Masterminds Read Online Free PDF Page A

hours or when Fiona was with his mother.
    On this day, though, he could only walk to the building, which was almost unnoticeable to the untrained eye. The building’s exterior was designed to look like the wall, and some trick of the design or maybe some nano feature made the building seem two-dimensional until you were standing right next to it.
    He could see the building because there were little shadows in the upper corners that wouldn’t actually be there if the wall were as flat as it seemed.
    He turned on all of his enhancements—the visual ones that saw the building in UV, night vision, heat vision, and on a nano- and chemical level. He was looking for flaws that didn’t get reported to the control room on the ground level of the dome engineering building. He figured if someone was clever enough to put a bomb down here, they would be clever enough to beat the security system that had been installed down here before Ó Brádaigh was born.
    The door to the building opened, and Ó Brádaigh just about jumped out of his skin.
    His immediate supervisor, Vato Petteway, stepped out, then started when he saw Ó Brádaigh.
    “What the hell are you doing down here?” Petteway snapped. He was a thin man, with a hooked nose and a narrow chin. His dark eyes never seemed to miss anything. “I didn’t assign you the substructure.”
    Ó Brádaigh swallowed. His heart was still pounding hard, and he felt the adrenalin course through him.
    “No, sir, you didn’t,” Ó Brádaigh said. “I just felt the need to double-check the area down here.”
    “Because what, you had a vision of disaster?” Petteway was good at sarcasm. Ó Brádaigh was one of the few engineers who could handle the man. In fact, Ó Brádaigh had prevented dozens of them from quitting over the years, by taking on Petteway himself.
    “It’s not hard to have a vision of disaster these days,” Ó Brádaigh said.
    Petteway’s eyes narrowed. “You’re one of my best engineers, Ó Brádaigh. I’d hate to get rid of you because you’re lurking in places where you don’t belong. Most people would consider your presence down here suspicious.”
    Ó Brádaigh’s cheeks warmed. He hadn’t thought of it that way. But he knew that the best way to handle Petteway was to challenge the man.
    “Most supervisors would be glad that their employees cared enough to check on things even when off the clock.”
    Petteway snorted, shook his head, and pushed the door to the building closed. “Maybe a year ago, your point would be a good one. But right now? Everything seems suspicious.”
    “Yeah,” Ó Brádaigh said, knowing two could play this game. “What are you doing down here?”
    Petteway’s shoulders slumped, as if Ó Brádaigh’s question forced the man to examine his own motivations.
    “I don’t sleep any more, Ó Brádaigh, unless I’ve checked every vulnerable area of the dome at some point during my day.”
    Petteway ran a hand through his thinning hair. No matter how many enhancements he got, the hair thinned after a few years. Ó Brádaigh had seen Petteway go through nearly five enhancements in the time they had worked together.
    “I know,” Ó Brádaigh said. “That’s why I’m here. If I didn’t check, I’d be moving my daughter somewhere safer in the Alliance.”
    “As if there is somewhere safer in the Alliance.” Petteway sighed. “I think we’re all on such high alert here on the Moon that this is probably the safest part of the Alliance—at least at the moment.”
    “I hope you’re right,” Ó Brádaigh said. Then he glanced at the door—or what he could see of the door. It always seemed to disappear in that flat nano-illusion. “I’ve always checked the exterior of this building. What do you think could happen in there?”
    “I don’t know,” Petteway said softly. “I’m past imagining what could go wrong. I never expected clones to bomb the Moon on Anniversary Day. I certainly didn’t expect Peyti lawyers to try