Free Death Angel by David Jacobs

fake but wasn’t sat on his head. The nattiest one in the group, he wore a seersucker suit, bow tie, and tassel loafers.
    Jack quickly brought the others up to speed on the poison needle incident and the murder of Peter Rhee. He made no mention of Annihilax. He was unauthorized to disseminate that intelligence to anyone else in the room and would continue to withhold it until directed to do so by his superior officers at CTU.
    Ironwood’s OCI was a civilian operation that was part of SECTRO. Lewis was CIA but he had not been cleared for the information, either. Maybe he already knew it. He might even know more about it than Jack. It was possible…it was possible. Jack was CTU, CTU was part of CIA, and Lewis was CIA.
    That’s where compartmentalization came in. Nobody knew another’s classified intelligence until there was a compelling reason to know. The system was clumsy but efficient, like watertight compartments on a ship. If the ship takes on water, the compartments can prevent it from sinking to the bottom.
     
    Jack reached the end of his summary. “The fat’s in the fire now,” Orne Lewis said.
    “All OCI offices are secured, but we put a special guard on Rhee’s when we learned about his death,” McCoy said. “We’re examining his files, appointment book, and computer entries to see if anything links to his murder.”
    “Find anything?” Jack asked.
    “Too much. There’s so much material there it’s hard to know where to start. Raw data, yes. Interviews, profiles, facts, figures, a mountain of data. But no smoking gun. Nothing that says this is it, this is why he was killed.”
    Debra Derr looked Jack in the face, her eyes narrowed. “Why did Peter Rhee want to meet with you? I mean, why you and not any of the rest of us?”
    Orne Lewis chuckled without mirth. “There’s a question.”
    Jack shrugged. “He said that he had something important to tell me and he wanted to do it in private. Something about the case, but he wouldn’t say what.”
    “Why Alkali Flats?” Derr pressed.
    “He thought it was safe, I guess.”
    “Obviously he was mistaken,” Lewis said.
    McCoy harrumphed. “We’re not going to get anywhere unless we all put our cards on the table, Bauer.”
    “I showed my hand.”
    “What about the card up your sleeve?” Lewis chimed in.
    Jack ignored him, speaking directly to McCoy. “Rhee set the time and the place. I never even heard of Alkali Flats before this morning.”
    Lewis turned to the OCI chief. “Face the facts. Rhee was off the reservation. Whatever lead he was following, he didn’t want to share it with any of us. Except Bauer.”
    “But why you, Jack? Why you?”
    “Vince Sabito asked me the same question and I’ll tell you what I told him: I don’t know.”
    “You were the target of an assassination attempt today—again, why?”
    “Same answer.”
    Gabe McCoy rolled his eyes. “You’ve been here less than two weeks and suddenly in one day we’ve got a murder and an attempted murder.”
    “And five suspicious deaths connected with this facility in the last six months,” Jack countered. “There may be more to come.”
    That gave McCoy a start. “Eh? How’s that?”
    “Peter Rhee would have been here now if he hadn’t beenkilled. Anyone here could be marked for death. One of us or all of us.”
    “That’s utterly fantastic—”
    “I advise everyone to be extremely cautious of their safety from now on. Watch your back. Avoid dark, lonely places. Exercise extreme precautions.”
    “Shun secret meetings?” Orne Lewis suggested dryly.
    “It couldn’t hurt,” Jack said.
    Debra Derr put her hands palms-down on the table. “What about Harvey Kling?” she asked Jack.
    Jack was caught off-guard. “What about him?”
    “He’s gone missing, too.”
    “I don’t have him.”
    McCoy made a disgusted face. “Don’t confuse the issue, Debra. You know Harvey. He comes in late on Saturdays when he comes in at all. Too busy sleeping off Friday