Winter Hawk

by Rachel Grant

  “Dex and Jessica are still on Peacemaker?”

  “It’s mostly Dex with Jessica working on her own project and pitching in as needed. Dex’s job has been to make sure the updates to Peacemaker will go smoothly as two million people launch their new drones on the same day.”

  “Except you said you did that.”

  “Yes. Dex broke it, and technically, he should have pulled Kevin in for the fix—he’s the only other person in the office with skills at that level, but I fixed it.” She grinned at him. “In a way, you could say I saved Christmas.” She let out a sigh. “I hate the idea of missing the show at Nationals Park. Hathaway-Hollis is holding a private reception in some of the presidential suites at the stadium. Given that I was fired, I have a feeling I’ve been uninvited.”

  “But the venue holds what—thirty, forty thousand people?”

  “Yes. And this isn’t a ticketed event. Anyone can walk in off the street and attend. Food vendors will be open, and there will be games and other events for the kids starting at noon.”

  “So basically, you could go and no one could turn you away.”

  She smiled at that. Yes, she could show up with the crowd and avoid the employers who’d betrayed her right before the massive event she’d made possible. “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll go.”

  “Really? That simple?”

  “It’s what you want for Christmas—er, Hanukkah, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll go,” he repeated. “I want to see what your amazing brain has created.”

  She snuggled into his extra-long arms. “Thank you, Hawk.”

  “You like calling me that,” he whispered against her temple.

  “It’s hot,” she whispered back. “It seems like there should be birds of prey in the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ song.”

  “I think all the birds in the song are food. That’s why they’re presents.”

  “I like to eat Hawk.”

  He let out a sharp laugh. She joined him, feeling lighter, warmer. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted to go to Nationals Park until it was decided they could.

  Their laugher settled, but they remained entwined on the couch, watching the candles burn down. She felt warm, cared for, and knew Nate “Hawk” Sifuentes was the best holiday gift she’d ever received.

  10

  December twenty-fourth began in the best way possible as Nate woke to the feel of Leah’s hands on his body. He made love to her in a way that started slow, sleepy, and languid, but ended hot, fast, and intense. Afterward, he held her by his side, his heart slowly settling into an easy, post-orgasmic rhythm.

  She traced the edges of the hawk wing on his stomach. “Are we going to DC today?”

  He nodded. He hated giving up their sanctuary, but they could get more answers in the city than hiding out here, and it would be easier to get to Nationals Park tomorrow if they were already in the area. But finding a decent hotel room in DC on Christmas Eve might be impossible. “I’m going to talk to my boss and see if I can bring you to the compound. If that fails, we can crash at my brother’s house.”

  “He’s going to freak, isn’t he? HH is his client—and a lucrative one. I’m pretty much the enemy.”

  “Freddy’ll get over it.” He ran his hand over Leah’s bare bottom. Freddy had called and asked Nate to do a two-hour job just two days and one lifetime ago. Now Nate didn’t want to imagine a world in which he woke up without Leah in his bed.

  But that didn’t mean Leah was on the same page, and he wasn’t about to push it. She had bigger concerns. Starting with the woman who died in the HH townhouse. “If the dead woman is Ainsley, they’ll have identified her by now. We should check the headlines.”

  Leah pulled on panties and a T-shirt while he donned the sweatpants again. Together, they entered the chilly living room. She grabbed the new laptop while he made coffee.

  “What’s the word?” he asked after a few minutes.

  “Nothing at all about the fire.”

  “Any statement from HH?”

  “Nope. But I would imagine they’re trying to stay out of the news right now. The only headlines they want are drone sales.”

  “Yeah, I wondered why they’d fire you right before the big event, given the potential for negative publicity.”

  “But technically, HH hasn’t fired me. The military did, and HH has me on unpaid leave while they review what I did wrong at the Navy Yard.”

  “Could this be all about money? Taking away your stock options before the IPO and using the military to do it?”

  “It’s possible, but I’ve ridden the startup pony before, that’s why I asked for a big salary up front and fewer options.”

  “What about a holiday bonus?”

  “I locked that down in my contract. I made all my deadlines, and we sold the baseline number of units by Cyber Monday. They have to pay me, fired or not.”

  “But they’ll try to get out of it.”

  “Of course they will.” She smiled. “But I’m rich. I can afford a good attorney.”

  He laughed, dropped a kiss on her lips, and handed her a steaming cup of coffee before turning to the cold hearth. “You should check the phone. See if Detective Brown has called with an update.”

  Leah reached for the phone, feeling trepidation. She wanted to know, and she didn’t. Right now, she could still hope Ainsley was alive.

  She checked voicemail, seeing a message had been left thirty minutes ago.

  She called the number, and Detective Brown answered immediately. “This is Leah Ellis. I have you on speakerphone to include Nathaniel Sifuentes.”

  “Ms. Ellis, I wanted to share our findings with you before the press release goes out,” Brown said in his deep baritone voice. “We’re still waiting on toxicology and other tests, but we have a preliminary determination based on the opinions of the arson investigator and medical examiner. Both have come to the conclusion that the fire that caused the death of Ainsley Weisz was an accident.”

