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director and his assistant. She stepped inside and said, “Darrell McClane, the security guard.”
    Sync nodded and said to the other two men, “Give me a moment alone with Mr. McClane. I’ll find you up in your offices.”
    They left, with Trane pulling the door shut behind her.
    Sync was at least six foot six, McClane thought, and looked to be in extraordinarily good shape, like a pro basketball player. He had sharp cheekbones, a squared-off chin, and the hair at the sides of his head was neatly buzzed. He had a scar on his right temple, a patch about the diameter of a quarter, that might have come from a burn. He pulled up a chair and pointed at another for McClane.
    “Bad business,” he said as McClane sat. “Now: I want you to tell me everything that happened, from the moment the alarms went off until you walked through the door one minute ago.”
    McClane told him, in detail. The recital took five minutes and then Sync cross-examined him for another five.
    When they were done, Sync said, “We know this has been a shock. We want you to take a week off—but don’t go anywhere. We will provide an attorney, a very good one, to handle any legal issues you may encounter, at no cost to yourself. We don’t anticipate any criminal action against you, but you may be sued by this girl youshot. If you’re sued, we will defend you. If you are penalized in any way, which we doubt, we will pay the penalty. In the meantime, we will increase your salary by two hundred dollars a week, ten thousand dollars a year. This disaster is not of your making. You did exactly as we expected you to do and we are pleased with your performance. So go home, and be available for that attorney.”
    “I really appreciate it,” McClane said. Relief flooded through him: Sync was a guy who had your back. He tried to tell the story again, of how the girl had gotten shot, but Sync, showing a flash of impatience, waved him off. “Darrell, go home. Can you drive? Good. Try to get some sleep.”
    A man knocked at the door and stepped inside. McClane had never seen him before, but he had an air of cool efficiency. He was younger than Sync, but wore the same kind of expensive conservative suit and had the same close-cropped hair. Like Sync, he had ice-blue eyes.
    Sync nodded and said, “Thorne.”
    Thorne was carrying a box. “I went down to one of the dorms and found some students and got them to wake up their friends. Five dollars for every mouse or rat—Janes counted, we got all the monkeys back. We’ve got sixty people out there now and they’re all calling their friends. We’ll have five hundred people here in an hour. I’m sending Lictor out there with the cash to pay them off.”
    He pulled the top off the box, and McClane saw that it was filled with cash. “I got fifty thousand. That should be enough.”
    Sync nodded. “Good. I’ve got Pascal and Coombs coming in to handle the PR. They should be at the airport in an hour. Get somebody to meet them.” Then he turned to McClane and said, “Darrell, good work. Stay close to your house.” McClane, dismissed, went out the door.

    When the door closed behind him, Sync turned back to Thorne and said, “If that idiot hadn’t shot the girl, this would be a hell of a lot easier to manage. We need to get that blond woman up from United Parkinson’s. The good-looking one with the cleavage, the one who cries on cue. They love her on cable news. We need to get her on the air everywhere, about what a tragedy this is, the setback to research. Maybe sweeten the pot for her. Her husband runs a management consulting company. Maybe you could talk to him about a consult.”
    “We need to talk to those kids,” Thorne said.
    “Yeah, we do. But they’re juveniles, and their folks have more money than Jesus Christ and all the apostles. They’re all lawyered up.”
    “Will McClane be a risk?” Thorne asked.
    “No. I don’t see it,” Sync said. “He knows almost nothing—one of the least