He looked toward the shut door, then back at me. 'He already knows who she is,' he said.
'He doesn't know much about her.'
'We don't know how much he knows about her. But at the very least he probably knows what she looks like.'
I could not think. 'How?'
'From when your American Express gold card was stolen,' he said. 'Hasn't Lucy told you?'
'Told me what?'
'The things she kept in her desk.' When he could see I did not know what he was talking about, he abruptly caught himself. I sensed he had brushed against details he would not tell me.
'What things?' I asked.
'Well,' he went on, 'she kept a letter in her desk at ERF - a letter from you. The one that had the credit card in it.'
'I know about that.'
'Right. Also inside this letter was a photograph of you and Lucy together in Miami. You were sitting in your mother's backyard, apparently.'
I shut my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath as he grimly went on.
'Gault also knows Lucy is your point of greatest vulnerability. I don't want him fixing on her, either. But what I'm trying to suggest to you is that he probably already has. He's broken into a world where she is god. He has taken over CAIN.'
'So that's why you moved her,' I said.
Wesley watched me as he struggled for a way to help. I saw the hell behind his cool reserve and sensed his terrible pain. He, too, had children.
'You moved her on the security floor with me,' I said. 'You're afraid Gault might come after her.'
Still he did not speak.
'I want her to return to UVA, to Charlottesville. I want her back there tomorrow,' I said with a ferocity I did not feel. What I really wanted was for Lucy not to know my world at all, and that would never be possible.
'She can't,' he simply said. 'And she can't stay with you in Richmond. To tell you the truth, she really can't stay anywhere right now but here. This is where she's safest.'
'She can't stay here the rest of her life,' I said.
'Until he's caught…'
'He may never be caught, Benton!'
He looked wearily at me. 'Then both of you may end up in our Protected Witness Program.'
'I will not give up my identity. My life. How is that any better than being dead?'
'It is better,' he said quietly, and I knew he was seeing bodies kicked, decapitated, and with bullet wounds.
I got up. 'What do I do about my stolen credit card?' I numbly asked.
'Cancel it,' he said. 'I was hoping we could use money from seized assets, from drug raids. But we can't.' He paused as I shook my head in disbelief. 'It's not my choice. You know the budget problems. You have them, too.'
'Lord,' I said. 'I thought you wanted to trail him.'
'Your credit card isn't likely to show us where he is, only where he's been.'
'I can't believe this.'
'Blame it on the politicians.'
'I don't want to hear about budget problems or politicians,' I exclaimed.
'Kay, the Bureau can barely afford ammunition for the ranges these days. And you know our staffing problems. I'm personally working a hundred and thirty-nine cases even as we speak. Last month two of my best people retired.
'Now my unit's down to nine. Nine. That's a total of ten of us trying to cover the entire United States plus any cases submitted from abroad. Hell, the only reason we have you is we don't pay you.'
'I don't do this for money.'
'You can cancel your Amex card,' he said wearily.
'
'You can cancel your Amex card,' he said wearily. 'I'd do it immediately.'
I looked a long time at him and left.
'Hi,' she said.
'There are at least a dozen cars in the parking lot,' I said. 'Do people usually work this late?'
'They drift in and out at all hours. Most of the time I never see them.'
We walked through a vast space of beige carpet and walls, passing shut doors leading into laboratories where scientists and engineers worked on projects they could not discuss. I had only vague notions of what went on here beyond Lucy's work with CAIN. But I knew the mission was to technically enhance whatever job a special agent might have, whether it was surveillance, or shooting or rappelling from a helicopter, or using a robot in a raid. For Gault to have gotten inside here was the equivalent of him wandering freely through NASA or a nuclear power plant. It was unthinkable.
'Benton told me about the photograph that was in your desk,' I said to Lucy as we boarded an elevator.
She keyed us up to the second floor. 'Gault already knows what you look like, if that's what you're worried about. He's seen you before - at least twice.'
'I don't like that he might now know what you look like,' I said pointedly.
'You're assuming he has the photograph.'
We entered a gray rabbit warren of cubicles with workstations and printers and stacks of paper. CAIN himself was behind glass in an air-conditioned space filled with monitors, modems and miles of cable hidden beneath a raised floor.
'I've got to check something,' she said, scanning her fingerprint to unlock CAIN's door.
I followed her into chilled air tense with the static of invisible traffic moving at incredible speeds. Modem lights blinked red and green, and an eighteen-inch video display announced CAIN in bold bright letters that looped and whorled like the fingerprint of the person who was just scanned in.
'The photograph was in the envelope with the American Express card he apparently now has,' I said. 'Logic would tell you that he may have both.'
'Someone else could have it.' She was intensely watching the modems, then glancing at the time on her screen and making notes.