“Because you love him,” he said softly. “And you don’t seem likely to love a murderer.”

Now she was the one to turn her face away. Her arms were wrapped tightly across her chest, and she had drawn her feet up to the edge of the seat, so that she sat in a small, folded position, looking as though she would prefer to disappear. “He told me himself,” she said in a lost voice. “He swore to me that he did not plan for any bomb to go off in the Centrifuge. Why wouldn’t I believe him?”

“Well, it might not even have been a bomb,” Nolan said soothingly. “It may have been some electrical problem, I heard. Or a spark setting off some underground gases. They’re looking into it.”

“It was a bomb,” she said, still in that frail voice. “You know some of the gulden have sworn they’ll do anything to stop the Carbonnier Extension. This is one of the things they’ll do.”

“But even if that’s so—Jex is still in prison, isn’t he? How could he have had anything to do with it?”

“He does have visitors,” she said in a strangled voice.

Nolan had a sudden vision of Colt, caught by Cerisa as he attempted to meet with Jex Zanlan in stealth. But surely Colt was not one of that band of terrorists. Colt had a fine disdain for all things indigo, but he was not a destructive man. He had chosen a career as a scientist, a preserver of life; he would not wantonly and randomly destroy it. And certainly he would not have risked the lives of his coworkers at the Biolab, many of whom rode the Centrifuge home at night, many of whom would have been at risk that fateful evening if Pakt had not kept them after hours with a meeting …

Nolan’s mind came to a sudden dead halt. Such an evening meeting was rare. Not unprecedented, but far from common. Why had Pakt chosen that night of all others to discuss items even he had agreed could have waited till morning? Had Colt warned him about the bomb? Surely not, that could never be—Pakt would unquestionably have reported such information to Cerisa, to Ariana Bayless. But perhaps Colt had spoken more enigmatically—“There will be trouble tonight. Everyone will be safe if they stay in the Biolab until dark.” That would not have given Pakt enough information to report, but enough to make him keep the others at his side. Perhaps Colt had not even said that much—perhaps he had merely told Pakt, “You’d better stay late at the lab tonight,” and Pakt had taken it upon himself to keep them all safe. That seemed realistic. That seemed possible.

But then that would make Colt a terrorist. That would make Colt a murderer. That would make the man Nolan knew a monster that he could not recognize.