by Bianca D’Arc
“That’s acceptable,” Jack told Boehm, looming over the much shorter man.
His inner grizzly enjoyed watching the pipsqueak unconsciously shy away. Boehm might talk a big game, but he wasn’t really in Jack’s league when it came to the larger fight. Boehm left with a grimace, stomping all the way back to his office and slamming the door.
Kiki looked surprised by the idea of taking Jack on a tour but acquiesced to her boss’s wishes without demur. She motioned for Jack to join her and led the way into the office area where Boehm had just disappeared, speaking quietly as they walked.
“Let’s just stop by my office. In some of the production areas, we’ll need to wear protective gear. I’ll pick up my set, and we’ll get you some new things from the lab storeroom, if that’s all right,” she said, leading him into a small office right behind the reception area.
Jack went in and stood just inside the door, opposite the desk, framed with multiple filing cabinets and two computer monitors. Paperwork was all over the desk surface, in neat piles. Lab reports, memos, and big binders of government regulations were everywhere, but in an organized way.
“Excuse the clutter,” Kiki said as she went behind her desk. “I was digging into some new regulations and trying to figure out where my predecessor left things.”
“How long have you been with the company?”
“Just a couple of weeks, so let me apologize in advance for the tour. I’ve only been to some parts of the plant once or twice, myself.” A look of consternation passed over her lovely face briefly, but she quickly regained her outward calm professionalism.
“Why don’t we start with the areas you know best, and hopefully, by the time we get to the areas you’re less familiar with, your boss will be free,” Jack suggested smoothly, hoping to put her at ease. His instincts were screaming at him to make her life easier. To protect her. To give her a free pass.
Which was exactly what he could not do. Everybody in this place had to be suspect until he knew more. Steeling himself, Jack went out of the tiny office as Kiki came around her desk. He had to be cautious here, even as he gave in to the desire of his inner bear to be around her.
She had a hard hat and white lab coat under one arm, a pair of safety glasses in her hand as she joined him in the wide hallway in the executive area. She smiled and started walking toward the back of the building as he fell in step beside her.
“We can go to the lab area first. They have spare safety gear we can commandeer for you. I spend a few minutes at the lab each day because their reports are key to my job. I usually go over in the afternoon with a pile of questions for the techs and lab director,” she admitted with a shrug. “I’m still learning, and my predecessor had some odd habits in the way he made notes. I don’t always understand his abbreviations and personal shorthand.”
“There’s always an adjustment when taking over from someone else,” Jack replied. He’d never really worked in an office, but he understood the challenge.
She led him through an office area with cubicles that were sparsely inhabited by people on phones or computers, working steadily, even as they eyed him. A few heads popped up from over the cubicle walls to stare at them. There was an air of hostility about the looks he was getting, but he pretended not to notice.
Kiki opened a door at the far end of the office area and led him through into another part of the building. This area had a more clinical look to it. He saw a few people in an open-layout office area to the right of the corridor. Most were wearing headsets as if they were manning some kind of call center. A row of windows preceded the doorway.
“This is the customer service section,” Kiki said, pausing by the doorway, a pained look on her face. “I’m not their favorite person because I’ve had to change some of the ways they handle complaints to comply with regulations.”
“We can leave that for later, if you prefer,” Jack offered. He’d taken a quick look at the people in the office, and none of them had raised any red flags in his mind—or tickled his magical senses. What was giving him a tingle of magic was farther down the hallway, and he wanted to investigate that before it had a chance to get away.
“Maybe it would be better if you met them with Mr. Boehm,” Kiki said, removing her hand from the doorknob. “I can take you to the lab. It’s just down here, and I know more about it than most of the rest of the plant.”
“That’ll be fine,” he told her in a calm voice. She was playing right into his wishes, though she probably didn’t realize it.
Jack took the precaution of putting up all his personal magical wards. He’d studied, first with a priestess, then later, with a shaman she had sent him to, about how to hide his true nature and abilities from even the most powerful mages. That skill was part of what made him such an effective hunter in these kinds of scenarios. He’d been called on to ferret out mages a time or two in the past, but this time was different because his brothers weren’t there to back him up. He’d have to be extra cautious here, because he was on his own.
Trying to seem as boring and human as possible, he followed Kiki down the hall and to the door of the lab. Whatever was setting his teeth on edge was still in there.
Kiki opened the door to the small office area that led to the lab proper. There were desks along one wall for the techs, and a small office for the lab supervisor. The desks were empty, but Carol was sitting at her desk when Kiki walked to the door.
“Hi, Carol. Do you have a moment?” Kiki didn’t wait for a reply, wanting to alert the other woman to exactly who Jack was before she said anything rash. In their past dealings, Kiki had come to realize that Carol often spoke before she thought through how her words would sound. Either that or she liked being deliberately rude. “This is Mr. Bishop from the headquarters of SeaLife Enterprises. I’m just taking him on a tour while Mr. Boehm finishes a conference call.”
