The Speed of Sound (Speed of Sound Thrillers #1)(45)

“He won’t do it himself, but you’re right.” There was no emotion in Stenson’s voice, because he had no emotional issue with letting Gloria Pruitt die. She was a chess piece about to be taken off the board, nothing more. And a pawn, at that. “He’ll have it done tonight. Which means we have a choice to make.”

“If we intervene, Barnes will recognize the scope of what he’s up against and further fortify his position. It will require a great deal more effort to establish a new foothold inside Harmony House.”

“Barnes is now aware that he has a security problem. He’s going to batten down the hatches no matter what we do.”

Greers grinned slyly, like he was about to reveal something big. “Have you considered the possibility that the echo box now actually works?”

Stenson cleared his throat. No, he hadn’t. Jesus, he was slipping. “Jason, if we could confirm that, we would devote the entirety of our very considerable resources toward retrieving it.”

Jason smiled with wonder. “It really would be astonishing, wouldn’t it? If the echo box works, I mean.”

“So astonishing that it’s also highly unlikely.”

The apprentice was determined to impress his mentor. “I’ve been thinking about how Edward and the box could have managed to leave Harmony House grounds.”

“He didn’t just walk off by himself.”

“No, he didn’t. He must have had help. And there is only one logical candidate.”

“The new resident. Dr. Skylar Drummond.”

“If our nurse’s reports are accurate, he wouldn’t trust anyone else enough to venture off facility grounds. This is the first time he’s left.”

“You’re assuming Parks was conscious.”

“If he wasn’t, he could have been taken by anyone at Harmony House. But if he went willingly, there is only one person he would have left with.”

“Have you confirmed that she was living with the victim of the subway event?”

The ambitious lieutenant nodded, certain that he had found the missing piece of the puzzle. “Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Stenson nodded, recognizing where Jason was going with this. “It’s still a bit of a stretch.”

“Michael Barnes is a psychopath. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“He’s a pit bull. He only does what Fenton tells him to. What reason could the good doctor have given him?”

“I can think of three. One is emotional. One is paranoid.”

“What’s the third?”

“That Fenton isn’t paranoid. The professor might have exposed something, intentionally or otherwise.”

The man in charge of the Foundation scratched his chin, recognizing the probability of a connection, which almost always meant there was one. “You think someone might have been running the professor?”

“Things had been going awfully smoothly for him,” Greers suggested.

“They sometimes do without anyone’s help. By all accounts, the young man was a star.” He looked pointedly at Greers.

“Well, something seems to have put him on Fenton’s radar.”

Stenson considered the young medical resident who had just started working for Fenton. “The new resident didn’t give herself much of a mourning period, did she?”

“The walls start to close in on you pretty quickly after a loved one passes.”

Stenson was lucky. He’d never cared for anyone who’d died suddenly. He imagined that he wouldn’t take it very well. That was one reason he’d been so impressed with Jason during his background check. The young man’s fiancée had been killed by a drunk driver committing his fourth offense. Jason handled the loss stoically, which contributed to his being hired at the Foundation. Stenson had the offender killed as a little signing bonus for his new hire. To this day, Stenson had never acknowledged the deed.

He pieced the day’s events together. “So she comes up for air, and decides to go to the office. But, as soon as she gets there, she does something that might end her career with Fenton. Why would she risk her dream job?”

“I’ve come up with several scenarios, but each involves Edward Parks successfully demonstrating the echo box. I believe he played something for her.”

Stenson folded his arms behind his head. “What could she have heard that would make her want to risk everything?”

“The only way to answer that is to listen to the device for ourselves.”

“That would kill two birds with one stone, wouldn’t it?” Proving the box worked, and hearing what Skylar had heard.

“I believe the fact that she took Eddie Parks and his device off Harmony House grounds proves that the echo box is now functional.”

Stenson shook his head in disagreement. “Edward Parks is known to have extraordinary hearing. He could have overheard something, which he then told the doctor. She could have taken Edward and his device to use as leverage.”

Jason nodded. “Dangerous game. She has no idea what Fenton’s capable of.”

“She will soon enough.”

Jason returned to the previous matter. “What do you want to do about the nurse?”

“What concerns me is how losing his mother might affect her son, Cornell.” Gloria Pruitt’s son was the X factor. While Bob Stenson still considered the echo box a long shot, he saw Cornell as a sure thing. He believed with complete confidence that Cornell could be the next great African American leader of the country.