by Raven Scott
“But their batteries are still heavy and expensive, and speed is limited, right?” she continued.
“So, what’s different with yours?” he asked.
“The high-capacity battery attached to the series design,” she told him simply. “Adam’s rechargeable battery is smaller, lighter, and more durable than anything used in cars today. My electric motor is more powerful than almost all in production, providing consistent speed in flat and hilly terrain. Together, they have the torque and horsepower typically found in high-performance engines, with long-range capacity per charge. Just based on what we did today, I think we could eventually get zero-to-sixty in under three seconds, with top speeds north of two hundred miles an hour.”
Alex wrote out the numbers on the whiteboard and circled each passionately.
“And that’s just the racing application,” she added, tossing the marker on the table. “With the right configuration, my computer models project that you could drive coast to coast at a hundred miles an hour on a single tank of gas and never need a plug-in recharge.”
“How?” Lucas asked, now leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped loosely between his knees.
“Once the gas-combustion engine is ignited by the battery, its only function is to charge the battery, for ten to fifteen minutes every five to six hundred miles. With the right-size gas tank, a car could easily do four thousand miles.”
He looked at her rough sketch and the circled numbers for well over a minute. Alex sat back down about thirty seconds into his silent contemplation. The impact of her statement seemed to fill the air with thick tension.
“Who else knows all of this?” Lucas finally asked, pinning her with a sharp, assessing stare. There was no trace of his casual flirtatiousness.
“Marco, of course. And my team is now helping me with the final calibrations,” she stated.
“How much does North know?”
“Adam knows that Magnus makes racing components, and that I’m trying out electric motor designs,” she explained. “He’s also aware that we’re planning to launch it at the Sea-to-Sky Highway race. But I haven’t told him anything else.”
“Why not?”
“Marco and I decided not to tell anyone else about the potential for broader use in passenger cars, not even our investors. We’ve also only told them about the racing applications.”
“Well, someone knows something. And it seems that they’re going out of their way to steal it,” he stated in a deceptively soft tone. “Any suggestions?”
“No, I don’t have any. I mean, I’ve been concerned about something like this from the moment I gave Marco my proposal. And I’ve been racking my brain since Friday trying to think of anyone else who could know what we’ve been working on. I just don’t know.”
Lucas stood up and walked the few steps over to the room door, where he planted himself in a wide stance and crossed his arms across his chest. Alex knew she wasn’t going to like the direction of the conversation. She stood also.
“What does North get out of this deal? Why sell his design to you versus a company with deeper pockets? No offense to Magnus, of course.”
“Adam is a professor. His focus has been solely publishing his research to academia. I had to really encourage him to build us a power pack and sell us the patent, and we paid him a good amount for it,” Alex explained. “In his nondisclosure agreement, he’s then able to publish the results of the battery performance of the Cicada three months after its official launch.”
“What would happen if he broke the NDA?”
“We would sue him for damages. It would be millions, and would ruin his reputation.”
Lucas nodded.
“What about your team?” he asked.
“What about them?” she shot back obstinately, planting her hands on her hips.
He stared back at her hard, letting her know he wasn’t buying her sudden obtuseness.
“Could they have leaked information somehow?” Lucas finally added, still pinning her with his unwavering stare.
“No,” Alex replied firmly and unflinchingly.
He lowered his arms to plant them on his hips.
“Alex, I know it’s hard to look at the people you work with every day suspiciously,” Lucas added softly. “But I need you to be completely objective here. Are there any risks among your other engineers?”
His tone felt patronizing and hit all of her buttons. She could not hold back a snarky response.
“What exactly makes you think I’m not being objective?” She took a step forward.
She waved her hands in front of him. He raised that annoying brow again.
“Is it my height?” Alex demanded.
“Alex—”
“Ahh,” she cut in dramatically, snapping her fingers. “I know! It’s the breasts, isn’t it?”
“That’s—”
She ignored his exasperated sigh.
“These damn boobs! Always interrupting my rational thoughts. Forcing me to get all emotional and incapable of logical reasoning,” continued Alex in a tone dripping with sarcasm, stepping even closer to him until they were only an arm’s length apart.
The mounds of flesh referenced were bound and secured behind a heavy-duty sports bra, and well hidden in the baggy, heavy cotton overalls, but she noted with satisfaction that his gaze fixed on them like they were naked. Until she forcefully crossed her arms in front of her chest, and Lucas raised his eyes again to meet hers. Finally, there was something more than calm amusement in his dark brown depths.
“They are very distracting, but I’m sure you manage just fine, Lex,” he retorted in a bland voice. “Now, just answer the question. Or have you forgotten it already?”
Alex glared and clenched her jaw hard as she stepped right up beside him, until her side was almost brushing his. He towered her by a good ten inches, but she refused to be bullied by his size and pretty-boy charm.
“There is no risk that someone on my team could have leaked information. They didn’t know anything of value until this morning. All they knew is that we were working on a hybrid to win at Sea-to-Sky Highway,” she snapped in clipped words. “And my name is Alex.”
