“Don’t worry.” Nolan started to back away. “I promise I’ll take care of him.”
There was a knock on the door, and Naman was standing there with two coffee cups in his hands. “Hey, Madeline. I brought you a latte in hopes that I can bribe you into looking over a few things for me.”
“She’s all yours,” Nolan promised as he walked out.
She wanted to run after him, but Deke was already gone.
And she had work to do. She gave her coworker a smile and accepted the offering. She would need the caffeine. “Of course.”
Fifteen minutes later she was in Naman’s office. The audio team had a whole floor to themselves, with small lab spaces and a few individual offices, but for the most part it was a shared space. Naman, as the new lead, had taken over Justin’s office, and there were still touches of the man lingering.
She stared at the picture of Justin in his cap and gown at his graduation, his mother and father standing proudly beside him.
“They died a couple of years back,” Naman said quietly. “He didn’t have any other family. His girlfriend took a few things, but she let us keep some of the pictures. We were his family, this team. It’s been hard on us. I understand that things change, people quit, and employees retire or move on. But losing two members in a single year has been difficult.”
Pam Dodson was gone, too. “I was surprised to hear she would just walk away.”
Naman leaned against his desk. “She’d been acting weird. Pam was always a little on the eccentric side, but I thought she adored her kids. I didn’t know her husband very well. Pam was secretive the last few weeks she worked here. I think she might have been having an affair.”
Or meeting with a CIA operative, not that she could tell anyone about Pam’s connection to Drake Radcliffe. “That might explain her leaving. I didn’t know her as well as I knew Justin.”
Naman’s lips pursed. “I knew Justin quite well. He’s been my boss and friend for many years. I still believe there’s something more to his death. He wasn’t a man who used drugs. I know what they say, but it seems… I’m talking out of hand. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take up your time.”
She didn’t want to end this conversation. “It’s okay. I thought his death was suspicious, too.”
Naman’s gaze went to the open door. “I didn’t use that word.”
“No, I did.” She lowered her voice. “Justin asked to meet me off campus the day before he died.”
Naman shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that. He hadn’t mentioned it to me. I know he was having some problems with the calibrations on the system. He was worried about some of the code.”
“What part?” She should have done this in the first place, but she felt better knowing Deke was around.
“I’m not sure. I can’t find all of his notes. After he died, security came in and took his computer away. When the files he was working on were transferred to me, some of them were missing. I know because I worked with him on protocols that no longer show up in the project. I had to rebuild them all from scratch, which is why I’m having the trouble Nolan talked to you about.”
“Why wouldn’t they send you all of Justin’s work?” It didn’t make sense. They couldn’t afford to restart a single part of this project if they wanted to launch on time. This wasn’t some softball, let’s-see-how-this-goes kind of launch. There would be a media circus surrounding Byrne’s revolutionary satellite going into space. It wasn’t something they could delay at this point. They needed every system working.
“No idea. I asked about it and was told this was all they found,” Naman replied. “Someone is lying, and I can’t figure out why. I also can’t waste time investigating. Not if I want my project bonus. I have three girls to put through college. I need this job.”
What he wasn’t saying was that anyone with the power to delete those files also had the power to fire him. Or worse. Before she’d known the real stakes, she’d had to consider what she was risking with her investigation—the livelihoods of everyone in this building. “Of course you do. We need to buckle down and get through the next couple of weeks and then we’ll deal with whatever we need to deal with.”
“Yes.” Naman let out a sigh of relief and moved to his laptop. “It’s been hard since we started testing the systems. I swear there must be something going around, and I would like to complain about the timing. The last thing I need is every member of my team going down to some weird virus.”
“Virus?”
Naman started pulling up his files. “Yes. It seems to be going around this part of the building, but it doesn’t seem to be terrible. I had two engineers go down with nausea and dizziness. The same thing happened with one of our admins this morning, and two more last week.”
“When did you begin testing on the audio?” She hated to think that people were getting sick because of the project, but she had to consider it after what she’d learned from Drake about Havana Syndrome.
Naman stopped, his gaze coming up. “We’ve tested all along, but we’ve been testing the vocal components the last couple of weeks.”
“Where do you do that?” They wouldn’t test it in the open.
“In one of the labs,” he replied. “We have soundproofing in a couple of them. It cuts down on outside noise so we can isolate Clarke’s voice.” He frowned. “You think there is a connection?”
She thought there were all kinds of connections she’d missed. “Have you done any of the testing yourself?”
“No, I’ve been working on another part of the project. Madeline, they’re not working on what I would consider an important part of this project. It’s literally choosing which voice to give Clarke. They’re modifying certain tones to be more soothing. It’s the cupholders on the car.”
Which meant they would be pretty and overlooked by anyone who was smart enough to figure out what was being done. The “cupholders” would be the perfect place to hide a bomb because they were innocuous. “Could you send me whatever you have on that particular project? I’d like to take a peek.”
“Of course. It’s your AI we’re giving a voice to.”
“I’d also like to talk to anyone who’s been in those labs.”
“Well, it can’t be the labs. I can give you a list of who’s been sick, but I know at least two of them shouldn’t have been in the labs. It’s got to be a bug.” Naman started typing again. “Now this is one of the protocols I’m trying to rebuild.”
He turned the screen her way and she got to work.
It was going to be an interesting day.
Chapter Ten
“Thank you.” Deke took the coffee from what appeared to be Nolan Byrne’s personal barista. As they’d walked through the building Byrne referred to as his “campus,” Byrne had pointed out all the amenities available. They had their own cafeteria, gym, childcare. There was a whole floor of the twenty-five-story building called the “chill zone” where his employees could hang out and destress.