‘And I don’t believe she’s been put on the security floor because some people think she’s sabotaging CAIN. If you really thought that, you’d send her packing. The last thing you’d do is keep her here.’

‘Not necessarily,’ he said, but he could not fool me.

‘Tell me the truth.’

He was thinking, looking for a way out.

‘You assigned Lucy to the security floor, didn’t you?’ I went on. ‘It wasn’t Burgess. It wasn’t because of this log-in time you just showed me. That’s flimsy.’

‘Not to some people it isn’t,’ he said. ‘Someone over there raised a red flag and asked me to get rid of her. I said not now. We would watch her first.’

‘Are you telling me you think Lucy is the virus?’ I was incredulous.

‘No.’ He leaned forward in his chair. ‘I think Gault is the virus. And I want Lucy to help us track him.’

I looked at him as if he had just pulled out a gun and shot it into the air. ‘No,’ I said with feeling.

‘Kay, listen to me …’

‘Absolutely not. Leave her out of this. She’s not a goddam FBI agent.’

‘You’re overreacting …’

But I would not let him talk. ‘She’s a college student, for God’s sake. She has no business-‘ My voice caught. ‘I know her. She’ll try to communicate with him. Don’t you see?’ I looked fiercely at him. ‘You don’t know her, Benton!’

‘I think I do.’

‘I won’t let you use her like this.’

‘Let me explain.’

‘You should shut CAIN down,’ I said.

‘I can’t do that. It might be the only trail Gault leaves.’ He paused as I continued to glare at him. ‘Lives are at stake. Gault hasn’t finished killing.’

I blurted, ‘That’s exactly why I don’t want Lucy even thinking about him!’

Wesley was silent. 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.’