Free Tek Power by William Shatner

off her mouth to you, nobody would know where I was.”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œFigure it out,” suggested Jake. “I found you. Others can.”
    â€œOthers—what others, for Christ sake?”
    â€œThe others who killed Eve. The others who broke in on her husband, looking for the vidcaz.”
    Seagrove wiped at his nose. “They don’t know I have the damn cassette, do they? Megan doesn’t know, so I don’t see how they—”
    â€œLook, I’m not sure yet of all that’s going on,” cut in Jake. “But I do know we’re dealing with folks who’ll kill to get what they want. And apparently they’d like to have the cassette.”
    â€œOkay, allright,” he said. “Suppose I hand it over to you? That should stop them from hunting for me. That sounds right, doesn’t it? It makes sense.”
    â€œSome sense, yeah. What’s on the cassette?”
    Seagrove shook his head. “I don’t know,” he swore. “I have, you know, a general idea, but honest to god, Cardigan, I never actually looked at the cassette itself, never played it. Never, not once. That way nobody can say, ‘That asshole Seagrove knows what she knew, let’s ice him, too.’”
    â€œEve gave you the vidcaz?”
    â€œYes, right. The day she found out that Junior—Arnie Maxfield, Jr., that toad—that he was dead. That night she stopped by, said she’d put a message on tape. It was important and I was to keep it for her.”
    â€œIn what way important?”
    â€œOkay, this is all, really, I know,” began Seagrove. “Eve was down in Managua on Larson-Dunn business. The manager of the Mechanix International operation in Nicaragua was in some sort of mess and, since we have the MI public relations account down there, she was assigned to make him look like less of a crook than he is.” He paused to fish out a handkerchief. “I’ve had this damn cold for a week. Can’t seem to shake it.”
    â€œWhat happened in Nicaragua?”
    â€œIt had, far as I can tell, nothing to do with the client.” He blew his nose, then balled up the handkerchief in his hand. “Arnie, though, was down there on some business or other for his father—that’s MaxComm, you know—and he found out something. After he was killed, Eve got very upset and she told me it wasn’t an accident. She was certain someone had killed him.”
    â€œWhat had he found out?”
    â€œI’m not sure, but it was sure as hell something he wasn’t supposed to know.”
    â€œDid Eve tell you who she suspected had killed Maxfield?”
    â€œNo, but she was afraid they were going to come after her.”
    â€œWhich means he’d shared what he knew with her.”
    â€œExactly. That’s why she was so scared.”
    Jake asked, “Why couldn’t she go to the police?”
    â€œShe didn’t want to risk that,” said Seagrove, sniffing. “My feeling is, you know, that Eve wasn’t too sure who she could trust. She put what she knew on the vidcaz and she told me, if anything happened to her, to give the thing to her husband.”
    â€œShe probably told somebody else about the cassette, told them that it existed.”
    â€œAs insurance, but that didn’t work.” Seagrove blew his nose. “She told me her husband would know what to do. His old man is—but, hell, you know that since you work for the old bastard.”
    Jake took a step back. “But you didn’t do what she asked you. You didn’t hand it over to her husband.”
    â€œI decided to look after my own ass, Cardigan. Lie low for a while.”
    â€œYou phoned him, though.”
    â€œI was drunk,” he explained. “Well, I’m drunk quite a lot these days. I wasn’t going to risk passing the thing to him or even trying to send it. But I thought,