“It doesn’t help my outrage if you’re going to be reasonable. But you are owned by the ‘man.’”
He was in big trouble. With all the shit going down, all he could think about was kissing her smug little smile until she melted. The idea of never kissing Darcy again was more of a loss than learning that his college friend was a criminal, possibly a terrorist. And what did that say about him?
She pulled over in an empty parking spot and reached for her phone. “I need to read this.”
With her attention focused on the phone, he could appreciate all the details that made Darcy Wilson irresistible: the freckles on her nose, the mole next to her mouth that he hadn’t spent any time worshiping, and the red highlights in her perfectly arched eyebrows.
“Did you know that Tex had a heart condition?”
“He was born with some sort of birth defect. He had several surgeries when he was a kid. The only reason he told Charlie and me was that his parents got him his first video game after his second surgery.”
“He died of heart failure, not the gunshot wound. He had cocaine in his system. The ME thinks that his level of stimulants caused his cardiac failure. Is there any chance Tex was involved with Charlie?”
“No way. It’s not totally out of the realm that Charlie got caught up in drugs. Charlie was on a full ride at Stanford. His dad split when he was a baby, leaving him with his drug addict mom. Life wasn’t easy for him, surrounded by all the rich kids at Stanford. Tex had overprotective parents whom he was very close to as an only child. And Tex was a straight arrow. I never saw him drink a beer. And if he were working with Charlie, why was he investigating his death?”
She nodded as she swung back into traffic. “We’re almost there. We need to discuss how to run the interview with Wainwright. The purpose is to find out anything we can about Tex or Charlie, anything about their recent work, without alerting him that I’m CIA or about the attack on the embassies.”
“I told him that I was in town for a conference and was trying to catch up with old Stanford friends.”
“Since he doesn’t know of our stop in Santa Barbara, you’ll have to act shocked if he somehow has learned of Tex’s death. The agency is trying to suppress the media coverage of the murder. They don’t want any publicity around the game.”
“I don’t plan to share the information about Charlie’s resurrection either. This is strictly reconnaissance under the guise of a visit with a beloved mentor. Wainwright knew the three of us. And his perspective and memories will be different than mine. He also is the only other person who understood how we developed the game. Not that he was privy to the actual code.”
“Let’s introduce me as a colleague from Seattle. We are both attending the same conference.”
“Sure, and when Wainwright asks you about the conference?” Reeves knew that a smart cookie CIA officer already knew what the best cover was. He enjoyed waiting her out.
“Good point. I’ll have to be your girlfriend who came to the conference for a break.” Her lips were pressed together.
“You think that’s the best cover? I’m not sure Wainwright would believe we’re together. You’re going to have to act nice and friendly.”
“Don’t be an ass. And don’t get carried away with the affection. Remember I’m carrying.”
She now had the Sig that the guard had brought to the front door last night when she and Reeves were in the pool.
“No, honeybunch. I would never put you in an uncomfortable situation with unwanted love and affection. I know how miserable it would make you.”
She was white-knuckling the steering wheel again. She must care, or she wouldn’t react. Sure, and giraffes flew.
Chapter Ten
Reeves gently placed his hand on Darcy’s back to escort her into Professor Wainwright’s office. She gritted her teeth, knowing how much Reeves would enjoy this charade. The room was large with a bank of wide windows that provided an impressive view of the campus. A computer was placed center on a small desk that faced the window. Shelves, heavy with books, lined two walls; a work table was in the middle of the room. Books, stacks of papers, old coffee cups, and foam containers were scattered on both the wood table and the scarred desk, giving the room a musty stench. Several pairs of reading glasses lay in the middle of the chaos.
Wainwright pushed away from his desk and moved toward them, his hands open in welcome. For all the empty food containers, the professor was a lean, wiry man in his mid-sixties. His glasses were shoved on the top of his disheveled, salt-and-pepper hair; his rumpled Oxford shirt was partially tucked into his dress pants. His receding hairline emphasized his prominent forehead and beak nose. He barely resembled his distinguished faculty picture on the Stanford website, more like a harried appliance salesman.
