“I’ll remember that, Ms. North, as long as you remember…” His words trailed off as he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest. She tensed at the action, every muscle more rigid than steel rods as she fought the urge to step away, until he placed a kiss on the top of her head. The action caught her so off guard, it was over before she could formulate a response. Soft, light blond chest hair brushed her cheek as her heart raced.
“Remember what?” she whispered against his chest, not trusting the strength of her own voice or her own feet if she attempted to move.
Six stepped back and winked. “That I do real life better than the Internet.”
CHAPTER THREE
Six waited for Louisa to get into her car and pull out of the parking lot. She beeped her horn, and he flashed his lights in her direction. All very cute, especially when inside he was dying of mortification. What the hell was going on?
A car crash had freaked him out. How was that even possible after he’d spent months doing almost daily patrols in Kandahar without batting an eye?
The constant throng of chaos had surrounded them as they’d driven through the crowded streets, horns beeping, people shouting. They’d never stopped. It had been too unsafe. Too uncertain. Plus, they hadn’t been able to tell friend from foe, so better to keep the show on the road. He’d been back on US soil for a couple of months, so why the hell was this happening now? How was he supposed to do his job at Eagle when he couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t lose his shit?
He drove north up the coast to Encinitas. Focus. That was all it would take to overcome whatever he had. Mind over matter had always worked for him before as a philosophy. There were guys who had it so much worse than he did. Guys who had come home with their legs blown off or had carried their friends off the battlefield. Yeah, he’d seen some shit, but as SEAL careers went, there was no way he could have PTSD. And he most definitely wasn’t going to ask Mac whether Eagle’s nonexistent healthcare plan covered psychologists.
It was just a few flashbacks. He’d manage them on his own.
Finally, he relaxed as he saw the sign for Encinitas. That had to be a good thing, being in a place where he felt at peace with the world. The vibrant beachside community of Old Encinitas, his home since birth, was buried deep inside his soul. When he’d lived out east, he’d missed it. As he pulled up in front of his home on top of the steep incline of E Street, he remembered the time when he was twelve and he’d thought he’d broken his wrist skateboarding away from this very yard. There were so many memories attached to this house. His parents had loved flipping and selling homes, so as a family they’d lived on just about every street in Old Encinitas. This house, however, had always been his constant. Every time he stepped through the front door, he was certain he was going to smell his grandmother’s apple cobbler or hear his grandfather trying to convince someone to join him in a game of Scrabble again. Just about every Christmas had been spent here, his own home usually in the middle of some huge renovation. When his grandparents had died within five days of each other during his second tour, he’d been devastated. They’d left the property to him, and he’d held on to it.
With his parents’ help, he’d rented it to a low-maintenance couple ever since. He’d felt like an asshole serving notice to tenants before he returned, but it was, in his heart, his home. Once Eagle started to make some money he was going to do the place up. For a while, he’d contemplated having a roommate, as the extra monthly income would be helpful, but he’d soon realized that he needed his space more than he needed the money.
Six let himself into the small, bright home. It needed a good coat of paint at a minimum, but he loved the bones of the place. Long linen drapes that he left closed hung from the window in the living room. A large array of plants grew in the bay window, left by the tenants when they’d moved out. They made him think of Louisa. She’d probably know how to look after them beyond just watering them when the soil became more arid than the trails in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province.
He grabbed his phone from his shorts before he dropped them and his briefs to the floor. He kicked off his shoes and socks and left them in the hallway, closer to the laundry in the garage, and walked to the guest bath to fill the tub. He’d refitted his own bathroom with a large walk-in shower, but some days he just needed a soak. Just as he was about to step into the hot water, his phone rang.
“Six,” he said.
There was a crackle on the line.
“Hello. Is there anybody there?” Six pulled the phone away from his ear and checked the caller display. Unknown number.
“Six, man. It’s Mac.” The line was severely distorted, but he was thrilled to hear his friend.
“Yo, Mac. How’s it going?” He turned the tap off and wrapped a towel around his waist before he wandered back into his room to lie down on the bed.
“Good. Sorry I haven’t been around, but this was a quick and dirty job, good pay, and it seemed stupid to turn it down.”
“Dude, I’m living in a house that needs a shit ton of work. Anything that pays the bills is priority. How’s it working out? Did you find the father and daughter?”
“Took us too long to track the girl down. We need more unit-level training for it to come together and a better intel network, but I know Cabe’s working on that. I’m pretty certain that the guy doesn’t know we’re hunting, but he keeps moving her around. I’m not sure he has anywhere permanent lined up for them to live, which tells me he abducted her on a whim rather than with a well-thought-out plan. Anyway, we’re going in tomorrow. Quick in and out.”
Six remembered the calm he’d used to feel the night before an extraction, the way he could still his mind until he was almost meditating. Perhaps he should try that now. Regain some control. He’d been slacking lately. If his mom and dad weren’t out of town, he would have gone to spend some time with his mom. She was a great sounding board and wouldn’t judge what he was going through.
“Take care, brother,” he said.
“On it! Speak to you when it’s done.”
The phone disconnected.
