by Adams,Claire
Lost in my own memories, I didn't notice a new group of men enter the lobby until I looked up and saw Julian Baines standing in front of me.
"Ryan, what are you doing here?" he asked as he held out his hand. I frowned as I took it and shook.
"Just taking care of business, sir," I said.
"I thought the lawyers were doing that," he said smoothly as he let go of my hand.
"Yes, well, there are some loose ends that need to be tied up," I said eyeing him suspiciously. "And since the estate executor hasn't yet done it, I thought I'd take care of it."
"Oh, come on, Ryan," he said with a cold smile. "Certainly you know by now that your father named me his executor."
"I was not aware of that," I lied. "But that will make it easier to coordinate the transfer of his estate to Eva and myself, won't it?"
"Why are you lying to me?" he hissed as he leaned in close enough to grab my arm. "I know you visited the lawyer, and I know he told you that I am the executor."
"I have no idea what you're talking about, sir," I said as I watched Baines go from irritated to angry. His response to my lie told me a lot about his emotional stake in my father's estate, and I wanted to see how far I could push him. "I was told that an executor had been appointed, but Mr. Weller did not tell me who it was."
"Don't bullshit me, son," he warned. "I'm not someone you want as an enemy."
"I have no idea what you're talking about, sir," I repeated. Baines's face went from pink to a deep shade of red as his grip on my arm became painful.
"Son, I have spent my life building that business, and I'll be damned if I see your sorry ass swoop in and make a mess of it at this stage of the game," he growled. "I want you to sell me your father's shares of the company."
"Why would I want to do that?" I asked as I watched Julian's face turn red. "How do I know he doesn't want me to take over where he left off?"
"I'm going to tell you one last time," Julian seethed. "You need to steer clear of TriCorp. I will not have some rogue soldier of fortune trying to take control of my company."
"Yes, sir," I said nodding as I felt grateful for every hard ass drill sergeant who'd taught me to maintain a neutral expression under any circumstance.
"Lieutenant Powell?" the concierge called from the desk. "Mr. Blake will see you now."
I gave Julian a smile that did not reach my eyes as I reached up and removed his hand from my arm.
"Do not cross me, Powell," he said in a low voice.
"Have a good day, sir," I replied as I turned and walked toward the front desk.
My meeting with Mr. Blake had revealed nothing other than my father's account was in good standing and had been paid through to the end of the year. He informed me that the membership dues were nonrefundable, and when I simply nodded, he offered to issue me a limited membership card in my father's name.
I thanked him and accepted it not sure if I would use it, but thinking it might come in handy later.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Echo
Cece and I hopped into a cab and rode over to the TriCorp offices, and on the way I told her the plan. She would go up to human resources and tell them she was there to apply for a position with the cleaning crew and Ruth would send her down to the ground floor to talk with Butch. Once in the elevator she would get out on the twelfth floor where she would pull the fire alarm and then disappear into the crowd and work her way up to the sixteenth floor where she would wait for me my former office.
I would wait for the fire alarm to go off and then slip past Butch and his security team and make my way up to where Cece would be waiting. It wasn't a foolproof plan by any means, and I knew that it was incredibly risky and relied on everything going right for us. One wrong move and we'd be discovered and probably arrested for trespassing.
"You understand what this means, don't you?" I asked Cece as she pulled on the black hoodie I'd brought with me and wiped off her bright red lipstick.
"I get it, chica," she said as she zipped the jacket up and looked to me for approval. "This is some serious shit."
"Can you let your hair down?" I asked as I tried to think about how to make her look a little less conspicuous. It was difficult because Cece has striking looks, but as we played with her hair I realized she could pull it off. "Don't look up at anyone. No eye contact, and act like you're super shy. Hide behind your hair."
"Don't worry, I'll be a good little turtle," she laughed.
"What?"
"A good little turtle, you know, pulling my head in and being afraid of everything," she said as she stuck her hands in her hair and arranged it so that her bangs hung in her eyes. Then she looked at me and in a serious voice, said, “I’m a great actress. I promise."
"I hope this works," I said as she saluted me and headed toward the building's entrance. "Be careful, Cece."
As I waited in the cafe across the street, I watched what was going on in front of the building as I worked on finishing the code I'd been writing all week. I knew that we were on borrowed time with the bug I'd left, so I wanted to install a program that would allow me to bypass the TriCorp server altogether and download data into my secondary account. It wasn't easy to write the program, but since Dr. Powell had had me writing programs to help him collate his data, I'd learned a little about the server he worked with and this helped me.
It was twenty minutes before I heard the sound of sirens in the distance and realized that Cece had done her job. I smiled as I snapped the laptop shut and stuffed it in my bag. I dropped some money on the table and quickly headed out the door and across the street. The fire trucks were pulling up in front of the building and people were beginning to stream out the front door. I slipped into the side entrance where one of Butch's security guards had propped open the door for the fire department. I quickly made my way to the stairway and began climbing knowing that the fire fighters were likely to be right behind me.
