The Institute, Daddy Issues(97)

The Cap­tain stirred rest­lessly in his chair.

“I don’t like this,” he said ab­ruptly. “This doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Well, it’s not up to you, is it Cap­tain?” I forced my­self to stand back up, even though my legs felt like they might give way un­der me. “Salt needs a change and far be it from me to stand in his way.” I lif­ted my chin. “I’d like to add some­thing to his re­quest though—I want a new part­ner too. Im­me­di­ately. I don’t care who it is—just make it hap­pen today.”

“These things take time, Sug­ar­baker,” the Cap­tain re­minded me, frown­ing. “Time and a hell of a lot of pa­per­work.”

“I don’t care about that,” I snapped. “Salt wants out, then so do I. I don’t want to have any­thing else to do with him and I’m sure he feels the same way about me.”

“Andi—” Salt began again, a pained ex­pres­sion com­ing over his face.

“Andi, Andi, Andi,” I mocked him furi­ously. “Just stop talk­ing—stop say­ing my name, you son of a bitch! You’ve already said everything there is to say—everything that mat­ters.”

“No, I have not,” he growled, frown­ing at me. “I must tell you—”

“I couldn’t split the two of you up right away even if I wanted to—which I damn well don’t,” Cap­tain Douglas roared, in­ter­rupt­ing us. “Be­cause this case is still hanging over our heads.”

“What are you talk­ing about?” I had my arms crossed and I tapped my fin­gers im­pa­tiently. “I thought it was all tied up with a bow on top.”

“Not quite.” The Cap­tain sighed and ran a hand over his face. “There’s still the little mat­ter of the evid­ence.”

“Do you not have everything that you need?” Salt asked. “Equip­ment from the lab, Berkley’s con­fes­sion…”

“Yes but we also still have all the evid­ence col­lec­ted by the hid­den cam­era equip­ment,” the Cap­tain said quietly. “I need to re­lease it to the judge but there are parts of it…” He cleared his throat. “Parts that might need to be, uh, ed­ited out.”

“You can’t do that, Cap­tain.” I was shocked. “That’s tam­per­ing with evid­ence.”

“Look, Sug­ar­baker, I’m not talk­ing about get­ting rid of any of the vids show­ing the Please Lab—which Berkley was stu­pid enough to re­cord, by the way. I’m talk­ing about cer­tain, uh, in­tim­ate events that you might not wish a judge or jury or the gen­eral pub­lic to see if they got out.”

Cap­tain Douglas’ face was red and I could tell that he’d watched the tapes he was talk­ing about—the im­ages of Salt and I in our room do­ing…oh God, do­ing all kinds of things I didn’t want any­one know­ing about.

“My God,” I whispered, feel­ing sick and faint for the second time that day. I grabbed for the back of the chair. “If those got out…”

“Now you’re get­ting the idea,” the Cap­tain said grimly. “Those parts of the tape don’t really do any­thing to make our case. And I don’t really think any­one but you and your part­ner need to see them.”

“He’s not my part­ner any­more.” I couldn’t keep the bit­ter­ness out of my voice and I couldn’t look at Salt as I spoke.

“He is for a little while longer, Sug­ar­baker,” Cap­tain Douglas said gently but firmly. “At least un­til the two of you re­view these videos and de­cide what parts you want me to ‘lose.’” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small flash drive. Reach­ing for­ward, he placed it at the edge of his desk and looked at me mean­ing­fully. “Do you un­der­stand?”

“This should be up to Andi,” Salt said in a low voice. “She is the one who should de­cide—”

“I want you both to de­cide to­gether.” The Cap­tain glared at us. “I mean it—find some time out­side of work and go through these. And it needs to get done soon. I can’t hold this back for much longer.”

“Fine.” I reached for the flash drive but Salt got to it first. He fol­ded it in his big hand and looked at me.