Six returned to the bathroom and studied his face in the mirror before sitting on the edge of the bath. Perhaps he should shave, throw on a shirt, and head out for a drink. Call up a couple of buddies … Wait, scratch that … Call up one of the girls he knew was happy to have a good time, and go out for dinner. But for some reason a quick hookup didn’t appeal. Instead wavy dark hair and expressive eyes hidden behind bangs flashed through his mind.
Louisa. He’d seen the way she’d bitten back a grin when he’d teased her and he liked how he’d felt with her. And she hadn’t judged him for hitting the ground, at least not as far as he could tell. It had been a long time since a woman had done more than interest him, but Louisa had intrigued him. Made him curious. Now he wanted to know more about her.
But she probably lived in the city, and the idea of fighting traffic was more than he could deal with. Plus, he’d just left her a few hours ago.
The clock on his phone told him it was nearly eight. There was still enough half light to get a surf in, and he stood, seriously considering the idea, but for some reason he just didn’t feel like it.
Why couldn’t he decide what to do?
A soak for his tired muscles, a night in, a mindless movie, pizza, and a cold beer. He’d make lousy company in this frame of mind.
Six grabbed his phone and hit the kitchen for a cold beer. Once he’d taken a sip, he grabbed Louisa’s card. He wasn’t sure why he suddenly felt the need to contact her, but he did. If he didn’t, he’d probably end up pulling on some clothes before hitting the highway to find her and convince her to go out to dinner. Five more minutes with her would surely answer his questions about why she was on his mind so much.
Wanted to check you got home okay? 6
There was a pause, the little dots bouncing in the corner of the screen, and he was surprised to find his heart rate elevated a little in anticipation.<
br />
I did, thank you. Did you?
He laughed. Usually girls wrote him freaking essays when he texted them. But Louisa spared nothing.
I did … Now what should he write? What are you doing?
Really original. Good job he wasn’t particularly trying to impress her.
Reading a book on the top medical advancements of the twentieth century.
Six laughed. Of course you are.
He waited for a response.
Hey, if you needed insulin, you’d be pretty excited by it. What are you doing?
Unable to resist, he was honest. Drinking a beer.
Of course you are. Good night, Six.
Good night, Lou.
* * *
Louisa stepped into the lab and looked around. Everything was exactly as she’d left it the night before, but she was starting to think that appearances didn’t mean a damn thing.
In spite of logic telling her there must be a rational explanation as to why the sample was missing, it felt as though someone was squeezing her chest tightly. She took some deep breaths anyway in the hope they would deal with the tiny flicker of fear she felt in the pit of her stomach. Even though she could recite the details of the sample in her sleep, Louisa hurried to the file on her desk to remind herself of its composition. While she was reasonably certain it was innocuous, it was definitely worth double-checking. Flicking through the pages, she confirmed what she already knew. Nobody was at risk from the missing sample if it had been taken for erroneous reasons, which was most certainly a relief.
Her mind went to all kinds of places. Logically, she knew she was overreacting. Samples got moved around all the time, which was bound to happen in a laboratory jammed with researchers and scientists. Yet she’d asked in all of the labs, and nobody had set foot in her domain. Even Ivan had confirmed he hadn’t moved them. But her gut told her that somebody wanted the toxin they’d created, a poison that didn’t just limit hyperkinetic movement disorders through its anti-chorea properties but also reduced the user’s ability to move at all while remaining fully conscious, leaving them open to pain receptors. She’d obviously watched one too many thrillers, because a nagging voice told her it would be the perfect drug to torture somebody with. They’d felt so confident when they’d moved on to animal testing, and she’d been crushed when it had resulted in paralysis.
Louisa flicked through the file to find her handwritten notes from that day. She’d typed them into files on her computer later that evening, censoring out words that revealed her true frustration, but she’d kept the originals. Every page she turned tightened the band around her chest until she got to the end of the binder and still hadn’t found them. Breathe, Louisa.
“More haste, less speed, Louisa. You will find it,” her father used to say to her in encouragement, even as his symptoms had deteriorated, along with “I’m confident in you, chickpea.” She went back to the start of the binder and carefully flicked page by page. When she got to the back of the binder again, her hands started to shake.
She flipped open the laptop and entered a password, NaClCH3COOH. Usually she found entering the chemical formulas for salt and vinegar, her favorite flavor of chips, entertaining. But today it was just a waste of time as she hurried to see whether the notes still existed. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she accessed file after file. There were no records. Everything she had entered was gone. She checked other versions, other iterations of the same experiment, and they were all there. So there hadn’t been some kind of file failure or computer malfunction. It was just the one experiment.
Louisa looked out of the window to the laboratory across the hallway. Aiden waved, and she returned the gesture halfheartedly. Somebody was lying. Somebody had taken all the information, and somebody thought they’d gotten the sample. In the spirit of discretion, Louisa decided to take it straight to the top. Vasilii would want to know and would be best placed to handle it. Watching a green strip on the otherwise gray linoleum gave her the opportunity to avoid talking to anyone as she hurried up the staircase to the luxury offices and approached Vasilii’s assistant.
