SEALs of Honor: Taylor

by Dale Mayer

  Ironic, since he’d been making calls on her behalf. But he didn’t say anything, he just massaged her shoulders gently and asked, “Did you hear anything else?”

  She shook her head. “No. No, I didn’t. By then I was so panicked it seemed like every sound was amplified to the point where I was afraid somebody was coming in the door. I couldn’t tell if I was hearing people upstairs or if someone was right outside. She shuddered and asked, “Why is this happening? What is going on?”

  A voice from the doorway behind her said, “That’s what we want to know.” Detective Butler walked toward her. He raised his eyebrows at Taylor, who motioned down the hallway.

  When they came back, Butler’s face was grim. “You want to start from the beginning?” he asked. “We need to hear it again. And likely again after that.”

  She lifted her face and stared up at Taylor, and her expression broke his heart. “He’s dead,” she said blankly, the shock very obviously setting in. “They’re all dead.”

  “All of them?” the detective asked. “Who is all of them?”

  She stared at him, bewildered for a long moment, and then said, “I don’t know.” She motioned toward the entire office. “Where are they all? What’s happened to everybody?”

  “That’s exactly what we need you to tell us,” the detective said.

  Hopefully sooner than later, Taylor thought. Yet she wasn’t in any state to do it right now. Taylor wrapped her up in his arms and tucked her tight against his chest. He looked over at the detective and asked, “May I take her home?”

  The detective hesitated, then nodded. “Might as well. We’ll come by in a little while. See if you can get her lucid again.”

  Taylor gave a small snort. “Four bodies in less than twenty-four hours? With another two or three employees unaccounted for? It might take longer than a little while, Detective.”

  Butler had the good graces to look ashamed. “I get it,” he said. “Go ahead and take her home. We have a lot to deal with here.” And then he stopped and said, “Wait. What did you touch when you came in?”

  Taylor pointed to the entrance door and then said, “The supply room door. Other than that, it would have been anything I touched right here. Oh, and I was here earlier, before lunch, when I picked her up but didn’t go past the front desk there.”

  The detective nodded. “Okay, thanks. Take her to your place, and we’ll be in touch.”

  Chapter 8

  Midge heard the detective’s words in the back of her mind, and she understood Taylor was lifting her up and carrying her outside. When the fresh air hit her, she lifted her head and said, “I’ll be fine.”

  He gave her a snort. “It’ll be a while before you’re fine, sweetie.”

  She struggled to get out of his arms, trying to stand, but he refused to let her. “My car is here,” she said. “I want to drive it home.”

  Another voice from behind her said, “You’re not driving anywhere, miss.”

  Taylor turned and said, “Midge, meet Colton. Colton, meet Midge.” And yet another man pulled up behind him. “And this is Troy. He’s another one of our guys.”

  Troy nodded with the gentlest of smiles she’d ever seen. “Good afternoon, ma’am.”

  She loved him immediately. With a sigh, she said, “Nothing is good about it, as much as I wish there was.” She looked over at Taylor. “Do you think they would drive my vehicle home for me?”

  “Good idea. Don’t worry. You can trust them with it.” Fumbling in her purse, he found the keys he’d scooped up when he’d grabbed her things and handed them to Colton. “Meet you guys back at my place.”

  Both men nodded.

  Taylor opened the door to his Jeep and helped her into the front seat, then closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. She sat there, numb, and hadn’t even thought to buckle up. But he did. Reaching over her, he grabbed the seat belt and pulled it around to click in tight. Then he started the engine and drove carefully back to his place. His mind reeled with questions, but it wasn’t the time, and it wasn’t the place. Besides, there didn’t appear to be any answers right now. Back at his place, he parked and walked around to her side. Once he unbuckled her seat belt, it was like she woke up from a nap.

  She looked up at him and smiled. “I really will be okay, you know?”

  “I know you will,” he said gently. “But how long it will take is the real question.”

  She hopped out on her own and reached for his hand before he led her inside to the elevator and up to his apartment. She was relieved to see his place was completely normal. The last thing she wanted was to see any ruckus here, as she already felt like she wasn’t safe anywhere. If his place remained untouched, then at least she could think of it as a safe haven.

  She walked over to the couch, where the blanket was folded in the same corner she had grown accustomed to. Wrapping the blanket around her and putting a pillow under her head, she curled up and closed her eyes.

  *

  Taylor hoped she would sleep. Knowing the guys were on their way, he put on a pot of coffee and tossed some beers into the fridge. Then he walked toward the small deck and opened the glass doors wide. He stepped outside and took several deep breaths of fresh air. Something rotten was happening on base. And he didn’t have a clue why or what. Hearing knocks at the door, he walked over and opened it. “Since when do you guys knock?” he joked. “Normally you barge right in.”

  “Yeah,” Troy said with a grin. “But we didn’t want to scare her.”

  “I appreciate that,” Taylor said, with a nod toward the couch. “I’m hoping she’ll nod off, if she hasn’t already.”

  As they studied her, she murmured something and snuggled deeper into the couch.

  “She’s had a shit day, hasn’t she?”

