Lock In (Lock In, #1)(84)

“Which explains the gun,” I said. “Stabbing’s fine for your sister, but you wanted your own end to be quick and mostly painless. But I suppose me rushing you scrambled your plans a bit.”

“So,” Vann said, again. “Do you want to remain silent? Do you want a lawyer?”

“You have the video,” Bell said, to Vann. He motioned up to me. “Your partner saw the attack. What would be the point?”

“To be clear, you’re waiving your right to silence and to an attorney,” Vann said. “I really need you to say ‘yes’ if that’s in fact what you want.”

“Yes,” Bell said. “It’s what I want. I intended to kill my sister, Cassandra Bell. That was my goal.”

“Well, that makes our lives a lot easier,” Vann said. “Thank you.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” Bell said. “I wanted people to know my sister is dangerous.”

“Is this covered in your suicide note?” Vann asked. “Because if it is, if it’s all the same we can just skip ahead to us taking you in and putting you in federal detention while you await sentencing.”

“Well, there is that one thing,” I said.

Vann snapped the fingers of her left hand. “That’s right. I did have one more question for you, Nicholas.”

“What is it?” Bell asked.

“How long are you going to keep this up?” Vann asked.

Bell looked at her uncertainly. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“I mean, how long are you going to keep pretending to be Nicholas Bell, Mr. Hubbard?” Vann asked. “I ask only because Shane and I have a bet going on here. Shane thinks you’re only going to keep this up until we get you into detention. After all, you do have a life and a multinational conglomerate to run, and now that you’ve confessed as Bell and admitted guilt, the hard part is done.”

“That’s right,” I said. “When the real Bell surfaces and backtracks in detention, no one will believe him. They’ll think he’s begun to regret his decision and is maybe hoping for some sort of psychiatric ruling.”

“That’s a fair call,” Vann said. “But I said no. You’ve come too far with this to half-ass it now. I think you’re committed to this all the way through the sentencing and housing. It’s only once the door slams shut on Bell in a six-by-nine cell that you’ll know for sure you’ve gotten away with it. So you have to stick with it, just like you’ve stuck with it this entire week. Yes, that means Accelerant doesn’t have you at the helm. But maybe when Bell’s asleep you can sneak out and leave a note saying you’re on vacation for a couple of weeks. They can get along without you.”

“Legal might have a problem,” I observed.

“They’ve got a lot of lawyers,” Vann said. “They can work around.”

“Neither of you are making any sense,” Bell said.

“He’s sticking with it,” I said.

“Well, he has to, right now,” Vann said. “But let’s mix things up. Mr. Bell, I have a picture for you.” Vann opened the manila folder, pulled a picture out of it, and slid the photo over to Nicholas Bell.

“Meet Camille Hammond,” she said, to him. “Twenty-three years old, and a resident of the Lady Bird Johnson Haden Care Facility in Occoquan, which is where the NIH stores Hadens with other severe brain disorders, who have no family or other means of support. More accurately, Camille was a resident, until Wednesday evening, when she died of a persistent pneumonial infection. Unfortunately common in people in her situation.”

Bell looked at the picture but said nothing.

“The NIH wasn’t too thrilled with us when we asked if we could borrow her for today’s festivities,” Vann continued. “But then, they also didn’t want to see Cassandra Bell brutally murdered by her own brother on the eve of the largest civil rights march on D.C. in a decade, either. So in the end they decided to help us.”

She leaned in across the table to Bell.

“So here’s the thing I want to know,” she said. “You came into that room to murder your sister. Someone you knew your entire life. I’m a little confused how you managed not to recognize that the woman you stabbed eight times was not the same woman that you had known for twenty years.”

Bell looked up and stayed silent.

“You know what, don’t answer that,” Vann said, and looked back to me. “Tell them to bring in Tony.”

I sent the message with my inside voice. A minute later Tony was in the room with us.

“Tony Wilton, Lucas Hubbard,” I said, by way of introduction. “Lucas Hubbard, Tony Wilton.”

“If it was a week ago, I’d say it was an honor to meet you,” Tony said, to Bell. “As it is, I can still say I admire your skill at coding.”

“Tony,” Vann said. “If you would be so kind as to catch up Mr. Hubbard on your latest adventures.”

“So, that thing you did where you downloaded code into the processor through the interpolator really was some genius-level work,” Tony said. “But it’s also really dangerous, because, well”—Tony gestured at Bell—“for obvious reasons. So last night I wrote a patch that would block that pathway, and the NIH, which can still dictate mandatory patching, put it at the top of their priority queue. Right around the time you entered Cassandra Bell’s apartment, it started going out to every Integrator in the United States. And after they’re patched, it’ll go into the general queue for Hadens, too. I mean, there’s no way that you could exploit it with a Haden like you do with an Integrator. But then we didn’t see this coming with the Integrators until you exploited it. Evil but brilliant. So we decided better safe than sorry.”