“Noted.”
With a sigh, Bas let him go and moved over to the painting, moving the edge cautiously. It was surprisingly light and had been mounted with a single wire draped over a screw in the wall. It lifted offeasily.
“Well, that’s fucking anti-climactic,” Drew said, coming closer as Bas set the painting on thefloor.
The wall behind it was completely bare, but Bas ran a hand over the smooth surfaceanyway.
“Total waste of time,” Bas said, looking up at the ceiling. “Fuck.”What the hell were they going to do now, without any other strings to tug or leads tofollow?
“It’ll be fine,” Drew said, coming around to console him. “We still have things we can…Wait! Bas! Look at the back of thepainting!”
The painting was just a stretched canvas on a frame, with no paper backing. And nestled against the bottom edge of the frame, held in place with a single strip of duct tape, was a tiny thumbdrive.
Bas watched as Drew knelt to peel away the tape. His mouth was suddenly dry and his gutchurned.
“Got it!” Drew said, brandishing the stick. He looked at the row of computers and frowned. “How do we load thisup?”
Bas took the drive from his hand. “I can do it.” He shucked his coat, sat in his chair, woke his machine, and inserted the flash drive, tapping his fingers restlessly on the desktop all thewhile.
“Hey.” Drew leaned over him from behind and laid a hand on Bas’s, stopping its motion. “It’s gonna be fine. Whatever’s on there, it’ll beokay.”
Bas nodded, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. Everything he and Drew had talked about was a hypothetical. Now he was going to see the reality… and learn exactly how much blood Levi Seaver had on hishands.
He called up the directory on the drive and scrolled through it. “It’s a bunch of notes,” he told Drew. “Names and dates. Contacts. Amounts paid, all in cash and untraceable. Shit, he made a lot of money fromSILA.”
“What are those?” Drew pointed at thescreen.
“Those are… Huh. Those are charitable contributions,” Bas said. “It… it looks like he made anonymous contributions for the same amounts Alexei was givinghim.”
“So he wasn’t profiting,” Drew saidsoftly.
“I guessnot.”
And did that make Levi Seaver’s actions okay? Maybe not. But, yeah, it made Bas feel somewhat better. He keptdigging.
“Are thoseemails?”
“Yeah. Dozens. Between my dad and Michael Paterkin. And notes from my dad’s conversations with him.” He turned to Drew. “Use my cell and callCort.”
As Drew got Cort on the line, Bas skimmed the emails, excitement and anxiety thrumming through his blood in equal measure the further heread.
The FBI-agent Cort used to be was evident in his no-nonsense voice as Drew put the phone on speaker and set it on the desk. “We’re here. What did you guysfind?”
“A flash drive,” Bas said. “With all the missing project notes from Storm Surge. For a paranoid man, Alexei… or Michael Paterkin, as he calls himself here… was remarkably stupid about the things he put inwriting.”
“Yeah, probably because he knew we couldn’t connect Michael to Alexei,” Drewsaid.
“What kinds of things, Seaver?” Cort demanded. “What have yougot?”
“I can tell you what tech my dad sold Michael over the years. I can tell you how much he paid - in cash - for each thing.” Bas kept reading. “And… oh, damn. I can tell you who Collieris.”
“Collier’s not a project?” Cam demanded. “I thought when Alexei… or Michael… whoever… emailed you, he referred to the CollierProject.”
“He did,” Bas said, shaking his head even though he knew his brother couldn’t see him. “Looks like Alexei had Dad feeding him information on some surveillance programs that Seaver Tech developed for the government. Collier was an undercover agent trying to infiltrate SILA about three years ago. But using the tech Dad passed him, Alexei was able to find and eliminate Collier before he could get any info onAlexei.”
“Jesus,” Cam breathed. “So when he was going on and on about how well they worked together on the Collierproject…”
“He was essentially implying that Dad had a hand in the guy’s murder. Yeah,” Bas confirmed. He was sickened by the idea. “But that’s where it ended for Dad. After this, he refused to pass on any more information. There are no new deposits here, even after… Huh. Even after he reminded Dad about the terrible car accident Drew and I were in, and how he hoped we’d learned to be more careful.” He glanced back at Drew, who looked shaken. “Son of abitch.”
