“You have any inkling where Archer might be?”
Rowe shook his head. “I visited his wife, Sidney.”
“We’ve met.”
“It’s hard to believe he would just up and leave them like that. He has
a daughter too. A beautiful little girl.”
“Maybe he didn’t plan to leave them.”
Rowe looked at him oddly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe he intends to come back for them.”
“He’s a fugitive from justice now. Why would he come back? Be sides,
Sidney wouldn’t go with him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s a criminal. She’s an attorney.”
“This may come as a big surprise to you, Quentin, but some lawyers
aren’t honest.”
“You mean… you mean you suspect Sidney Archer of being involved in
this whole thing?”
“I mean I haven’t ruled her or anyone else out right now as a suspect.
She’s an attorney for Triton. She was working on the CyberCom deal.
Seems like a perfect position to cherry-pick secrets and sell them to
RTG. Who the hell knows? I intend to find out.”
Rowe put his glasses back on and rubbed his hand nervously across the
glass tabletop. “It’s so hard to believe Sidney would be involved in
all this.” Rowe’s tone betrayed the conviction of his words.
Sawyer studied him closely. “Quentin, do you want to tell me something?
Maybe about Sidney Archer?”
Rowe finally sighed and looked at Sawyer. “I’m convinced that Sidney
was in Jason’s office at Triton after the plane crash.”
Sawyer’s eyes narrowed. “What proof do you have?”
“The night before Jason supposedly left for L.A. he and I were working
late on a project in his office. We left together. He secured his
office door behind me. His office remained locked from that moment
until we had the company come to deactivate the alarm and remove the
door.”
“So?”
“When we entered the office, I noticed immediately that the microphone
on Jason’s computer was bent almost in half. Like someone had hit it
and then tried to straighten it.”
“Why would you think that someone was Sidney Archer? Maybe Jason came
back later that night.”
“If he had there would be a record of it, both electronically and with
the on-site security guard.” Rowe paused, dwelling on the memory of the
night of Sidney’s visit. Finally he threw up his hands.
“! know of no other way to put it. She was sneaking around. She
claimed she was not in the restricted area, and yet I’m sure she was.
I think the security guard was covering for her. And Sidney told me
some bogus story about meeting Jason’s secretary there to get some of
Jason’s personal things.”
“Doesn’t that sound plausible?”
“It would have, except I casually asked Kay Vincent, Jason’s secretary,
if she had spoken to Sidney recently. And she had, from her home, on
the very night Sidney went down to the office. She knew Kay wasn’t
there.”
Sawyer sat back in his chair. Rowe continued. “You need a special chip
card even to begin the deactivation process on Jason’s office door.
In addition, you need to know a four-digit password or the alarm will go
off. It happened, in fact, when we initially tried to enter his office.
That’s when we found out Jason had changed the password. I even
considered attempting it the night Sidney came by, only I knew it would
be futile. I had a master security card, but without the password, the
alarm would’ve just gone off again.” He paused to take a breath. “Sidney
could’ve have had access to Jason’s security cam and he could’ve told
her the password. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but she’s involved
in something, I just don’t know what.”
“I just looked through Archer’s office and I didn’t see any microphone.
What did it look like?”
“About five inches long, the thickness of a pencil, small speaker at one
end. It was mounted directly on the computer’s CPU on the bottom
left-hand side. It’s for voice-activated commands. One day it’ll
replace the keyboard entirely. It’s a godsend for people who can’t type
well.”
“I didn’t see anything like that.”
“Probably not. I’m sure it was removed from the office because it was