by Lexi Blake
“I’m fine,” the woman said, her voice quieter now. “Just out of practice and a bit paranoid. I’m on my way out, and I’ve already put the plan in motion. I’ll meet Sidirov at the time and place we agreed to. No. No one will be able to tell I was ever here. Including Jessica Layne. She’ll have to delete this chick’s lifework herself if our client decides to make a deal. I’m going to create some chaos on my way out. I have plans in place. Despite my previous issues, I’m still a pro. And yes, I intend to tie up loose ends soon.”
He stayed perfectly still, barely breathing.
“You’re clear, but you should know that she introduced a program to the system,” MaeBe began. “I’m not sure what it is but…fuck. She took out the CCTV, and I would bet anything it’s going to erase the last ten minutes. That’s going to set off an alarm. You need to get back to the lab. Now. I can’t see anything, Hutch. She was walking to the elevator, but I don’t know if she got on or not.”
She could be standing right outside, waiting for him. And he had no weapon to defend himself with.
How long before they would notice he’d been gone too long and Noelle might come looking for him? Kyle would either forbid it or come with her. Either way, she would know something was wrong.
He had to tell Noelle, but he couldn’t do it here. She had to know what was happening with her research. And he had to protect her. There was one thing he could do to help her before they needed to get somewhere safe and stay there until he could work through this problem.
As quickly as he could, he found the files where Noelle’s lab work was stored and copied it to his drive. He took a quick look around.
Madison Wallace’s research was there, too. At least the files were. Every single one of them empty.
Had Jessica Layne sold Madison’s research, too? Who had she met with before Madison’s “accident”? He had a million questions, but his first responsibility was to protect Noelle at all costs.
“I’m coming out. If anything happens to me, call Kyle and have him get Noelle out of the building. Then call Big Tag. I want Noelle under twenty-four seven guard,” he said. “And you tell him that I don’t care what deal we made. She should know what’s going on.”
“You’re going to tell her about the feds?”
MaeBe had been debriefed and was one of the only other people beside senior staff who knew about the deal they’d made.
“As soon as we’re out of this building and I can be assured no one is listening, yes.” He took a deep breath, slid the drive into his pocket, and opened the door.
Kyle was walking down the hall and stopped when he caught sight of Hutch. His gaze went from slightly concerned to steely in a heartbeat.
“What the fuck are you doing? Noelle is worried about you.”
“You’re supposed to be with her.” He didn’t like the fact that Kyle had left Noelle alone.
“It was this or bring her with me, and then she would know that you’re a liar and you’re hiding something from her.” Kyle stopped in front of him. “And me. What is going on and why am I out of the loop?”
He didn’t have time to deal with Kyle. “I saw an opportunity and I took it.”
“Is MaeBe in your ear? Because if she is, then you didn’t see an opportunity,” Kyle insisted. “You planned this. You planned it when you let Noelle stay late. You planned it because you thought I wouldn’t be here.”
Well, no one had ever said Kyle was a dummy. “We will talk about this later. We need to get Noelle out of here now. Get the car and meet us at the front of the building.”
He had to get out of this building with the information on that drive.
Kyle stared at him for a second before he nodded. “Fine. But we’re going to have a long talk, and we might need to bring Ian in because if he approved this, I have a problem with him, too.”
Hutch didn’t look back as he jogged down the hallway, praying Kyle did his job. “Have the cameras come back on yet?”
“No,” MaeBe said. “I’m blind. You should know I already sent Tag a text updating him. I thought you would be all right with that.”
“Of course, but he’s at Sanctum.” It was a play night, and Tag tried not to miss Friday nights. “I want to know the minute those cameras come back up, and I want you to check CCTV anywhere around the building. I want to identify that woman.”
He made it to the lab and Noelle was starting to pack up her laptop. He grabbed his own and shoved it into his satchel.
“Hey, I was worried you got lost.” Noelle’s eyes were wide, concern for him plain there.
He was crazy about this woman, and he prayed she could forgive him. He’d thought he could honor the deal with the feds, but now he knew he should have walked out of that meeting and laid it all out to her. He couldn’t talk to her now because Pete was standing behind her.
“I told her it was likely that the janitors hadn’t gotten to the men’s room yet and you couldn’t make yourself go in.” Pete shuddered slightly. “Some of our techs, I swear they need to see the doctor. She doesn’t understand because women’s rooms are never nasty.”
He needed a reason to leave and fast. “Hey, sweetie, I sent Kyle down to get the car. I got a call from home and something’s happened to my mom.”
She paled because she knew damn well his mother wasn’t alive. She knew a whole lot about his family. She nodded. “Is she okay?”
“I don’t know. I need to get home and call my dad. We might have to head down to Louisiana if it’s serious.”
Her grip tightened around her cane as she obviously realized something had gone wrong and she might not be coming back to the office soon. “Of course. Let’s go.”
“Hutch, I’ve got cameras again,” MaeBe said in his ear. “Be careful what you say until you get in the car.”
Well, of course they would come up now. Fuck.
“Go,” Pete said. “I’ll take care of closing everything up. Please let me know if I can make things easier on you.”
