Greer got up from the computer in the ops room and walked away, moving absently through the hall and into the big conference room. He rubbed his face. The eyes of his dream flashed through his mind, sounding an alarm.
Remi didn’t exist. Not on paper, only in the flesh. Someone set up her identity. He went back to his computer, determined to find out who she really was.
Six hours later, he had found what he needed to know. He went upstairs through the den. Owen and Kit were there, talking quietly.
“S’up, Greer?” Kit asked. “You look like you have bad news.”
Greer frowned. “I checked out the professor. Her identity is an illegal one her mom purchased from a black market vendor seventeen years ago when they left the Grummond Society.”
Kit leaned back in his chair in front of Owen’s desk. “What’s the Grummond Society?”
“A polygamist group in southern Colorado.”
Kit looked at Owen, then back at Greer. “Are they connected with the Friends or the WKB?”
“No.”
“Didn’t she need a criminal background check before the university hired her?” Owen asked.
“Possibly, but she’s been in her false identity since she was fourteen. It would have passed inspection since she doesn’t have a criminal record in that ID or any other associated with her fingerprints.”
“Does she know her identity’s bogus?” Kit asked.
“Not sure,” Greer said.
“Maybe Jafaar Majid knows,” Kit mused. “Maybe it’s what he’s blackmailing her with so he can force her to be the ‘butterfly’ he told Rocco about. If her university finds out, her career is over.”
Greer shrugged. “It’s a stretch to think she’s the mole. I went to her. She didn’t come to us. They couldn’t anticipate that connection before we’d made it. She doesn’t want anything to do with our investigation. She’s unwilling to expose her data and reveal the confidential sources of her research. If she were being blackmailed, she’d be a whole lot more willing to be helpful so that she could get inside.”
“You could be right,” Kit said. “We just heard back from Val. He said Ivy’s waitress is hiding something. Said she was hyper-vigilant during their chat, kept herself on alert the whole time.”
“We have no idea who Jafaar’s butterfly is,” Owen said. “Could be more than one person. May not even be female. Hell. It could even be Lobo’s new boss. Let’s just keep our eyes open and be aware.”
Greer nodded. “Could be false info he’s feeding us to distract us or to see where it washes out in our network.”
“Or that.” Kit stood up. “If you think your professor has some useful info, get the scoop on what she knows of her identity.”
Chapter Seven
Greer repositioned himself on the ridge overlooking the Friendship Community. He’d come back out to continue observing the Friends, trying to get a sense of their behavior patterns. It was past one a.m. The community had rolled up its figurative sidewalks hours ago. They didn’t spend a lot of time awake after dark, he’d learned—if he were to judge by the few cottages that were lit after sunset. In the daytime, they were busy in their gardens and fields, doing laundry, cleaning their cabins. Or baking. Geez, the sweet scents from their kitchens wafted up to his stand every day.
He checked his watch. It was time to rendezvous with the team. The place he’d picked for the meetup was near the community’s entrance. The spot was accessible by their SUVs via a forest service road; it would be easy for the guys to get in and get out. He stood and slung his pack over his shoulder.
Something triggered his inner alarm. He went still, channeling all of his attention to what he was hearing…or not hearing. At all hours of the day and night, the woods were alive with large and small game. The forest never slept, but tonight, it was silent.
He wasn’t alone. Needles pricked along his spine. Aw, Christ. Not here. Not in the dark nether world of the woods. He watched and waited, calming his rapid breath.
He definitely had picked up a ghost somewhere along the line.
His grandfather had taught him how to calm his pulse, quiet his breathing, open his senses. They can hear your thoughts, you know, the people you’re tracking, he’d told Greer. Thought waves go first, tickling the senses. Empty your mind. Silence it, his grandfather had warned.
Same held true for ghosts.
He and his grandfather had spent an entire summer on self-control. His mind, his thinking, his bio impulses. His grandfather had begun mentoring when he was eight. Puberty had wreaked havoc with more than his body; he’d had to relearn the lessons of an eight-year-old once he’d started his shift into adulthood. The mental facility of a child was far shallower than that of an adult, and the lessons in puberty were intense. Everything that had come before was like kindergarten compared to the real shit his grandfather set loose when Greer’s body had reached its full size and power.
And now, in moments like these, he could become nothing—nothing sentient anyway. Just air and shadows, seeking the source of the disturbance he’d felt, protecting himself from the ghost. He heard a breath, felt a chill on his skin. The temperature in the woods had dropped twenty degrees. A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.
Someone was out there. A woman, maybe. He’d seen a flash of clothes before she slipped behind a tree. A sleeve, or the edge of a skirt. It happened too fast to say. He waited a second, polling his senses for anything else that might be near.
Everything was silent and still.
He moved in the direction of the woman. He caught another flash of clothing, long hair, pale-looking in the moonlight. They were heading down a hill, away from the village. She was moving quickly, as if something had spooked her. Maybe she’d seen his ghost.