Under Fire

by Scarlett Cole

  It was impossible to tell if anybody had tampered with it. Were the trays a little off-center? Maybe. Had the doors been opened? Impossible to say. But was it safe to assume this was all in her head? To do nothing?

  If someone had been messing with the sample, they’d either found what they were looking for or hadn’t finished searching. She pulled out an earlier sample drug that had been equally unsuccessful but had had nowhere near the same kind of side effects as the sample she had just finished testing. Carefully, with her back to the lab across the hall, she removed the labels from both of the samples, switched them, and replaced the samples on the shelf. It was her laboratory, so she could manage the samples any way she liked. Even in a way that might seem—or worse, be—paranoid. Paranoia had been one of her father’s earliest symptoms at the onset of the disease.

  Louisa closed the door and tried to ignore the way her heart raced. She reminded herself that fear was simply a signal for the body to engage, a command for adrenaline to flood the skeletal muscles in preparation for some kind of physical activity to avoid disaster, and that while it was one of the most adaptive emotions, she wasn’t in any real danger right now.

  She squared the microscope so its edges matched up with the corner of the desk and turned all the Erlenmeyer flasks so the measurements faced toward her. Then she hurried over to the autoclave and grabbed a clean beaker, just to make sure there were an equal number of beakers lined up with their spouts at forty-five degrees.

  Relieved that the lab was in order, Louisa inhaled a deep breath in preparation for the battle to get out of the building. She left through the cleanroom air blower, allowing the hard jets to blow any chemical residue from her before she stepped into the small hallway where she kept her coat and purse in the locker.

  Keeping close to the wall of the corridor, she hurried from the building. I’m fine, she reminded herself as she thought about the samples.

  If only she could command her trembling hands to agree.

  * * *

  Six took another tour around the ballroom, eyeing the exits and balcony while trying to avoid the not-so-discreet glances of some of the female attendees and a couple of the men. He tugged the cuff of his crisp white shirt beneath the sleeve of his black tux. Maybe it was years of conditioning, but his head was running multiple scenarios. There was a truckload of money in the room. Not that he’d been to too many fundraisers hosted by the ultra-rich, but this one seemed to be swimming in a sea of diamonds. Sure, it was all for a good cause, but he couldn’t help but imagine how much impact that money could have on the lives of injured veterans.

  “Sixton Rapp. I didn’t know you were back in town.” Ivan Popov held out his hand and Six took it, politely greeting his old school friend even though he couldn’t stand the guy.

  “Just two weeks. How’ve you been, Ivan?” he asked, trying to sound like he actually cared. After all, Ivan and his grandfather were the ones paying their bill for the night.

  “I’m good. Just bought a new place in La Jolla and picked up a McLaren 650S. Pharma always did pay better than fighting. Still serving our country, man?” This tool had the audacity to talk about serving America in the same breath as he gloated about his wealth. Rumors abounded about huge multipliers on the prices of the most basic drugs. The guy was gouging Americans, not helping them. Six should kick his ass just for that.

  “Out two weeks. I’m actually working.” Six pointed to the earpiece and mic.

  Ivan laughed. “No shit. This is a fundraiser for my project. You remember my grandfather owns VNP Laboratories? This is to fund our research.”

  That Vasilii Popov, a billionaire who could probably find between his sofa cushions the kind of change these rich jet-set rollers were handing over, was fundraising instead of giving only reinforced Six’s view that these things were a crock of shit. Rich people had no idea how privileged they were.

  “Small world,” Six said politely, but it was time to disengage before the thoughts pinging around inside his head came out through his mouth. “Look, I gotta get back to work.”

  “Yeah. Good seeing you, man,” Ivan said, shaking his hand again.

  Six began another circuit, walking carefully to ensure he looked everywhere for the possibility of trouble. A loud crash sounded behind him, and without a moment’s hesitation, he turned, the palm of his hand wrapped discreetly around the handle of his holstered Sig Sauer P220, a gun he carried legally, in spite of San Diego’s tight gun laws. He relaxed his grip when he saw two servers picking up broken china from the floor.

