An Aria for Nick (Christian Romantic Suspense) (Song of Suspense)

by Bridgeman, Hallee

  It was Henry, and they talked for an hour. Aria yawned into her hand as they hung up. Checking the time, she made a mental note to try give Carol a call the next day when it was not so late on the east coast.

  ¯¯¯¯

  ARIA heard the alarm going off, but buried her head under the pillow, ignoring it. She hated waking up, especially on a day like today when she planned to pilfer top secret classified information from her office.

  Finally, unable to take the constant buzzing, she sat up and reached over to turn the alarm off, forcing herself to stay in the sitting position. Why they were having the weekly staff meeting at nine o'clock instead of the regular two o'clock was a mystery to her.

  She went to the kitchen and turned on the coffeepot, then pulled on a pair of shorts and a tank top. With the change in the meeting time, she would only be able to run two miles that morning, a fact which only served to worsen her mood. It was her normal day for five miles.

  Her annoyance with the disruption of her schedule and her anxiety over what she planned to do that day, spurred her to run faster than normal. Within fifteen minutes, she arrived back at her house.

  She showered and ignored the brewed coffee, deciding to have a cup of Irish breakfast tea instead. The idea of eating made her stomach turn so she went ahead and prepped for the day. Nervous butterflies in her stomach made her hands unsteady as she packed her purse. She kept going over the step-by-step motions she would need to go through to successfully sneak technology into a highly secure government contractor facility then smuggle information out.

  She packed her lunch, careful to keep everything the same as she always did. Tuna salad, ice pack, whole wheat crackers, apple, yogurt, coffee in her coffee mug. Would they search her? When was the last time they searched her? A month, maybe longer? If they searched her, would they find it?

  The drive to work felt interminable, traffic a little heavier and her fellow drivers more intense than usual. All the while she prayed, whispering prayers of helplessness to God, knowing she couldn't do this alone.

  At a stop light, with her windshield wipers swiping off the morning drizzle in a regular staggered pattern, she put her forehead on the steering wheel and closed her eyes. Why did they need proof first? Why couldn't they just call her into some cushy little FBI field office and interview her?

  If she'd never held her hand up to Raymond Williams, he never would have had the opportunity to snap her wrist. She often had dreams of him just punching her in the face instead. She would have sported a black eye like a badge of courage and still gotten to play on the stage at the London Symphony in a sequined gown and a stunning pair of red soled Jimmy Choo high heels.

  The tooting honk of the car behind her brought her back to reality. Reality reminded her of the imminent danger government leaders of these United States faced if she didn't follow through. Pulling her mind back in, regaining the focus she needed to get through the day, she smiled at Benson as she pulled up to the gate and spent her normal few seconds chitchatting with him as he inspected her ID card. She wondered if her smile looked as fake to him as it felt to her.

  After she parked her car, she grabbed her purse and her ceramic travel coffee mug — that contained no metal specifically so that it wouldn't set off the metal detectors. She retrieved her lunch box from the back seat, then locked her doors and rushed to the security line.

  The eight-thirty crowd was way larger than the nine-thirty crowd. Aria checked the time often, watching the minutes tick by. She finally got up to where she could put her bags on the belt of the X-ray machine.

  "You're in early this morning, Dr. Suarez," Dave observed as he took her badge.

  "Rescheduled staff meeting. Big east coast suit on the VTC, apparently." The guards would know if anyone was due to arrive in person but had no knowledge of who joined the video teleconferences. She looked at her watch and waited for her turn to step through the metal detector. "I am in so much trouble if I'm late."

  The guard on the other side of the scanner waved her forward. She rushed through and a red light started flashing as an alarm rang. Aria felt her face fuse with color and turned as Dave approached. Aria set her coffee cup next to her purse then put her hands on her thighs and patted. From her pocket, she retrieved her car keys and did her best to look embarrassed, not terrified. "Dave, I'm so sorry. I forgot to put them in my purse."

