Hostile Witness by Leigh Adams

Author:Leigh Adams [Adams, Leigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62953-659-0
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Published: 2016-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

Eleven

It was dangerous being out there in the dark, with every store and gas station in sight deserted for the night, but Kate still took a good five minutes making up her mind what to do next. She didn’t want to make an idiot of herself, and she didn’t know what she was going to say when she made the only phone call she could make.

But it couldn’t be helped. She called Tom.

When Tom showed up nearly half an hour later, he was driving a green Subaru instead of his usual silver unmarked police car. Kate didn’t recognize it when he first pulled into the station, and for a panicked moment, she wondered if she ought to hide.

Tom parked the car next to where she was standing, braking so hard the squeal hurt Kate’s eardrums, and jumped out onto the pavement like Superman emerging from a phone booth.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

Kate ran over to the passenger-side door and tugged at the handle. Locked.

“Could you please let me in the car?” she asked. “I’m freezing.”

Tom got in behind the wheel and shut his own door. Kate got in and fussed with her seat belt so that she didn’t have to look him.

“Let me try this again,” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Kate’s seat belt was fastened. Tom was not starting the car.

“I went in to work,” she said. “I mean, I went in to Almador. I figured I had a good shot at being able to get in because my old manager was really disorganized. He should have shut down all my codes and passwords and had my security clearances yanked, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have remembered to do all that because he never does. He gets distracted. So I thought I’d go in and use the secure computers.”

“Let me make a guess,” Tom said. “Secure computers and you need a security clearance to get into them . . . a government security clearance.”

“Yes,” Kate said.

“And people who don’t have those clearances aren’t allowed to work on those computers.”

“Yes,” Kate said again. She really didn’t like where this was going.

“And,” Tom said, “the only reason you have those clearances at the moment is that some idiot manager forgot to rescind them when you were put on leave.”

“Okay,” Kate said. “All right. I see where you’re going with this—”

“See where I’m going? See where I’m going? Are you out of your mind? You just broke into a building you had no right to enter, used codes and clearances you knew you had no right to have—for God’s sake, you must have broken fifty laws. Or worse. I should probably be arresting you right now.”

“No,” Kate said, “I don’t think so. It’s not your jurisdiction.”

Tom sent her a withering glance, and she sank a little deeper in her seat. She really wished he’d make the car move, but he gave no indication of leaving.

“Then,” he said, staring out at the wall now, “you park your car all the way out here.

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