Running Hot

her own secrets.
    She straightened her shoulders, the decision made. She would give Luther the information that might be helpful to J&J. But she didn’t have to throw herself under the bus.
    She had one very big factor going for her in the equation, she decided. J&J clearly needed the data that she could supply. That gave her some negotiating power. If worst came to worst, she could work with that.
    “I told you that until I joined the Bureau of Genealogy, I worked as a librarian in a large corporation,” she said.
    “Crocker World.”
    “Right. A lot of my time was spent doing Internet searches that were commissioned by various executives, including Mr. Crocker. On a few occasions I was called into the executive suite to deliver the results of my research.”
    “Martin Crocker summoned a librarian into his office?”
    There was irritation and impatience in Luther’s voice. He didn’t believe her.
    “Mr. Crocker was a strat talent. People like that love background and research. The more facts and details they can gather before they make a decision, the better. I did a lot of work for him.”
    She was pleased with the way that came out. Let him look. Every word was true.
    “Go on,” Luther said.
    “During the years that I worked at headquarters in Miami, I saw Mr. Crocker many times.” More truth.
    “On your trips upstairs to the executive suite,” Luther said without inflection.
    Damn. Was he buying this or not?
    “What I’m trying to tell you is that I had several opportunities to examine his aura,” she said. True.
    “What made you do that?”
    The question threw her for a couple of seconds. Why would the company librarian care about the boss’s aura?
    “I suppose,” she said simply, “because he was Martin Crocker. In the world in which he moved, he was a rock star. And he was my boss.”
    “I assume you profiled him?”
    She nodded and concentrated on the horizon. “He was a complicated man. Driven.”
    “Were you attracted to him?”
    “Not in the way you mean.” More truth. “But I suppose you could say I admired him. Everyone in the company respected his business abilities. He was Martin Crocker, after all. He built an empire.”
    “Go on.”
    “During the last few months of his life, Crocker was working on a major project. He requested a number of detailed searches.”
    “All of which were hand delivered by you?”
    “Yes. I made a number of trips to the executive suite and on several of those trips I saw Crocker. Something changed in his aura during that time. I noticed the dark energy waves. They were small, almost undetectable at first. But they grew stronger as the weeks went by.”
    “What did you think was happening?”
    She folded her arms very tightly. “It occurred to me that he might be developing some sort of mental illness that was psychic in origin. Something about his dark energy scared the living daylights out of me.”
    He considered that a moment. “Okay, it’s spooky stuff, I’ll give you that.”
    “One day when I was summoned to the executive suite, I noticed two men going into Crocker’s office. Both gave off bad vibes. You couldn’t miss them, not if you were an aura talent.”
    “You checked out their patterns.”
    “Sure.”
    “And?” he prompted.
    “And I saw the same dark energy patterns in their fields.”
    “What did you do?”
    “Started working on my résumé. What else? I’ve been around enough freaks in my life to know when it’s time to bail. But before I could land another job, the news broke that Crocker had disappeared while on a trip to his private island. There was a lot of speculation. If you followed the story, you know that everyone had a theory. There were rumors. Some of them hit the papers.”
    “What rumors?” he asked.
    “That Crocker was involved with some drug lords and there was a falling-out. That was when I assumed that Crocker himself was doing drugs.” Okay, that was a minor tweaking of the truth.
    “The theory was that the drug lords got rid of him?”
    “It wasn’t exactly an off-the-wall conclusion,” she said. “Crocker World was headquartered in Miami, after all.”
    Luther was silent for a long time, his expression cop-hard. Quickly she reviewed her story. It sounded tight. She was satisfied with it, especially given the fact that she’d had only a few minutes to put it together. It helped, of course, that most of the facts were true, including the rumors about Martin’s involvement in drug