  "Not a problem, Doc. Just go on back through, please." He held a hand politely toward the metal detector. Clearly it wasn't a request. Ignoring her steaming hot coffee cup, Dave placed her keys into a small tray and ran them through the X-ray machine while Aria rushed back around the metal detector, then walked through it again, this time to a green "all clear" light.

  "All set, Doc," he said, smiling and nodding before his attention went to the next person in line.

  Snatching up her purse, lunch box, and her coffee cup, she waved at him. "Thanks, Dave! I'm so sorry!"

  She left her lunch box at the guard's station in the lobby of the administration building, and after going through all the procedures and check-ins, she arrived to the meeting five minutes late. She sat in the back of the conference room and offered little input.

  All of the details of her plan's execution this afternoon kept swimming in her head. She must have glanced at her watch three times during the hour, and caught her director, Tom Curtis, watching her with a frown on his face. She decided she should probably pay a little more attention to the meeting, and turned to watch the speaker.

  As soon as the meeting ended, she retrieved her coffee cup from which she had not taken so much as a sip, then grabbed the stack of papers in front of her and left, not stopping to speak with anyone. When she got back to her office she shut the door. It wasn't uncommon for Aria to work on a difficult project, and when she shut her door, Julie knew she was off limits unless a family member called. Aria typically didn't like to have her concentration interrupted.

  This morning she took a roll of paper towels out of her credenza. She unrolled several and created a little pallet on her desk then opened the lid to her coffee cup and reached inside the now cooled liquid and pulled out a small disposable cell phone that had been wrapped in three layers of plastic baggies and jammed into her coffee.

  She'd already turned off the wireless card on the phone. If it tried to access any kind of wireless network or send any kind of signal out, it would have been detected instantly and automated geolocation protocols would have led to her discovery. She didn't need it to be a phone. All Aria needed was the camera and the scanner application she'd written and installed on it.

  She went to her filing cabinet and pulled out a file she'd started two months earlier. She whispered a quick prayer and started scanning documents. About halfway through the first page she realized that if she were going to back out, if she were not going to commit a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in a federal penitentiary, she could stop what she was doing right now. The thought of so blatantly breaking the law gave her some pause and she felt her heart race for the hundredth time that day.

  She took a deep breath, said a somewhat longer prayer, and then got back to work. It was tedious scanning one page at a time, but she had absolutely no other way to do it. No machine in the facility had a plug for any kind of external or backup drive. She could hack one of the boxes and possibly hand-wire a drive, but she didn't know how fast she could do that and the threat of discovery was much greater than doing it this way. Instead, she tediously scanned a single page at a time.

  When she'd copied the entire file, she shredded two pages, put the others back in the folder, and jammed it back into her filing cabinet. She would shred two pages at a time until she had rid herself of the printouts so as not to draw any attention to the amount of waste in her shredder.

  Turning to her computer station, she accessed a list of files she'd made the day before and opened them up, one at a time, on the three computer screens at her desk. Using the video capabilities of the phone, she shot a v
ideo and as quietly as possible, gave brief explanations of what she recorded.

  It took her about three hours to fill the phone's memory with all of the information she needed. When she finished, she removed the micro-SD card from the phone. She opened her wallet and took out the fake quarter, slid it open, and placed the micro card inside the compartment and closed the quarter. It now looked and felt like a real coin.

  Her tasks complete, she wrapped the phone back into one of the plastic bags and set it on the ground next to the leg of her heavy desk. She lifted the desk and let it fall onto the phone. She repeated this five times, moving the phone a few inches with her toe each time, cracking the case and mother board pretty thoroughly. Once it looked entirely crushed under the force of the impact, she retrieved it and divided the pieces into the three plastic bags, wrapped them up in crumpled paper, and put them in the pocket of her lab coat. After grabbing her keys out of her top desk drawer, she unlocked a drawer in her credenza, grabbed her lab security badges, and left her office.