  Why was his heart rate way up over broken plates? He didn’t do jumpy. He did cool under pressure.

  He began box breathing. In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. His brothers would laugh if they knew he’d been spooked by silver serving trays and china. And if he told them the truth—that it was a fairly regular occurrence—they’d start some kind of well-meaning outreach program like he was a charity case.

  “Next time Mac has a good idea to make money, remind me to tell him to go fuck himself,” Six said into his microphone, looking for some way to release the pressure he felt. Banter between the brothers had been the one thing that had kept his naive, idealistic ass sane on his very first tour and the ones that followed.

  Cabe’s laughter crackled through the earpiece. “It’s not all bad. See the red dress over by table eight. I’m calling dibs.”

  Six shook his head and turned to look over at the blonde wrapped in a bandage dress. They always looked sexy on, those dresses, but trying to help a girl out of one was like wrestling a gazelle out of the jaws of an alligator. “In that case, I’ll take the white dress at the bar and the green dress over by the third exit, preferably at the same time.”

  “Good to see you haven’t lost your appetite,” Cabe said. “The presentation is up soon. Daughter of the main fundraiser is some med-geek researcher who works at the lab. Probably going to be as dull as dishwater.”

  Six made his way over to the podium, checking the surrounding area thoroughly. It was already beginning to feel highly unlikely that anything out of the ordinary was going to happen tonight, but if anything were going to happen, it would likely be when all the guests were definitely in the room for something like a presentation.

  “Do we know what’s behind these?” he asked Cabe, taking a step toward the closed, rich blue velvet drapes behind the temporary podium.

  “Yeah, I checked it out earlier.” A crackle cut through his earpiece. “A small balcony.”

  Curious, Six took the few steps over to the curtain and wiggled the handle of the doors. Unlocked, it swung open on to a small space.

  “You can do this,” a soft voice whispered in the half light. “It’s nothing. Go in. Get it done. Get out.”

  “You okay?” he asked, spotting the woman seated doubled over on a white chair. She was half-hidden by the ivy that crawled up the brick wall next to the door.

  “I’m fine,” the woman replied, in the most unfine tone he’d ever heard.

  He took a few steps closer. All he could see was the top of her head, messy brunette waves fluttering in all directions as a breeze came in off the bay. The hem of her aqua tulle skirt danced around her calves. Toenails that matched the skirt peeked out through tall-heeled silver sandals. He crouched down in front of her. “Can I get someone to come out to you? Get you some water maybe?”

  The woman lifted her head. He could barely see her eyes through her bangs, but the snatches he could see were as brown as the Negra Modelo beer he’d drunk by the bucketload in Mexico the week before. Plump lips and defined cheekbones, both with minimal makeup, added a softness to a strong nose and brow. Not hot, like the women he usually went for. More interesting. And he got the feeling she’d hate that word.

  “Crap,” the woman said and lowered her head to her hands, not quite putting her head between her knees.

  “You sure you aren’t going to pass out?” he asked. At a loss, he placed his hand on her back, wantin
g to bring her comfort. She was definitely shaking.

  “You need help, Six?” Cabe whispered in his earpiece.

  “Nah. I got this,” he replied.

  “You got what?” Her words were mumbled.

  “Oh. No. I was just talking to my partner,” he replied. “I’m Six. I’m part of the security team tonight.”

  “Louisa,” the woman said. “I’m part of the dog-and-pony show.”

  The med-geek researcher. “You’re the presenter who’s up in a few minutes?” Six placed his finger under her chin and raised her face until he could just about see under her bangs to her eyes if he crouched low enough.

  Her eyes found his for a moment, and then they looked away quickly. “Shit. Is it time already?”

