Formula for Danger (Love Inspired Suspense)

by Camy Tang

  Yet despite all that, she couldn’t shake the feeling of menace that emanated from Gloria in subtle hints here and there, in a word, in a tone, in the corner of her smiles.

  “When I saw PDD a few months later,” Gloria continued, “they mentioned you hadn’t reordered more, so I assumed the project had been canceled or something like that.” Gloria shrugged daintily. “C’est la vie.”

  Ms. Reynolds’s gaze narrowed sharply. “Did you come all this way to ask me about it? Am I under suspicion for something again?”

  The way she said it made Rachel want to sink in her chair. Naomi had suspected Gloria of the murders last year, and now this year, Rachel had showed up and accused her of…what? Knowing about an abandoned project? What was Rachel doing?

  But Gloria wasn’t done. “I must protest. The Joy Luck Life spa has been incredibly suspicious and rude to a longtime patron. Well, no more.” Gloria rose to her feet, all stately indignation. “I will no longer grace your spa with my patronage.”

  Rachel rose, also, but her legs shook, and the room began to spin.

  Gloria’s voice rose. “And you can be sure I will tell all of my acquaintances how abominably I’ve been treated.”

  The panic rose in Rachel’s chest. What had she done? Naomi would kill her. Her father would be livid.

  “You may leave now, Dr. Grant.” Gloria stared down her nose at Rachel, and her eyes seemed to be filled with hate.

  Edward’s hand at her elbow kept her from drowning in that awful gaze. “Let’s go, Rachel.”

  She stumbled out of the house with him. “I feel so stupid.”

  “No, don’t be.”

  “But it was such a simple explanation…”

  Edward paused, looking back at the grand facade to the house. “There’s something not right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something about what she said.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I should have realized that since her husband is in the diamond business, of course she’d speak to other suppliers and stores, of course she might chat with PDD and hear about my diamond-dust order. And the chatty sales rep I talked to mentioned how she couldn’t imagine using the dust for anything except cleanser. I didn’t say anything to deny or refute it, but really, what else could a dermatologist use it for?”

  Edward tucked her into the passenger seat of his truck. “No, you’re right, that all seemed logical when she said it, but…”

  “But?”

  He gripped her hand. “I don’t trust her, Rach. Despite everything, I think she’s hiding something.”

  Rachel tried to pray, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  More, her faith wasn’t in it.

  She stared at her Bible, open on her desk. Sure, she’d had troubles before—like the fiasco with Avignon spa—but she’d always been able to just work harder, come up with more ideas, spend more time at the lab, push herself more.

  She had never before felt as if God had it in for her.

  No, wasn’t that being overly dramatic? After all, the data stolen was two years old, and Naomi had laughed off Gloria’s pronouncement of not coming to the spa again with the remark that Gloria had made that pronouncement dozens of times before, usually in response to some scheduling mistake or miscommunication, and more recently after Naomi had visited her last year to question her about the two murders that had happened at the spa. Yet Gloria always came back after a few days. There was also the fact that Gloria’s very expensive Tamarind membership fee, which allowed her use of the exclusive Tamarind lounge and special services at the spa, was already paid up for the year, and despite her wealth, Gloria’s actions were often excessively miserly.

  But the sabotaged plants, Steve Schmidt’s deceit, her ransacked bedroom… Once again, the feeling of being overwhelmed sank upon her mind.

  Why were all these things happening? Why was God allowing all these things to happen?

  She was a good Christian girl. She went to church every week—well, unless she had an experiment. She didn’t read her Bible as often as she should, but she tried to read it at least once a week.

  Unlike Aunt Becca, Rachel had never felt as if God were present in a room with her—although as a child she had pictured Jesus a bit like an invisible best friend—but now, she felt horribly alone. Abandoned. God was not there for her.

  And now, she wondered if He ever had been.

  No, she couldn’t think like that. After years of being a Christian, was she going to throw it all away because of hardships worse than normal? She had never given up so easily on her work—why would she do so with her faith?

  She gave up trying to pray, and picked up her Bible. Over the past year, she’d been going through the entire Bible and was finally in Revelation.

  But the words swam in front of her eyes with chemical formulas. What exactly had been stolen? She should do an exhaustive search to figure it out.

  After she read her Bible.

  But the worry kept intruding, and her reading was more like just going through the motions. Finally, she closed her Bible. The passage was one that didn’t make sense to her anyway—something about lukewarm water and God spitting it out of His mouth.

  First, she got on her computer and checked her research calendar to see what projects had been at the forefront at the time of the computer hack. Yep, it was all there—on the day of the hack, she had scheduled herself for one more “vehicle” experiment, or one more shot at perfecting the properties of the cleanser paste itself so that it would soften the harsher effects of the diamond dust added to it.

  At the time, she’d suspected the diamond-dust cleanser would be a bust, so she’d also been looking into other potential research ideas. She had scheduled action items like a phone call with another researcher—there had been brief talks about a collaboration for a wrinkle cream that never panned out—and also a note to read up on a few saved articles about hand creams.

