“Why do you want to do that?” Mary demanded. “Isn’t the work here enough for you?”
“Oh, yes, of course it is. But, well...I’ve always heard of Corcoris and what a wonderful company it is, and I’ve just been so curious about how it works to make and package the medicines. I’d just like to see it sometime.”
“Well...tell you what...” It wasn’t an absolute no, and that almost made Beth smile for real. “I won’t be able to get you any overtime pay if you don’t finish your regular assignment today—and I have you scheduled to do some deep cleaning in the cafeteria—but I got a call earlier and the cleaning staff in the manufacturing building is low on sanitizing solution. You can take a few containers over there and get a look at the place—as long as you hurry back. Okay?”
“Oh, yes,” Beth said. “Thank you.”
Of course, she knew that popping over there with heavy containers of liquids wouldn’t allow her to delve into what she really wanted—like a chance to collect samples of CorcoTrim from where the diet pills were manufactured and packaged or even the unlikely scenario of finding one of the handwritten log books and sneaking it out—but at least she would be able to see the place.
And she’d be able to tell Daniel later that she’d succeeded in getting in, even if she didn’t actually meet the challenge she had told him about.
Later, when they were pretending to be involved in a secret relationship.
* * *
At first when he started to work in the lab that day, Daniel could think of little besides Beth.
He was worried about her attempting to find a way into the other building and getting into trouble. It would be a lot better for him to go there first and report to her any further ideas he got about obtaining evidence there, though he didn’t think he’d be particularly successful. He really believed that what he had already started here, in this building, was the way to go.
But his thoughts focused even more on how to engage in Beth’s latest approach to their joining forces for the same goal.
Donning his white jacket like the other half-dozen geeks present in the lab, he’d exchanged hellos with them while wondering what they would think about one of their members hobnobbing with a member of the cleaning staff.
If they knew what Beth was really like, outside her assumed nonentity personality, all the guys would be envious—and that was about half of the staff there.
But he soon gave himself a mental butt-kick. In addition to figuring out how to check out the manufacturing facility just to tell Beth he’d succeeded, he had work to do that day—and that work included not only the lab assignment handed to him here but also the task of figuring out what he could do next to further his real purpose at the company.
As a lab rat, he was scheduled to review some reports that morning—not do any new quality-control testing or analysis of ingredients or formulations. In other words, nothing that could lead to concrete evidence.
At least his month of working here and getting to know people, gaining a little bit of trust, was starting to pay off. Instead of being assigned to work with only the older, tried-and-true Corcoris products, he had begun to receive some reports on newer pharmaceuticals to double-check their contents along with other technicians.
At the moment, Daniel sat at the cubicle designated as his in one of the lab areas on the second floor. Since no password was necessary to access the reports he’d been assigned, the results must be perfect, in favor of Corcoris.
Unlike what he’d hoped to see after using Georgine’s password—which he didn’t want to do here and now, surrounded by other lab geeks.
Today the guy who’d been here the longest, Manny Busbey, was holding court with two of the female lab rats at his cubicle just a couple away from Daniel’s. They were loudly discussing how proud they all were over the latest reports about to be sent to the FDA.
The ones supposedly confirming the purity of CorcoTrim.
Manny was theoretically a level above Daniel only because of his seniority here, but he liked to tell everyone around him what to do.
Daniel had an idea. He pasted a geeky smile on his face, rose and joined his three ostensible coworkers. “I couldn’t help overhearing,” he said, looking at Manny.
The guy was shorter than the women, dark haired, with a swarthy complexion and an ego bigger than the huge manufacturing building across the property. He just gave Daniel a condescending stare.
“I’m just so glad to hear about the good results,” Daniel continued. “But for me to be able to completely get what I’m reading, I need to understand the whole process. Which I kind of do, but do you know if it’s okay for me just to peek in at the manufacturing building again?” When none of the others responded immediately, he shrugged and grinned even more. “Okay, I admit it. I just love to stand right there on the observation deck and watch and listen from a distance to all those machines chugging along making, then packaging, those pills.”
“We’re not really encouraged to do that,” said one of the women, whose name was Ilana. She was tall enough that her lab jacket reached just to her waist, and her concerned smile revealed uneven teeth. “At least not by ourselves. You haven’t been here long enough to know, but we’re invited to go there every few months as a group to check it out. Otherwise, we’re supposed to stay away.”
“So you’ve gone there before on your own anyway?” Manny glared at him as if he had committed some major crime.
“Well, yeah. Maybe it’s not the best thing, but...well, I’ve got a few minutes right now to do it again. Anyone care to join me?”
Manny just snorted and shook his head. The women, too, just stood there. Would Manny complain? Report him?