  “It’s getting close. I’m sure you are going to do great.” Though he was pretty certain he was going to have to crane her out of the seat when it was showtime, he needed to say something to encourage her. Abject fear pulsed from her, and he could have sworn he felt the chill of it.

  Louisa stood suddenly. “Hardly,” she said, walking to the balcony.

  Now that she was standing, he could see that she’d topped the tulle, knee-length skirt with a fitted white waistcoat with very little underneath as far as he could see. It was quirky and so unlike anything he’d seen inside of the room. Part of him assessed her as outdressed by the attendees, but there was something very unique about her.

  “The last time I did this, on the way back from the stage I puked into a large, potted Dieffenbachia fortunensis.”

  Six laughed, and she turned to face him.

  “It wasn’t funny,” she said, but her pout turned into the makings of a grin.

  “I wasn’t laughing at the puking. I was laughing that you knew the plant and its … make or whatever.”

  The sound of someone testing the microphone drew Louisa’s attention to the door, and she shook her head. “Its species and genus,” she said casually before taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. “And I guess it’s showtime.” She walked toward the door and reached for the handle, but turned back before she opened it. She blew her bangs out of her face, and he finally got a good, straight look at her. “Pretty” was the first word that came to mind. “Compelling” was the second.

  “Thank you for rescuing me, Six,” she said.

  The door opened and the lights shone brightly through her skirt, making it ever so slightly transparent. From the silhouette, he could see she had legs that went on for days.

  “You’re welcome,” he said as the door clicked shut.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Goddamn. Why couldn’t she get that blond hair and those eyes that were the color of a frozen lake out of her mind?

  Louisa pulled her car to a stop outside the lab and rested her head on the steering wheel. It had been five days since she’d survived her presentation, and he was still there in her head, front and center.

  In high school, she’d laughed at the girls who’d gotten distracted by boys. The ones who’d spent their lunch breaks pretending to be Britney Spears running through a high school gym as they’d practiced their dance moves, or debating the relative merits of *NSYNC versus the Backstreet Boys while sitting on the bleachers hoping to attract the attention of their latest crush. Instead, she’d sat in the shade and focused on the relationship between the DNA polymerase binding site and start and stop codons. They’d called her a geek, a nerd, and often, a loser. But her father’s symptoms had been getting worse, and she had been determined, even back then, to find the cure that would fix their once-perfect family. Plus, she was simply happier in her own company.

  Confusion over a man was a new thing. Louisa had tried dating when she was younger, but the calling of her laboratory had always felt more interesting than going to the movies or dinner to waste two hours of her life getting to know a man she had no intention of staying with for the long term. It was time that could be spent doing something important, and eventually the relationships had fizzled out. Any remaining desire to date had been killed by her dislike of being around people. Social outings, family gatherings, and getting to know strangers took so much effort.

  So obsessing over Six, which couldn’t possibly be his real name, and who was quite literally the most handsome man she’d ever seen, was disconcerting. At the presentation, he’d slipped back out onto the stage moments before she’d started speaking and moved down the stairs to stand to the left of the podium. It was nice to see those broad shoulders as he turned his face out to the crowd. As she’d spoken to the audience, his head had turned from side to side as he’d observed the room, and focusing on the steady metronome of his movements had helped keep her calm. When she’d finished her speech, he’d offered her his hand to help her down the steps and then had mischievously whispered that there was a potted palm to her right if she felt the urge to barf. It had made her laugh and had loosened the tightness in her stomach.

  As she’d been forced to listen to her mother gush about her latest boyfriend, she’d watched Six from beneath the safety of her bangs. Given his handsome face and incredibly confident posture, she knew she wasn’t the only woman watching. Toward the end of the evening, she’d seen a beautiful woman in a green dress approach him and hand him a slip of paper on which Louisa imagined she’d written her phone number. Six had glanced at it and then looked straight back at the woman and grinned, nodding his head as if in agreement. Later, though, she’d also seen him slip his wallet out of his pocket, take out some bills, and hand them over to Valerie, one of the foundation members who had been collecting money from the attendees. Most people flashed their credit cards, or brought checks, so the sweet gesture had warmed Louisa’s heart. Her mother’s latest boy toy, Lucan, who had accompanied her to the event, hadn’t opened his wallet once, and Louisa had struggled to contain her frustration when he’d asked her mother to bid on their behalf in the silent auction for a luxury trip to the Galápagos Islands.