Carol’s eyes narrowed as she looked past Kiki to the man who stood behind her in the doorway. There was a slight hesitation before Carol stood and invited them into her office. Kiki held her breath to see what Carol might say, but she seemed to be on her best behavior—very unlike the way Carol had greeted the state inspector Kiki had brought through just last week.
Of course, the inspector had been a short, older fellow, who hadn’t been all that friendly to begin with. Jack Bishop was tall, handsome and had a charming smile on his face as he walked into Carol’s domain. Kiki could easily see why Carol—who was rumored to have run through the male staff like a kid through a candy store—was reacting differently to this hunky guy from the corporate office.
“Jack Bishop, this is Carol Burns, the lab supervisor,” Kiki said, making the introductions.
Carol didn’t stand up but reached across her desk to shake Jack’s hand. Kiki felt a stab of annoyance when Carol captured the man’s hand and a little tug-o-war ensued when she held it for much longer than was socially acceptable. All the while, she was staring into his brown eyes as if issuing an invitation. Or trying to see down into his soul.
Kiki mentally chastised herself. She didn’t know where such sinister thoughts were coming from, but Carol had been helpful, if not friendly. She hadn’t interfered in Kiki’s work and had provided the necessary documentation Kiki needed for her reports, when asked. Why Kiki suddenly felt animosity toward the difficult woman—over a man she barely knew—was a mystery.
And it was something she had to nip in the bud. Right now.
“As I said, Mr. Boehm is busy with a call, so he asked me to show Mr. Bishop around. Only, since I’m so new here, I’m not very familiar with anyplace other than your lab and a few other sections of the plant where I go regularly for reporting purposes. I hope you don’t mind that I brought him here first.”
“Mind?” Carol was fairly purring as she sat back in her high-backed chair, not even looking at Kiki as she spoke. “Not at all. I’m glad you brought him to me.”
Chapter Three
Jack didn’t like the look of this Carol Burns
at all. There was something slimy about her. A slick feel to her presence that indicated strong shielding to Jack’s trained magical senses. It’s not something others would understand as readily, though this kind of woman would repulse many who were at all sensitive to such things, even if they didn’t fully understand why.
She seemed inordinately interested in him, which sent up a red flag in his mind. Were his natural wards noticeable to her? He certainly hoped not. Maybe she was just a man-eater looking for her next meal.
She was definitely giving him the once-over. He didn’t like the way her gaze slithered over him, but there wasn’t much he could do about it right now. He was undercover, and if this woman was involved in any sort of evil plot, he needed to observe closely and keep his wits about him.
When she’d tried to hold onto his hand much longer than necessary, he’d had to politely disengage while pretending to be just a tad socially awkward. He hoped the ruse had worked. Touching the woman’s hand had made his skin crawl. There was definitely something wrong here, and this Carol woman was right in the middle of it.
“So, Jack,” Carol said, coming out from behind her desk. “I can call you Jack, can’t I?”
“Sure thing, Carol. I may be from headquarters, but I don’t bite,” he told her, smiling. “Much.”
She giggled, and it wasn’t a pretty sound. It sounded more like a rattlesnake’s warning rattle to his ears. Oh, yeah, he’d be keeping an eye on this one.
Kiki didn’t like the way Carol appropriated the visitor from corporate. Not at all. She was probably just being silly, though. Kiki certainly had no claim over the newcomer, even if he did stir an attraction down deep in her soul.
Why she should feel proprietary toward Jack was a mystery she didn’t want to look at too closely at the moment. She was here to do a job, and she didn’t want Carol’s mercurial mood swings to affect how this important visitor perceived her workplace. That’s all it was. Right?
Kiki followed after the lab supervisor and her captive—Carol had what looked like a death grip on his arm—into the lab proper. There, Carol introduced him briefly to the two technicians who were working on various tests that were required by the government to assure quality and consistency in the paper goods they supplied to the medical industry, in particular, which was heavily regulated.
Kiki felt like a third wheel, but she kept smiling throughout the awkward moments and stuck with Carol and Jack while she showed him around her domain. At some point, Carol would have to let him go, and Kiki would resume her appointed role as tour guide. Jack asked some astute questions about the testing regimes, which clearly surprised Carol and made her look at him oddly.
“So, you’re not just a pretty face, then?” Carol almost pouted as she teased the corporate representative in a very inappropriate way, to Kiki’s mind.
“I prepare for my inspection tours,” Jack said, modestly bowing his head. “In this case, I took a look at what the state and federal governments required of this facility in more detail, because I know you’d had some issues with that in the recent past.”
Carol shot Kiki a look that should have set her on fire from fifty feet. Then, Carol seemed to recall where she was and with whom. She gave Jack a sickly smile.
“You know Kiki is new here. Her predecessor, Josh Moll, made quite a few mistakes with my lab’s reports that cost him…his job.” Carol batted her eyelashes at Jack, but Kiki saw something cold behind the other woman’s gaze that made her shiver inside.
And what was with the weird pause before Carol said the other guy had been fired? It almost sounded as if she was going to say something else but thought better of it. Which made Kiki wonder again, what exactly had happened to the guy who’d had her job before her?