  “Yeah, the past twenty-four hours have been one nightmare after another. So, the beer isn’t quite cold yet, but the coffee is hot. Which do you want?”

  They both asked for hot coffee, with Troy adding, “That’ll give the beer time to cool.”

  Taylor took them out on the small balcony. They stood there out of Midge’s earshot, so she could sleep, and quietly went over the details. At least the few details he had.

  “Seriously? That’s four dead people in less than twenty-four hours,” Troy said, his voice hard and angry. “What the hell is going on?”

  “We don’t know,” Taylor said, fatigue in his voice. “Tesla has been on it too. Because something in the staff records data was hacked. Certain files were accessed, and all we have to go on is a theory involving Jenny, a disgruntled employee, who blamed Midge when she got fired.”

  “Do you think Jenny’s the one involved?”

  “We don’t have anything that proves it either way. It would be nice if we could get a definite lock on one suspect and their motive though.”

  “Of course Jenny makes a decent suspect because she had access and could have done all kinds of things to the files. It’s possible and, even likely, that she still has computer access, plus a key to the records department, even though her credentials should have been canceled.”

  “Midge suggested Jenny might have taken somebody else’s access codes. Which means Jenny could have never really lost access at all. She could have been getting together whatever information she wanted this whole time.”

  “But it’s not as if the staff records contain any top secret files,” Troy said, trying to get up to speed.

  “No, they don’t,” Taylor said. “And the department is constantly updating the files. Midge is always providing employment information for banks and finance companies for mortgages and things like that. When new information comes through, they update the files. Sounds like the records are mostly all electronic now, except for a relatively small batch of paper files still waiting to be scanned.”

  “Sounds boring.”

  “It is, though she seems happy enough. I’m not sure she wants something more challenging right now, although it seems like may
be the challenge is in managing the volume of work, rather than the work itself. Plus, her boss seemed like a dick.”

  “Right. Besides, somebody has to do the job. Otherwise you and I could get stuck with it,” Colton said, laughing at his own joke.

  Troy rolled his eyes at that. “They’ll be sorry if they ever put me into a job like that. It’s amazing how much paper I can drip coffee all over, and that’s without even trying,” he said with a cheeky grin.

  “There has to be a reason why someone would even think access to the staff records data would be helpful.”

  “The only thing I can think of,” Troy said, “is if getting access to staff records somehow gives them a back door into something else that’s more valuable.”

  “That was the premise I think Tesla is looking into. But you realize a whole IT department is supposed to be working on this breach. I don’t know this for sure, but I rather imagine she would have gotten frustrated at the slow results. I haven’t heard anything from them either.”

  “You let Mason know about this from the get-go, so I’m sure he’s discussed it with Tesla and the brass to see what the hell’s going on. This isn’t a small case now.”

  “I don’t know if the base is on full lockdown,” Taylor said, shaking his head. “It should be, but you and I both know information flows slowly sometimes. As do decisions.”

  “Well, a lover’s tiff is one thing, but killing an old couple to get a key to Midge’s apartment shows a decided lack of handy skills, like lock-picking,” Troy said. “So I’m thinking it won’t be anybody with any military training.”

  “Not to mention the fact the first-known victim’s groin was shot up,” Colton said, “so I’m leaning toward a female.”

  “And a disgruntled female employee would also go back to make sure she shot her boss for good measure,” Taylor said. “Although I only spoke to him twice, I wanted to punch him out myself. I’m sure he had plenty of enemies.”

  “Yeah, especially whoever sentenced him to a job like that,” Colton quipped. They all had a good chuckle, a welcome release of tension.

  “So, I’m really liking the idea of Jenny as a suspect. But, for all this conjecture, we need something that’ll prove her involvement,” Taylor said, leaning on the railing and taking a deep breath.

  “That’ll be the hard part,” Colton added, “because, if she’s had access all this time and is any good with computers at all, then maybe she’s already closed off any trail showing she was there.”

  “But we know,” Taylor said, “that, no matter how good they are, they always leave something behind.”

  “True enough,” Colton said with a nod.

  “However, we still have the guy trying to break into her apartment this morning. And his driver. So it’s not just Jenny. She has help.”

  Just then they heard a sound. Taylor turned to see Midge sitting up.

  Chapter 9

  “You know I can hear you guys just fine, right?” she announced. “And, although I had my eyes closed and was resting, I wasn’t asleep.” The men just looked at her without saying a word. “It’s not as if you were discussing classified secrets or anything. And you made a summary that makes sense. But I don’t know that Jenny has the balls to do all this.”

  “How about her anger?” Troy asked, walking in to sit down on the couch beside her. “Is she angry enough, mean enough or revengeful enough for something like this?”

  “The problem is, I don’t know her that well,” Midge said, looking first at his coffee and then back over at the pot. “She did have a mean streak, I guess. But it was just little stuff. You know? Office stuff, … like Jenny would take the last cup from the pot of coffee and not put another pot on. Leaving me with a full set of busy phone lines when Jenny went off for lunch, instead of taking five minutes to help. Saying she’d done a bunch of work, and then you’d discover she hadn’t done any of it. She was definitely not coworker of the year material,” Midge said with a tired smile. “Not by any means.”

