Formula for Danger (Love Inspired Suspense)

by Camy Tang

  He paused.

  Then he dropped his hands from her face but twined her limp fingers in his.

  She opened her eyes, turning her head to gaze unseeing at the computer. “Two years ago, the data that was stolen was for a diamond-dust cleanser that failed miserably. And before that was the Avignon scandal.”

  “What?” The name Avignon sounded familiar, but he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it.

  She turned to face him with wide, anguished eyes. “Everyone was gossiping about it.” She explained about the two grape-seed extract moisturizers that Joy Luck Life and Avignon spa had developed separately, and how Joy Luck Life had been accused of “stealing” Avignon’s formula.

  Now he remembered. People had been whispering about the scandal. Most Sonoma residents were outraged at the impugning of their most popular local spa, but a few people and many tourists thought Joy Luck Life had done something underhanded. “That was just bad luck. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure.”

  “Dad wasn’t happy.”

  The sentence itself wasn’t unusual or unexpected. Edward knew Augustus Grant was a good businessman who would demand as much from his daughters as any other employee. But the way she said it implied something deeper, as if her heart were breaking.

  “Dad blamed me for going through with the product launch the month after Avignon released their moisturizer. He said the negative press cast aspersions on the spa’s integrity and quality of products.” She paused, swallowing hard. “We lost several wealthy clients because of it.”

  “But that wasn’t your fault.” Anger started to simmer in him. Did Augustus blame his daughter for a bad coincidence?

  “He’s just…” She stifled a sob. “He’s so hard to please. No matter how hard I work, I never seem to please him.”

  Edward reached out to embrace her, and she clung tightly to him, not crying, but not okay.

  No matter how hard I work…

  For Edward, her words were like the first sliver of light cutting through the dark of early morning. Was this, then, the reason why she worked so hard? He’d thought her workaholic tendencies were just like his father—a selfish desire for more success, more personal satisfaction—but maybe her reasons for working so hard were different. Maybe she was only trying to live up to Augustus’s expectations, or her perception of them. Edward couldn’t quite reconcile the jovial image he had of her father with the exacting one she spoke of.

  Then again, he had noticed several days ago the tension between father and daughter.

  “I don’t know how to tell him about this,” she mumbled into his shirt. “He’ll be so upset.”

  He ached for her. How to tell her that even if she never lived up to other people’s expectations—her father’s expectations—that God the Father will always love her?

  “And it’s even worse than this.” She pulled away, her expression so hopeless that he wanted to kiss it away.

  “How?”

  “I know who stole my data.” She tapped at her keyboard and a face popped up on the monitor. “Steve Schmidt. He was a research assistant I hired two years ago. He came with a great résumé, and he was competent but strangely lazy. He only worked here a week.”

  “A week? Did he leave?”

  “No, I fired him. He snuck his girlfriend into the lab one night. We only had one security guard on duty back then, and Martin caught them when he was making his hourly rounds. I fired Steve the next day, but according to the time stamp Jane found on my computer, my research was stolen that night. By Steve.”

  “Or his ‘girlfriend.’ Rachel, that isn’t your fault.”

  “But it is.” She gripped his hands. “Don’t you see? Dad has always prided himself on being a good judge of character and hiring loyal staff workers. But I…” She glanced at Steve’s picture again. “I messed up when I hired Steve. I jeopardized my own research.”

  “You yourself said he was competent.”

  “But Dad will say I should have suspected something was wrong when I interviewed him.” She rubbed her forehead. “Dad always had great instincts when he interviewed prospective employees.”

  “He didn’t interview Steve?”

  “No, I insisted on doing it myself. I wanted to prove to him that I could.”

  Edward could clearly see she had wanted to please her father.

  Her mouth trembled. “He was already upset when I fired Steve after only a week. But this… Oh, Edward, I’m so afraid to tell him,” she whispered.