Heck, he had to sign in there anyway, so it wouldn’t be a big secret that he’d gone inside. He’d only mentioned it since his absence, even though he’d keep it brief, would probably be noted. The other times had been just as he had been leaving the campus to return to his apartment.
Now, though, it was late morning. He left the lab, signed out downstairs, and crossed the area between the two buildings that was landscaped with well-tended grass and rows of hedges and palm trees.
He could hear the equipment even before he opened the door. There was an entry area staffed by a woman who wore all white, including a sanitary cap on her head.
“Can I help you?” she asked. She was middle-aged, and she stared at him harshly as if he was an intruder. Which, of course, he was.
Daniel explained that he was a Corcoris lab employee and only wanted to take a peek at the facility.
Too bad he couldn’t tell her that what he really wanted was to be given free rein to inspect every inch of the place, including the areas containing all the pharmaceuticals’ ingredients. Not to mention the log books for each brand, the assembly lines where each type of medication was mass-produced and packaged, everything.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
“Okay if I go to the viewing area?” Daniel asked the greeter. That was a raised walkway where visitors could look down on what was happening below. Some of the functioning areas were glassed in for sanitation and it wasn’t possible to see much of what happened inside them, but the observation area at least gave a global view of what was going on.
“All right,” the woman said. “Go ahead.” But before he reached the door that led from the reception area to the hallway and stairs to the observation area, it opened.
Beth came through it. She met his eyes for only a second before lowering her gaze.
“I’ve dropped the sanitizers off with the plant cleaning manager,” she said softly to the lady behind the desk.
“Good. Thanks for bringing them over.”
Her sideways glance at Daniel as he moved forward was triumphant.
They would have lots to talk about later.
Especially if the clever woman, who’d found an acceptable way of visiting here, had also figured out a way to check out the plant even more.
* * *
Despite having gotten into the other building and walked around on the main level, Beth recognized that she had accomplished little that day.
She’d found no way to gather samples. She hadn’t entered the areas where pharmaceuticals were manufactured and packaged. She hadn’t even figured out how to reprise her entry into the building.
The cleaning manager wasn’t going to run out of sanitizing solution often—if ever again.
Beth thought about her limited success all day, and especially now as she finished her last cleaning assignment before her designated time to leave—a hallway on the first floor outside the elevators and the unimportant administrative offices located on that level.
People walked by, usually in pairs or groups. They all ignored her, which was fine with her.
She was dressed like a janitress. She smelled sweet and tangy, like the cleaning brews she utilized.
She supposed she should feel grateful that no one seemed to recognize her at work—or at least no one had confronted her. Nor had anyone made catty remarks about the time she’d spent talking to that nerdy tech guy in the parking lot.
But she wished she had done more that day than simply enter the manufacturing plant.
Although...maybe it had been enough. She’d seen what it was about and realized how unlikely it was that she, at least, would be able to study it enough and grab stuff up that could be used as evidence.
For now, she pushed her filled cart around and cleaned the areas designated by her boss, Mary—including the cafeteria, as she’d been told, and also some storage areas.
That meant she didn’t run into Daniel again, which might be a good thing.
Their ruse would involve their pretending to be seeing each other outside work. While here, they would need to act cordial but remote, as if they’d seen one another before but that was all.
Would anyone buy that? Probably at least those people with no agenda regarding them.
But how about the person who had followed her, or whoever had told him to do it?
And Beth was convinced that, whoever it was, Preston Corcoris had to be involved.
As she finished dusting the top of a door frame and dismounted from the small footstool that she carried around on the cart, she saw Daniel approach from the main entry door.
Her heart stopped, then started again at an elevated pace.
Dumb reaction.
As he reached her, she heard him mutter, “Six o’clock.” He didn’t slow down or stop but continued to a door to a stairway.
Six o’clock? That was half an hour from now.
She had to interpret what he’d meant. Well, after their apparent agreement that morning, she would assume he wanted to meet her at her car at that time so they could continue their pretense of being a couple hiding their relationship.
That would also be a good time to briefly recap what they had learned that day.
Should she exaggerate her success in getting into the manufacturing facility to show that she, at least, had met the challenge she had given them?
Heck, he’d met it, too. She had even seen him there.
Had he, unlike her, learned anything helpful?
Their efforts here weren’t really a contest. If either of them succeeded in finding the needed evidence, they both would succeed.
Then, eventually, she would believe that both her family and she would finally be safe.
Okay, Daniel, she thought. Tell me what you found.
She hoped it was exactly what they both had been looking for.
Chapter 15
It was no accident that at six o’clock Daniel followed Beth out the employees’ exit with a few other people between them. He had planned it that way, finding a place to hang out, ostensibly talking on his cell phone, pushing his geeky glasses up to the bridge of his nose, as he waited for her to leave.
