Acceptable Risks

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  She followed her instincts and warily shook dirt off her hands, sidestepping between the tables in the opposite direction of the person at the other end. He didn’t speak again, but she could see flashes of white between green leaves and purple and blue flowers as he kept coming her way. She shifted to stay out of sight, not frightened so much as suspicious and annoyed.

  Fishing her cell phone from the pocket of her khakis, she kept moving, keeping some distance between them but not heading toward the door. Her father would freak if he knew she wasn’t fleeing, but she was not leaving sensitive, top-secret work at the mercy of this…whoever.

  The call she speed-dialed went through and Phil’s voice said, “Security.” Lark ducked below the edge of a table and whispered her situation.

  “Don’t hang up,” Phil told her. “People are on their way.”

  She rose, trying to spot the guy. He could be innocent, a visitor or new employee Ralph had forgotten to tell her about. But the unease she’d felt in the shower the other day returned, and she wondered if this was connected. She had to get a look at him without getting in his way. The wooden tables supporting the plants had cross braces that made it impossible to crawl under them. She crouched low and settled for running along the end of the rows until she saw movement again, then got down on her hands and knees and eased forward.

  Man, would she feel stupid if he was legit and caught her doing this.

  The man was moving away from her down the aisle, his head turning back and forth as he checked the tags on the plants. The light on his Bluetooth earpiece pulsed, signaling an open call.

  “I don’t see her. Not yet. Look, the tags aren’t in English. It’s not going to be easy—” He tilted his head back, an exasperated move. “Well, which do you want, the paperwork or the plants? I’ll try, boss, but if she doesn’t show up… Okay, fine. Girl, papers, plants. In that order. Yeah, I got it. I said, I’ve got it. No, you don’t have to—hey. Crap.” He ended the call and pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster under his preppy jacket, muttering something under his breath.

  Fury and fear bubbled through her, making it difficult to hold her position. Fury won the short skirmish. This guy was after her work. Which study? His tag checking didn’t give a clue. Why would he want any of it? Her research was always preliminary. Development occurred in other departments.

  His motives didn’t matter. She’d ferret them out later, after she saved the data.

  She eased back on her haunches. She needed a weapon. Most of the stuff here heavy enough to do damage was also too heavy for her to lift. Or too short to use without moving within the guy’s reach, which would be stupid. She had basic self-defense and kept up with training, but there was no point in putting it to the test if she could avoid it. She watched him turn the corner into the main aisle, and then inspiration struck. She wound through the greenhouse to the room in the back. Her speed meant she wasn’t very silent, and her keys rattled when she opened the door, but she had one advantage. This was her place.

  The man’s footsteps echoed as he hurried in her direction. Adrenaline spiked. Lark grabbed one of the transfer buckets and a hose and braced herself. When the man pushed open the door to the storeroom, she flung the contents of the bucket—dry fertilizer—in his face. The bucket clattered to the floor and she raised the hose, spraying the sputtering, spitting man with water. He yelled as the mix ran into his eyes.

  “That’s got to burn.” She strode forward as he backed away, keeping the spray on his face so he couldn’t recover and come after her, or run away. He smacked into a stand of pots, knocking them over, and staggered as they tumbled around his feet.

  Lark dropped the hose and picked up a clay pot, swinging it at his head.

  “That’s enough.”

  Startled at the voice behind her, Lark pulled her swing and spun.

  The man was young, only a couple of years older than her, and good looking in a sparkly-blue-eyes, pale-blond-hair, tennis-muscles kind of way. But the glee on his face almost made him look ugly.

  “What the hell is going on here?” she demanded, still angry. “How do you people keep getting in?”

  “Yeah, we’re gonna tell you.” The blond eyed the other man, who whimpered and rubbed at his face. “Did you blind him?”

  “Probably.”

  He tsked. “That doesn’t make me happy.”

  Lark didn’t say anything. If these guys knew anything about her, they weren’t surprised by her response to their attempt to steal her work. And her, apparently.

  “Oh, well. Come on, Donald.”

  The man tried to follow the command. The tennis blond reached for Lark’s wrist. She attempted to jerk away, but he was ready for her and held on.

  “Ah-ah!” He held up a finger. “Your father taught me well. And unlike you, I’ve used what he taught me for years.”

