Formula for Danger (Love Inspired Suspense)

by Camy Tang

  “Dr. Grant? I found my cell phone. Thanks. Um…can I talk to you for just a second?”

  Her voice sounded edgy, wavering. Rachel sat still for a moment. No, she shouldn’t let her in.

  But Martin was with her. And Rachel’s computer was shut down—no one could pull any information off it until Jane got here, and that would be any moment now.

  She unlocked the door and opened it a crack, her heart racing. “I’m a bit busy, Stephanie.” She saw Martin’s form a few feet behind the research assistant, watchful but trying not to be intrusive.

  The girl bit her lip, her eyes darting up to Rachel’s face, then down to the cell phone in her hand. Her other hand fingered the smooth fabric of her jacket.

  The nervous gestures caused alarm bells clanging through Rachel’s head. She placed a hand against the door to slam it shut, but Stephanie blurted out, “I got another job offer.”

  It seemed that getting out the words released her pent-up energy. Stephanie’s face smoothed, and excitement glimmered in her eyes and her smile.

  “Another job?”

  “It was such a fluke, Dr. Grant. My old research supervisor has been working for her brother’s biotech start-up company for a few years, and they just got another round of funding, so she got the go-ahead to hire more people, and she wants to pull me into the company while it’s still taking off, and it’s in San Francisco and it starts in two weeks and it’s doing all the biochemistry stuff I love doing and…” Stephanie’s face fell a little. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Grant. I know it’s a pain to have to hire someone else so close to your product launch.”

  “No, I’m very happy for you, Stephanie.” And she was—happy that her suspicions about Stephanie were obviously unfounded. She’d find another research associate—she didn’t want to think about that now. There were too many other things to worry about.

  Stephanie smiled and heaved a sigh. “I was so nervous about telling you,” she confessed. “I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch like this, but it’s a great opportunity.”

  “Of course you can’t pass this up,” Rachel said. “I wish you only the best.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Grant.” Stephanie held out her hand. “I appreciate it. It’s been great working for you.”

  Rachel shook the girl’s hand.

  Stephanie smiled and turned away, but she turned quickly in a wide circle as if going back into the lab area, bumping into Martin, who still stood a few feet behind her.

  An electric crackle sound shot through the air. Martin stiffened, his body jerking and his eyes wide, then fell to the floor.

  Rachel saw him go down, heard the sound, but couldn’t react fast enough. Her first impulse was to go to him, but she checked that and instead tried to slam her door closed.

  Stephanie threw herself at the office door.

  Rachel bucked against the sudden force, digging her heels into the smooth floor, but sliding backward.

  Stephanie slithered her slender form through the crack of the door and swung her hand toward Rachel’s face.

  Rachel turned aside, but not fast enough.

  A painful thud to the side of her head shattered her vision into a million stars. And then blackness

  TEN

  “Rachel? Rachel?”

  Jane’s voice jolted Rachel awake, sending a current of pain sizzling through her brain. She screwed her eyes shut, feeling the cold of the linoleum floor and pinpricks of dirt particles against her cheek.

  And metal. She smelled metal.

  She was smelling her own blood.

  “Andrew, come quick,” Jane was saying. She must be on her cell phone calling the other security guard.

  “Martin?” Rachel whispered. Where was Martin? Was he okay?

  “He’s fine. He’s just still weak.”

  She tried to raise her head, but the dizziness that attacked her made her stomach heave. No, she didn’t want to throw up on her office floor.

  The lab doors unlocked and opened, and footsteps hastened close. “Dr. Grant! Martin!” Andrew cried.

  “Did you call an ambulance?” Jane asked. “We need to get them to a hospital.”

  “I can get up,” Rachel croaked. She took a deep breath, then slowly pushed away from the floor, supported by Jane’s hands. The ground tilted, but she managed to sit upright, leaning against the open door, which lay flush against her office wall.

  Andrew was helping a shaky Martin also get up from the floor.