All of his stuff had still been in her office when she’d taken over, including his coat and a heavy bag that had turned out to contain a custom-drilled bowling ball and his bowling shoes. The head of Human Resources—a reedy man named Oliver Crumb—had told her to dump all of Josh’s stuff into a large rolling hamper, which had been deposited in the hallway just outside her door by a bored-looking janitor named Jeff.
Jeff was a strange one. Always lurking, and watching everything. He never seemed to actually do anything. His janitorial skills seemed nearly non-existent, but he was certainly good at watching everybody. He gave Kiki the creeps.
When Carol had shown Jack every last corner of the lab, including where they stored the test tubes and how they disposed of the waste, she wound down and just smiled at him. It was a dazzling smile, Kiki had to admit. Probably designed to charm the pants off any male she fancied. Kiki felt a little triumph when Jack didn’t seem to fall for it.
He extricated his arm from Carol’s and smiled benignly. A business smile. A noncommittal smile. Perfect, Kiki thought, as Carol’s lips thinned with displeasure.
“Thank you for the in-depth tour,” Jack said, still being pleasantly businesslike. He turned to Kiki. “Can you show me some of the other areas your job takes you to?”
Kiki studiously ignored what sounded like a low growl coming from Carol’s direction. The other woman wasn’t happy at being dismissed so easily. Kiki took her cue from Jack and remained businesslike as she led him from the lab area with a final word of thanks to Carol for letting them interrupt her important work.
As they walked down the corridors, heading for one of the production areas, Jack asked quiet questions. Kiki answered as best she could, considering she was still learning her way around the place, but he seemed to be understanding of her situation, being the new girl and all. His questions were mostly about the process and how things worked in the factory portion of the plant, but he threw in some personal ones, as well.
“Are you friendly with Carol?” he asked at one point.
Caught a bit off-guard, Kiki shook her head. “Not particularly. You may have noticed she works more closely with men.” Both of Carol’s techs were men, and it was pretty well known in the company that, if Carol had a problem, it was usually with another woman.
“I didn’t think you were supposed to notice or say things like that in this day and age,” Jack chastised her with a smile.
Kiki shrugged. “I’m just stating the facts as I see them. Carol and I work together, at times, but we’re not what I’d call friendly.”
Jack asked a technical question at that point, and Kiki breathed a sigh of relief at the topic change. They got to the part of the plant that she knew best outside the lab. It was a room where the samples were kept before they were picked up by lab personnel. All the samples from the various production lines were kept in bins, sorted by line, lot, date, and time.
She was explaining the scheme when Henry Baskin, one of the line leads, walked in from the production area with a bagged sample in his hands. Kiki was happy to make the introductions and let the friendly and very experienced factory worker explain how things worked on his production line. With the pressure off her a bit, Kiki tried to think about what she could show Jack next. She was quickly running out of places she’d been and had any familiarity with. She could show him the warehouse, but she hadn’t been back to it since that horrible night when she’d observed something sinister.
Henry and Jack chatted while Kiki worried. She really didn’t want to go anywhere near that warehouse. She didn’t have to visit the place, strictly speaking, in the course of her job, though she’d been trying to track down something her predecessor had mis-reported, which was why she’d gone there in the first place. Really, though, she could ask the production people to get her the information. She had just been trying to cut down on requests to them, which took a while to fulfill, so she could both give them a break and get her work done quicker.
It had turned out to be a bad move all around. She should never have been there to see what she’d seen, and it was best for all concerned to keep thinking that she had no real familiarity with the warehouse operation at all. For that reason, she really didn’t want to bring Jack through ther
e. She could keep up the fiction that she didn’t know her way around there, but that would make her look bad to Jack, which was something she also didn’t want. For some reason, lying to him felt really, really wrong.
Certainly, she’d been raised with old-fashioned values that said lying was verboten under any circumstances. She’d learned how to get along in the modern world, among people who didn’t stick to the same morals she’d been raised with, but she tried never to lie or deceive, unless it was under very specific circumstances.
In this case, she was pretending she knew nothing of the warehouse to protect herself from something she feared might be evil. Her folks had taught her that protecting yourself from evil was a top priority, and she felt they would support her ruse in this case and approve of the deception of her co-workers.
Deceiving Jack, now… That felt different.
She couldn’t explain why. It just did.
Henry was saying goodbye, and Kiki was starting to wonder what she should do when Bob Boehm walked in the door, saving her from her quandary. He dismissed her offhandedly, taking over the tour, and Kiki gratefully escaped to go back to her office while Bob was getting Jack to suit up in protective gear for a look at the factory. As she slipped out without saying goodbye, she wondered if she’d ever see him again. Then, she wondered why such a fleeting encounter had impacted her so greatly.
Then, she told herself to forget all about the mysterious stranger who had occupied an hour of her day and get back to work.
As things turned out, Kiki didn’t get to see Jack again, that day. She went about her work, as usual, though she couldn’t help listening carefully each time the door to the office area opened, just in case he was coming back from his tour. By quitting time, he still hadn’t reappeared, and she had made it her policy, ever since that warehouse ritual she’d almost interrupted, to leave on time.