  Their eyes met then, and he stopped breathing. The expression in her hazel eyes, normally so confident and filled with intelligence, touched him like a featherlight caress to his jaw. The urge to reach out to her and kiss away all her problems rose up in him again, stronger than it had been before. He wanted to hold her, shield her. He wanted her to be his.

  But no, she wasn’t his. He shouldn’t be thinking about that.

  He dropped his gaze to their clasped hands and rubbed his thumb against her knuckles. “Let me come with you when you talk to your father.”

  She paused, then slowly straightened in her chair, looked him in the eye with resolution. “No. I have to do it myself.” Her voice shook slightly, but she swallowed hard. “Let’s go.”

  They were silent on the drive home. Edward ignored two calls from Jason to his cell phone.

  This brief glimpse into her feelings about her father had been painful for her but enlightening to him. It had shown him a reason for her work priorities that had never occurred to him before.

  It had shown him that she might be different from his father, who had missed every major event in Edward’s life because Papa had been more interested in his work, in making money, in gaining promotions and working on new projects at his job. Papa had missed Edward’s high school and college graduations. He had missed three out of every four of Edward’s birthdays. And he had missed the one thing Edward had been most proud of, the grand opening of his greenhouse business, without even a call to explain why he hadn’t shown up.

  But Edward was starting to wonder if maybe Rachel’s focus on her work wasn’t motivated by the same things as his father’s focus on his work.

  Had Edward misjudged her?

  SIX

  “I tried Steve Schmidt’s old contact information, but he’s moved. So I asked Jane to try to find him,” Rachel told Naomi near the end of the following workday as the two of them headed toward her sister’s office. Rachel glanced at her watch—Edward was coming to pick her up soon, so she needed to collect her things from her office. The locked doors to her lab were at the end of the corridor where Naomi’s office was, so they had met as Naomi had finished her last massage client.

  “Do you think she can?” They turned the corner and Naomi dug her office keys out of her pocket.

  They both stopped.

  A spa patron stood a few yards down the hallway from Naomi’s office door, in front of the double doors guarding the lab area. That in itself was unusual—spa patrons occasionally got lost in the hallways while trying to find the lounge areas, but this corridor, unlike the other spa corridors, was stark and brightly lit, unadorned by the silks, hall tables and flowers that lined the other public areas of the spa. It made it very obvious this was not the way to a lounge room or a treatment room.

  What was more, this man hunched over the card-key pad on the wall to the right of the doors, his fingers scrabbling with the lock.

  Trying to get into her lab.

  Rachel wanted to demand what he was doing, but Naomi must have known her thoughts because she laid a hand on her arm and instead addressed the man. “Sir, can we help you?”

  He flinched and straightened up, his blue eyes fastening on them for a long heartbeat.

  Then he bolted.

  He shot between the two of them, shoving Rachel hard against the wall. Naomi, stronger than her sister because of years of massage-therapy work, wasn’t so easily tossed aside and tried to grab him, but he slithered away.

  “Stop!”<
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  Naomi and Rachel took off after him.

  However, he didn’t know the spa well, because he turned down the wrong hallway toward the lounge areas. He approached the door to the Tamarind lounge just as it opened. A client, Gloria Reynolds, emerged directly in the man’s path.

  Rachel shouted, “Stop him!” but Naomi groaned, “Oh, no.”

  Rachel discovered the reason for her dismay as the man realized he’d reached a dead end, with only the women’s restroom doors ahead of him. He turned and wildly grabbed at Gloria, who shrieked.

  “Let her go,” Naomi said as they stopped a few feet away.

  Rachel stared into Gloria’s horrified eyes for a brief moment before the man shoved the woman into the two sisters.

  Footsteps raced past them as the man escaped.

  “I should have called Martin when we first saw him,” Naomi said as they got to their feet.

  Rachel felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t thought to do so. She never managed to think as pragmatically as her sisters, especially when it really counted. “I’ll call him now.” She pulled out her cell phone from her pocket and dialed the security guards’ desk, although it was probably already too late.