My heart pounded from not only the effort of running up the stairs carrying the bag with the laptop in it, but also the fear of being caught. If Julian found me in the building, he'd probably be angry enough to call the police and have me arrested. If he knew I had Dr. Powell's classified research on my laptop, there was no telling what he'd do.
I made my way to the sixteenth floor and heard fire fighters yelling that all was clear on twelve and fourteen before I yanked open the door and slipped inside. The entire floor was dark and the fire alarms were still shrieking loudly as I headed straight for my former office and found the door locked.
"Shit," I muttered as I looked around wondering where Cece had hidden if she hadn't been able to get inside the office. I didn't have time to look for her. I only had minutes before the fire crew hit this floor and if I were found, it would be disastrous.
"Psst, chica!" Cece called from somewhere in the darkness. "I think I have a way to get in the office. I found something..."
I felt Cece pushing me out of the way as she bent down and slipped something into the lock of the door. I heard something clicking before it engaged and the next thing I knew, the door was swinging open and we rushed through it.
"Close it and get down under the desk," I frantically whispered. Cece quietly closed the door and turned the lock so that crews checking the floor wouldn't be able to enter without breaking the door down. Then she crawled under the desk and waited.
"Found something, eh?" I whispered.
"Hey, I come prepared," she said and I heard the grin in her voice.
"Who taught you how to do that?" I whispered.
"Chica, when you date as wide a range of dudes as I do, you're bound to pick up stuff from them," she said before laying her hand on my arm and saying, "Shhhh. We don't want to blow it now."
Twenty minutes passed and we heard nothing. I squeezed Cece's arm and wondered if the coast was clear.
"Wait," she said as she crawled out from under the desk and slowly peeked around the edge of it. She froze and then quickly moved back under the desk where she
whispered, "Someone's standing at the door, but they're not doing anything."
"What the hell?" I whispered just as someone rattled the door handle. I gripped Cece's arm as we both held our breath. Ten minutes passed and there were no other sounds in the hallway. Cece snuck out again, and signaled that the coast looked clear.
I quickly fired up the computer on the desk and hooked my laptop to it, whispering "C'mon, c'mon!" as Cece watched the door.
"Are you sure this is going to work?" she asked.
"Nope, not at all, but it's better than what I left here two days ago when I got fired," I said as I tapped the keyboard and installed the program. "Besides, by tonight, the IT department will probably find the bug and exterminate it. Now we need to find the lab keys!"
"All of this programing language is so violent," she said as she watched me.
In the fifteen minutes it took to upload the program, Cece and I snuck into Dr. Powell's office and combed the premises for the keys.
"Where sentient beings display empathy," I whispered over and over as I scanned the bookcases in his office and then rooted through the files in his cabinets. Someone had gone through this office, but I couldn't tell what had been taken. I signaled to Cece to check all of the anatomical models on Dr. Powell's shelves thinking maybe he'd hidden the keys inside the heart or the brain. No such luck.
"We're not going to find it," I whispered. Cece rolled her eyes and kept looking. She wasn't one to give up so easily.
I kept my eye on the time. Once the program was loaded, I needed to run a check of the system. I crawled back into the front office and started the test file I'd created, and once I was sure that the information Dr. Powell was sending would be re-routed to my new account, I closed the laptop and disconnected it.
"Cece!" I called as quietly as I could. "We need to get out of here. Now!"
"Coming," she said as she quickly crawled out of Dr. Powell's office and joined me under the desk.
"Now the hard part," I said. "We have to get out of here without being seen."
"Oh, that's simple," Cece said snapping her fingers. "I know exactly how we're going to do that."
"Oh? Do tell," I said. Cece gestured for me to follow her. She stuck her head out into the hallway and looked both ways before leading me toward the utility closet where she grabbed a large blue trash bin on wheels and a mop and broom. She pointed to the bin and said, "Get in."
"What?"
"Chica, we don't have time to discuss how you feel about sitting inside a trash bin," she scolded. "Those office workers are gonna be back up here any second! Get in and sit still!"
I climbed into the bin and clutched my bag to my chest as Cece looked down into the bin one more time before closing the lid and tilting it up on its wheels. My stomach lurched from the combination of the movement and knowing that I was sitting in a dirty bin that had collected who knew what kind of trash. I heard the elevator ding and then voices emerging from the cars as workers flooded the office.
"Eh? No hablo ingles," Cece said as someone asked her why she was up here. I felt the wheels bump as she loaded me into the elevator car and then the car began to descend. Cece whispered, "Just keep quiet, and we'll get out of here alive, chica."
I held my breath and waited for Cece to guide me out of the darkness.
#
When Cece and I returned to Nemo's, Mando was waiting at the front door with a frown on his face and his cell phone in his hand.
