the corner of her eye. Looked like she wanted to talk but didn’t want to volunteer. So Bree wandered over.

“Hayley, right? Hayley Brogan?”

“That’s me,” the woman said.

“Do you have a few minutes to talk to me? Explain your work and why you chose to work at this lab?”

Brogan studied her for a moment, then hooked her foot around a stool and dragged it over. “Sure. Have a seat.”

Bree slid onto the stool and pulled out her notebook. But before she could ask a question, Hayley asked, “There are a lot of labs like this out there, some of them way closer to Seattle. Why’d you pick Jameson’s lab for your interview?”

Bree closed her notebook. Studied Hayley for a long moment. “To be honest, he was willing to talk to me. I contacted several other labs, but they weren’t interested.”

“So why did Jamie agree?” Brogan asked.

Bree wondered why she called Jameson ‘Jamie’, and guessed it wasn’t a sign of respect for her boss. Instead of asking, she said, “He wanted publicity for the people working here. He figured if I featured the four of you, it might spark some interest in your work. I liked the idea of talking to some up and coming computer engineers, and I liked featuring people no one had ever heard of. So I agreed to work with him.”

“So Jamie was being unselfish. Helpful. How unusual of him.”

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