Page 91 of Into the Fire

“I know,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

Equipment storage sat between the loft and the gear shed, one long room of shelving and bins with a door at each end, and by seven-thirty, Shep was there. He was signing out webbing to use for the cargo racks. I stood in the doorway, watching him do it.

“Am I in trouble?” he asked.

“No. You’re helping.”

“Those can be the same thing.”

“Put the webbing down. The day the link was cut. Where were you when the rebuild was done?”

“I told Hanson all of—”

“Tell me while you’re standing there.”

He pointed through the wall, roughly at the tower. “There. Hollis called it, and I left.”

“Don’t point. Go there.”

I followed him out of storage, across the corner of the yard toward the lean-to behind the gear shed—he slowed half a step where the blanket and the bowls had been—then around the shed where he’d come around it carrying the bowl and walked into me. Next, he walked to the wall of the ready room where the chili had been. I timed it against my watch and against my memory of crossing with Marty’s memo in my hand, and the two agreed.

Shep ran the packed-chute night and the hour before the jump. Everywhere he’d been would have multiple witnesses. He was never alone. Somehow, he’d squeezed in a dog for three days, but for my reconstructions, he was clean.

“Wait.” He stopped. “Was I seriously on your list?”

“Everybody was on my list.”

“That’s not as comforting as you think it is.”

I worked my way through the rest of the names the same way. Fellhauer had been in and out of the loft all week for the spotting gear, but during the tower lunch hour he’d been at the wall with the crew, root beer and all. Ramirez could have reached the tower, except he’d spent half that morning on a ladder at the rack line with the yard watching him. The loft overnight didn’t work either; he’d been four players deep in the bunkhouse card game.

One by one, they all failed. Some could reach one place, but they couldn’t do the rest. The sabotage needed a man who could reach all of them.

I stood in the storage doorway with the yard in front of me, thinking, and while I stood there Teller came out of Operations and crossed toward the loft carrying a clipboard and a coil of something. He passed Hollis and Ramirez and entered.

Nobody looked up.

Including me. I had to make myself reconstruct the crossing a second afterward, because I’d watched all of it and retained none of it.

Operations at eight-thirty was phones and the smell of toner, and Marty was at his desk with his glasses up, working through a stack with a pen behind his ear. He glanced at me over the monitor.

“If this is about the tower report, Hanson has everything, and he types slower than he drives.”

“It’s not. I’ve got questions about how things move.”

“Things.”

“Paper. Gear. Information.” I pulled the spare chair around and sat. “The manifests. Who physically carries them between here and the ready room?”

“Whoever’s going in that direction. Usually me, because nobody else can be trusted not to set a coffee cup on them.”

“Gear logs. Loft to here.”

“Nash sends them with whoever he’s got, or I collect them when I’m over there. Boone, this is riveting, but maybe you should just tell me what you’re—”

“I’m putting the pieces together,” I said. “Circulation. Hanson documented locked doors. Nobody’s documented how things actually travel.”

That made sense to him. He answered everything: who carries and who collects. He answered without hesitating, and he included himself in every answer because he belonged there.