"Why didn't you answer me when I texted you?" he demanded. Cece smiled and patted him on the head, which only served to make him angrier.
"Big Brother, do not get all protective on me," she scolded as she walked back to the kitchen and dished up a couple of plates of food for each of us. My stomach rumbled as I watched her slapping beans and rice with cheese and sour cream into fresh corn tortillas and then topping them with salsa and lettuce.
"You are not allowed to just disappear without telling me where you're going!" Mando shouted. "I depend on you to set a good example for the wait staff and this is not it!"
"Mando, listen to me," I began.
"No, stop it, Echo," Cece said holding up a hand as she stepped into her brother's personal space. She lowered her voice to what I recognized as the danger zone as she spoke to him, "Listen to me, brother. I am not your servant nor am I your employee. We own this place together, and there are times I need to take care of business that does not involve you. This was one of those times, and if you know what is good for you, you will step down and let me eat some lunch."
Mando stared at her, but didn't say a word. I followed Cece out into the restaurant and sat down across from her at a table in the corner. She grabbed the bottle of Tabasco and began pouring it on her tacos as she silently fumed. I didn't know what do say, so I picked up a taco off of my plate and bit into it.
"I'm sorry," Mando said as he came to the table and set two cold beers down in front of us. "It's just that after mom and pop, I worry. Can you understand that?"
Cece's face softened as she looked up at him and chewed. She nodded slightly and then took another big bite of her taco. Mando nodded and then turned and walked back to the kitchen.
"You guys going to be okay?" I asked worried that our adventure had driven a wedge between them.
"Oh yeah, we're fine," she laughed. "He's just too bossy for his own good, so every once in a while I have to put him in his place."
"Oh good," I sighed.
"Chica," Cece said shaking her head. "If you're ever gonna land that Navy SEAL, you're gonna have to learn to stand your ground and not back down!"
"What are you talking about?" I asked trying to play innocent.
"Oh please, do not bullshit me," she laughed as she scooped up what had fallen out of her taco with her fingers and stuffed it in her mouth. "The two of you are so head over heels in lust that it's painful to watch."
"Oh God, is it that obvious?" I whispered mortified that I wasn't maintaining a poker face where Ryan was concerned.
"More than obvious," Cece said. "Look, there's nothing wrong with the two of you hooking up. You're young and single, and holy moly, he's a hottie!"
"Well, I thought we were going to hook up the other night," I confided. "But then he's maintained a distance that makes me think he's not actually interested."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
I told her about how I'd sat with his head in my lap until he fell asleep and how he'd spent the night on the couch without taking things any further. I also told her about his nightmares and the way he and the other SEALs pounded their Tridents into the casket.
"So, he's got issues," she shrugged. "Who doesn't? Give him time and space and let him work it out. Oh, you're worried because he disappeared this morning, aren't you?"
"Yeah, what if he's not coming back?"
"His note says he is, doesn't it?" she asked knowing that it did. "Give him space, chica. He'll come back, believe me. They always do."
Once we finished lunch, I hugged Cece tightly and thanked her before heading up to my apartment to see if Dr. Powell had sent another email and to wait to see if Ryan contacted me and let know what was going on.
#
I spent the weekend waiting for another message from Dr. Powell and worrying about Ryan. I'd texted him once, but gotten no response, so I did what Cece had suggested and gave him space. The problem was that I didn't want space. I wanted Ryan back in my apartment, preferably in my bed.
I couldn't stop wishing that he'd touched me and thinking how badly I wanted him to do more than just fall asleep. I wanted more; so much more, but all of that was going to have to wait until Ryan turned up. So, I shifted my focus and tried to figure out what Dr. Powell's messages meant. I'd done what he'd asked and downloaded the files before transferring them onto a hard drive for safekeeping, but I had no idea who the files should be turned over to or what he wanted done with them.
The next message arrived on Sunday evening, but this time it contained encrypted files
that I was unable to open and more detailed instructions about what needed to happen next.
Dear Ms. Frost,
By now it is probably fairly certain that I am not going to be returning to TriCorp anytime soon. This set of files contains essential elements in my research project and, as a result, I have encrypted them so that they cannot be read or accessed without the hard drive in my lab.
If you are receiving this note, then you will need to get to the seventeenth floor and use the keys I've left you to access my lab. I know that I never allowed you to see my lab, and this is one of my biggest regrets; however, you will have to overcome the lack of familiarity with my lab and find the drive so you can deliver these documents to the proper people when the time comes.
I cannot tell you exactly where the hard drive will be because by the time you get this, I will have moved it again. However, I have faith that your eagle eyes will have little trouble narrowing down the field in which the drive resides.
Be cautious as you explore the lab, and do not let Julian Baines know what you are doing or have access to the key!
Regards,
Dr. Alan Powell
