“But most of these cars don't have dew on them.”

“Right. They were driven to work this morning, by early risers like you. The point is, they're empty. So far, so good. Now drive around the block a few more times so I can see the perimeter, then park somewhere you don't usually park and use an entrance you don't usually use.”

They parked and went inside. Ben moved cautiously, the way he had in the hotel. He kept pausing and looking around as though gauging something.

“Key card access,” he said, and Alex wasn't sure if he was talking to Alex or himself. “That's an obstacle. Plus, if you don't belong here, where do you set up inside? People coming and going, risk of discovery even early and late, so you can't control the environment. So the parking lot is your best staging area. Multiple entries and exits. But likely the target solves that problem by always using the same one. Yeah, no doubt, I'd go with the parking lot.”

They walked up a set of stairs in the Death Star. Ben said, “Don't say anything inside your office until I tell you it's safe.”

“Safe to-”

“Just don't say anything.”

They walked down the long, green-carpeted corridor. The light was on inside Osborne's office, and as they passed, Alex glanced inside. Damn, Osborne was in there. He looked up at the sound of footsteps.

“Alex!” Osborne called out. “I didn't expect to see you. How are you feeling?”

“Uh, better,” Alex said. “What are you doing here so early? You're back from Thailand?”

“I'm always here early,” Osborne said. He gestured toward Ben. “And this is…”

“My brother, Ben.”

Osborne stood up and strolled over, cowboy-boot slow. “I didn't know Alex had a brother.” He held out his hand. Ben waited a long second, then shook it.

“I don't get out to California much these days,” Ben said.

“No? Where do you live?”

“I do volunteer work with the Missionaries of Africa.”

Osborne looked taken aback. Alex thought, What the hell?

“ Africa,” Osborne said. “Hmm.”

“Yes, we provide food, clothing, shelter, new sources of clean water, medicine, pastoral care, education…”

Osborne looked more nonplussed than Alex had ever seen him. “Really,” he said.

Ben smiled. “ 'suffer the little children… for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Matthew 19:14. Don't you agree?”

“Nothing more important than children,” Osborne said. “Well, don't let me keep you.” He offered a sickly smile and went back to his desk.

Alex and Ben went down the hallway. Alex was steaming. What the hell was that about? Osborne was going to think he had some kind of religious zealot for a brother. He wanted to say something, but they were almost at his office and Ben had told him not to.

They went in. Ben held a finger to his lips, then pointed at the door and rotated his hand as though turning a key. Right. Alex closed the door and locked it. Ben set his bag down on Alex's desk and took out something that looked like a radio. He attached a corded wand to it and started walking around the office, pointing the wand here and there. Alex realized: Damn, he's checking for bugs.

After a few minutes, Ben turned his attention to Alex's phone. He checked the receiver, the line, and the unit itself.

Ben set the detector down on Alex's desk. He looked out the window for a moment, then closed the blinds. “Your office is clean,” he said.

Alex noticed the unit's red indicator light was still on. “You're leaving it on?” Alex asked.

“In case there's a bug that was turned off while I was looking for it, and that gets turned on later.”

“You really think someone could have bugged my office?”

Ben shrugged. “We're doing things for the sake of argument, remember?”

“You carry that equipment with you all the time?”

“What are you getting at?”

Alex shook his head. “I don't… I don't know how you can live like this.”

“I'd be dead if I didn't.”

“I mean, it must be exhausting.”

“It just seems that way to you because you don't know what to look for. You don't have any filters.”

“What were you looking for out the window?”

“A place someone could set up a laser to read conversations off the window glass.”

“You can't be serious. You can really do that?”

“It's not easy, but it can be done. No sense taking chances.”

Alex sat down in his chair, glad Ben hadn't taken it already. If he hadn't been playing with his equipment, he probably would have. “Why did you say all that stuff to Osborne about being a missionary?”

Ben laughed without mirth and took one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. “I didn't like the smell of that guy. I didn't want to talk to him. He's your boss, right?”

“How could you tell?”

“I just could.”

“Yeah, well, all the more reason not to make him think my brother's a fanatic.”

“It was the right thing to tell him to cut short the conversation. Fat cats who spend their days collecting five hundred dollars an hour to move paper around don't like to engage people who do charity work. It makes them feel their lives are shallow.”

“You think my life is shallow?”

Ben looked around the office. “You've been gone a couple of days, right? Anything seem out of place here to you?”

Alex wasn't going to let him just pretend he didn't hear. “I said, you think my life is shallow?”

There was a pause. Ben said, “It doesn't matter what I think.”

“No, I want to know.”

“I don't know, Alex. You live in the same house, you work in an office five miles away from it, you went to college and graduate school and law school all at the same place, all right here… I mean, have you ever done anything different? Ever taken a risk?”

Alex could feel his ears burning. “So what? Stanford was the best school. And you know what kind of tax hit you take in California when you sell a house?”

Even as he said it, it sounded lame. But fuck Ben, not everything was about taking risks.

“You think you're a big risk taker,” he said. “But you want to know what I think?”

Ben glanced away as though bored. “Not really.”

“You sucked in school, you quit college, and you couldn't have cut it in the Valley. You stumbled into the only thing you seem to be any good at, and ever since, you've been making a virtue of necessity. You don't do what you do because it's worthy and important. You do it because you don't know how to do anything else.”

Ben unwrapped a piece of chewing gum and put it in his mouth. He extended the pack to Alex. Alex wanted to slap it out of his hand.

“Anything seem out of place here to you?”

Alex stared at him for a moment, then decided to drop it. “Let me see,” he said.

As soon as he started looking, he noticed it. There had been eight stacks of paper on his worktable. One of them was missing now. The one on Hilzoy.

“What the hell?” he said. He started poking through the piles, confirming what he already knew. It was as though the Hilzoy paperwork had just been… deleted.

“What is it?” Ben asked.

“My file on Hilzoy. Obsidian. It's gone.”

“You sure?”

“It was right here on this table. This is where I keep active matters.”

He looked through his filing cabinet. “Yeah, it's gone.”

He sat down and called Osborne. “David, you didn't borrow any files from my office, did you?”

“Why, is something missing?”

“David, is there a reason you can't just give a straightforward answer to a question?”

The second it came out, he couldn't believe he said it. Even Ben was looking at him with surprise.

There was a pause. Osborne said, “No, I didn't borrow your files.” And hung up.

Ben said, “I wouldn't worry about him thinking I'm a zealot. You can probably piss him off all by yourself.”

Alex didn't answer. It had felt good to snap at Osborne. He'd half expected Ben to be impressed by it, too… except now Ben was criticizing him, or mocking him.