Somehow the idea of getting closer to Glynis didn’t bother Jake at all. He smiled at the thought of it. But then he remembered that she was going with Tim Younger. A vision of a shootout in a frontier saloon popped into his mind: Younger gunning him down in a blaze of fury.

Jake pulled in a deep breath—and realized that it was well below zero, sitting in the post-midnight darkness in his unheated car.

Hacking

HACKING

Jake sat alone in his office the next morning, still wondering how he could pry into Sinclair’s reason for refusing to back Tomlinson. Glynis is the key to it, he told himself. Yet somehow the thought of trying to use Glynis to ferret out Sinclair’s secrets bothered him. Too damned sneaky, he told himself. It wouldn’t be fair to Glynis. She’s too nice a woman to use that way.

Besides, he admitted ruefully, she’s too smart to allow me to use her. She’d see right through me. And if I came on to her, Tim would come after me.

Leaning back in his little wheeled chair, Jake asked himself, What do you mean, if you came on to her? She’s going with Tim and you’ve got something going with Amy. Who’s also letting Tomlinson sleep with her, most likely.

What a mess, he thought. What a tangled, bollixed-up freaking mess.

Then he thought of Cardwell. Ever since he’d been twelve years old Jake had brought his problems to the planetarium director. Maybe Lev can show me which way to go.

Half an hour later he was in Leverett Cardwell’s office on the top floor of the museum. It was a spacious, airy room, with a wall full of bookshelves and a trio of windows that looked out across the domed roof of the planetarium. The windows were rimed with frost, even this late in the morning.

“… so I just don’t know what I should do,” Jake was saying. He sat at the round conference table in the corner of the office, as he had so many times, with Cardwell sitting next to him in his prim little bow tie and neatly-pressed suit.

Cardwell hiked his eyebrows a bit. “You’re not cut out to be a detective, Jake.”

“You mean a spy.”

“Whichever. It’s not in your makeup. Drop the matter right here and now.”

“But Tomlinson—”

Cardwell silenced him with an upraised hand. “Tomlinson can hire professionals to dig into Sinclair’s life. Stay clear of it. If there’s any dirt to be uncovered, let them do it. Keep your hands clean.”

“I’m not being much help to Tomlinson, then.”

“You’ve already helped him immensely,” said Cardwell. “You’ve given him an issue that’s so good that Leeds is backing this man Dant in an attempt to knock Tomlinson out of the running.”

“You think Leeds is backing Dant?”