“When I spoke to him, he was outside the city. It’s night in Gabon, and I don’t think there are any passable roads through the jungle. He’s flying back to Port-Gentil in one of our helicopters.”

“What was the problem reaching Gordian yourself?”

Megan looked at Ricci across the small conference table. “He’s staying as a guest at a local Sedco executive’s home to avoid the bugs in the hotel walls, and they’re behind closed doors having a late consultation about that affair on the oil platform. Hughie Bennett and his entire court are in attendance, and I don’t want the boss to hear this news over the phone under those circumstances.” She paused. “Better Pete tells him in person. He should be there any time.”

Ricci did not answer. His glassy calm eyes gave no clue to what he might be thinking or feeling. Megan saw her reflection in them and could not keep her own nerves from becoming exposed. That was unlike her, and she resented him for it—how much more of herself might be revealed on the mirror’s surface?

She sipped from the glass of water beside her to relieve her parched throat.

“I don’t know, Rollie,” she said. “My mind is everywhere at once. I know I’ll pull it together, but for now I just can’t center.”

Thibodeau nodded grimly.

“Soup to soup,” he said. “Be a Creole saying I heard a lot growing up. Ain’t no food for the pot tonight, we find something to put in it tomorrow.”

She gave him a thin smile. “I’ll try to remember that one.”

“Oui.”

Megan was quiet a moment. With the detectives in her office, she had called Nimec to break the news about Julia, then phoned Ashley Gordian’s sister’s house in Los Angeles, gotten the answering machine and left an urgent message for Ashley to get in touch. After that she had summoned Ricci and Thibodeau down here into one of UpLink SanJo’s underground safe rooms—a spare rectangular enclosure that was little more than the conference table and four windowless, two-foot-thick concrete walls webbed with an array of interstitial countersurveillance systems.

It hadn’t taken her long to share what she knew, and none of it was encouraging. Julia Gordian was gone from the animal shelter where she did volunteer work a number of days a week. The woman whose husband operated the shelter had been shot dead along with her infant daughter, their home a crime scene Erickson had described as beyond horrible.

“This Rob Howell,” Ricci said now. His eyes went to Megan as he spoke. “Those cops figure he’s clean?”