  Naomi headed down the hallway after the man.

  “Hey!”

  That was Edward’s voice, filtering down the hallway from the spa entrance. For a moment her heart hitched and she wanted to shout to tell him to stay away in case the man hurt him. But then she realized he might be able to hinder him until the security guards got there.

  “Hello? Hello?” said a voice over her cell phone.

  “Martin, come quick! There’s a man headed toward the entrance foyer.”

  Rachel couldn’t hear the security guard very well because Gloria Reynolds had yet to rise from the ground and was screeching, “What was that? Who let that man in here?”

  The door to the Tamarind lounge now opened. “What’s going on?” asked several clients as they peered down at Gloria, still hysterical on the ground.

  Rachel was surprised Naomi hadn’t thought to mollify Ms. Reynolds before chasing after the man—after all, as acting manager, she usually put the clientele before everything else.

  Well, then, she’d do the honors. She wasn’t as tactful as Naomi, but she could at least be polite. “Are you okay, Ms. Reynolds? Are you hurt?”

  “I ache all over,” she snapped.

  “Can you stand, or would you like to just sit there for a while?” Oh, that didn’t come out right.

  “I demand to know what’s going on,” Gloria said, thrusting out a hand so Rachel could help her to her feet.

  “Well, that man—” No, she needed to be a bit more tactful, especially in front of the other Tamarind members. “We’ll find out soon, Ms. Reynolds. We’re very sorry for the, uh…inconvenience.” My goodness, she couldn’t do Naomi’s job unless it didn’t involve talking. She hoped she wasn’t upsetting Ms. Reynolds even more.

  Gloria sniffed and pushed at her highlighted locks. Luckily she didn’t realize how wild they looked, although one of the other women snickered softly.

  “Dr. Grant!” Several massage therapists, aestheticians and clients raced around the corner, coming from the hallways with the treatment rooms. “We heard someone scream.”

  “Everything’s all right now,” Rachel said. “Haley, could you please take care of Ms. Reynolds? I need to find out what happened.” And she left them to race to the front foyer.

  No sign of the strange man, but Naomi stood at the receptionists’ desk, talking urgently on the phone. And Edward stood in the middle of the room, his hands held awkwardly at his sides.

  “Edward! Are you all right?”

  He smiled at her. “I’m fine, but don’t touch me. I scratched the man and have his DNA under my nails. Naomi’s calling Detective Carter right now.”

  That was smart of Edward, but the problem was that the Sonoma police department was very small and outsourced their DNA testing. Rachel had paid for DNA testing herself for the Malaysian basil plant and used the same lab they did, and it took over a month to get the results.

  Well, maybe the police could put a rush on it.

  “Rachel, what did you do with Ms. Reynolds?” Naomi’s tone implied Rachel had done something wrong, and she had a sinking feeling in her stomach.

  “I left her with Haley. I’m sorry, was that wrong?”

  Naomi sighed. “I should have told you to stay with her and coddle her a bit, maybe stick her in one of the Saffron lounges with some wine.”

  Oh, that made sense, to put her in one of the elite lounges to mollify her. Rachel bit her lip. She should have thought of that herself. The spa prided itself on exemplary customer service and luxuriant pampering, and leaving a distraught client with a massage therapist hadn’t been the most gracious thing to do.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Naomi left just as the two security guards entered through the front doors. “Sorry, he got away.”

  “But we got the license-plate number and make and model of the car,” said Martin. “Blue Ford Taurus.”

  Edward had gone rigid, and he gave Rachel a long, hard look. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. They thought a blue car had followed them to the spa the other day.

  Detective Carter arrived within a few minutes. They seemed to be calling him so often lately, he probably didn’t roam beyond a ten-mile radius of the spa.

  After questioning Naomi and Rachel, he dispatched an officer to process the DNA under Edward’s fingernails, but he affirmed what Rachel had already suspected. The Sonoma police department outsourced their DNA testing and wouldn’t have the results for a month or more.