  “Martin, are you all right?” she asked him.

  “Dazed,” he mumbled. “Shaky. She hit me with a stun gun.”

  She had suspected as much.

  Rachel slowly glanced to the side. Her computer tower was completely gone, only a nest of wires remaining.

  Jane followed her gaze. “Don’t think about that now.”

  “It was Stephanie,” Rachel whispered.

  Martin nodded slowly, his mouth pulled in a regretful grimace. “I let my guard down, Dr. Grant. I’m sorry.”

  “You couldn’t have known.” Rachel closed her eyes briefly. “And after she told me about the job offer, I stopped suspecting her. I thought I was being paranoid.”

  “We’ll get you to the hospital and Detective Carter will get to the bottom of this,” Andrew said.

  “It’s too late…” Rachel closed her throat to the sob rising there. “Stephanie has the scar-cream formula. She has all my data.”

  “Not all your data,” Jane hastened to assure her. “The backup external drive is still there, and it looks fine. I’ll take a look after the police go through everything.”

  “I thought that since the computer was shut down, no one could get the formulation,” Rachel moaned. “It didn’t even occur to me that they would just take the computer.”

  “The hack was a distraction,” Jane said, her voice taut. “It made you shut down the computer, so she just swiped the tower. No need for her to know how to break into your computer’s security system.”

  “She called me before the hack happened, so I didn’t even connect it to her coming to the lab.” Plus she hadn’t expected Stephanie, rail thin, cute and girly, to take down two-hundred-fifty-pound Martin.

  Or herself, for that matter.

  “I’m calling your family.” Jane punched a number into her cell phone.

  “Edward. Call Edward.” Rachel wanted him with her. She needed to hear his voice. Everything was falling apart, but just being with him would make her world seem steadier.

  And she wanted him with her when she told her father.

  When the nurses finally let Edward, Alex and Jane into Rachel’s hospital room, Edward had been on the verge of forcing a doctor to let him see her.

  As he entered her room, he zeroed in on her face—strained and pale. Trouble lurked in her eyes as she looked at her father, who sat in his wheelchair near her bed.

  Then she turned her head, her eyes brimming with relief as she saw him.

  She didn’t see her father’s hand reaching out toward hers resting on the covers, as if to touch her or hold her. But upon seeing Edward, Alex and Jane, he drew back his hand.

  Edward almost regretted their entrance. “How are you feeling?” he asked her.

  She surprised him by grabbing his hand and squeezing. Her fingers were cold and he automatically rubbed them in his warm palm.

  “I’m fine,” she told him.

  “She has a concussion,” her sister Naomi said darkly from her seat in the corner. “That’s not fine.”

  Becca discreetly laid a hand on Naomi’s arm with a flickering glance at Augustus, and Naomi became more subdued.

  Augustus didn’t witness the exchange. He sat in his chair with a deep frown, but also anxious eyes that glanced at Rachel every few minutes—quick looks that she didn’t notice.

  “Where’s Monica?” Edward asked. He would have expected the youngest Grant daughter, a nurse, to be by her sister’s side.

  “She’s with Devon, consulting with Rachel’s doctor,” Naomi said.

&
nbsp; “Did Jane tell you what happened?” Rachel asked him.

  “Jane didn’t tell us what happened,” her father groused.

  Jane gave him a cheeky smile. “You weren’t stuck out in the waiting room for the past hour, Uncle Aggie.”

  “I told you everything, Dad,” Rachel objected.

  “You also had a knock to your head for most of it,” Becca retorted. “Go ahead, Jane.”

  Jane shrugged. “After Rachel told me someone had tried to hack into her computer remotely, I drove to the spa. I found Martin on the floor of the lab, weak and trying to wake Rachel, who was passed out on the floor of her office.”

  “How is Martin?” asked Rachel.

  “Fine,” Naomi said. “Blaming himself.”

