“Where the hell could he be?”
Gretchen shrugged, her face twisted with worry. “We went to the Tellmore place and found everything just like Bradley described. Except…”
“Except?”
“No Whirlwind.”
“Boogers,” Travis cursed softly.
The two of them had stolen a few minutes away from the chaos surrounding Doctor Harmon’s reappearance by ducking into a storage closet. Fortunately, the Polk Medical Center kept a lot of spare everything on hand and the closets were large, so there was enough space for Travis’s bulk. Unfortunately, there was very little space left over for the police chief. The two were pressed against each other, virtually chest-to-chest. Had anyone opened the door, they would have assumed they had interrupted a romantic tryst.
“You’re sure he’s not at the agency?” Only a faint trace of hope colored her voice; she already knew the answer.
“He told Randy he was napping. ‘Do not disturb upon pain of death.’ You know how dramatic he gets. Randy finally barged in anyway and Alec was gone. I double checked their apartment at Ale Mary’s, and then I called Peter.”
Gretchen winced. “I can’t imagine that went well.”
“I got lucky. His secretary said he was still at lunch.”
Gretchen tiredly scrubbed her face with her hands. “At least we didn’t find a body. Alec is hard to kill so, odds are, Thanatos is holding him somewhere.”
“When Peter gets home tonight and finds Alec missing… Damn! I knew I should have made insulating that suit a priority!”
Travis looked like he was frustrated enough to bang his forehead against the storeroom wall. Fortunately for the wall, it was covered with shelving.
“You had other things to worry about,” Gretchen soothed. “Like saving innocent lives.”
“Alec is innocent, too.”
“He’s only one person. If Thanatos gets impatient or decides to give us another demonstration, your work on the nanoprobes could help dozens, maybe hundreds. You done good, my friend. Besides, the Whirlwind’s been captured before.”
“True. But this business with Thanatos is different. It worries me. No one else ever suspected that electricity was the Whirlwind’s weakness. Even I didn’t know that! It’s like this guy’s got an inside line on information that no one else has.”
“What can I do to help?”
“When Peter shows up, keep him occupied. Use any excuse to keep him from finding out Alec’s missing. Arrest him if you have to.”
“Arrest him?”
“Well, maybe not arrest him. Maybe you could drag him downtown for…I don’t know…for questioning or something. People died at Greene Genes, Gretch. Pete’s the acting Chairman of the board. There’s got to be some kind of paperwork you can tie him up with for a few hours.”
“I’ll figure it out. Wait!” Her eyes glinted when she thought of something. “Didn’t you once mention a homing device in Alec’s suit?”
Travis grimaced. “I made the mistake of putting it into the earpiece. The kid was always bitching that it didn’t fit and…well…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a mangled hunk of plastic. “He got all huffy and took it off. Stepped on it too, it looks like.” He smiled, sad but affectionate. “Typical.”
“In the meantime, if we find Whirlwind, we find Thanatos. I’ve got every cop I can spare out looking. It’s just a matter of time.”
“I know,” he replied miserably. “I just wish we had a better idea of how much time we have to spare.”