  The kick in the gut she felt at the confirmation the woman was Ainsley was compounded by shock at the determination. “What? An accident? But how?”

  “It appears Ms. Weisz was cooking with hot oil. From the ingredients, the ME believes she was making latkes when she suffered a seizure. You mentioned in your email last night that Ms. Weisz is epileptic.”

  Her brain swirled with questions, but she managed to say, “Yes, but her seizures are controlled with medication. The one at work had been deliberately caused by a strobe.”

  “The toxicology tests will take a few more days, but it’s possible she missed a dose or the effectiveness of the medication was negated by other factors. I understand she was under a lot of stress with the organizing of the Peacemaker events.”

  “I assume. I hadn’t seen her in weeks.”

  “We can’t be certain she suffered a seizure, but it fits with the findings—her tongue was severely bitten. The cause of death, however, was smoke inhalation.”

  “How could her seizure trigger the fire?”

  “When Ms. Weisz collapsed, she may have knocked the handle of the pan filled with boiling oil. Oil spilled all over the cooktop, including on a dish towel near the burner and another hanging on the oven door. The arson investigator believes the burner remained on and the remaining oil in the pan exceeded the flash point. Vapor ignited. The oil-soaked towels helped spread the flames. It likely took some time for the fire to take off to the degree you and Mr. Sifuentes smelled the smoke, but once that happened, the kitchen was engulfed.”

  Leah ran a hand over her face. Her heart ached, thinking of Ainsley, seizing and helpless as the flames spread. “Was she still alive when we first smelled the smoke?”

  “Probably not. As I said, it took time for the fire to spread, but the kitchen would have filled with smoke quickly, and she was right next to the source.”

  He might be lying. A kindness to ease guilt and pain. She wiped at a tear. She’d had twenty-four ho
urs to prepare for news of Ainsley’s death, but such news would always hit hard. Could it really be just a freak accident, though? The timing didn’t make sense.

  “Wait. The townhouse was dark when we saw it before the fire started. The kitchen lights should have been on if she was cooking.”

  “But the kitchen is in the back of the middle floor. You might not have seen lights from the front.”

  It was possible. The middle floor of the townhouse was something of a tunnel. There were no windows on the sides of the building, just front and back, and a swinging door separated the kitchen from the small dining room nestled between the kitchen and living room. With the door closed, little light would slip through—and smoke would stay trapped in the kitchen.

  “But…how could Ainsley be in the townhouse making latkes when the NSA had seized it?”

  “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. We went several rounds with NSA and your supervisors at the Navy Yard before we found someone who would go on record. It appears the NSA never received any orders from the military to search the townhouse. It was never scheduled to be seized or locked down as far as we can confirm. And your supervisor at the Navy Yard says he was informed you were to be terminated, but he didn’t order it and he doesn’t know who did.”

  “So…who fired me?”

  “Given that we’re dealing with national security issues, I can’t say for certain, because it’s possible people in the know just won’t talk to me, but as far as I can tell, your contract with the US military was never terminated. At least, not by them.”

  11

  Leah felt numb. She’d assumed someone in Hathaway-Hollis had pressured the military, but it was possible the military hadn’t fired her at all? The townhouse hadn’t been seized? The car and phone had essentially been stolen from her?

  She’d been lied to. Betrayed. By the company she helped build. How many long nights and weekends had she worked on the Peacemaker project?

  And why had they done it? For money? So they wouldn’t have to honor her stock options when the IPO rolled out someday?

  Considering she was the technical brains, how well did they expect that IPO to do when word got out they’d fired her without cause?

  And she could sue them for this. All she needed was someone in the military to go on record to confirm they hadn’t fired her. She closed her eyes and could picture the two MPs. Could she question them? Ask them who delivered the order to escort her from the premises?

  And who had they turned over those car keys to? She jolted upright and scanned the room for the FedEx box, spotting it on the bench by the door, where she’d set it Sunday night. She’d placed the Mt. Vernon ticket in the box after fleeing the townhouse fire.

  “Why is that important?” Nate asked.

  “When I saw the MPs, I panicked. The beta test was incomplete, and someone who knew what they were doing could corrupt it. So I buried the code in the system, then deleted my files from the main directory.”

  “Buried your code. You mean it’s not gone?”

  “No. Not with this.”

  “I don’t understand. That’s for Mt. Vernon.”

  She pointed to the extra QR code. “This is the file path for where the code is buried.”

  He gave her what she’d come to think of as a hawkish grin. “Nice.”

  “Thank you. Frankly, I just couldn’t bear to garbage my work. And I needed backup in case I was way off base on why the two MPs were there.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “No. Except…they were. I was never fired. But they collected my keys and cell phone, which means someone needed to claim them. It would draw attention if my personal belongings remained unclaimed because I’d never really been fired. Also worth noting, one of the things I had to leave behind was the schematic for the system I’d been building. Whoever takes over the project for the Navy would want that notebook. That would probably be Dex, given that the HH contract isn’t canceled.”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I will, but first I’d like to go to the Navy Yard and speak to the MPs. They’ll have a log of who they gave my phone and keys to. I’m going to need evidence to show Michelle Hollis to prove Dex and Tim sabotaged me and, by extension, HH.”

