No Immunity

no.
    He peered into the distance. Those red lights could be taillights, but more likely they came from the Doll’s House.

CHAPTER 39

    Right foot on gas, left playing the clutch, Kiernan barreled down the narrow mountain road above Gattozzi as it followed the whims of the black hills.
    Tchernak could be anywhere, following any kind of lead. He had insisted he could second-guess Hummacher. Maybe. As for figuring Tchernak, well, no one knew him like she did.
    The road dead-ended. The truck quivered madly and for a moment she thought it was going to stall and the at this elbow between hill and town. She sat catching her breath, checking the darkness, thinking again of Tchernak.
    He had met with Adcock, then begun the search for the oil explorer, Hummacher. He’d have called BakDat about Hummacher, and if he’d learned anything at all in his rime working for her, about Adcock too. He’d have ordered those backgrounds before he left La Jolla. And favored child that he was with Persis, he’d probably have had the results as soon as he could find a fax in McCarran Airport.
    She turned left and started up an unlit residential street. Tchernak would have checked Hummacher’s house or apartment, the neighbors, and, well, gone on from there. But first he’d have—he should have —cornered Adcock and gotten the skinny on that meeting that Hummacher didn’t make. How much money was riding on that? How much could Hummacher sell his knowledge for? And who were the likely buyers? What did the two Panamanian seismic aides know’ that was so vital, he had to whisk them out of their country?
    The first right turn was Main Street. She slowed almost to a stop, peering in both directions for the waiting sheriff’s department car. The street was empty. Too good to be true. Uneasily she turned, hoping to get out of Gattozzi unnoticed. The highway was a quarter of a mile away. Restraining the urge to speed to it, she kept her foot steady and checked the rearview mirror. And when she came to the highway, she headed south with a relief unwarranted by common sense. She wasn’t freer, she reminded herself, just moving taster in the cage.
    What kind of boss was Adcock? Bad enough to create the notorious “disgruntled employee”? Had Tchernak gotten an employee list? The names of the recently resigned or fired? Surely, yes. Would he have spotted a telltale blink or twitch in Adcock’s face when he spoke to him? Had he coerced him into full truth—as she would have done by what she thought of as refusal to come up empty and what Tchernak called pain-in-the-assedness? A spike of fear shot down her back. Investigating was like being an all-pro lineman; it took more than raw talent, it took years of training. Training Tchernak had barely begun.
    The highway was flat and empty, lulling drivers into complacency, luring them off into rolls and crashes. She glanced at the speedometer and lifted her foot till it settled back to eighty. No need to give them an excuse. Oh, shit, she was beginning to think like Tchernak!
    She turned on the radio, forced herself to listen through the static. Her reward was bits of the same report she had picked up earlier, the tale of casinos rising faster than the dawn. And how much would it benefit a local sheriff to destroy the evidence of epidemic? She snapped off the radio, grabbed for the cell phone, and dialed BakDat.
    “BakDat, the professional search network. Thorough, fast, reliable. Leave a message, and one of our many investigators will get right back to you!”
    “Persis, this is Kiernan O’Shaughnessy,” she said, relieved that the call had gone through. “I’m calling for Tchernak.”
    No response.
    “Persis, pick up. Open your eyes and reach the hand of all your many investigators to the phone. This is important!”
    Still no response. For Tchernak she would have flown out of the bed and had the computer up and running already.
    “Tchernak is missing.”
    Still no response. Maybe Persis really was out, or really asleep. More likely she was just lying on her bed in an orange muumuu, fingering thin, dry dyed-red hair, listening to the phone and laughing.
    “Okay. Listen. I’m on the move. I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to call you. In the meantime get me whatever he wan ted from you in the last day. And Persis, if anything happens to Tchernak, you’ve got only yourself to blame.”
    Dammit, she could not charge into Adcock’s office empty-handed. Without leverage all