He wouldn’t tell her why, since she’d seemed so intent on taking care of herself, even when she was clearly rattled by what was going on around her. And even though, like it or not, she knew why he felt compelled to ensure her safety.
But that was before. He’d been concerned about her when he saw her gloat inside the production building, and he remained concerned for her now.
The SUV that had followed her yesterday late in the day remained squarely on his mind as they prepared to leave the quasi safety of the Corcoris campus.
At least with the new game they were beginning to play about being a secret couple, presumably no one who paid any attention to them would see anything off about his nearness to her, now or any other time.
Would that change the approach of anyone trying to harm her—or him, for that matter? Unlikely, but Daniel did like that Beth was now including him in her planning.
And her challenges.
The crowd surged pretty much in the direction they were both heading: toward the company’s parking garage, at the edge of the property behind both buildings.
“Hi, Daniel.” The feminine voice beside him startled him. He turned to see one of the other lab rats who helped in random quality-control tests walking beside him.
“Hi, Samantha,” he returned, giving her a friendly grin. “Good day today?” Like, did any of your QC tests on some of the newer, less established and more lucrative drugs show any problems? If so, did those problems appear in any reports? But he couldn’t ask her that.
“Good enough,” the tall plain woman answered, but a troubled expression marred her pale face.
Before Beth’s arrival here, Daniel had tried to get to know Samantha and some other female lab rats like Ilana better, hoping that if he acted interested in them they would share secrets.
But whether it was warnings—explicit or tacit—that floated between the walls of the company headquarters or just his unsexy demeanor here, that angle hadn’t succeeded.
“How about you?” Samantha continued, giving him a smile.
Interesting. Maybe his earlier efforts were now paying off after all. If he hadn’t already had plans—like meeting up with Beth and ensuring her safety—he would have invited Samantha to join him for a drink.
Not now, though. Not while he was following Beth.
Even so, he drew a little closer, trying to make it appear as if the press of others heading toward the garage was crowding him. Maybe he could suggest some more businesslike reason to meet up with her.
He bent toward Samantha and said softly, “As you know, I’m fairly new here, and I have some questions. Do any of you ever get together to talk about inconsistencies in any tests?”
“Inconsistencies?” Her voice, though still low, squeaked. “I’ve never seen any. And, no, I’ve never heard anyone else talk about any, either.”
Which meant, Daniel surmised, that she’d seen something troubling, and so had others working in the labs, but they didn’t dare to discuss it. Interesting—but he doubted that following up with Samantha would yield anything.
Especially now, when he was Beth’s new guy.
Samantha probably had no idea about that, but she had started walking faster, evidently wanting to get away from him.
He didn’t step up his own pace, since he was walking about the same speed as Beth, who remained ahead of him among a bunch of other people.
She soon reached her car and headed toward the driver’s side. She rooted in her purse for her key, and he figured she took her time finding it since the time was almost exactly six o’clock and she would expect him to meet her there.
Which he did, maneuvering his way between her car and the one nearest it.
“Hello, Beth.” He stuck his dweebiest smile on his face in ca
se anyone was watching. “How was your day?” That was a nice, friendly question he could ask everyone he met, not just Samantha and Beth.
“Okay.” She looked down toward her car door in her shyness mode. “And yours?”
“Okay.” He spoke loudly enough so the people behind them could probably hear. He followed it up, though, by moving only his lips: See you at your place.
She blinked before looking shyly down again.
She got it.
* * *
Even knowing that Daniel had her back again, Beth drove carefully to her apartment, keeping watch behind her and even off to the sides.
Her apparently being followed last evening had freaked her out, and since the vehicle had been stolen, she didn’t even try to convince herself it was a coincidence. Sure, she had already been observing her surroundings, but now she was even more cautious.
She wanted to talk to Daniel again. Not that she had much to report about what she’d accomplished that day, but having someone to bounce thoughts and concerns off of—well, that was worth a lot.
She didn’t intend to cook, though. If he wanted to stay, she would order out. Pizza, probably.
She finally reached her building and pulled into her spot.
By the time she had turned off her engine and gotten out of the car, Daniel was at her side.
“Hi, Daniel,” she said in her janitress’s soft voice. “Nice to see you again.”
“Ditto, Beth.” He still wore his glasses and sent her a toothy smile.
Ah, yes, they were both still in their roles.
But after she had carefully turned off the alarm and used her key to get inside the building’s door, he didn’t wait till they were upstairs to plant that sexy body of his right in front of her. “Hello, Beth,” he said in what she now knew was his normal, enticing voice.
“Ditto, Daniel,” she said, much louder than she had spoken for hours.
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