Hyper Lynx (The Lynx Series Book 6) by Fiona Quinn (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📗

old butts in a little plastic baggie in my freezer. I’d leave one or two behind at each crime scene. That way, the investigators would say precisely what this CIA officer was saying.

I wasn’t giving a lot of credence to the cigarettes. But this was a fascinating and ethically questionable new tool that might be deployed. I was looking forward to talking this over with Zoe. Maybe she and I could take a trip to New York City and go see this installation.

Good? Bad? Yeah, rules should be put in place, and I’d like to hear Zoe’s take on it since she was a stickler for ethics.

“But you’re not convinced that it’s the right guy based on other… No.” I tapped my chin. “You think you have the right guy, but you don’t have evidence other than his proximity, and you’ve found holes in your speculation. Enough holes that you don’t think that this will make it through the grand jury when you hand it over to a prosecutor. What crime? What continent?”

“Espionage. Europe,” Casper said.

“Foreign player?” Striker asked.

Casper stuck his tongue between his teeth and lip, making his mouth bulge outward. It was a modified signal that he was feeling aggressive, if not violent, about the subject. “American.”

This was actually more interesting than I thought it would be, in a creepy and disturbing way. “Please continue. I’m assuming that you went to the extremes to engage with this artist because this person of interest didn’t have a DNA sample in the government data banks. And I’m betting that no one in his family did one of those home DNA testing kits because they wanted to know where their ancestors came from, so there was no familial DNA to track down.”

“Correct,” Cho said.

I blinked as I processed the information. “So what traits could the artist use to develop her conclusions?”

“Gender, eye color, weight ranges, anything important that could change facial morphology.” DiSarro reached up to rub the space between his eyes and swept a thumb up his cheek bone. “She said there are about fifty-ish traits that she’s analyzed. Putting those trait parameters into the software program, she prints off a 3D structure that could model the person’s face.”

“You tested her theory?” I asked.

Casper leaned forward and typed into the computer. Up came a picture of DiSarro next to one of the creepy pigmented death masks. It was a close, if not an exact likeness.

Simultaneously amazing and disturbing.

“From there, she creates a sculpture and paints them hyper-realistically,” DiSarro concluded.

“Okay,” I said. “Now, what do you want from us?”

Chapter Fourteen

Casper swiped his hand down his tie. “We started with a customer question—how did the top-secret information get into the hands of the bad actors. We sent that question to our relevant collection specialists who determined which collection platforms—” He turned to me, offering an avuncular smile. He was going to slowly lead me through an intelligence cycle, baby step by baby step.

“Cigarette butts?” I asked with a bat of my lashes, trying to move this along.

“This includes human intelligence—people who will give us useful data.” He turned his attention to Striker, who sat stoically listening. “In this case, it was determined that we needed assets.” He caught my eye. “An asset is a term that the CIA uses, but we use other synonyms like sources or agents. We aren’t CIA agents.” He pointed at each of the three.

I wasn’t sure what response he wanted here—surprise? Astonishment? A slap to my forehead that gosh, I’d been using the wrong terminology?

“Targeters, operations officers, staff operations officers are all involved. These highly educated, highly trained, highly professional intelligence officers give the leads to our field agents for covert action.”

“Who was your customer that posed the question?” I asked, trying to get him to stop with his CIA 101 lecture. Yeah, I was aware that he didn’t perceive me as a “highly” or a “professional,” but really, whatever. His reading of who I was didn’t matter in my analysis, and soon I’d be out the door and headed over to talk to Finley at the FBI.

“The Pentagon.”

“Thank you,” I said sweetly. “And can you tell me which station was developing the assets?”

“No.”

“Are one of you the collection management officer?” I looked from one man to the next. That was a no. “Who vetted the material that you’re sharing today?” I thought maybe if I threw out my own CIA vocabulary that we could move on from kindergarten.

“I did,” Cho said, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

“I appreciate your effort to bring me up to speed on the CIA processes. Since we have limited time in this meeting, I'd like to know what information you were able to glean from your Red Cell artist? What you wanted to accomplish by hiring Iniquus.” I paused. “Other than checking your superior’s boxes, that is.”

Striker reached under the table and squeezed my thigh. I could interpret that as a warning that I was about to overstep. But I preferred to interpret it as Striker getting totally turned on by my take-charge attitude.

Casper chewed his upper lip. “I’m going to show you some video. Please watch carefully. I’ve printed off the image that was created by the artist. I was told that you are an expert at body language.” He paused. “I think that’s a pseudo-science without real applicability in this instance. But… I was told to run this by you, and that’s why we’re here.”

For twenty-five minutes, we watched the surveillance videos. Some were grainy security camera feeds, some much more high-tech and easily viewed and interpreted.

And honestly, I didn’t know why I was here. Wasn’t this obvious?

The footage came to an end. Casper tapped his computer again. The lights came up. “Body language interpretation isn’t going to get us what we need.”

“I agree with you,”