  Lark frowned at him. “You—what?” Her mind raced as she leaned away from him, her arm stretched out. Pieces came together, clicking quickly into place. Her father’s business might be struggling, but he had few true enemies. Her heart sank. “You’re Isaac Kemmerling.” Shit.

  He smiled. “Daddy talks shop at home. Great, that saves us the whole getting-acquainted period.” He laughed and tugged on her arm. “Come quietly and no one gets hurt.” He turned to leave.

  A man Lark hadn’t seen creeping up on them slammed his fist into Isaac’s face. He crumpled without a sound, his slack fingers sliding off Lark’s wrist.

  She gaped at the new guy. He was blond, too, but a darker color that would bleach into streaks in the sun. His skin tone was “computer geek” but his body was—well.

  Then he looked up, and all the edges of her vision went fuzzy and dark. She swayed and blinked fast to bring it back. A hard, warm arm wrapped around her back, grounding her, and she stared up into the green-gold eyes of a dead man.

  “Jason,” she breathed.

  He grinned. “I guess Matt didn’t tell you.”

  Before she could respond, blue-uniformed security men flooded the building, fanning out and scampering up aisles, peering under tables.

  “They’re over here!” she called.

  “We have to go,” Jason said, his arm tightening around her.

  “I can’t, I have to—”

  “We have to go now.”

  Lark didn’t argue. She should stay with company security, talk to the police, make sure the two men on the floor—one still, one writhing—were taken into custody. But this man was her father’s best friend, and though she hadn’t seen him for years before he died, she trusted him.

  It didn’t keep her from casting a reluctant look over her shoulder at her rare, delicate plants as she and Jason trotted behind a row of cabinets and around to the main door, now stupidly unsecured. Jason gave her a significant look as he pushed through, and she nodded. Whatever was going on, there was a distinct lack of safety here at the moment.

  Jason led her to a navy sedan she recognized as Hummingbird issue. He’d obviously driven here from DC.

  “Is my father okay?” she asked as he opened the passenger door for her.

  “He’s fine.”

  “Where is he?” She tried to look at his face for assurance, but he firmly guided her into the car and she only caught a glimpse of determination.

  “I don’t know. I last saw him at the company.” He closed the door behind her and jogged around the front of the car, sliding in and starting the ignition with a surprising economy of motion, given what his condition should be.

  “That had to be hours ago, at least,” she argued. “Can I call him?”

  Jason handed her a slim cell phone. “Press and hold one.”

  She did, watching “Matt” appear on the display, then lifting the phone to her ear with a sudden surge of fear. Jason died six months ago. This guy couldn’t be Jason. She’d been stupid to get into the car with him. She had no proof her father sent him, or that she was even calling her father. She put her hand on the armrest, near the handle,
ready to dive out when the car slowed, holding her breath while the line rang.

  The third ring cut off abruptly. “Did you get her?”

  “Dad?”

  “Lark.” His relief made her ear tingle. “You’re okay?”

  “When I was six, I built a sand castle. I was very proud of it and angry when the waves came up and destroyed it. What did I say?”

  Her father chuckled. “Good girl. You said ‘pissflaps.’”

  Tension released, her muscles weakening. Jason glanced at her from the corner of his eye before turning the car onto the main road to the entrance gate. She thought she saw approval before he looked back at the road, and warmth suffused her. Her brow wrinkled, but she concentrated on the phone.

  “Dad, what’s going on? I’m with Jason, but he’s—”

  “Dead, I know. I tried to call you to tell you he was on his way but you didn’t answer.”

  “I turned my phone to vibrate while I was working. I didn’t feel it.” Her father didn’t have to say what she knew he was thinking: Typical. “Dad, how—” But understanding hit her in a wave of shocked euphoria. “Oh, my God, it worked. You did it.” Without thinking, she grabbed Jason’s forearm. He hissed in a breath and she let go, quickly. “You used the regeneration therapy.” It had worked. Suddenly, Isaac and his goon trying to get her and her work made more sense.

  Now Jason looked at her full on, his slightly parted lips the only expression of his surprise.

  “We did,” her father admitted. “Among other things. Look, Lark, I’m in the middle of something—”

  “Important, I’m sure. And Jason will tell me everything. Yada yada. I know the drill.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “I love you, Larkling.”