  Rachel searched the weeks before, but she hadn’t specifically scheduled anything to do with the scar-reduction cream. She hadn’t begun working on that project until several months after Steve Schmidt had been fired.

  She frowned as she stared at her calendar. She could have sworn she started working on the scar-reduction cream sooner than that.

  She did a search for Ocimum Redemptiorum, the basil species name, but only came up with all her experiment reports and protocols, and none of them dated before the blue-coded dates on her calendar, which were after the date of the hack.

  But she knew she had some preliminary notes on the project before she actually drew up protocols and started experiments. She opened a master document with her notations on the scar-reduction cream, but none were dated. When did she make these? How to search her computer for the dates?

  She called Jane. “Hi, it’s Rachel.”

  “Everything okay with your computer?”

  “Yes…well, I’m at a loss.”

  “What do you need?”

  “How can I figure out exactly when I made certain notes in my files?”

  “You mean, you have the current versions, but you want to know what was in the older versions of the file when your computer was hacked.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. Just search through your backup drive.”

  She had a backup drive?

  It sounded as if Jane stifled a giggle. “You forgot about it, didn’t you?”

  “Did you tell me about it?”

  “Of course I did. I told you at the same time I explained the security firewall I installed for your system when I set it all up.”

  “Oh, but that was years ago—”

  “And I tell you again every quarter when I upgrade your security system.”

  Busted. “Tell me again?”

  Jane walked her through how to access her external backup drive, which she discovered was the cute little box sitting under her desk, nestled inconspicuously in all the wires running to and fro.

  “You
should see a list of folders on your computer screen,” Jane said.

  “But these aren’t old, some of these are new folders.”

  “If you go to the top right, there should be a scroll bar.”

  “Okay.”

  “Click on the bar and pick a date.”

  She did, and some folders disappeared. “What happened?”

  “What’s in the window should be the old versions of everything that was on your computer on that date.”

  “Oh, okay. But the notes on the basil plant could be in one of several files. Do I have to just open them all and search through them?”

  “No, there’s an easier way. You can input the basil plant name in the data field in the top right corner of the window. Do you see it?”

  “Yes.” She typed in the basil name.

  “Now click the search button, and it will find that name only among the files from that backup date.”

  Oh, that was convenient. She got a window that said, “No results.” Suddenly, it was as if a woolly lining had been cleared from her lungs, and she could breathe easier. “Hooray! Jane, it says ‘no results.’”

  “Great, that means you didn’t write any notes about the basil plant on that day.”

  “Do I have to search through each backup date to find when I first took notes on the basil?”

  “No, there’s a special search function I set up.” Jane gave a series of instructions and Rachel inputted her basil-plant search term.

  “What does the window say?”

  “It gives me a listing of folders.”

  “At the top of the window is a date column. Click that to list the folders by date.”

  She did. “The oldest date is a few weeks after Steve left.” But the date was also a few months earlier than when the item showed up blue-coded on her calendar, so this was a more accurate record of when she started working on it.

  “When does this backup occur?”

  “Every evening at eleven. So the folder for the day of the hack will include exactly the files he stole, unless you added more to the notes after you discovered Steve in the lab that night.”

  “No, I fired him that night and watched him clean out his desk, then I went back home.”

  “Okay, well, you’re set then?”

  “Yes, thanks, Jane.” Rachel disconnected the call.

  She opened the oldest file that referenced the basil plant and read her notes.

  Ocimum Redemptiorum: Sickly growth. Find expert in growing tropical plants for advice. Must also arrange for possible mass production.

  Preliminary formulation notes…

  Wait a minute. These phrases seemed to indicate this wasn’t the first time she was taking notes on this plant. Rachel went back to the window and clicked the date column again, but this file came up as the oldest one.

  She redid the search with the basil name, but came up with the same results.

  An ache like heartburn started in her chest, and she rubbed it. She must have begun work on the plant before this date. But when? And why couldn’t she find it when searching for the basil name?

  Wait, she had gotten the basil seeds from Aunt Becca’s friend, Ellen, who had been a missionary in Malaysia for several years. Ellen had noticed villagers rubbing the basil leaves on scars and had witnessed its ability to reduce them, and so she had contacted Aunt Becca and Rachel, sending the seeds for her to grow and eventually experiment on.

  Rachel searched for Ellen’s name, but all that came up were some old e-mails she had saved when the missionary had first contacted her. The basil plant name wasn’t even mentioned. The e-mails, however, were dated before Steve was fired. Had she begun to experiment on the plant and develop the formula when he’d been fired, or had she only been growing the basil?

  Rachel searched for Malaysia and found some notes she’d taken when she’d had several phone calls with Ellen later to discuss the plant, but Rachel hadn’t recorded the calls, only taken notes. The calls took place before Steve was fired, but the notes didn’t seem to indicate she had started formulation yet. However, they also didn’t give her a clue as to when she did start formulation—whether before or after the computer hack.

