Page 4 of Unlocked

He stopped beside her and touched her shoulder. "Tatum."

She startled and looked up, blinking herself back into the room. "Sorry, I was somewhere else entirely." She rose. "How are you?"

"I'm well. You?"

"Jet lagged." Her smile didn't reach her sharp blue eyes. "Japan. I'll catch up on sleep eventually." She moved toward the pastry table before he could press it.

He let her go. She was lying, or at least not telling the whole truth, and she knew he knew it. He would deal with that later. He needed her focused on committee oversight, the unglamorous work that kept the Society's machinery running cleanly and Davis's fingers out of places they didn't belong. Fisher's, too, for that matter.

"Now." Davis spread his hands across the table as everyone settled. "Shall we?"

Archer called the meeting to order.

For the most part, it was like every other board meeting happening across the world at that precise moment. Reports, amendments, budget line items, the comfortable tedium of institutional governance. If it weren't for the weapons concealed on three of the people in the room and the particular quality of silence Davis and Fisher maintained while watching Archer, it could have been a quarterly review at any multinational corporation.

Archer almost smiled. With the weapons and the silence, it still could be.

Fisher contributed nothing during the substantive portions of the meeting. He didn't need to. He was there as a body, as a vote, as a signal. Davis had installed him on the board the way someone props a door open, not because the door does anything useful, but because you want to make sure it can't be closed.

Archer was reaching for his pen to close when Davis opened his mouth.

"Before we adjourn." Davis shook his head slowly, arranging his face into something approximating grave concern. "I need to raise something that I pray you're going to tell me is untrue, Archer."

Archer set aside his pen and waited.

As if realizing he wasn't going to get a reaction, Davis pressed on. "I have it on good authority that there are hidden cameras inside Society locations."

Sharon Edgerstone inhaled sharply. "That can't be right."

Alan Forgerty looked like a man who had just discovered a scorpion in his shoe, which Archer supposed, given the congressman's recreational habits on Society property, was essentially accurate.

Fisher leaned back in his chair with the slow ease of someone watching a performance he had already seen and enjoyed. "I have to say, I find that very troubling, Archer. Very troubling indeed. Our members trust us completely with their privacy."

The hypocrisy was so dense Archer could almost feel the weight of it from across the table. Eli Fisher, champion of member privacy. There was not enough composure in Paris to make that sentence sit right.

"Archer? Is there truth to that rumor?" Davis prompted. His concern was immaculate. It was almost impressive.

"Define hidden cameras," Archer said. "Hidden where, and installed by whom?"

His tone was mild. His heart rate had ticked up precisely once and was now back where it belonged.

"Are you denying it?" Davis asked.

"No, Austin, I'm asking for specifics. Hidden cameras can mean a great many things. Without details, this is just noise, and I have enough of that already."

"Noise?" Fisher straightened. "Archer, if there's even a suggestion that members are being filmed without their knowledge, I don't see how that can be characterized as noise. The implications for people's reputations, their families, their careers..." He trailed off and shook his head with what appeared to be genuine distress.

Archer looked at him for exactly one second. Then he looked away, eased out a breath, and allowed his gaze to move back to Davis.

Who’d recalibrated his expression toward wounded dignity. "This is a serious breach of member privacy. I don't see how you can dismiss it so easily."

"I'm not dismissing it. I'm asking you to be precise. I receive rumors every day of this magnitude or worse. Aliens have infiltrated the Society. The Chinese are listening through the kitchen appliances. Without a source and a location, I can't act on any of it, and neither can anyone else at this table." Archer let the patience in his voice carry just enough of an edge to make his point. "So… Do you have details or don't you?"

The temperature in the room shifted. People who had been alarmed a moment ago were now watching Davis with a different kind of attention.

Fisher opened his mouth, but Davis got there first. "Our Maine location. Possibly Venice. Likely others."

"And your source?"