  Detective Carter then questioned everyone else, starting with the security guards, and finally spoke with Gloria Reynolds, whose pinched mouth conveyed her distaste at everything that had happened.

  As Naomi and Rachel stood several yards away and watched Gloria and Detective Carter, Naomi suddenly started. “Rach,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “I just remembered something from all that stuff that happened last year.”

  That “stuff” being two murders in the spa, Naomi being framed for them and Naomi’s boyfriend Devon’s life in danger. “I would think you don’t like remembering all that.”

  “No, this is important. Do you remember that Devon and I went to talk to Gloria Reynolds because one of the murder victims had argued with her? At the end of our interview with Gloria, she mentioned something vague about dinner with our family, but she wanted to talk to you.”

  “Me? I barely know her.”

  “She said she wanted to talk to you about your research. Have you talked with her about it?”

  Rachel searched her memory. “Most of my conversations with her are just polite chitchat.”

  “Rach, she specifically mentioned some diamond-dust cleanser. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Rachel’s stomach clenched and held, making it hard for her to take a breath for a moment. “That’s right, now I remember you mentioned that to me last year. I wondered how she knew about it, but I got so distracted, I never thought much about it beyond that.”

  “You didn’t tell her about it?”

  “No. I never speak about my research. And all my research assistants sign a confidentiality agreement.”

  The main focus of Rachel’s stolen research notes had been about the diamond-dust cleanser. How had Gloria known about it?

  Was Gloria Reynolds behind everything that had happened?

  Later that day, Evita’s grim face when she met Rachel at the garage door made her insides rumble darkly. “Miss Rachel, your father wanted to talk to you as soon as you got home from work.”

  Naomi moved in front of Rachel as if to protect her. “Why?”

  “Now, Naomi, don’t shoot the messenger.” Aunt Becca’s dark eyes reproached her.

  Naomi glanced at her aunt, then gave the housekeeper a rueful half smile. “Sorry, Evita. But he
already hollered the house down last night with Rachel.”

  “I appreciate it, but I’m not your lion cub, Naomi.” Rachel sighed, although her heart fluttered.

  Naomi muttered something that sounded like, “It’s not fair…” but Rachel didn’t quite understand what she meant by that.

  “Evita, Edward’s parking his truck right now, but I invited him in for some coffee,” Aunt Becca said.

  Evita nodded. “I thought you might. I made coffee cake, too.” She gave Rachel a soft look. “Come get a piece, Miss Rachel, when you’re done talking to your father.”

  “Where is he? His office?”

  “The garden walk.”

  Her shoulders relaxed slightly as she headed outside. He might be in a better mood among Mom’s roses.

  Mom had always understood Rachel better than her father did. Rachel missed her still, even fifteen years after cancer had taken her to Jesus.

  Last night had been horrible. After telling Dad what she’d learned about Steve Schmidt hacking into her computer, he had accused her of poor judgment, of failing him and the spa. Again. But he couldn’t blame her more than she had already blamed herself. She’d been too dejected to want to defend herself, not that she had much to say, so she let him rant on. Their conversation had been cut short by Monica’s coming in to insist Dad hadn’t been doing well all day and needed to rest. Rachel knew Monica interrupted them in order to save her older sister from more of their father’s anger.

  The chill of the late-fall breeze stung her cheeks but carried the faint scent of the dying roses, a melancholic wave washing over her. Before Mom died, Rachel spent a lot of time out here with her, and often Dad had joined them. She and her father had been closer then.

  He hadn’t noticed her yet, wheeling his chair down the paved garden walk, his mouth pulled down. She swallowed. What a contrast, those carefree days and these tense ones. When had their relationship changed to this? “Dad.”

  He looked up and saw her. The lines around his mouth seemed to deepen.

  She steeled herself. “You wanted to talk to me?”