  “So he should,” Augustus said with some heat. “He’s supposed to protect—”

  “Augustus,” Becca chided. “The girl had one of those zapper things. They’re supposed to be able to take down cows, you know.”

  “Aunt Becca, Martin is not a cow.”

  “Jane?” Augustus interrupted. “You were saying?”

  “I called Andrew, the other security guard, who notified the ambulance and the police.”

  “Horatio was here a few minutes ago talking to Rachel,” Becca said, “but he asked me to mention to you that he’d like to speak to Jane later.”

  Jane nodded. “I checked your computer, Rach, after the ambulance took you away and the police were done. Your external backup hard drive is fine and you still have all your data.”

  “Thank God,” Augustus said.

  Rachel darted a nervous glance at him.

  Edward frowned. How had Augustus taken the news about the stolen formulation?

  Rachel seemed to shrink into the white hospital bed. “I had just found out exactly what Steve stole from me,” she said softly.

  “Who’s Steve?” asked Alex.

  “Steve Schmidt, Rachel’s ex-research assistant, who hacked into her computer about two years ago,” said Jane. “Rach, I tried finding him, but no luck.”

  “Where did he live?” Alex asked.

  “San Francisco was his last known address.”

  Alex pulled at his bottom lip. “I might be able to help,” he said slowly.

  “Jane.” Detective Carter appeared in the doorway. “Oh, and Alex. I need to speak to both of you—Jane, I need your statement, and Alex, I wanted to ask about that case we discussed the other day. Unrelated to this one,” he assured them all.

  “I’ll be back,” Jane told Rachel.

  “Me, too.” Alex followed Jane and the detective out of the room.

  “Wait.” Augustus rolled his wheelchair after them. “Horatio, I want to know how the investigation is going….”

  Rachel watched him exit with pained eyes.

  Edward leaned in toward her. “How are you really doing?” He sent a silent blessing on Becca, who distracted Naomi with some bright chatter.

  Rachel’s mouth trembled, but she kept her composure. “He was so upset,” she whispered.

  Edward didn’t have to ask who she meant. “He seems worried about you.”

  Rachel’s face was a mix of shame, anger, depression. “When I told him about the computer being stolen, he looked like he wanted to blame me but couldn’t.”

  “Rach, I’m sure he didn’t.”

  “But it is my fault.” She swallowed. “Why did I let Stephanie into the lab? If I hadn’t let her in…”

  “You took the precaution of having Martin with her.”

  “I just…I should have done things differently. I feel sometimes like I can’t do anything right. Like I’m a big failure.”

  He wanted to shake her. “You’re not a failure.”

  “Dad said…” Then she stopped herself. “I know Dad’s not always right. In my head, I know that. But when things happen, I…” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I can’t stop myself from internalizing it all.”

  And a strong personality like Augustus Grant would compare Rachel’s softer nature to her sisters’ more vivacious ones and think Rachel was weak. “You’re becoming obsessed with your need to please your father.” The words shot out of his mouth before he could think of how to soften them, but he knew they needed to be said. He needed to get through to Rachel.

  Her wide hazel eyes showed that she was startled and a little hurt by his bluntness, but he wanted to help break her out of this cycle. “You said it yourself. Your self-esteem is caught up in whether you fail him or not.”

  “It’s not my self-esteem that—”

  “Then why is your father’s approval of you so important?”

  “It’s not.”

  “How would it make you feel if you knew for certain that your father thought you were incompetent?”

  She flinched as if she’d been staked in the heart.

  “You care more about what your father thinks of you than you do about how God thinks of you.” He knew his words were hard, and he had rarely spoken about faith with her. He had never told her how her faith could be so much more than it was.

  In that sense, he had failed her. He should have told her this before.

  She turned her eyes away from him. Maybe she was embarrassed that he had brought up the topic.

  “Rachel, you’re a scientist. You’re logical. Can’t you see that your fear of failure is illogical and irrational?”

  A light flickered in her gaze, then was gone again.

