“Superconductors I get, but what’s ‘chiral’ mean?”

“I looked it up—didn’t really understand the explanation, though. Something about electrons only moving in one direction.”

“Well, something they did here pissed Cotton off. Made him bring in his death squad.”

“If he’s so upset about advanced tech, why doesn’t he go after a major aerospace or biotech firm?”

She pondered that. “Too difficult. He only goes after easy marks.” She glanced around at the aged building. “I mean, look at this place. They didn’t even have a perimeter gate. Half a dozen employees. It’s like the other bombings. Small, relatively unknown firms. He wants victims for the news. Let me take a guess about this company: They weren’t at the forefront of anything. No distinguished principals.”

Falwell glanced down at his notes. “This Alcot guy taught physics in the Ivy League.”

“I saw that. Retired, though, wasn’t he? In his eighties. Just a figurehead maybe.” Davis thought for a few moments more in silence. “What about their funding?”

“I pulled their business filings this morning.” Falwell brought up PDF images of business permits, incorporation papers, and other documents on his computer tablet and started flipping through them. “Looks like initial funding came from this Shearson-Bayers, the New York firm, and judging by the chronology on these other SEC filings, I’d say the founders were canny enough to use the initial investment to get buy-in from other, smaller investors.”

“Any repeats from past bombings?”

Falwell shook his head. “We’ll check shell companies and subsidiaries, but on a first look, no. They’re Midwest and Southeast partnerships. Probably doctors and lawyers without Silicon Valley connections looking for a big tech score.” He flipped through a few more pages. “Looks like they might have been sold a bill of goods.”

She looked back at him. “Why do you say that?”

“The company president, this Jon Grady guy: thirty-one years old. His parents said he’d received a National Science Foundation grant.”

“And he didn’t.”

He shook his head. “NSF has no record of him.”

“And his academic background?”

“Heh. That’s the thing. He didn’t really have one. I mean, not a real school, anyway. Dropped out of Albany. Got a bachelor’s and a master’s in physics from an online diploma mill. His parents said they were real proud of him because he’d overcome a learning disability.”

“Specifically . . . ?”

He glanced at his notes. “Congenital synesthesia.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“Apparently he saw music and heard numbers—some crossed wires in the brain. That sort of thing. Had a compulsion for folding paper, too.”

She could see several more scorched origami shapes in the wreckage.

“Undistinguished academic record. Kind of an oddball. Behavioral problems . . .” He glanced through the papers. “Yada, yada, yada.”

Davis considered this. “Now that’s starting to sound familiar. The New Orleans bombing five years ago—the company founder had Asperger’s or something like that. Wasn’t there another one who had some sort of mental condition?”

Falwell gave her a look. “I’ll go back through the files, but what are you thinking?”

Davis pondered the previous cases. “There was that Winnower bombing in Tampa—before both of us. What, nine years ago? Electrical engineer who had claimed he was financed by the Defense Department. But wasn’t.”

Falwell nodded. “Okay, so maybe it’s high-tech scam artists that Cotton hates. Maybe his mom lost her retirement savings or something.”

“Did this Chirality Labs ever produce a product or file for a patent?”

Falwell flipped through the papers for a few moments before looking up and shaking his head.

“They never do.” Davis looked up at the media helicopters hovering half a mile away. She knew their nose cameras had impressive capabilities. They were combing the crime scene on live TV, adding to Cotton’s ego. “Cotton goes for camera-ready catastrophes.”

“But what’s the point of hitting sham start-up tech firms every couple of years? What’s it accomplish?”

“Cotton’s probably smart enough to realize that if he punches above his weight or too often, we’re going to get some serious manpower focused on this case.”

Falwell considered this.

Davis stood at the edge of the still smoking crater. It was easily twenty feet across and five feet deep. “Two and a half years since the last attack. And nearly two years since the one before that. Who has that kind of patience, Thomas? Who can keep operational security within a group of anarchists for that long?”

Falwell stowed his computer tablet. “I have to say this, Denise. And you need to hear me out.”

She almost cringed. “What? I thought we were good.”

“It’s not that. I’ve been chasing Cotton for seven years. And now that there’s been another bombing—and it’s all over the news again—D.C. will give you additional manpower. Just like they did me.”

“I won’t let them forget all the hard work you did, Thomas.”

“Not my point. My point is that in a year or so this team will be pared down again.”

“Then we’ll have to capture Cotton before then.”

“I’m just letting you know that Cotton is like no narcissistic sociopath I’ve ever heard of. There comes a point when we have to ask ourselves whether Cotton still fits the BAU profile.”

“Okay . . . we can have them do another workup.”

“I’ve never seen anyone who’s content to disappear for so long—to be almost forgotten. Only to strike again somewhere far away and always with faceless, masked followers. There’s something here we’re not seeing. We’ve had informers inside antitech anarchist groups for years now. It’s as though Richard Cotton doesn’t exist except when he’s attacking.”

She walked up to him. “It’s been a long road, but I hope you know that I need you to do exactly what you’re doing: telling me what you really think.”

He nodded.

Davis walked back toward the knot of emergency vehicles, where Dwight was now approaching with an FBI ERT member. She spoke over her shoulder. “Use the extra agents while we’ve got ’em, Thomas. Chase down all the loose ends. And if Cotton doesn’t exist between attacks, then we’ll just have to conjure him, won’t we?”

CHAPTER 5

Master Copy

Don’t you need to resequence him before transport?”

A blond man, physically identical to the first except for his lab coat, bristled and looked up from a holographic computer display. “I’m sorry, do you have a medical classification?”

“I’m just saying, if you gave a longer estimated time of departure, I’d have time to hit the R&R levels before we go.”

“You’re always ‘just saying.’ You’ve got diarrhea of the mouth is what you’ve got.”

“I’ve been away from civilization a long time.”

A clattering noise.

“C’mon, don’t be an asshole. Give us a few hours before they send us back, man.”

Grady watched the men from an inclined position on a metallic table. Grady was still a disconnected head—unable to feel a thing below his neck. And it was panicking him. He stared up at the lights, trying to calm himself—especially because listening to his rapid breathing without feeling anything was freaking him out further.

“Mr. Grady, please stop hyperventilating.”

“Just pump him full of PP-3 and put him on ice for a while.”

“Stop telling me how to do my job.”

“C’mon, do me a solid. A few hours are all I need.”

“I’m not falsifying official paperwork so you can get laid.”

“You’re such a kiss-ass.”

Another two identical men entered Grady’s field of vision. They weren’t handsome, but they all shared that thick-necked, swarthy, alpha-male demeanor. The two new arrivals wore gray guard uniforms with Greek numeric patches on the shoulder—Delta-Alpha and Theta-Tau—as though each was his own fraternity. They glowered down on Grady.