The look on Sonya Gomez’s face couldn’t have been more incredulous. “The padds?”

Corsi sat the two padds recovered from Caitano’s bed, as well as the padd she’d found at Deverick’s crime scene, on the workbench between them. “Whoever did this is using our own equipment against us.”

“Our own equipment?”

Corsi tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. You’re the only one who’s taken counterterrorism training. Don’t forget that. “It’s an old terrorist ploy. If they use things that we take for granted, they can plant the bomb in the center of town and nobody will give it a second look.” She pointed at one of Caitano’s padds. “Commander, Hawkins scanned this one three times and found nothing unusual about it. I even scanned it once, myself, but it was the same reading. If I’m right, somebody wants it that way.”

Gomez picked up the device and began giving it a closer inspection. She retrieved a sonic screwdriver from the nearest tool kit. Grabbing the unit that had the novel Caitano had been reading, she got to work. Her eyes widened when she cracked the padd’s case open on two bits of electronics that obviously hadn’t been part of the padd’s original design. “How’d the scanners miss this much tampering? That’s got to be the smallest emitter array I’ve ever seen. That looks almost like an acoustic amplifier. Bounce the acoustic signal off of this, and you can focus it like a phaser beam. You know, I’ll bet that’s designed to fool any scanner into thinking the padd’s just a plain, off-the-shelf unit,” Gomez said in the same tone that Corsi had heard from Stevens—she was rolling, and nobody with any sense should interrupt. “I wonder what the other thing’s for.” Her voice trailed off as she resumed staring down into the guts of the altered padd. She stared intently at the small piece of obsidian circuitry that sat beside the emitter. “Have you told Captain Gold yet?” she muttered.

Corsi shook her head. “There was nothing new to report until now. How long before you think you’ll know what the other emitter does?”

Gomez shrugged. “Don’t know. A day, maybe? Caitano got this on Deep Space 9, right?”

Corsi nodded. “Best we can tell. I’m already working on the message for Captain Kira and Lieutenant Ro. If my hunch is right—”

“Yeah, a padd with that novel on it came through Quark’s place last month,” Ro Laren said, her brow furrowing into ridges that matched those on the bridge of her Bajoran nose. “He told me it was some bestseller in the Gamma Quadrant.”

“That’s their cover story,” Corsi replied. “The crew here believes it was designed to pass scanner detection, because we’d never think to look at a padd. Who’d tamper with that?”

Ro shook her head. “I know it’s probably not worth much, Commander, but we should have thought to look at it more closely. At least half of the grandfathered militia members were in the resistance. The odds are good somebody tried a stunt like this once.”

Corsi leaned back in her office chair, staring at Deep Space 9’s security chief. Dark eyes that had seemed pretty happy when they’d begun the conversation now looked haunted—the eyes of someone who was going to be feeling some serious guilt when the conversation ended. Corsi couldn’t say as she blamed her, really. In her shoes, she probably would have felt the same. If she didn’t figure out who used the padds to kill Caitano and Deverick, she was pretty damned sure she’d feel the same.

“Do you know if he has a paper trail on the device?” Corsi asked.

Ro shook her head again. “No, but I will by the time you arrive. I suppose you’ll want to talk to Quark about it?”

Corsi thought about that for a moment. She would definitely have to question the Ferengi on the transaction, but something as simple as Bajor’s recently finalized Federation membership would throw more than just a spanner into the works. Quark’s Bar had become the Ferengi embassy. She realized with a depressing turn of her stomach that this would require questioning an ambassador, possibly even in his own embassy where he could pretty much call all of the shots.

Her lips pursed. She didn’t like that one bit.

“We may want to get him out of the bar to do it,” Corsi said. “Questioning him inside the embassy could raise all kinds of diplomatic problems.”

Ro’s eyes rolled. “Especially since he also happens to be the brother of the Grand Nagus. What a time for fatherhood to make Rom grow a spine.”

Corsi shook her head. “From what Nog said, he’s always been protective of Quark.”

The ends of Ro’s lips turned up. “That protection works both ways. Those two have been to hell and back together. He held the guns on a couple of Jem’Hadar guards to get Rom out of jail during the Dominion occupation. Who knows what Rom might do in return? Although, I just don’t see Rom going ballistic.”

A thin smile spread across Corsi’s face as she thought of something. “On second thought, a little ‘interview’ in the bar might prove handy. He won’t want to cause a scene in front of the customers.”

“True,” Ro replied, one dark eyebrow raised. “Bad for business.”

“Let me work on a strategy here,” Corsi said. “We’ll be there in about another day.”