Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

and buy laundry soap. It was a look that, despite years of faking, Grace knew she’d never get right. Knew that all a woman like Beth had to do was take one look at her to know that, too.

      “This is the lecture Bartholomew crashed?” A faint tinge of condescension colored Beth’s question.

      Grace swallowed her irritation. “Pretty much. Little simpler this time, but yeah.”

      Zsloski harrumphed into his hand.

      “What do you think Bartholomew was trying to tell you?” Beth clicked her sterling silver pen and readied it.

      “The only time I met Professor Bartholomew, he was lunging at me with a protest sign and spouting sound bites from the Bill Ayers playbook.”

      Pete nodded. “At the time of his death, he was a full-tenured professor at Riverside University, teaching a popular undergraduate-level course called ‘Silent Voices.’ It was about the ones history forgets—the ones on the bottom. He was arrested at Grace’s lecture by a Palm Desert cop in a roomful of forensic biologists.”

      The sheriff investigator patted the pocket of his tan shirt. He had penetrating mahogany-colored eyes the same color as his skin and wore his hair close to the scalp. His brass ID bar read t. thantos. “So he wanted to get arrested.”

      “Looks that way,” Pete said. “He got press, if that was the plan.”

      In her mind, Grace saw the Desert Sun article taped to Bartholomew’s wall.

      Thantos pulled a Mars bar out of his pocket and unwrapped it. “DNA testing for race would definitely have pushed Bartholomew’s buttons. From what we’ve got so far, he was all about how human dignity was compromised by putting racial groups in boxes.”

      “Bartholomew could have been trying to tell us we’re looking for a racist,” Grace offered. “But if the doer was using racial percentages somehow, the question is why? What’s the point? Why would those be flagged?”

      Zsloski shifted his bulk in his chair. “It doesn’t have to be a racist. Could be somebody in law enforcement. Based on what you said. I mean, we’re the guys who use this stuff, right?”

      “Or some genealogist with a grudge,” Beth suggested.

      “Or it’s possible the suspect had a genetic anomaly shared by only a small subgroup.”

      Grace shut down her computer.

      “Any idea yet what kind of crazy Bartholomew was?”

      Her uncle shook his head. “We’re doing cross-checks with every face on that wall. Dividing the photos into subgroups—class, gender, race. Whatever it is, it’s not mentioned in either his university file or medical chart, so right now we’re shooting in the dark.”

      The group was already starting to gather notepads and pens and tuck them away. Grace looked down the table. “Any more questions?”

      Agent Beth Loganis flipped open her cell phone and checked for messages. Grace felt a slow burn.

      “Good, because I’ve got some. What in the hell is going on here?”

      Faces looked up. The noise stilled.

      “Two fields torched and somebody’s died. What is this?”

      She stared at her uncle. He stared back, dark eyes inscrutable in a face creased and grooved and furrowed, as if everything he’d seen in his job had chiseled out a piece of him. Another couple years and he’d be left with nothing but a skull.

      “I’ve flown over three thousand miles through the night and driven in from San Diego. I think I deserve to know.”

      Her uncle grew still. She could feel him weighing what to say.

      “You understand this is information that you are not to share outside this room.”

      She couldn’t believe he’d actually said that. “Or you’ll have to kill me, right?”

      “We’ve had lots of experience. There won’t be seepage.”

      He waited.

      “Fine. All right. I get it. I’m not going to say anything.”

      “We’ve gotten word from FIG, Field Intelligence Group, out of Norwalk. They did a threat assessment on the convention. My SSA and the OCC’s involved, and when FIG passed along—”

      Acronyms made her testy. “Okay, so your boss in Riverside and the operational control center out of L.A.—”

      “Right. OCC is set up to manage big situations. We’ve been lining up assets and manpower for months, pulling in bodies from all over Southern California. Field Intelligence monitors Internet chatter, blog sites, confidential sources. We have reason to believe a group calling itself Radical Damage has plans to disrupt the agricultural convention during closing ceremonies.”

      “What is it?”

      “A violent offshoot of ELF out of Northern California.”

      He shifted in his seat.

      “These guys aren’t worried about collateral damage. They’ve taken credit for explosions in three labs that have led to the deaths of four scientists and crippling injuries to five others. One guy was left blind and without hands. The victims all worked with genetically modified plants. Here’s what’s at stake. There are delegates from every state and almost sixty countries at this ag convention. Frank Waggaman’s had death threats. He heads up the teams that created ten fields of GM crops here, six soy, a couple of sugar beets, and two corns.”

      “I didn’t think any of that stuff grew here.”

      “That’s why they picked Palm Springs for the convention. The genetic modifications—each field tweaked differently—had to do with making crops drought-, pest-, and weed-resistant. Ag convention director Frank Waggaman believed that one field in particular, USDA Experimental Crop Project 3627, held the key to helping solve world hunger.”

      Grace stared. “And that’s where Bartholomew was killed? In USDA Experimental Crop 3627.”

      Pete nodded. “This whole thing could explode in our faces. The GM fields are off-limits now to delegates, but all we need is a foreign delegate killed and an international incident on our watch.”

      “Monday night.”

      “Monday night.” He glared at Grace, his eyes small balls of bright fury under drooping lids. “Two days from now. We need to figure out what Radical Damage has planned and stop it. The clock, as they say, is ticking. And damn, I hate that expression.”

      “Same old Uncle Pete. You still haven’t told me how I fit into this.”

      He glared. “Same old Grace. Always pushing it.” He stepped away from the table. “We’re done here. Not you, Grace. You’re coming with me.”

       TEN

      She followed her uncle past a gray fabric wall with notices tacked to it. On the other side of the wall was a row of workstations with access to a balcony that ran the length of the agency. Her uncle’s silence made her review every wrong thing she’d ever done. He kept walking and that gave her a chance to flip it, and think about every wrong thing he’d ever done, and by the time he opened his office door and motioned her in, she was herself again.

      He stood uncertainly, as if wondering whether to hug her, and Grace pretended to dig through her bag. She dropped into the chair across the desk from him, and when she looked up, he was seated.

      He looked smaller, somehow, diminished. His shirt had a button loose and he needed a shave. “Thanks for coming.”

      “Did I have a choice?” She folded her arms.

      He studied