  “And that irrational fear drives you. It drives you at work so that you can try to please your father. But your heavenly Father already loves you.”

  She met his gaze then, her eyes burning. “You say that,” she said slowly. “But I don’t feel that. I don’t know that here.” She touched her chest. “It might be true, but, Edward, I don’t know it.”

  He caught her final words as the others started filing back into the hospital room.

  “Edward, God has to prove it to me.”

  ELEVEN

  Rachel tossed her Eppendorf pipette on the laboratory counter. What was the use? Her formula was gone. Someone else was using it, developing it, maybe even making it better.

  Joy Luck Life spa would come out with a scar-reduction cream, but someone else would come out with it, too, and again, the rumors would say Joy Luck Life had stolen or copied someone else. People would say that if there’s smoke, surely there’s fire—so Joy Luck Life must be guilty.

  The only way to prevent that would be if they came out with the product tomorrow. Or next week. And that wasn’t going to happen.

  She rubbed her temple, trying to dispel the throbbing there. After a couple days in the hospital and over a week of rest, she felt better, but was still occasionally plagued by headaches. She had a feeling they were from stress and not the concussion.

  Detective Carter said he had a lead on where Steve Schmidt was, although he didn’t tell her more than that. He was still looking for Stephanie and the man who had later tried to break into the lab and tried to steal the laptop.

  So far, no luck.

  And really, why was she surprised? Lately, she’d felt as if God had abandoned her. The way everything was working out, it certainly seemed that way.

  You care more about what your father thinks of you than you do about how God thinks of you.

  How did God think of her? It didn’t seem to her as if He loved her very much.

  Your heavenly Father already loves you.

  It seemed as if love was something she chased and never found. Not her father’s love, not God’s love.

  Not Edward’s love.

  During those months of working with Edward, she’d gotten to know him. The firm yet compassionate way he interacted with his brother, Alex, and the other people working at his greenhouses contrasted with how her father rigidly demanded quality performance from the spa personnel and his own daughters. Edward was phenomenal with the Malaysian basil—plants very difficult to grow—and yet he was so humble about his abilities, which only made him more attractive
to her. When they discussed her work, he made her feel so smart and confident. They had spent so many bright moments laughing together. He had gotten her sense of humor in a way her sisters and father never had.

  So she had opened herself up. She had been unguarded with him in a way she opened up only to her sisters. She had felt free to be herself.

  And then a couple of months ago he had withdrawn, as if he hadn’t liked what he’d seen. As if she wasn’t what he wanted.

  He had rejected her for being herself.

  Lately he seemed warmer toward her, but she couldn’t trust him again, not after he had rejected her. She was afraid to open herself up to him again. And as things progressed, she was starting to think that her viewpoint of who God was differed too much from Edward’s faith.

  Despite her family’s faith, despite the fact she had been baptized when she was a teenager, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to believe in God anymore.

  “God—” she spoke to the empty lab “—do You still care about me? It just doesn’t seem that way.”

  Silence. Really, had she expected Him to answer in a booming voice that shook the building?

  “Things have been awful, lately.” The accusation echoed off the flat walls. “Why are You letting these things happen?”

  Anger started to roll in like a fog. “It doesn’t seem like You’re there for me anymore.”

  Really, had she ever felt that God was “there for her”? She had heard the phrase spoken by Aunt Becca and her pastor at church, but had she really felt it herself?

  “Edward says You love me. If You love me, prove it.”

  The challenge made her tremble. Would God strike her down? Or would He prove He was there? Or would He not answer such an impertinent demand at all?

  “Prove it.” She repeated. “Prove…” She stared down at her empty hands. “Prove You’re…my Father.”

  The anger receded, and there was only emptiness.

  Suddenly she heard running footsteps in the hallway outside the lab double doors. Rachel jumped off her high lab stool and whirled to face the doors. What was going on? Should she arm herself? What good would that do? Or maybe it was nothing….