Lock In (Lock In, #1)(22)

Schwartz glanced down at his body. “I suppose it is,” he said. “I know some Hadens who enjoy cross-gender integration, but I’m not usually one of them. But my usual Integrator was unavailable this evening and I was a last-minute addition to this party. So I had to work with who was available.”

“You could have done worse,” I assured him. He smiled again.

“I don’t know how I feel about you knowing these two better than I do,” Dad said, charmingly, smoothly.

“I find it a little surprising myself,” I said.

“As do I,” Hubbard said. “It doesn’t seem possible that your father and I haven’t crossed paths before, all things considered. But then, aside from our various offices, Accelerant Investments doesn’t do much in the field of real estate.”

“Why is that, Lucas?” Dad asked.

“As a Haden, I’m less engaged with the physical world, I suppose,” Hubbard said. “It’s just not front of mind for me.” He motioned at Dad with his scotch. “I don’t think you mind me not competing in your field.”

“No,” Dad said. “Although I don’t mind competition.”

“That’s because you’re very good at beating the competition,” Hubbard said.

Dad laughed. “I suppose that’s true,” he said.

“Of course it is,” Hubbard said, and then looked at me, smiling. “It’s something the two of us have in common.”

* * *

As we sat down at the table for dinner I called Vann, using my inside voice so no one at the table would know my attention was elsewhere.

Vann picked up. “I’m busy,” she said. I could barely hear her over the background noise.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m in a bar, having a drink and trying to get laid,” she said. “Which means I’m busy.”

“I know that Lucas Hubbard uses Nicholas Bell as an Integrator.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Hubbard is sitting across from me at the dinner table right now, using Bell.”

“Well, shit,” Vann said. “That was easy.”

“What should I do?”

“You’re off the clock, Shane,” Vann said. “Do what you like.”

“I thought you might be a little more excited,” I said.

“When you see me tomorrow, on the job, I will be excited,” Vann promised. “Right now, I’m otherwise occupied.”

“Got it,” I said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“So am I,” Vann said. “But since you did I’ll tell you I’ve made progress on our corpse. The DNA came back.”

“Who is he?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“I thought you said you made progress,” I said.

“I did. The DNA analysis didn’t come up with anything but it determined that he’s probably of Navajo ancestry. Which might explain why we can’t find him in the database. If he’s Navajo and he lived on a reservation, then all his records would be on the reservation’s databases. They’re not automatically tied into the U.S. databases because the Navajo Nation is autonomous. And strangely distrustful of the United States government!” Vann fairly cackled that last line.

“How often does that happen?” I asked. “Even if you live on a reservation, if you ever leave it, you probably do something that gets you into our databases.”

“Maybe this guy never left,” Vann said. “Until he left.”

“Do we have a request in to them?” I asked. “The Navajo Nation, I mean.”

“Our forensics team does, yeah,” Vann said. “DNA, fingerprints, and facial scan. The Navajo will get to it when they get to it. They don’t always put a priority on our needs.”

Up at the head of the table, Dad started clanging on his wineglass, and then stood up.

“Have to go,” I said. “My dad is about to make a speech.”

“Good,” Vann said. “I was about to hang up on you anyway.” And then she did.

* * *

Dad’s speech was his standard-issue “at home with donors who everyone is pretending are friends” speech, which is to say that it was light, familiar, casually intimate, yet at the same time it touched on themes important to the nation and to his not-quite-formally-announced senatorial campaign. It went over like it usually does, which is to say very well, because Dad is Dad and he’s been doing the public relations thing since he was in high school. If you can’t be charmed by Marcus Shane, you’re probably a sociopath of some sort.

But at the end of the speech there was a switch up from the text. Dad mentioned “the challenges and opportunities that Abrams-Kettering offers each of us,” which I thought was a little out of context, since only Hubbard and Schwartz and I had Haden’s. So I cheated and did a quick facial scan of the other people at the table. Five of them were CEOs and/or chairmen of companies that catered to the Haden market one way or another, with all the businesses headquartered here in Virginia.

That explained it, then. And also why Dad was especially keen to have me at the dinner.

Which meant, of course, that I was put on the spot.

“And what do you think of Abrams-Kettering, Chris?” one of the dinner guests asked me. The facial scan registered him as Rick Wisson, the husband of Jim Buchold, the CEO of Loudoun Pharma. Buchold, who was seated next to his husband, shot him a look, which Wisson either missed or ignored. I did not imagine their ride home that night would be especially pleasant.