Free Crosscut by Meg Gardiner

rest.”
    “How am I supposed to do that?”
    Her voice went quiet. “Walk back the cat, Evan.”
    Static rose on the line and the video pixilated. When it cleared, her feline eyes were dark and assessing.
    “Explain,” I said.
    “It’s a metaphor for troubleshooting. When something goes wrong, you analyze the situation to figure out why. Think of a cat unraveling a ball of string. You have to rewind the twisted yarn to find the flaw.”
    Her voice lowered to a register that put me in mind of a Ferrari. Racing, smoothly and effortlessly, even though the engine was running at high revs.
    “When you walk back the cat, your goal is to correct mistakes so they don’t happen again. You reassess evidence and assumptions until you find the double agent, the false source, or the analytic error. That’s how you identify the real problem.”
    “The obvious problem is that this person Coyote has killed two of my classmates. But you’re suggesting that the real problem lies elsewhere.”
    “Rumor has it that Project South Star was shut down because results ran ahead of the researchers’ ability to control them. The question is, what happened to Coyote on that project?”
    “If you want me to dig, give me a shovel. Tell me more about Coyote.”
    Tim strolled in from the balcony. “Very well.”
    He had a mutt’s face and the self-possession of a Buddha. His weathered eyes and haphazard English smile went with the workingman’s voice, though for all I knew he was the son of an earl.
    “Coyote is adept as a trickster because he loves to play dress-up. He’s airy-fairy. A little man overbutching it during the day and strapping himself into heels and spandex at night.”
    “He’s a transvestite?” I said.
    “She-male, mister sister, whatever you want to call it. His sexual identity has a certain fluidity that helps him blend into scenes, playing either gender.”
    A wormy feeling passed through me. “That’s information I can give to the police. The rest of it, digging into this Project South Star, how am I supposed to do that? Give me some guidance.”
    “Look at your connections.”
    Connections meant China Lake. Static increased, brushing over the audio connection like sand.
    “Be straight with me. Why are you telling me all this?”
    “I’ll tell you why,” Jax said. “Because I have the training and the experience to know that I can turn anybody’s lights out, and I’m damned good at it. But Coyote is flat-out petrifying.”

6
    “She’s playing with me. She’s running a game,” I said.
    Jesse didn’t disagree. He watched me pacing back and forth along the edge of his deck. His blue eyes were dark in the night.
    “If it’s a game, that implies she wants to win,” he said. “The question is, how does she do that?”
    The night was cooling, a chill rolling off the ocean. Breakers shrugged up the beach. Behind Jesse the plate-glass windows shone with amber light from the house.
    I turned and paced. “Jax is trained to use disinformation as a tool. How do I sort truth from lie?”
    “You took the first step by phoning this new information to Tommy. He’ll investigate.”
    I nodded. “That still leaves me wondering what Jax wants from me.”
    “Do you believe that Coyote frightens her?”
    I slowed. “Yes.” And that frightened me. Tremendously.
    “In that case, presume she isn’t sending you on a wild-goose chase. Look at your connections. You know what she was getting at as well as I do.”
    “China Lake.” I crossed my arms against my chest. “But my connections are navy. This defunct project was supposedly something else.”
    The navy doesn’t have sole control over the base. In its labyrinth of labs and million acres of test ranges, other entities run their own projects. Perhaps including South Star.
    He looked thoughtful. “At the reunion I was joking about cover stories and secret pasts. But—”
    “Could it be real? No.” I put my hands up. “Okay, I know China Lake’s