"Not by me." She began spraying again. "Besides, this is nothing; superficial apart from the ankle, and that'll be all right in a week."

"Good. Anyway, my visit wasn't a complete disaster. You remember Katerina Cawthorp?"

Eleanor paused, flipping through her mental files. "Friend of Julia's?"

"Got it. Well, right now she's living with Kendric and Hermione."

"And Hermione?"

That brought a weak grin to his lips. "Yeah. That's how Kendric must've found out about Philip Evans's NN core. He would be bound to question Katerina about every aspect of her relationship with Julia, and that includes her time at Wilholm. She told him about the NN core. There is no mole, never has been."

"So how did Kendric get hold of the Zanthus security monitor programs?"

"A top-notch solo hotrod burnt into Walshaw's cores. Kendric could afford it."

She finished spraying on the dermal seal, and inspected his hand. "But what about the buyout?"

"Yeah," he admitted. "I still don't understand that. But the blitz was definitely a vengeance act. Katerina proves that; she's the link, the common factor. God, Eleanor, you wouldn't believe what he's done to that poor kid. Tell you, she's a virtual cyborg, no messing." He flexed his fingers gingerly, watching the dermal-seal stretch over his knuckles.

"Has he drugged her?" she asked.

"Sort of. That's something else we'll have to sort out when this is finished. Christ, as if we didn't have enough to do identifying Wolf and the remaining hotrods."

"You know, if you wanted to flush some compromising evidence out of Kendric's brain you should've asked him how much the blitz had cost him. Then you'd have seen the guilt, clear-cut and irrefutable. I'll have to bind that forefinger."

"Bugger. Next time I'll take you along. Someone who can think straight."

Her heart fell. "Oh, Greg, you're not thinking of going back there are you? Wasn't this enough?"

"No, I'm not marching up to confront Kendric again; I've learned my lesson. From now on the macho routine is all down to Morgan Walshaw and his hardliners. Hopefully, all I have to do is wait for Royan to backtrack Wolf's payments to O'Donal, find out who the hell he is. Then we can start establishing how Wolf is plugged in with Kendric. The proof's there, somewhere, like you said, another intermediary between Wolf and Kendric, maybe two. But I'm convinced it's him at the end of the trail. Does that sound paranoid to you?"