“Then what. I don’t understand. You go in the lab to do what? You don’t know anything about our work.”

“I don’t have to know. You handle that. Sometime the day before you get on your computer and make changes to your data. Nothing outrageous. You want it to look bad but you don’t want to overplay your hand. Elevate a number here and there, downgrade a few. Tamper, but not too radically. Just enough to suggest someone familiar with your work has been in there poking around.”

“Why would I alter my data when that’s what she’s accusing me of in the first place?”

Pete offered Linton a benign smile. “Morning after this event you go into work and discover your computer’s up and running. You’re confused because when you left Wednesday afternoon you remember shutting it down. It looks like someone’s gotten into your database and you’re worried. You can’t imagine what’s going on so you start checking sensitive documents.”

Linton stared at him. “And discover my data has been sabotaged.”

“That’s exactly right. Someone’s falsified your statistics, inflated the test results, and who knows what else? You go straight to your boss. You’re stunned. You’re white-faced with shock. You have no idea what’s going on, but someone’s undermined your work. You know everything was fine the day before because you started a printout of what you’d done to date. You can even show him pages you printed on both days and point to the discrepancies. Someone wants to make you look bad. If you hadn’t picked up on it, you’d have ended up submitting results that were way off. Doctored, if you’ll forgive the pun.”

“Do I mention Mary Lee?”

“You let him do that. You’ve complained about her before, haven’t you?”

“I did when she first came to work. I had to tell him I’d been involved with her in case she started bad-mouthing me.”

“Exactly. The woman’s trying to damage your reputation because you resisted her attempts to rekindle the flame. You rebuffed her and now look what she’s done.”

Linton thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. “Don’t like it. Too risky.”

“That’s my lookout.”

“What if somebody’s in the building and wants to know what you’re doing?”

“Won’t happen. Look like me and nobody wants to stop and chat about anything.”

“But why would she give you her ID?”

“She won’t know I have it.”

“You can’t pull it off. There’s no way.”

“Let’s don’t argue the point. Give it some thought. If you decide we have a deal, we’ll meet again.”

“And if I don’t call you, the deal is off?”

“That’s correct.”

Linton stood for a moment, debating with himself.