Midnight Fever (Men of Midnight #5)(38)

Kay nodded. "I think I'll know what to look for. But you're right. I'll rest. What-what happened to the drone?"

Felicity blinked. "Pass that over to the master. Metal?"

A jumble of images, and then Metal's solid Irish face showed on the small screen. "Let's go to the big screen," he said, and the cell connection closed.

Nick helped her out of the armchair and they walked over to a work desk set up with a huge screen. Nick touched the top corners of the screen and two other screens popped out laterally, making for one continuous two-foot screen. He switched the system on and Metal's face appeared, so clear she forgot for a second he was miles away. Felicity's face appeared in a small square screen on the lower right-hand side. The screen was so wide she could see the great room at ASI behind them. One of the most impressive tech offices she'd ever seen. There too, elegance was married to efficiency. 

Her own face was in a little square on the lower left-hand side. Nick appeared behind her, one big hand on her shoulder.

"Kay. Nick." Metal nodded at them. It felt so much like he was in the room.

"Where's the drone?" Nick asked.

"Disappeared an hour ago." Metal's mouth tightened. "Dipped under a covered passageway and must have had a pre-mapped route of covered exits. Or maybe went to ground. We don't know. We were going to take it down just after nightfall, in about half an hour. Jacko was going to go up on a rooftop in stealth clothing and aim a DroneDefender. He wouldn't have shown up on FLIR."

"God, it could have fallen on someone's head," Kay said, alarmed.

"No, Jacko would have made sure it was right over Conrad's rooftop and he'd have been able to see if anyone was there. But now that's not gonna happen."

Kay shuddered. She remembered all too well the mechanical creature swooping down with a faint buzzing sound, Mike collapsing to the ground, the insectoid camera lenses. She shook her head. "The drone might have photos of me. I can't guarantee that it doesn't. Mike tried to shield my face but it all happened so fast … " She stopped and bit her lips.

Nick's hand tightened on her shoulder and she looked up at him in gratitude.

"The drone would have been sending intel constantly." Felicity frowned. "We'll look at the drone if we ever catch it, but any photos would have been sent at the time."

"Do drones have IDs?" Kay knew next to nothing about the things. They had never caught her attention except for the large ones that sent missiles into deserts and small ones that took amazing landscape photos. "If we had caught it could we have figured out who sent the drone by looking at its innards? Like that Roman priest … "

For a second, she flashed on a book of Roman history she'd read as a child. It had been lavishly illustrated. One of the illustrations had been of a group of men in togas carefully watching one man pulling out the entrails of a sheep. The divination centered on the lobes of the liver. She'd been creeped out by liver ever since. What was the name of the guy who'd carried out the divination? Something beginning with an "h" …

"Like a haruspex," Felicity said with a slight smile. "No liver in the drone and I suspect any identifying marks would have been eliminated." She looked around. "What?"

"We're all really impressed that you knew the word," Kay answered. Metal, Jacko and the other boss, Douglas, were all looking at her.

Felicity sighed and rolled her eyes. "I guess no one here has played The Ancient Gods Return. Listen, Kay. You get some rest and I promise to send the files as soon as they're ready. I think Metal's got something to say."

Metal's sober face took center screen. "Mike Hammer's body was autopsied. Bud said the autopsy results could not be disseminated but that he knew Felicity would just hack the coroner's office and leave no trace, so he gave us the results anyway. He said that Hammer died of suffocation."

Poor Mike. Kay still had the wheezing sounds he made as he'd tried to drag oxygen into his lungs in her ears. "His lungs were filled with fluid," she said.

Metal nodded. "Yeah."

"And the cytokine levels?"

"Through the roof, the coroner said. By the way, they don't usually test for cytokine levels. The coroner wants to know how we knew to ask for it."

"A hunch. But it doesn't mean anything good. As a matter of fact, this could be devastating news." She felt overwhelming sadness and exhaustion. And fear. "I'll know more when I can look through the files."