“Hey, Liz. Is Vasilii in his office?” As one of his most senior researchers, she had the perk of being able to get time on his calendar.
“Hey, Louisa. He’s just between calls. Is it quick?” Louisa nodded, even though it wouldn’t be. She was certain, though, that once Vasilii knew what she wanted to talk about, he’d defer whatever meeting he had next. Espionage between drug manufacturers was a real issue. It was the reason they weren’t allowed to take their phones into the labs or their laptops out. As somebody who just wanted to do good and develop medicines that would help people, it irritated her how much money was made from owning patents.
She was equally certain that Vasilii would be concerned about the reputation of the lab. Louisa considered how to handle the fact, though, that she’d switched the samples. Ivan would be pissed that she hadn’t told him, and it was poor lab etiquette to deliberately mislabel. She’d make sure there was a thorough investigation first, and then tell him it wasn’t as damaging as it could have been.
“Okay, go in, sweetheart.”
Louisa hurried to the door, knocked twice, and pushed it open. “Hey, Vasilii. Liz said it was okay to pop in for a word.”
He was seated at his desk, looking at real estate photos on his computer, and he quickly shut them down. “Of course, of course. Come in. I was about to email your mother. The fundraiser was a huge success.”
“It was,” she agreed. Her mother had told her the final tally and it would most definitely enable her to continue her research for at least another eighteen months. “I’m sure she’d appreciate hearing from you. And I’m sure she’d love to see you for dinner one evening.” Her mother had once dated Vasilii’s son, Ivan’s father. In another world, she and Ivan could have been siblings instead of lab partners.
Vasilii nodded his agreement. “I’ll have to go see her soon. I’m thinking of moving, downsizing. My place is too big for an old man like me. Your mother has a good eye for real estate.”
“She does. I think living with an architect all those years helped,” Lou said, thinking of her father fondly.
“So, what can I do for you, Lou?”
“I have a sample missing in the lab. We’ve searched for it, but more frighteningly, all my notes that go with it are gone.”
Vasilii stood and walked around the front of the desk. “You think somebody has stolen it?”
She knew that would be the first place he would go. “I’m not sure. But I think it’s odd that the sample and all of our notes would go missing.”
“Let me call Ivan.”
She waited as he carried his cell phone toward the window and muttered something to Ivan she couldn’t hear, and within a minute, Ivan bounded into the room.
“Hey, Louisa, Vasilii,” he said, coming to stand next to her.
Louisa had always thought it odd, yet understandable, that Ivan usually addressed his grandfather by his first name.
“Ivan,” Vasilii said. “Louisa has concerns about a missing sample.”
Ivan turned to face her. “What sample are you talking about, Louisa? The one you texted me about?”
“Yes. That one. The one we had just moved to live testing. The one that led to paralysis.”
Ivan sat down in one of the chairs opposite his grandfather. “Have you done a thorough check?”
“I did. All the other labs have checked their units. Everybody has been asked whether they borrowed anything from the lab. I’ve gone through our units four times, and always get the same answer. The sample is missing.”
She was about to add that she had switched the samples, but something made her hold back. Something niggled the back of her brain. But she trusted these two men. They’d been good to her, provided a safe place to continue her research, but something … what. Irked? Itched? She couldn’t put her finger on what had her so unsettled.
“Just to be doubly cautious, I�
�ll do a check,” Ivan said. “You know how it is, sometimes you can’t see for looking. Happens to me all the time with my car keys, and they are usually right there in front of me.”
“Of course, that’s a great idea,” she replied tactfully. “But that doesn’t explain why all the notes are missing. They’re gone too. I looked this morning, but they aren’t there. Someone removed the working notes from the file and the full reports from the system. It’s as if the sample never existed.”
Vasilii stood. “Tell me more about the sample. What is it? What are the risks?”
“It had been looking really positive until we started live testing,” Ivan answered. “It paralyzed the mice yet kept them alive and fully functioning mentally. They could feel pain but not respond.”
“Look,” she said, standing. “I know we have protocol for this kind of thing, but I think there is a quick way to figure this out. We can use the security footage of the lab to see who went through the files. We keep the footage for a while, right? Or maybe somebody in IT can help figure out who accessed the data. They’d have to have put in a user ID, right?”
“Louisa,” Vasilii said, calmly, “the cameras in your lab haven’t worked in over two months. We trusted you and Ivan, so it wasn’t a priority to fix them.”
The news hurt like a kick to the stomach. The wind left her.
“But there are things we can do,” Vasilii continued. “We can look at which cameras near your lab work, maybe we can see someone heading to your lab who had no business there. And you are right, we can get IT to take a look and see if the person who deleted the files left some kind of trace behind them.”
“We should call the police as a precaution,” Louisa said, feeling anxious.
“Let us conduct our own internal investigation, first. If the samples turn up in the lab, it will be a significant embarrassment for all. And even if they don’t, we need to handle this carefully. Losing a dangerous sample is not something we would want to get out there if we can avoid it. Let us check those things out first, then I promise you we will call in the police if there are no answers.”
Under Fire Page 4