“Funny.” Kevin crossed his arms like a shield.
“Just letting you know. Now,” he leaned over the tall testing table and clasped his hands together, “shall we get to work?”
Getting Ford and Kevin up to speed went by quickly, since Dalton had covered plenty with his dad, and Andrew had already gone over most things with Kevin. All that remained was the results of the CSI tests Steven had shared with Andrew from the few pieces of evidence they did have, which would have been easier to focus on if Andrew wasn’t distracted by the obscene way Ford kept wrapping his lips around his coffee lid.
“Everything alright, Andrew?” he asked without an ounce of innocence.
“No.Yes. Fine.” Andrew tore his eyes away from Ford’s smug smirk. “Just glad you’re enjoying that coffee so much.”
“Andrew? The evidence,” Kevin urged.
Right. Continuing his assessment of what the police had found yesterday, Andrew ended with, “The strangest thing might be lack of hair or fibers.”
“So? The thief’s smart.” Ford shrugged.
“You don’t understand. Enough fibers aren’t always found for evidence, but they still exist everywhere, even if they’re minuscule. This time there was nothing.”
“The cleaning crew would have been finished by the time of the theft,” Dalton said, “and they take their job of sterilizing the labs very seriously.”
“Exactly, so any foreign object meeting that pristine of an environment should have left something behind.”
“You’re saying it was a ghost?” Kevin joked.
“Or someone who can make themselves seem like one. Anything off about the firewall or security protocols?”
“Besides how easy this place would be to hack?” Kevin scanned the technical readout Andrew had given him, but then caught Ford's satisfied smirk. “Shut up. I’m not admitting you’re right, just meant for me it would be easy. Other than that, not really. I mean, standard setup, good overall. Only a serious hacker could break into this place with this minimal a trail left behind unless they had an advantage.”
“I swear,” Dalton urged, “it can’t be an inside job.”
“While I appreciate the sentiment,” Ford said, “you’ll understand if I don’t take anyone’s good nature to heart. Other than yours.” He smiled softly at his son, and then turned to Andrew. “Dig anything up on the roster yet?”
“No. The only new employee in the last year was Dalton. Vallancourt is pretty strict about who she hires. And before you ask, yes, I put Dalton’s background check through the same ringer I would anyone else, and his record came out squeaky clean.”
“You must be so disappointed,” Kevin snarked.
“What about timeframe?” Ford cocked his head with a dangerous grin.
“If you assume it took a handful of minutes for them to get inside while avoiding the cameras,” Andrew said, “they then hadto bypass security guards to get upstairs, move across the floor, download Dalton’s files, grab the equipment, and they were gone. So, twenty, twenty-five minutes tops?
“They were in a hurry too. I don’t think the broken equipment was purposeful. Otherwise, with this clean of a getaway, since we know it wasn’tyou,” he teased Ford, “they’d almost have to be superhuman.”
“Such flattery.” Ford grinned wider.
“Ahem.” Kevin cleared his throat—Andrew really needed to stop getting pulled into their banter. “If police are at a loss with suspects, what about intent? What could someone do with this equipment and research? You already mentioned building a bomb.”
“Plenty of easier ways to do that,” Dalton said.
“Then why would a layman steal all this when they obviously didn’t understand the full scope?” Ford asked, seemingly already having an answer, given the look he gave Andrew.
Andrew did too. “They were hired by somebody else.”
“Which means whoever hired this thief was someone whodidknow the research, had a buyer who did… or had reason to target you,” Ford nodded at Dalton, “and not the research at all.”
“Dad, you're being paranoid. Right, Andrew?”
As much as Andrew wished he could reassure him, he knew well how deep resentments went. “The deal your dad made at Christmas caught a lot of attention. Dozens of inmates went back to prison, and he didn't get any added time.”
“I guess I didn’t realize,” Dalton said sadly. “Dad won’t talk about it.”