Done with him, Alex made for the conference room door in long, firm strides, but was stopped abruptly by a firm grip on her upper arm. She gasped in surprise and spun around in reflex to attack him with her free arm, but Lucas swiftly and easily caught that one as well. He pulled her up to him until their bodies were almost flush and his head was bent low next to hers.
“Lex suits you much better,” he whispered into her ear before abruptly letting her go.
She shot him a final, scathing glare then marched out of the room.
CHAPTER 6
Lance, Ned, and Michael arrived at the Toronto Island Airport on Tuesday morning. They had hitched a ride on a cargo flight, needing room for several large aluminum cases with the equipment required for the Magnus job. Lucas met them on the tarmac with a large black SUV that he had rented last night, and ferried over from the city.
The men greeted him with wide grins and hand slaps.
“Raymond looked pretty disappointed that he wasn’t coming along,” Ned stated as they worked to load up the back of the truck with their cases. “I think he’s bored out of his mind on Sam’s bodyguard job.”
“Yeah,” Michael piped in. “The client’s daughter is a real piece of work. She’s barely eighteen and all over Sam like a cheap suit. Maybe Ray’s worried that once she finally gives up on Sam, she’ll set her sights on him.”
The guys all laughed. Raymond was a brilliant tech wizard and decent as an agent in the field, but he was a classic introvert and not at all equipped to deal with an aggressive crush-obsessed adolescent girl.
“Poor guy,” Lucas sympathized. “He’s probably having nightmares about it.”
“Or maybe his disappointment has more to do with what he’s missing out on here, huh, Luc,” Ned speculated. “Based on the pics in the cas
e folder you sent last night, Alex Cotts is pretty easy on the eyes. Maybe they had some kind of connection when he was here in Toronto last fall.”
“Nope. Cotts was out of town when Raymond set up their network security,” replied Lucas in an easy voice. “And she’s definitely more than our Raymond could handle.”
The other three men raised eyebrows and looked at each other speculatively.
“Sounds like a handful,” scoffed Michael.
“And then some,” Lucas muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “I’ll fill you guys in on the drive to the auto shop.”
They quickly finished loading up the truck.
“What about customs and our weapons?” Lance asked once they were all seated and Lucas was driving away from the runway.
“All taken care of,” Lucas told them. “Fortis is a registered private security and investigation firm in all ten provinces and three territories, and a specialized contractor to the Canadian government. I arranged your clearance in advance.”
“Nice!” Michael replied. “I guess Secret Service contacts are still useful.”
“Occasionally,” chuckled Lucas.
The ferry ride and drive into downtown Toronto took them around thirty minutes. Lucas used some of that time to review the key facts about Magnus and their Cicada engine that he had provided in the case folder. It was a few minutes to ten o’clock in the morning when Lucas drove the large SUV around to the rear side of the Magnus Motorsports auto shop. He reversed into the open spot closest to the large open garage bay, parking close to the sleek gray Porsche with matte black rims and hot red brake calipers.
“We have a room that we can set up as our control center, so let’s get unpacked,” he told the team. “I want a plan confirmed by twelve hundred hours.”
A couple of Magnus mechanics stepped outside from the shop floor with coffee cups and packs of cigarettes just as the four big men filed out of the SUV. All the agents were dressed in black with full-size handguns clipped into shoulder holsters worn over their shirts. The mechanics froze with looks of alarm on their faces.
“Morning,” Lucas said smoothly with a nod as he strode by them toward the garage bay at the center of the building, carrying two of the equipment cases. Lance and Ned followed in a single line, similarly loaded up, with Michael in the rear carrying the last case, with only their personal luggage left behind in the trunk.
Lucas could feel almost a dozen eyes following him and his men as they walked through the shop floor to the entrance to Magnus’s offices. One pair of eyes in particular felt so hot that it might singe his flesh. But he resisted the pull to look back at Alex as she stood with the other racing engineers in the right side of the shop. He had been much too distracted by her already over the last day and a half as it was.
The Fortis team was entering the small conference room given to Lucas just as Norma and Marco came through the doors to the showroom at the front of the building. Their client and his assistant stopped short, with very similar expressions of alarm as everyone else in the building.
“Marco, Norma, this is the Fortis team that will be on the ground for you,” Lucas stated in an easy, casual voice that was at odds with the armed presence now lined up behind him inside the small room. “Lance and Ned will provide security detail, and Michael will work with me on the investigation.”
Each of the other agents nodded when their names were mentioned, even as they began opening the large cases to unpack the contents.
“You’re wearing guns,” Norma stated as though she couldn’t quite understand what was going on.
“Are those legal? Are you allowed to wear them?” added Marco, pointing at the weapon Lucas had not been wearing yesterday.
“I assure you, all our weapons are licensed and very legal,” Lucas told them both in the same calm voice.
“Is this necessary?” Alex demanded as she marched up the hall with indignation written all over her face. Lucas couldn’t help but notice how cute she looked, all agitated. “You can’t just walk around strapped to the teeth.”