  “Sounds like a good starting point.”

  They were on the road heading back to the DC area within thirty minutes. Nate drove while Leah made calls. She put the phone on speaker so he could hear both sides of the conversations.

  First, she called Michelle Hollis. “Michelle, it’s Leah. It appears the military never fired me, so I just wanted to give you the heads-up that I’ve contacted an attorney. My car, phone, and residence were seized without cause. I was terminated without cause. HH is going to pay.”

  “You would do this to us right now, after what happened to Ainsley?” Hollis said.

  “I’m broken up about Ainsley. But that doesn’t change what HH did. It only raises more questions. Like how is it that she was in the townhouse after I’d been told no one could enter it until after the NSA searched it? Tim said it would be days before I could claim my things.”

  “I don’t know anything about what Tim said.”

  “How embarrassing, considering your name is also on the company. He was speaking for you.”

  “I didn’t find out that you’d been fired until after it happened. I took three damn hours off for the first time in months so I could go Christmas shopping for my kids.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that the military didn’t fire me, Tim Hathaway did. Or why Ainsley was in a supposedly locked-down apartment.”

  “She probably didn’t know you’d been fired either. She was in DC, dealing with vendors for the Nationals Park event. She told me it was your first Hanukkah without your mother, and she wanted to surprise you.”

  Leah sucked in a sharp breath and pressed her hand to her heart. Nate put a hand on her leg but kept his eyes on the road.

  “Why was I fired, Michelle? And don’t give me some bullshit line about missing a deadline.”

  “Why do you think I’d say anything when you’ve already told me you plan to sue?”

  The muscle under Nate’s hand stiffened, but Leah’s voice was calm. “You don’t even know, do you?”

  There was a long silence, then Hollis said, “I was told the Navy was unhappy the beta test was behind schedule.”

  “I was behind because I had to fix Peacemaker.”

  “Peacemaker wouldn’t have needed fixing if you hadn’t screwed it up.”

  Leah’s hand dropped on top of Nate’s, sandwiching him between her thigh and palm. He turned his hand over and intertwined their fingers.

  “This is all bullshit, Michelle, and you know it. The Navy never fired me. And I didn’t screw up Peacemaker.”

  “There was nothing I could do. You were fired before I knew about it.”

  “Yet you didn’t try to contact me after it was a done deal.”

  “I didn’t know how to reach you. And you didn’t call me either.”

  “I shouldn’t have had to reach out to you. I was the one who’d been screwed. At least Dex had the brains to use my web email to try to find me.”

  Nate knew Leah was fishing with that line.

  “Dex emailed you?”

  “What did it take to get you to agree? Or was this all Tim?”

  “I would never betray you like that,” Hollis said. “I know Peacemaker would have been garbage without you.”

  Nate returned his hand to the steering wheel and smiled. He’d known Leah was good, but was still impressed with how she’d gotten the company cofounder to join her side.

  “Dex was always angry he wasn’t named top engineer,” Leah said.

  “Dex is blinded by belief in his own greatness.”

  “Yet, he’s the head of my department now, isn’t he? Crazy that it happened as Peacemaker launches. He’ll get all the credit.”

  “That’s not what this is about, Leah.”
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  “Isn’t it, though? Tomorrow, when two million drones fly in perfect synchronicity, you’re really going to say to the world, ‘This is all thanks to the work of Leah Ellis, who was fired by HH on Sunday, and oh, by the way, we’re going to roll out that IPO soon, too bad we got rid of our lead engineer’?”

  The line went silent.

  Leah pushed. “We both know when Dex steps forward to take a bow, you’ll clap along with the rest of them.”

  “I’ve given my life to this company.”

  “So have I. The only difference between you and me, is you can’t be fired. Think about that, and how much you can trust Tim and Dex. They’d stab you in the back too, if they could.”

  Again, Michelle Hollis said nothing.

  “I have one last question for you,” Leah said. “What time was it when HH was supposedly informed I was being fired?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Humor me.”

  A heavy sigh sounded from the phone. “The message I got from Tim was left around noon. Tim said he’d just received a call from Captain Sullivan with the news that you were being terminated for failing to meet Friday’s beta test deadline.”

  Nate shifted his gaze from the road for a brief glance at Leah. “I got the call from my brother at eight a.m. He gave me your last name, the time, and the place. He specifically said HH—and not the military—was the client.”

  Leah directed her voice at the cell phone. “Nate was hired to pick me up after being canned. He knew at eight Sunday morning. Supposedly before Tim knew. Before you knew. And from what the police told me, before Captain Sullivan knew.”

  12

  Thirty minutes from the city, Leah’s cell phone rang. She looked at the screen. “Detective Brown’s number.”

  “Better answer it,” Nate said.

  “Detective Brown, I have you on speaker,” she said.

  “Good. We have a new development in the investigation into Ms. Weisz’s death. Can you meet us at your townhouse?”