  Louisa gathered her bags and stepped out of her Audi A3, a car her mother had called “pedestrian.” As if she had the right to judge—or had any judgment herself—these days. She’d been on a self-destructive kick since Louisa’s father’s death, dating men way younger than herself who were, unfortunately, out for one thing only—the gifts the North family millions could provide. Gigolos, charlatans, call them what Louisa would, her mother just wouldn’t listen and was routinely getting her heart broken after a lavish trip or expensive item had been paid for. How she could be so clueless about these men was unfathomable.

  Using her pass, Louisa let herself into the building and discreetly hurried down the corridor to her locker. No one really understood her acute terror at being around people. Even experts who professed to be able to cure her failed to understand how debilitating it could be. She planned her journeys around the paths of least resistance, which meant she arrived at places either before they opened or just before they shut for the day. The hallways were empty as she slipped her purse into her locker and closed it.

  She and Ivan had been working through a complex revised formula the previous day, but she still felt as though they were missing something. Today, Ivan was attending the company board meeting with his grandfather, Vasilii, a job Louisa didn’t envy. Accounts, balance sheets, committee meetings, and action items all made Louisa shudder. Give her an opportunity to develop models of pathological dynamic activities in neurological disease, and she was all over it, but corporate objectives killed her brain cells faster than cerebral hypoxia.

  She put on her lab coat and gloves, passed through the air blower, and stepped into the cool embrace of her lab. Her sanctuary. It felt more like home than home. There were some cultures growing that she needed to check on, and she was excited to have been asked to review the results of a brain slice out of the Baltimore Huntington’s Disease Center over at Johns Hopkins. Who got results first or made the biggest strides in the race for the cure really didn’t matter to Louisa, just so long as somebody did, and soon.
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br />   A cold blast of air washed over her as she opened the refrigerator to grab the cultures. She grabbed them off the shelf and was about to close the door when she noticed that one of the samples she’d put in there the night of the presentation was missing. Sliding the cultures in her hand back onto their shelf, she stood on her toes to see if the samples had been pushed back into the deep unit. But it was empty. She thought through her steps five days earlier when she had deliberately switched the dangerous sample with an innocuous one because of her paranoia that her papers had been messed with.

  She gazed across all of the shelves and all of the samples. It was obviously possible that Ivan had been in the lab while she hadn’t been there, but he’d always been an incredibly thoughtful and thorough lab partner and had graciously humored her need for order. Until he got out of his meeting, she couldn’t ask him in person where the sample might be, but she could step outside, grab her phone, and send him a quick text in the hope that he would check in some time before the end of the day, however unlikely that was. Vasilii, who was old school, had limited patience with digital interference during meetings.

  Bracing herself, Louisa left the lab and walked across the hallway to where research for a cure for Alzheimer’s, as well as medicine to delay its onset, happened. VNP Laboratories, under Vasilii’s leadership, was focused on brain disorders, though for reasons quite different from her own. Unlike cancer, which had a fifty-percent or more ten-year survival rate and a series of treatment options, nobody had found a way to stop neurological disease. So medication to manage symptoms was the only option. To Vasilii, this research was about profits and balance sheets; to her it was life or death. She looked left and right along the corridor. The only people in sight were heading to the stairwell to take them to the second level. With a sigh of relief, she crossed to the other lab and knocked on the window to get the attention of Aiden, one of the few people she could talk to. He understood her drive and had become a wonderful mentor who respected her social boundaries.