  She did a few more searches using fragments of the chemical formula as search terms, but came up with absolutely nothing. Apparently there were limitations to Jane’s search engine.

  When had she started formulation? Had Steve been able to steal the basil formula?

  She sat back in her chair. All this still didn’t make sense. Even if Steve had stolen the formula, why did they steal the basil plants from the greenhouse?

  Or maybe Edward was mistaken, and there weren’t any plants missing after all….

  A sharp metallic rattle cut through the quiet of the lab.

  Rachel twisted in her chair, her heart knocking around in her chest as she stared out her open office door at the darkened lab.

  The sound had come from the locked doors to the lab area. Someone had shaken the push bar on the outside to try to open the heavy door, but the steel double bolts hadn’t been disengaged—that only happened when someone swiped a card key and inputted a numeric code on the touch pad.

  Rachel stood up slowly. Maybe she’d been imagining things. She crept softly out of her office and approached the double doors. There was a narrow vertical crack of light between them from the outside hallway.

  A shadow cut the beam.

  She clapped a hand to her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

  Scrabbling sounded outside in the hallway, as if someone were wrestling with the card-key-code pad on the wall. Again, someone loudly jammed against the door. Rachel jumped. Thankfully, the door held.

  It better—her father had spared no expense to guard the laboratory area at the rear of the spa building.

  Rachel hurried back to her office. Maybe she was blowing this out of proportion. Maybe it was just one of the security guards. They made walk-throughs of the building every few hours, and that included the lab area. In fact, that had been how they’d caught Steve Schmidt in the lab with his girlfriend that night.

  She dialed the security guards’ desk. The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

  No one picked up.

  There were two guards these days—implemented after the murders at the spa the year before. One of them should have picked up.

  She tried again. Whoever was outside the lab jammed against the door once more, making her drop the phone. She fumbled to pick it up, but it still rang. Neither of the guards answered her call.

  She hung up the phone, her hands trembling. If a guard was trying to get in he had card-key access to the lab. There was no reason he’d be locked out.

  If Rachel tried to run, there was only one door into the lab area. The only other exit was an emergency window exit, which when opened would activate an alarm and automatically call both the fire department and police department.

  Except the emergency exit was fifty yards from her office, at the very back of the lab.

  No, she should lock herself in her office, thankful for the newly installed dead bolt on the door. And call someone.

  She shut her office door as quietly as she could and turned off the lights, in hopes that whoever was out there didn’t realize she had arrived early at the spa to do some work. Edward hadn’t been happy to drive her so early, but he had already been awake—the drive had only cut into his morning coffee time.

  So she knew he would be awake. He could make it to the spa within a few minutes.

  Faster than any police cars.

  She punched in his number on her cell phone, and he picked up on the first ring. “Rachel?”

  “Edward, come quick!” she whispered just as the doors were jiggled again.

  “What’s that sound?” he asked sharply. “What’s wrong?” She heard his car keys clinking.

  “Someone’s trying to get in through the card-key doors to the lab. I can’t get hold of any of the guards.”

  “I’m on my—”
r />   His words were cut off by the unmistakable snap of the lab-door dead bolts being disengaged. Rachel shot off her chair and crouched in the corner of her office. “He’s inside,” she told Edward softly.

  What could she do? How long would the dead bolt last on her office door? She dimly heard Edward shouting into the phone, but it was hard to hear him because of the dull roar in her ears.

  “Rachel, stay put! I’m on—”

  “Dr. Grant?”

  Martin. The spa security guard’s voice filtered through her overwrought senses. She stood up slowly, still silent. What if he wasn’t alone? What if an intruder was forcing him at gunpoint?

  “Dr. Grant, are you okay?” A soft knocking on her office door. Martin’s voice didn’t sound strained or under duress.

  Heat radiated from her neck and cheeks. Had she been overreacting? She flicked on her office lights, unbolted the door and peeked out.

  Martin smiled at her. “Taking a nap? You need it.”

  She smiled weakly.

  “You shouldn’t be working late and then coming in so early, Dr. Grant.” He had the chiding voice of an uncle—and after working for the Grants for so many years, he often treated Naomi and Rachel like his own daughters.

  She cleared her throat, which had closed up tight while she’d been scared out of her mind. “I just tried calling the security desk, but no one answered.”

  “Andrew is clearing the lens on an outside camera. We noticed there was something splattered on the picture we saw in the video monitors.” Martin began walking through the darkened lab, doing a cursory sweep. “I had to do my walk-through, though, so I left the security desk.” He glanced at her. “Should I have stayed to watch the monitors? I figured since Andrew was outside…”

  “That’s fine, Martin.”

  He shook his head. “No, I probably should have stayed at the desk. Andrew can’t see on the other side of the building. I’ll go back now.” He headed toward the door, then paused. “Oh, and you should know that ever since that man tampered with the card-key pad, it’s been acting up. I had a hard time getting into the lab just now—had to run my card and input my code several times before it let me in.” He left the lab.