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“Throw me a bone, Noah.”

“All I can tell you is that the technology Buck developed for Project Naïveté is a dangerous tool in the wrong hands.”

“But you’re not going to tell me what it is, are you?”

“No. And my advice to you is that you don’t ask your father, because if he tells you, he could go to jail. You don’t have clearance.”

Kate could see only one way around the wall he was hiding behind. “How do I get clearance?”

“Are you asking me to get it for you?”

“Yes. I’m tired of being a pawn in a game of chess where I can’t even see the board.”

Noah stared back at her, silent. Kate couldn’t tell if the accusation had wounded him more on the professional or personal level.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “Bring me something. Something big. If you do, I’ll see if I can get you clearance to tell you what Sandra stole.”

“What do you mean by ‘something big’?”

“I want to know who Sandra was stealing for.”

“She wouldn’t even give me a straight answer when I asked if she accessed company secrets. How am I supposed to find outwhoshe was stealing for?”

“Help us find a motive. If we can find her motive, we can figure out who she was working for.”

“So, you’re asking me to meet with Sandra again?”

“Yes. Obviously, you can’t just come right out and ask her, but I want the focus of your visit to be on one thing—why she did it.”

I did it for Megan.The words replayed so loudly in Kate’s mind that she feared Noah might hear them.

“Can you do that, Kate?” he asked.

One option was to tell Noah that she did it for her daughter. But Kate was an outsider to Noah’s investigation, and putting that information in his hands might only make it harder to find an answer to the question that really mattered: what had her mother meant by “I did it for Kate.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” said Kate.

Chapter 34

Patrick heard noises coming from the party room.

He was blindfolded and handcuffed to a bed frame, but the routine trips down the hallway to the bathroom had allowed Patrick to orient himself. The smell of food wafted from one end of the hallway, opposite the bathroom. Halfway between his room and the bathroom was the “fiestaroom,” as he called it. The guards gathered there at night, drinking and laughing over the fear they instilled in their prisoners.

The door creaked open, footfalls crossed the room, and Patrick felt the barrel of a gun pressing up under his chin.

“Be still,” he said, and the voice belonged to Inkface.

Patrick felt a moment of comfort as Inkface unchained his wrist from the bed frame, but it was short lived. With a rope, Inkface bound his wrists behind his back. He did a poor job of it, Patrick noted. Much more slack than usual. Definitely drunk.

“Up,” said Inkface.

Patrick obeyed and immediately felt the barrel of the gun against the back of his head. With hands behind his back and a drunken Inkface breathing down his neck, Patrick walked down the hallway, as directed. He figured either this was the end or he was the night’s entertainment in thefiestaroom. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.

They stopped halfway down the hallway, and it sounded like a sports bar on the other side of the door—music blasting as men laughed at their own jokes and competed to be the loudest voice in the room. Patrick was beginning to think this was not an “either-or” situation—clearly he was the night’s entertainment—but maybe this was the end, too.

Patrick heard the door open. Inkface shoved him, and Patrick fell into the room. The men inside cheered the arrival of the guest hostage of honor. Inkface horse-collared him, pulled him up onto his knees, and yanked off the blindfold.

“Look what you did!” Inkface shouted.

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