  Julie was at the table in the outer office sorting printed documents. "I'm going to run to the lab if anybody needs me, Julie. But I'm not expecting any calls."

  "No problem, Dr. Suarez. I'll be here until at least four." She rubbed her pregnant stomach. "God willing."

  "Yes, please. I need at least another week out of you," she teased, then left her office.

  She tossed one of the packets with the pieces of the phone into the garbage can of the break room of her building, which was overflowing with breakfast and lunch refuse. She left the building and walked along the sidewalk toward the laboratory, stopping at a smoking area where three benches surrounded a combination ashtray and garbage can. She deposited another baggie there.

  Outside the lab building, she threw away the last piece as nonchalantly as possible. When she entered the lab, she smiled at the guard, showed him her credentials, then went to her section of the building.

  ¯¯¯¯

  Chapter 8

  ARIA slept until ten Saturday morning. She was relatively free to set her own schedule during the work week, but between morning meetings and the regular jogging schedule she'd set for herself, she still had to get up earlier than she liked every weekday morning. On Saturdays, she never made any plans before noon.

  Once she was up and functioning, she decided to tackle cleaning her home. Her schedule was usually so busy during the week that she tended to ignore the clutter. It took a few hours. When she finished, she sat down on her couch — guilt free — with an organic root beer and her laptop, all set to work on her article for the rest of the day.

  An hour later, the telephone startled her out of her essay on jet propulsion analytics using an unconventional power source in a vacuum, and she absently answered. "Hello?"

  "Aria, it's Peter. I unexpectedly have Becky for the weekend and wondered if you were interested in pizza and a movie." Becky was Peter's fifteen year old daughter. While Peter constantly bragged about his daughter, he never spoke of his ex-wife. Never. Aria wasn't even sure of the woman's name.

  Aria bit her lip. She had no desire to spend any more time with him ever again. Except that she knew she had to keep acting as if everything were normal until she heard back from the FBI. "That sounds good. I'm working, but I can spare a few hours, I guess. What time do I need to be ready?" she asked.

  "We'll pick you up about … six, maybe? The movie starts at eight fifteen, so we'll have time to enjoy our meal. She wants to go back to that one place, you know," Peter explained.

  "Yeah. Great cheese bread. Okay. I'll be ready. Thanks for calling, Peter." Aria hung up. She still had a few hours, but try as she might, she found she couldn't refocus on her article. Instead, she went to her piano and slid onto the bench.

  Not bothering with sheet music, she just played from her heart, her hands and fingers slowly moving across the keys. What poured out was a melodramatic, haunting melody that ended up making the hairs on the backs of her arms stand up. Determined to change the mood all around her, she played a couple of quick show tunes, an old kids' nursery rhyme, and a worship song.

  Restless, she grabbed her keys and wallet and left the house, stopping to lock the door behind her. She lived within walking distance of the Willamette River and an eclectic collection of tourist shops and seafood restaurants. The sun was warm, but the breeze blew wintery cold, so she was glad she'd worn a hoodie sweatshirt and a pair of jeans.

  She walked down to the dock that served as the front walkway for the Willamette Fresh Catch Restaurant. Arriving after lunch but before dinner made for a light crowd on a spring Saturday afternoon, and Aria opened the wooden door to the familiar sound of the bell jingling announcing her arrival. As her eyes adjusted to the interior, she heard her name on a squeal. "Aria!"

  With a grin, she hugged the apron clad waitress. "Hello, Steph. How's the day going?"

  "Busiest lunch in months," Stephanie said, stepping back and gesturing at the very casual environment. "We're going to end up needing extra help over the summer if business keeps growing."

  "You and Brandon deserve it." She followed Stephanie Laramore into the back of the room near the kitchen door where she had set up one of the tables as a work station to roll silverware into cloth napkins. Steph sat down and Aria sat across from her.