Lucas tried to keep his lips still to suppress a grin.
“It is and we can,” he replied briefly.
Her mouth hung open, as though his explanation meant nothing.
“Who are you people, anyway? It’s not Texas, you know. This is Canada!”
“I know where I am, Cotts, but thanks for the reminder,” he shot back quietly before turning to Marco and his assistant. “Marco, I’ll need ninety minutes with my men to get situated. Can I provide you a review of our plan by, say, one o’clock?”
“Sure, that’s fine,” Marco told him, swallowing tightly.
“I will be there also,” Alex demanded, practically vibrating with frustration.
“As you’d like,” he told her politely before he walked into the meeting room leaving the door open.
“Did you know anything about this, Markie?” he heard her asking her boss from a short distance down the hall. Marco’s response was too quiet for Lucas to hear as they walked away.
“You weren’t kidding,” Michael quipped, barely looking up from his task of setting up a high-capacity computer system at the far end of the conference room table. “She’s definitely a handful.”
The other men snickered, but Lucas ignored them. He was too busy trying to figure out how to get rid of the energy and anticipation that swept down his back every time that damn woman was anywhere near his vicinity. Sure, she was cute, and those golden eyes were captivating, but he usually preferred his women with dispositions more like his own: light-hearted and easygoing. Alexandria Cotts was proving to be as easygoing as a territorial panther.
The Fortis men worked in silence to set up all the equipment they had brought with them for the assignment, then stacked the empty aluminum boxes along the back wall, out of their way. There were two powerful, dual-core computers connected to an ultra-high-speed router with an untraceable, ricocheting IP address. They also had a storage and backup server stack, configured with a new Fortis security encryption algorithm designed by Lucas. The last couple of boxes had the latest in digital laser technology surveillance equipment, and locked cases with extra handguns and ammunition, just in case.
“Okay, we’ll work in two teams,” Lucas stated to Lance, Ned, and Michael as he stood in front of a large map of the Magnus building with schematics posted on the wall of the room. “Building security will be in twelve-hour shifts, six to six each day. Lance, you take days; Ned, you take nights with their regular security guard, Oliver.”
Lance and Ned nodded.
“You’ll follow the our standard security pattern, so each of you will rotate your surveillance position in thirty minute intervals, altered by seven minutes every four hours, reset on a five-day cycle. We’ll do a full sweep to make sure there are no bugs or listening devices planted. Then we’ll wire up the building with external and internal surveillance cameras, using sensors at night,” Lucas continued, circling the connection points on the building map. “Michael, you’ll be monitoring everyone who comes within a mile of the building, using my facial-mapping search engine. Anyone we can’t identify through social media will be tagged as a potential threat. I will focus on trying to find out who’s funding our friend Pratt, and monitoring the network for any new intrusion attempts. Questions?”
There was a moment of silence as Lucas looked to confirm that everyone was clear on the instructions, though he knew it would be. It was a pretty basic plan.
“Hopefully, this will be the easiest assignment we’ve had in a couple of years, and we’re just overdressed for the party,” he finally added.
“But you don’t think so,” responded Ned. It was a statement, not a question.
The two men had met during their time in the Financial Crimes division of the United States Secret Service. While Ned was a special agent assigned to investigative work, Lucas worked as a systems security consultant for protection against financial crimes. They had seen enough similar patterns durin
g their careers to know when something noteworthy was in the works.
“No, I don’t,” Lucas finally confirmed. “Someone wants this Cicada technology, and they are too invested already to just walk away. Now, the only way to get the information they want is right here is this building. I’d rather figure out who it is before they show up at our doorstep to try to take it.”
Lucas walked over to one of the two computers on the table and pulled up pictures of two men.
“We have two targets to start our investigation,” he stated, clicking on the image of a tall, slender, ruddy-skinned man wearing a gray cardigan and blue plaid shirt, carrying a messenger bag strapped across his chest. “Adam North, thirty-five-year-old associate professor of physics at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He designed the battery for the Cicada engine. Since our visit to Chicago last week, we confirmed he was unaware of Pratt’s hack into his computer. We also know that Pratt pretended to be a student at the university to gain access.
“What we don’t know is how Pratt and whoever is funding him knew what North was working on for Magnus. He’s married, no children, and lives a pretty routine life from what we’ve seen so far.”
“Who’s the second guy?” Michael asked, since the details about North were already in the case file they read during the trip to Toronto.
Lucas pulled up the second image of a smaller man with wavy black hair, blues eyes, tanned skin and a boyish smile. The shoulder of his racing suit was visible in the picture, with various logos covering the front.
“Is that Jean Renaud, the race car driver?” Ned guessed, leaning forward to be sure.
“One and the same,” Lucas confirmed. “Twenty-nine years old, French-born Indy Car driver, winner of the Daytona 500 two year ago. Cotts confirmed yesterday that she was introduced to North through Renaud at a racing event, also two years ago.”