“Reeves, you haven’t changed a bit.”
Darcy felt the rumble of Reeve’s laughter shooting sparks of awareness down her spine.
“My hair’s a bit shorter.” Reeves shook hands with Wainwright, who eyed Darcy while grinning at Reeves. “Darcy, meet Professor Wainwright. He deserves credit for putting up with Tex, Charlie, and me when no other faculty would.”
“A great exaggeration. I was lucky to have the three brightest stars, all interested in computational theory.”
Something didn’t ring true about his false modesty. He was at the top of the food chain at a prestigious university.
“Professor Wainwright, this is the love of my life—my girlfriend, Darcy Wilson.” Reeves smiled down at her, his eyes shining with pride as if he meant his words.
She was going to pound him for making her insides get all mushy just from his warm gaze. She offered her hand to the professor. Handshakes were a good way to gauge the emotional state of an adversary.
His thin hands were clammy, and he barely grasped her hand. Either he was anxious around women or socially awkward. There was no reason for him to be nervous. She noted no wedding ring and no family pictures anywhere in his office.
“Come sit down.” He pointed to the table in the center of the room. “I want to hear what you’ve been working on, Reeves. I always thought you would stay in academics. You were the best of the group at translating complex theory to the undergrad students.”
“Honey, why don’t you sit here?” Reeves held the chair that gave her a view of the door and the room, directly across from Wainwright. A point for Reeves for situational awareness.
“As you must know, Darcy, Reeves had a following of the female students. He’s quite the charmer with the women.”
Reeves’s cheeks flushed. Interesting. She didn’t know anything about his dating life. He wasn’t involved now because he wasn’t the sort of man to cheat. And she realized at the moment how much she trusted him.
“I’m sorry, Darcy. I shouldn’t bring up Reeves’s past.” His smile didn’t meet his eyes. Was he testing their relationship, or was he as awkward as Reeves described? “I’m awful at chit-chat. I’m much better at discussing my work than … ”
She squeezed Reeves’s hand, which rested on the table. “I’m grateful that Reeves was unattached when I met him.”
She waited to see the glint of amusement in Reeves’s dark eyes. His eyes were shuttered. And she was surprised by her feeling of loss. She had gotten used to his openness. When he shut her out, it hurt.
He took her hand and placed it on his muscular thigh, then covered it with his.
“Today calls for a celebration. Not often I have one of my best students come to visit. I want to hear all the news about you and Tex.” Wainwright walked to the tall file cabinet, pulled out a drawer, and held up a bottle of Macallan scotch. He shoved aside a stack of papers on the top of the cabinet to find a place for the bottle before producing three glasses.
“Thank you, Professor Wainwright, but I must decline. I’m allergic to malt liquor.” Darcy wasn’t allergic to scotch and would have enjoyed the expensive blend. But she never drank on the job.
“What a shame. I’ve never he
ard of such an allergy.”
“It’s true. Darcy with hives is not a pretty sight. Isn’t that right, honey?”
She squeezed his thigh hard. Reeves stared at her hand before his lips lifted in a small smile.
Wainwright handed Reeves a very generous pour before he sat across from Darcy. His drink was less than half of Reeves’s.
“Reeves described how wonderful you were to him and his friends. Must have been a challenge dealing with these super-smart, arrogant men.” She paused to look closely at his face for a reaction. “What a tragedy with Charlie’s accident to lose one of your brilliant students. It must have been such a shock and a loss for you. Wasn’t he your top student in computational theory? I know Reeves and Tex were more into Lambda.”
“I always thought Charlie would be my protégé.”
“I’m surprised then that you didn’t stay in touch?” Reeves pitched his voice enough not to make it sound like a direct question.
Darcy repressed any smile from appearing. She and Reeves were a good team.
