Read Online Crosscut by Meg Gardiner - Free Book Online Page B

face with a pillow.
    Not in a million years did I want relatives yakking about my sex life. What went on between Jesse and me was off-limits to anybody else. Yes, things were sometimes complicated. Not sex—sex was fine. Sex was a moon shot for me. It just took patience and imagination by the truckload. But when a man had a spinal cord injury, conceiving without fertility treatment was tough. The truth, which worried me more than I liked to admit, was that his SCI meant we didn’t need contraception. I rolled over. If I strangled Taylor with a push-up bra, nobody would convict me. I could blame the tic.
    I stood up, headed to the bathroom, flipped on the light, and stopped short. Mr. Martinez and his sons had been going to town. I had no shower, toilet, or sink.
    Jesse laughed when I called, and said he’d love a guest as long as I left Toby Keith and Patsy Cline at home. I packed up and was halfway out the door when the phone rang. I waited, hand on the knob, letting the machine pick it up. Jax’s cool voice came on.
    “Webcam.” She hung up.
     
Exhaling, I pulled the small camera from my desk drawer and wired it up to my laptop. Almost immediately the video program beeped and a window opened. On-screen I saw Jax, her face warm under a desk lamp, her diamonds afire.
    “Good job. The chatter has escalated. People are paying attention,” she said.
    “Is that how they taught you to talk back at Langley?”
    In the background were a bed, hotel-quality artwork, drapes, a balcony. Outside, a man leaned against the railing, gazing at the dusk. A cigarette glowed red as he inhaled.
    “Hello, Tim,” I said. “How’s the view there in Lone Pine? Or is it Palmdale?”
    “Dubai, pet.” He blew smoke toward the sky.
    “Jax, the China Lake police are calling in the FBI. They’re annoyed at me but going all-out.”
    “Good. Because I have more information for you.” She adjusted the focus on her camera. Her image blurred and sharpened. “Coyote was once attached to a project called South Star. It was black. Run out of China Lake.”
    My pulse jumped. “He’s navy?”
    “No. And neither was South Star. It was DARPA funded originally, but went dark. The research developed fast and weird. Big stuff.”
    DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, funded open research at universities and corporations. But sometimes projects turned hot and went classified.
    “Coyote was a test subject for the project,” she said.
    My thoughts adjusted. “You’re saying South Star wasn’t a weapons system?”
    “On the contrary. That’s precisely what it was.”
    China Lake is all about weaponry: missiles, bombs, antimissile space defense. At the gate to the base a sign politely reminds drivers to phone for a police escort if they’re delivering high explosives. But Jax was implying something quite different.
    “Human weaponry,” I said.
    “Precisely.”
    “But you’re saying this wasn’t navy research. Was it the agency?”
    “Could have been DIA or NSA, or any one of a dozen off-the-books pet projects of somebody with the ear of the brass.”
    My mind was buzzing. “If the killer was attached to this project, then there must be records. They’ll have his name and can begin tracking him down.”
    “Did you hear me? This project was black. It won’t be like looking up names in the phone book. The Bureau will have to pry that information loose with a crowbar. If records even exist.”
    “So? Ask around Langley.”
    She smiled, showing ice-white teeth. “For the longest time you refused to believe that I was with the Company. Now you refuse to believe that I’m not.”
    Exactly. I didn’t know what her real story was, who she worked for, whether she was freelance or still collecting a federal paycheck. And her smile told me she liked it that way.
    She folded her arms. “You have sources; I have sources. All mine know is that Coyote was once attached to South Star. You’ll have to dig for the