“I told you not to come here.”
“I don’t take orders, Clark. I told you that when you offered our… partnership,” Bustamonte retorted. “Someone hacked the system, email isn’t safe.”
“Relax, we’re on track. Just stay calm. We have to be in for the long haul for this to work.”
“I don’t know if you have the cahones, Clark. You worry me. You sure your experiment isn’t going to be discovered.”
Clark stung from the condescension. “None of us wants that Bustamonte. Time isn’t something to play with, if the company found out that I was making something on the side by revealing secrets to a slime such as yourself, they would hurt you more than me.”
Bustamonte’s red face was stopped short when he saw two figures approaching. The silhouette of a man wearing a hat, light glinting from polished toes, and the curves of a woman’s dress, her hair creating a halo around her head held pistols toward the two men.
***
“What are you getting from Gnomon labs Bustamonte?” Wallace questioned the man in a white room of blazing lights; his double-breasted blue suit and white carnation contrasting the captive’s disheveled clothes and nervous pallor. “we know you have been trafficking in classified information. That is a felony. A good prosecutor could make a case for treason. You had better start singing.”
Bustamonte rested a sweaty brow in his hands and slumped, silent.
In another room Ella Forester’s eyes shone behind lenses illuminated by the bright lights.
“You weren’t forthcoming with us Mr. Clark. It seems Bustamonte knows more classified information about Gnomon than we do. You will both rot for a long time, or worse.
Clark let a nervous titter escape.
“Treason is nothing to laugh off, Clark.”
“It’s not that agent Forrester. I’m willing to roll on that pig, Bustamonte. That is the word isn’t it? No matter. Bustamonte intimidated me into giving him any advantage. We arranged for thousands of commuters to pass through a Gnomon test area that is hidden.”
“Hidden?” Forrester repeated with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, it works by… let us just say, it bends time.”
“What would Bustamonte get out of it?”
“Each pass through the area would alter a mag-craft’s chronometer. Over the course of a few years he would stand to make extra millions on early returns and maintenance. The impression on the stock holders was worth his compensating me handsomely.”
“Sound’s pretty damning for Bustamonte,” Forrester observed. “I have a feeling you are not so innocent, and the prosecutor puts a lot of weight into our report, I can make it go easy on you, or hard. Perhaps you can make a better impression yet.”
“How?”
“Tell me how you and Bustamonte murdered Doctor Whitney.”
“I don’t know… I mean we didn’t… I didn’t.”
“That is not a better impression.” Ella rose putting her papers in her folder.
“Wait… Wait, I’ll help you with your investigation—I can tell you what he was working on!”
Ella smiled and walked out of the room.
Part 4
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