“We did for a while, but then he dropped off the radar. Just disappeared. I assume that was when he started using drugs.”
“Reeves never believed that Charlie would use drugs. Isn’t that so, honey? You thought the press just wanted a sensational story. A millionaire cocaine addict to pander to the theme of the excesses of the young and wealthy techies in Silicon Valley.”
“I can’t believe Charlie would use … especially cocaine. Our brains are already spinning faster than everyone else. You believed the story? Or did you hear something else?”
“Why all these questions now about Charlie? He’s been gone almost ten years.”
“I’m sorry, Professor Wainwright. It’s my fault, but I know how much Reeves has grieved Charlie’s death. I guess I was hoping he could find closure by coming back here.”
“Of course. Let’s talk about happier things. When are you getting married? And do you plan to have a family?”
Either the man was very skilled or completely socially inept. Who asked about children after just meeting a woman?
“Darcy wants an enormous wedding. She has a large extended family, so it’s going to be big and expensive.” How did he know about her family and what kind of wedding she always imagined?
“Now, Reeves, don’t start on the budget again. For all his money, he can be a miser. Do you have children? Is that why you’re interested in families?”
“No, I never married. Seemed I was destined to guide the next generation of mathematicians.”
Darcy couldn’t get a clear read on this man who Reeves esteemed. Reeves was very intuitive for a man. But he had been an immature and impressionable student when he formed his opinion of his mentor.
“Darcy and I want a large family. She wants to have a brood of little Reeveses, right, babe? She is tired of selling cosmetics at Nordstrom. It’s where I met her. I was shopping for my mom and sisters.”
Darcy didn’t know whether to laugh or throat punch him. She shouldn’t be entertained by his ability to lie with such facility. He’d be great in the CIA. And he loved teasing her, knowing exactly how to poke fun at her. He had only known her little more than twenty-four hours, but he was already more adept than her brothers at getting under her skin. And adept at unfreezing her libido, which had been in deep storage until meeting him.
“You must still be in touch with Tex since you have to communicate about your shared ownership of the game.” The professor looked over his glass at Reeves.
“Now that it’s managed by Rocket Games, Tex and I don’t have any reason to be in touch. And I haven’t heard anything from him in years. How about you? Any contact?”
“Nothing. I don’t even know who he’s working for or what he’s working on.”
Darcy pasted an interested look on her face as the men discussed their different colleague’s work. At least Reeves hadn’t given her a role that demanded that she had to pretend to understand any of the mathematical theories the men debated.
Watching Reeves sit forward, his face lit with enthusiasm by talking about programming and something about Turing complete, she understood his bond with Wainwright.
After fifteen minutes of the men’s shop talk, Darcy nudged Reeves with her knee. She was antsy to check in with her CIA support team and Nick Jenkins.
She felt unsure about the professor. He knew more about Charlie than he was willing to share. He was quite adept at changing the subject. But he gave them nothing to help with the investigation.
After fake promises to not let as much time lapse before the next meeting, she and Reeves went outside where she could take a deep breath. The air in the office had been stifling, or maybe it was the mathematics snooze fest, or maybe it was the fact that she kept waiting for cockroaches to crawl out of one of the containers.
Reeves leaned on her as they walked side by side down the sidewalk.
“Knock it off. No need to keep playing the devoted boyfriend. You’re lucky I don’t kick your butt for saying that BS about wanting little Reeveses.”
Reeves weaved against her, almost knocking her off her feet.
She grabbed his arm to support him. His face was pale, and his pupils dilated.
“The scotch just hit me.” His words were garbled.
His eyes rolled backward before he passed out and fell against her. She struggled but couldn’t hold him upright. She lowered him onto the sidewalk and removed his shoulder bag for comfort, and then his entire body twitched in uncoordinated spasms. His eyes were open but unaware. Frothy white foam formed around his mouth. My God, he was having a seizure.
“Help me. Call 911!” Darcy shouted out to a young woman with a backpack texting. The student stopped walking and immediately dialed her phone.