  She winced and was glad he couldn’t see it. “I love you, too, Dad.”

  “I’ll see you soon. Let me talk to Jason for a second.”

  She handed the phone over and listened to Jason give her father a shorthand version of what had happened. They were done in less than a minute, and Jason laid the closed phone in the console between them.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “To a safe house on the other side of the city. Tomorrow we’ll go to your apartment and get whatever you need for a short trip. We’ll meet your father back at Hummingbird.”

  “And when we get to the safe house you’ll tell me what’s going on.”

  “Yep.”

  “All of it.”

  “Yep.”

  “No ‘protect the little lady, the delicate daughter of the big boss, from the things that go bump in the night’?”

  Jason snorted. “No. I think Matt knows better than to try that now. And I definitely do.”

  Lark smiled, remembering the incident he was referring to. “Perry was the team captain.”

  “I understand.”

  He smiled back at her, and something zinged Lark, deep under her breastbone. Her breath caught. Oh, boy.

  She faced front again. “Dad should never have told me not to worry my pretty little head.”

  “He was joking.”

  “But he meant it. And all I wanted was to go to a high school dance.”

  “And he knew a threat had been made against the school.”

  “It was kids!” She subsided immediately, remembering other schools, threats that had been real. “Okay, I get it now, but he should have explained it instead of expecting me to just do as he told me. I was seventeen.”

  “I know, Lark. He knows. No one’s patting you on the head. You have to know what the threat is to be safe from it. And we need your help.”

  Well, that was a new one.

  “My curiosity level just went to red. But we have to go to my apartment first.”

  “Lark—”

  “Jason.”

  Jason closed his mouth. Part of her gaped in amazement that he was here. That she was talking to him. Questions raced through her head, dragging so many emotions there wasn’t time to feel them before the next one crowded in. But prioritizing them was easy.

  “My work is there. The plant that led to the compound that led to the regeneration therapy that’s partly responsible for you being alive and whole. And all the data supporting it.”

  Jason immediately turned the car around, and Lark sank into her seat. He didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need him to. He’d just confirmed the reason Isaac had been after her. Despite the cauldron of questions and emotions, she appreciated the silence the rest of the way to her apartment. She needed a few minutes to absorb what was happening.

  Since her father didn’t exactly participate in Take Your Daughter to Work Day, Lark had never seen Jason in action. Not that she actually saw him this time, either. He left her in the car outside her apartment house and in five minutes, figured out where the Kemmerling spies were and identified their blind spots. Then he got her inside, slipping past the guard at the desk, who didn’t look up.

  Lark waited until they were in the elevator before asking, “What did you do?”

  Jason quirked an eyebrow in question.

  “The guard ignored us. They don’t do that here, even the ones I don’t know very well.”

  “Your father knows them all. It didn’t take much to convince him not to see us come in. Now he doesn’t have to lie if Isaac or his guys try to get information from him.”

  Lark winced. “I hope they won’t hurt him to get it.”

  “Isaac is smarter than that.”

  “Yay.” Smart wasn’t a good thing in an enemy.

  Jason insisted on entering the apartment first. As soon as he’d cleared the entryway, he pulled her in and made her wait by the door. The alarm was armed and undisturbed, but Lark waited patiently while he searched the rest of the apartment.

  “Okay, where first?” He holstered the gun he’d strapped on in the car, hidden under a snug jacket he now wore over his super-tight long-sleeved T-shirt. Clothes that showed off in delicious detail how fit he was. Lark wondered again how that was possible. The regeneration therapy could only do so much.

  “Roof. Greenhouse.” Since she had the top-floor apartment of the small building, she had the only access to the roof. Still, she breathed a sigh of relief when she found her low-tech precautions intact. Isaac must have assumed all her work would be at BotMed. But since she’d developed the compound before she went to work there, both the data and the remaining plants were all here.

  She strode to the rear of the greenhouse but then stood, fists on her hips, staring at the four plants sitting on their table.

  “What’s the matter?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know what to do with them. We can’t cart them all over the place. And I can’t hide them in a safe or something. They need light and air.”

  Jason picked up two and carried them to another table. “Mix them in with the rest. Then pull all the labels.”

  She stared at him, open-mouthed. “Pull all the labels?”

  “He won’t be able to tell which ones are the right ones.”

  “Neither will I!”