A courtesy call would have been nice, at the minimum.
One thought roiled Trevor’s mind:
I don’t believe in coincidence.
Trevor reached a conclusion about the mystery of the vacated leases and dropped flights. It added up to much more than a political stunt. And now, this apparent rush to redeploy the Guardian fleet.
Everything is connected.
He entered the outer lobby of the Governor’s office head down, determined to ask Graygone some hard questions. Trevor doubted he’d receive the right answers.
What then? Who to call next?
“Trevor. Wait.”
Shireena grabbed his arm. He didn’t see her coming.
“Hey, hun. Look, I’m about to talk with Graygone. I ...”
She spoke over him with a somber tone.
“Trevor, we have a problem. A big one.”
“Another? What now?”
“It’s Thomas. He didn’t show for work and doesn’t respond on any device. I dispatched Sec Admin. Trevor, he’s missing.”
20
IN A DIFFERENT CONTEXT, Trevor might’ve been relieved. But today? Yet another in a run of coincidences?
“Break it down,” he told Shireena. “What do we know?”
“He’s always punctual. First in, last out. I checked in with his pom fifteen minutes into the shift. Thought maybe he was feeling poorly. No response. Same for his wrist pad.”
“That’s right. He still wears it.”
Trevor and Shireena rarely wore theirs after leaving Sec Admin. It became redundant. Shireena nodded.
“Thomas said he preferred it to a pom.”
“How long ago did you try him?”
“Twenty minutes. I didn’t want to raise a commotion. There could be any number of explanations. I ran a cursory scan of his LinkPass history. He entered his flat yesterday at H2320 and never left. I contacted HVSA. Ramesh and a deputy arrived five minutes ago.”
Trevor flashed back to the Ulbrecht Hann case, which pushed his life on a trajectory leading to the Governor’s office.
“Did they enter?”
“Yes. After he didn’t respond. They found the flat empty except for his personals.”
No body. OK. The case already deviated from the Hann mystery, which gave Trevor little comfort.
“He has no LinkPass history since last night?” Her confirmation reduced the options. “He has to be in Haven. Assuming he somehow slipped past the identifiers in his building, which is a hell of a feat, there’s no way he could’ve reached the Crossway without creating a trail. There are too many access points. If he ...”
Trevor felt a shiver down his spine.
No. That’s mad, jackass. He couldn’t have.
Trevor’s silence alarmed Shireena.
“What are you thinking?”
“The Hann case. I didn’t know how the killer got to Ulbrecht until I learned about the phantom drill. That’s how Hoshi entered his flat. It got her through countless access points. It covered her tracks.”
“You’re saying Thomas owns one of those.”
Trevor hated being played for a fool as much as the next man; but if his new theory was true, Trevor had no one to blame but himself.
He pulled Shireena off to one side. Andreas didn’t need to hear the next bit.
“Remember what I said about the night when Nexus contacted me the same hour Thomas brought over the Mau Ping case? How it established a possible link? At the time, it seemed farfetched, even by my paranoid standards.”
Shireena took a deep breath.
“You think they’ve been working together.”
“How else did Thomas acquire the device? He must’ve sent the anonymous message to Murrill knowing it wouldn’t be traced.”