  “Did anybody ever stop by at work to see her?” Taylor asked. “Like a boyfriend, family members coming to take her out for lunch—anything like that?”

  “Or did you ever see her anywhere else but work?” Colton added.

  “Did she get picked up by anybody?” Troy asked.

  “Easy, guys, one question at a time.” She sighed and cast her mind back. “I’m not sure that I did see anybody else actually wanting to see Jenny. Again she’s not somebody I particularly liked, so I did my best to ignore her.”

  “And you still have no idea why the other two people didn’t show up for work?” Taylor asked.

  “Nope,” she said, “and actually it’s three people. I don’t normally work on Monday, so I usually would have been at home when that guy was killed in my apartment. But Debbie, the person who was supposed to work on Monday, didn’t show up, so I got called in. And two others, Bart and Terri, didn’t show up today. I was hoping the cops would check it out by going by their places. At least we’d know they were like seriously hungover or something, and that’s why they didn’t show up or answer their phones.”

  “Did they call in sick?”

  “No, they didn’t, and that’s why my boss was so upset. I heard Debbie called in sick yesterday.”

  “Do you know if anything else was bothering your boss?”

  “This morning, it could have been anything. Taylor saw him, and he wasn’t very friendly, although that wasn’t so uncommon for him. But he was very agitated today. I wondered if he figured he was doomed to be in staff records for the rest of his career because of the security breach.”

  “That would do it,” Colton quipped.

  They turned to look at Taylor, and he nodded. “Can’t say he was terribly friendly. He was adamant Midge shouldn’t be allowed to leave for lunch.”

  Both men drew their eyebrows together.

  Taylor added, “They were getting so far behind, her boss wanted her to work straight through.”

  “Which I have done many times,” Midge said, “and I would have this time too, but I needed food.”

  “And I had ridden over to take her out for lunch,” Taylor said. “We weren’t even gone the full hour. I took her back because she felt guilty about the work.”

  “The problem with that workload,” she said, “is that there’s supposed to be at least four of us. No way I can get caught up if it’s just me.”

  “Interesting. Could you have gotten fired over this?” Colton asked. “Not that I can see why you would, but, if somebody was fired and blamed you, maybe they’re doing their best to return the favor and get you fired.”

  She chuckled. “You know something? If they did fire me right now, it would be a blessing. Because something is rotten in that department, and I don’t have a clue what it is.”

  “You won’t be going back until it’s cleared up,” Taylor said. “So it doesn’t matter how far behind they are because it’s about to get worse.”

  Midge groaned and said, “It’ll take weeks to get caught up if I’m not there daily, at least trying to keep up.”

  “It’ll take weeks anyway,” Troy reminded her gently. “Remember that.”

  She nodded, then got up and walked into the kitchen, where she poured herself a cup of coffee. It was the last cup. After the others waved off her suggestion of making more, she shut off the pot and came back and sat down again. “The thing is, none of this pertains to the poor man who died in my bed yesterday. And, other than a theory about getting a key to my apartment, how could any of this—the dead guy in my apartment and my office being hacked—possibly involve that sweet couple from downstairs?”

  “Well,” Colton said, “we don’t know how or why yet, but there will be an explanation. We just have to get to the bottom of it.”

  “And fast,” she said in a sharp tone. “This guy’s leaving a mess of bodies in his wake, and, well, I really don’t want to be the next one.”

  *

  Just the thought of he
r being the next victim turned Taylor’s blood to ice. He walked over and sat down beside her. Patting her hand and linking their fingers, he said, “I told you that isn’t happening.”

  She raised her eyes to his and said, “I know. But I didn’t expect my boss to get shot while I was at lunch either.”

  “As much as it’s hard to think along those lines, we do have to consider the fact your boss could have been an entirely different issue.”

  Troy and Colton shared a nod.

  She stared at him and then shook her head. “No way. Not when we have three other bodies and a hacker involved.”

  “I know it doesn’t look that way, but you know we have to look at every angle. And that also means we have to sit back and let the police do their work.”

  She glared at him. “Did you walk through that place? With all the paper files collecting everywhere, how would the cops find anything?”

  “They’ll fingerprint anything suspicious or anything commonly touched, like the front entrance doorknob and the like,” Troy said.

  “It’s a public office,” she said tiredly. “You saw that front counter, right? Hundreds of people come in that office. If they fingerprint that front counter, it will just bog down their investigation.”

  “What about the boss’s door?”

  “Well, mine will be there for sure,” she said, “because I thought maybe he was sleeping, so I opened the door to check. It was strange, like, all of a sudden, the place felt empty. I hadn’t noticed up until then because I’d been so buried in work. Well, I did put the ringing phones on Silent. And then it just seemed to take a little bit of time for that sense of unease to trickle through my brain. Apparently I’m really slow these days.” At that point, she yawned and sank back against the couch.

  “You’re exhausted,” Taylor said, studying her face with worry. “And you should be on medical leave as it is. Finding one body is enough. But finding out you were set up, somebody was killed in your bed, friends of yours in the building are missing, and then your boss is murdered—probably while we were out for lunch—is reason enough for a mental breakdown. And we don’t want to go there.”