  The door to the kitchen opened and a man with a shock of red hair and a red goatee stuck his head out. "Steph, I'm calling the produce guy. Can you think of anything you need to add to your list?" He looked from his wife to Aria and smiled, then came fully into the dining room. "Aria, hi there."

  She returned his smile. "Hi, Brandon." She and Brandon met on the dock one day right after she moved to Portland. He'd flirted with her from the deck of his fishing boat while she leaned against the railing of the pier. They'd dated for months, and for about six weeks, they were engaged.

  Once Aria started to launch into wedding plans, though, she felt more and more uneasy. It occurred to her one Saturday evening, sitting with him on deck chairs on his boat, that as much as she liked him and respected him and enjoyed his company, she didn't love him. When she told him that, he later admitted he'd felt relieved.

  They stayed friends though, and a few weeks later, he met Stephanie. Aria couldn't believe how beautiful the two of them were together, and in no time they were married.

  "What exciting plans do you have scheduled for today?" Brandon asked, grabbing a chair from another table and straddling it as he placed it next to Steph. He wore a white apron over his T-shirt and jeans and had a kitchen towel slung over his shoulder.

  "I'm writing an article on jet propulsion analytics in a vacuum." She grabbed a fork and butter knife and tightly rolled them into a napkin.

  "You rocket scientists and your need to get wild," Brandon observed.

  "You know us; party, party, party." She tossed the flatware roll into the plastic bin and grabbed another set. "I guess I'm going with Peter to see a movie later."

  Brandon frowned, looking skeptical. "You still seeing that guy?"

  Aria shrugged. "I don't see it lasting much longer. He still won't go to church with me."

  Steph rolled two sets of silverware to Aria's one. "I think you're hanging on for the kid," she said with a smile.

  "I don't think so. She knows her dad uses me for a buffer, so she resents it a little bit." Aria longed to tell them what was going on, but she couldn't. Maybe one day.

  "Want some coffee?" Brandon offered. "It's pretty fresh."

  Aria tossed another wrapped silverware packet on the pile and stood. "No thanks, Brandon. I need to get back to my article. I just stepped out to clear my head."

  Steph grinned. "Have fun on your hot date tonight."

  Aria laughed. "You know I will." She lifted a hand in a wave. "I'll see you tomorrow at church."

  "Bye, friend," Steph said, then turned to her husband. "Do you have the produce list? I'll look at it and make sure I didn't forget anything."

  Aria walked through the restaurant,
smiling. When she stepped back outside into the warm sun, she contemplated just strolling down the street and enjoying the Saturday afternoon. Except that her article beckoned and the deadline loomed, so she turned back toward home.

  ¯¯¯¯

  THE next morning, Aria dressed for the weather and walked to church in the rain. She wore pants, brown leather boots that had been waterproofed, and a rain jacket over a cream colored sweater. Instead of an umbrella, she tucked up her blonde hair and threw on a rain hat.

  She enjoyed her small groups class. She was in a group with eleven other single, professional women. One of the things she loved about the class was that they all had that in common. It made the issues that faced them in both the Christian and professional worlds much easier to bear.

  They often got together for dinners or weekend lunches, and spent a good part of the morning planning the next gathering. All Aria could think about was the information she'd stolen from an intensely secure facility and the empty e-mail box this morning.

  After small groups, she played the piano for the large worship service. This time spent playing with the other members of the musical ensemble was easily one of her favorite parts of the week. It thrilled her to have the talent and skill to make music for God that proclaimed her love and worship of Him.

  She and a few friends from church typically spent the afternoon together after services, but today she begged off. Instead, she walked home and changed into running clothes.

  After two months of suspecting, watching, essentially spying, she wanted it over. She wanted to hand everything over to some government spook in a black tie and cheap shoes and let him handle it from there. The idea that someone that she once trusted, someone she liked and admired, would use what she created with the intent of harming thousands and thousands of people just crushed a little part of her soul and she no longer wanted it to be a part of her life.