She nodded and walked out of the lab with him.
The minute the door closed, she looked up at Hutch. “What’s going on?”
“Like I said, I’m not sure. Dad was upset. He said something about an accident, but the doctor called him back in the middle of our conversation. I’m waiting for him to get in touch again.”
Noelle stopped, and for a moment he worried she might argue with him. Then she started for the elevators. “I hope everyone is okay and not in danger.”
Smart girl. “Me, too. Kyle is getting the car and we’ll go back home and take it from there. Hopefully we’ll have more information soon.”
They made it to the elevator, the tension palpable between them. He reached out and took her free hand in his.
She was silent but entwined their fingers and turned his way. “I hope everything is okay.”
He smoothed back her hair and stared down at her. “I’m going to make sure it is. Trust me, baby. I’m going to take care of things no matter what. I’m going to put you first.”
She took a long breath and then tilted her head up. “Okay.”
He kissed her, needing to be close to her. It had been a rough hour, and he wanted nothing more than to get her somewhere safe, wrap his arms around her and tell her everything.
He could also tell her he’d gotten all of her research because if he was right, it would be gone soon, and if she fought Genedyne, she might find herself in the same position as Madison Wallace.
He wasn’t going to let that happen.
The doors opened and he stepped out. She let go of his hand and started around the corner.
“Hutch, something’s happening. I need you to go out the back of the building. I can get you out,” MaeBe said, her voice urgent in his ear.
He stopped, letting Noelle go slightly ahead of him. She rounded the corner. “What is it?”
“It’s the cops. They’re here and they have Kyle,” MaeBe said. “Damn it. Why is Noelle walking out there? They’ve seen her,
Hutch. The guard is taking her into custody.”
Oh, that wasn’t going to happen. “Call Tag.”
He started toward Noelle. They wouldn’t be able to see him until he fully entered the lobby.
“Hutch, stop. Think for a second,” MaeBe pleaded. “They’ll arrest you, too. They’ll take the drive. We don’t know who will get their hands on it. We don’t know if you can get it back.”
His feet felt planted to the marble floor. From his vantage, he could see the lobby guard gently leading Noelle out the front doors where blue and red lights made the whole place look eerie.
Kyle was on the ground, his hands cuffed behind his back and a burly officer standing over him.
“I need you to run to the back stairwell,” MaeBe said. “I’m shutting the cams down and I’ve got Michael ready to pick you up. He’s on his way. You’re going to leave out the freight entrance and immediately take a right. Keep your head down and I’ll get you to Michael and he’ll take you to Sanctum.”
Hutch hesitated.
“If she talks about you, they’ll find you,” MaeBe pointed out. “You can’t help her right now. All you can do is save her research and get the feds the data they need. They can get her out. We don’t even know if they’re arresting her. This could be about Kyle.”
He didn’t think so. The mystery woman had said she’d put her plan in motion, and this felt like a plan.
He couldn’t let Noelle’s research fall into the trap.
With a pain in his heart, he turned and made his way to the back of the building. “All right. Get me out of here.”
Walking away was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
* * * *
Noelle’s hands were still shaking two hours later. She’d been arrested, put through the booking process, and then shown to this cold, quiet room. On the wall across from her hung the classic mirror through which someone would watch her.
But she’d been left in here alone for what felt like forever.
The moment when she’d realized something had gone terribly wrong played through her head. She’d walked out and seen the red and blue lights, realized it was Kyle on the ground, and then the kindly security guard had explained that they were here for her.
She’d glanced behind her and Hutch had been gone.
He’d left her. Left her alone to be arrested, to know her career was in ruins because she was being accused of stealing something from the company. She still didn’t understand that part.
She definitely didn’t understand where Hutch had gone and why he’d left her alone.
The door came open and a man entered. He wore a button-down shirt and slacks. His badge was in a lanyard around his neck. He was tall and older than the men who’d arrested her. There were threads of gray in his short, well-kept hair. He pulled out the chair across from her and settled in, a notepad in front of him.
“Noelle LaVigne, I am Detective Grady. Do you want to explain to me why you broke into the Genedyne server rooms this evening?”
“I would like to make a phone call.” Her first thought was to call Hutch. She wanted to see him, to have him tell her everything was going to be okay.
But he’d left her. He’d left her and Kyle behind. She was starting to wonder if Hutch wasn’t the reason she was here in the first place. He’d been gone so long, and then he’d wanted to hustle them out of the building.
He’d told Kyle he was going to the bathroom. What if he hadn’t been? What if he’d been doing something else?
Trust me, baby. I’m going to take care of things no matter what. I’m going to put you first.
So much for putting her first.
“You can have your phone call, but I need you to answer a few questions first. Is there any way this is a mix-up? I’m surprised a nice young woman like yourself is involved in something criminal.”
“What exactly am I being accused of?” It would be nice to know why she was sitting here. She was a sheriff’s daughter. She knew she should ask for a lawyer, but the whole day seemed surreal. This was some kind of nightmare, and she would wake up soon.