Darcy checked his pulse. It was racing. She didn’t know if Reeves had a seizure disorder or he had been poisoned. Either way, he needed immediate medical attention. Now. She knelt next to him and lifted his head onto her lap to prevent him from injuring himself on the cement. She knew enough not to put anything in his mouth or try to restrain him, but that was it for the emergency care. “Stay with me, Reeves. I’m going to get you to the hospital.”
Darcy sorted through the possible ways Reeves could have ingested poison. He hadn’t been in contact with anyone except the chief of police and the professor to have absorbed the poison through his skin. And they both ate the same breakfast on the flight. It had to be in the scotch. That was the only difference in their experiences and intake.
“The ambulance is less than five minutes away.” The student stood over them. “What can I do to help?”
Reeves’s muscles suddenly tightened, throwing his head hard against her lap. His breathing changed to rapid and shallow, his eyes vacant. Terror filled her lungs, making it hard to take in air as she helplessly watched him suffer through another seizure. There was nothing she could do to stop the seizures. She hated feeling that way. She texted Nick Jenkins to ask about Reeves’s medical conditions. With their deep investigation into him, she never saw any medical problems.
Her entire being tightened, adrenaline shooting through her with a need to act. He would not die on her watch. Time slowed as she waited in agony for the seizure to stop, knowing not to interfere unless he stopped breathing.
“University Hospital is less than a mile away. They’ll be here soon.” The concerned student, like Darcy, was powerless to intervene.
She silently prayed when she heard the sirens. Please, God, let him live. She couldn’t lose him when she just discovered how wonderful he was.
Two medics rushed toward her, pushing a gurney. The taller one asked questions as they lifted an unconscious Reeves onto the stretcher. Darcy’s ignorance of Reeves’s medical history was abominable. She passed Jenkins’s contact info. They’d be able to sort it out.
Darcy’s knees buckled when she stood. Now that the seizure had stopped, he lay still on the gurney, which was as frightening as the spasms. The energetic man l
ifeless was more terrifying than any firefight in Afghanistan. His calm state might be a good sign that the seizures had stopped. But if he had been poisoned, he could be going into heart failure as Tex had.
Both medics worked in harmony in the small space. The shorter attendant put an oxygen mask on Reeves as the taller man hooked him up to monitors and attached a blood pressure cuff.
“Is he going into heart failure?”
The taller one jerked his head up from shining a light into Reeves’s pupils. “He’s stable.”
“Where are you taking him? I want to follow you to the hospital.”
“To University Hospital.”
She flashed her badge. “There is a chance that he has been poisoned. You need to run blood tests immediately. And keep your guard up.”
And with a nod from the man who seemed to be in charge, he closed the doors.
Darcy’s heart constricted in fear and pain from the separation from Reeves.
She ran the fifty yards to the SUV. Jumping into the vehicle, she threw the car into reverse. Never losing sight of the ambulance, she sped down the campus street. She reached for her phone in her purse and hit speed dial for her team.
“Hewitt is down. He had a seizure after our meeting with Wainwright. Not sure if it is poison or if he has a seizure disorder. I’m headed to the hospital. Notify the director and Nick Jenkins. Tell Jenkins to meet me at the Stanford Hospital and to get someone to Wainwright’s office. I’m following the ambulance now.”
Had Wainwright poisoned Reeves? She had watched the professor pour the scotch from the container into the glasses. He didn’t have an opportunity to poison Reeves’s drink. The only conclusion was that both men had been poisoned. She had no clear motive for an attack on the professor except from his link to Reeves and the other men.
She sped up as she raced through the intersection to avoid being stuck at a red light. She didn’t see the SUV coming at her until it was too late. He slammed into her, hitting her with such velocity that her car spun in the opposite direction as her head ricocheted off the airbag and then slammed into the headrest from the impact.
Mission: Impossible to Deny (The Impossible Mission Romantic Suspense Series Book 7) Page 8