Fantasy in Death (In Death #30)(10)

“Don’t you need a warrant or something?”

She aimed a cool look. “Do you want me to get one?”

“No. Sorry.” He raked a hand through his hair and sent the short ends into tiny tufts. “No. I just... His stuff. It’s all his stuff. He’d have logged anything he took with him on this unit. It’s inventory. The four of us have the same password here, so we can check what’s in and out. There’s a secondary, different for each of us, that’s required on our own units to edit. So we can’t mess around, you know?”

“All right.”

He entered the password manually, his back to Eve. “Var,” he said and held his pass up for verification.

Var is cleared, the computer announced.

“Show any log-outs for off-site use by Bart for June twenty-third.”

“Make it a week,” Eve told him.

“Oh. Amend to June seventeenth to June twenty-third.”

One moment, please. How are you, Var?

“I’ve been better.”

I’m sorry to hear that. Here’s your list. Can I help?

“Not right now, thanks. There’s nothing for yesterday.” He gestured at the screen. “He’s got a couple of in-developments off-site through the week, but he logged them back in. He didn’t have anything out yesterday.”

“I’ll take a copy of that list, and a copy of any of the programs he took out this week.”

“Oh wow, Jeez. I can’t. I mean, I really can’t just give you copies of stuff we’ve got in development.” His face went from shocked, to pained, to worried. “It’s, like, secret. Nobody but the four of us is cleared to take anything off-site. Benny won’t even do that until we’re about ready to rock it. It’s why he ends up working all-nighters here. He’s nervous about taking something that’s not in the jump out of the building.”

“I’ll just get a warrant.”

“Oh, man. I don’t know what to do. I can’t think straight.” Tears swirled into his eyes before he turned away. “I have to protect the company, but I don’t want to do anything that messes things up. I don’t even know if I can say yes or no. We have to vote on it. The three of us. We’d need to figure it out. Can you let us try to figure it out first?”

“I’ll give you some time. How long did you know Bart?”

“Since college. He was already hooked with Cill and Benny. They hit in, like, elementary, and then we all just... See the logo.” He pointed to the logo of U-Play on the screen. “He’d come up with a lot of fancier ones, really rocking ones, but he wanted this. The words in a square. He said that was us, the square, because it took four of us to make it happen. Can I be excused for a minute? Please. I just want to, um, take a minute.”

“Go ahead.”

As he fled, Eve’s ’link signaled. “Dallas.”

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Feeney told her.

“Good first, it’s been a crap morning.”

“We were able to dig some of the program details out of the unit. The name’s Fantastical, and it’s coded SID.12—still in development, I’d say twelfth version. It’s got the U-Play copyright, and the date of last edit as of two days ago.”

“Was he playing solo, or was somebody in it with him?”

“The unit’s set for solo, but that’s part of the bad. No way to tell from the disc. No way to tell what the hell Fantastical is as the disc self-destructed when we bypassed the last fail-safe.”

“Shit.”

“It’s pretty toasted. We might be able to get something off it, given a miracle or two. They have to have a copy. No way this is the only one.”

“I’ll get on that from here. I’m going to need a team to pick up the vic’s work equipment. Try not to blow it up.”

“That hurts, kid.”

“Well, it might as well be a crap day for you, too,” Eve said and signed off before signaling Peabody. “I need you to come to the vic’s office, start a prelim search, and keep everybody else out. I’m on my way there.”

“Copy that. I’ve got the salients on these two, and I’ll do runs on the three of them. Are we going to interview the rest of the place today?”

“Better now than later. We’ll keep it to whereabouts at the time of until we do more runs.”

“There’s over seventy of them, Dallas.”

She sighed. “I know. Contact Feeney again. He and McNab and Callendar can come down. They speak geek anyway.”

“Copy that, too. McNab’s going to wet his pants when he sees this place.”

“And won’t that be fun? You here, me there. Now.” Eve clicked off again.

Eve took her time going back. She saw that Var was right—people knew something was up, something was off. Heads turned in her direction, whispers followed her. The place reeked of guilt and worry and just a hint of excitement.

What’s going on, what did they do? Are we in trouble?

She spotted Var coming back from the opposite direction, looking wrecked, and the whispers pumped up to murmurs.

She let him go in ahead of her, then closed the door behind her.

“What’s Fantastical?”