“You and your boyfriend broke into a part of the Genedyne building that was off limits to you. They’ve had several problems there in the last couple of weeks with people breaking in.”
“I don’t have to break in. I work there. And tonight I never left my lab,” she replied. “I was in my lab from after lunch to a few minutes before you arrested me.”
“That is not what the security logs say.” He opened a folder that was sitting in front of him. “According to this, you used your security card to open the door to the server room at exactly nine forty-two this evening.”
She looked down at the security logs and sure enough, her keycard registered as accessing the server room. There was one big problem with that. “That’s impossible. I don’t have clearance to get into that room.”
“Yes, that’s what we’ve been told, too. The logs clearly show that your card was used to enter the room. From what we can tell your security clearance was changed an hour before.”
“I wouldn’t know how to do that. I certainly don’t have access to change security levels for an employee even if I did.” She hadn’t been able to find her card earlier. She’d thought she’d misplaced it. Hutch had distracted her from looking for it.
It had gone missing a few minutes after Hutch had brought her dinner and kissed her and changed all his previously important security protocols about her staying at work.
She was starting to get a bad feeling. Why wasn’t Hutch up here trying to get her out? She hadn’t seen Kyle since they’d put him in a separate squad car and raced off.
She was alone. Completely alone.
“I was in my lab. Someone else must have used my card. And Kyle isn’t my boyfriend. He works for Genedyne, too. He’s in security. He was in the lab at the time, too. As well as my engineer.” She had witnesses. “His name is Pete Moore. You can talk to him and he’ll tell you that Kyle and I were both in the lab.”
Except for when Kyle went to look for Hutch.
“I will certainly do that,” the detective said.
She wanted to say that he should check the security cameras that were all over the building, but then he might see that it had been Hutch who had crept into the server room. What had he done?
Why was she hesitating?
“I would pull the security camera footage, but somehow all the cameras mysteriously went out in the ten minutes before and after your card was used. Did you do that or was that…” He glanced down at the file again. “Kyle Hutchins?”
So they hadn’t figured out that Kyle Hutchins was Kyle Hawthorne. Should she point that out? She was confused about how to handle this. Hutch had explained to her that the security guard at her building was Dallas police, and they weren’t sure if he was investigating Jessica Layne or working for her. She didn’t know if she should lay everything on the table or if that move would get her in even worse trouble. Before they’d taken her in Kyle had told her to stay quiet. He’d promised her someone would come for them. She folded her hands together to try to keep them from shaking. “It wasn’t either of us. I wouldn’t begin to know how to hack a system, and neither would Kyle. He works security. He’s got access to the whole building. Why would we use my keycard if we were…what? Trying to screw with the computers? Why would we do that?”
“Because there are companies out there who would pay a lot of money to get the research on that system. You’re not allowed to take home large parts of your research, are you? No one is. So all that research, all that cutting-edge knowledge, is in that room.”
A chill went through her. “I wouldn’t do that.”
The detective pointed to his file. “But I have evidence that says you did. And it’s not only companies that would be interested, is it? Other countries would love to get their hands on some of that data. According to your boss, there’s a vast array of cutting-edge research, the kind of tech that could give a country an adv
antage.”
He wasn’t merely accusing her of stealing. He might be accusing her of spying, of treason.
How had Hutch done this to her? He hadn’t told her he was going to take a look around the server. He’d taken her card and put her in a horrible position and then left her to take the punishment.
Her career was over. She would lose everything and she wasn’t sure why. Why had he done it?
Why couldn’t she point the finger his way? She should do it because everything was on the line for her and he’d left her out in the cold. She had no idea what he was doing.
Had someone taken him? Was she looking at this the wrong way? Maybe he was completely innocent and someone had taken him. Maybe she was sitting here feeling sorry for herself and he was being hurt.
Helpless. She felt so helpless.
“I can’t do anything for you unless you talk to me.” The detective’s voice had softened. The good cop was in the building. “Noelle, I’m sure he talked you into this. He’s a good-looking guy. Did he convince you he cared about you?”
Yes. Hutch had. Despite her better judgement, she’d fallen for his every line. He’d figured out exactly how to play her. He’d walked the fine line between making her feel cared for and appreciating her independence.
He was good, but then hadn’t he told her flat out how good he was at undercover? Seducing her had likely been way easier than dealing with the evil doctor.
“Noelle? Are you all right?” The detective was frowning her way, making her wonder how long she’d been zoned out. “You have to know that Kyle Hutchins is in a room next door and he’s talking. He’s telling us everything.”
“He’s making a deal?” A numbness had settled over her, and she welcomed it. She wasn’t going to cry now because she couldn’t feel the pain.
The detective nodded. “That’s exactly what he’s doing.”
“But I could make a deal first.” She knew how this went. Even if she hadn’t been a sheriff’s daughter, she’d watched enough Law and Order to play this scene out in her sleep.
“All you have to do is tell me the truth.”
“Because that’s what Kyle is doing.” She didn’t even know what the truth was. How hard had she been played? Had they set her up to take the fall? She couldn’t help but remember how Kyle had told her Hutch would never be anything but honest with her.