by Vicki Hinze
“Come on,” Seth said. “I’ll give you the nickel tour. Maybe we’ll run into Dempsey.”
“Who’s Dempsey?” Julia looked at the lab tables with pure envy. Everything imaginable, right at the fingertips. And for the thousandth time, she felt that hollow ache of loss at having to leave her work behind. The lab had been the one place she had felt comfortable. The one place she hadn’t felt compelled to lock doors and constantly look back over her shoulder.
The only place she had been safe.
“Dempsey Morse,” Seth said, pausing at the water fountain to get a quick drink. “He represents Slicer Industries on the team.”
Home Base’s contractor. “Ah, I see.”
“We have a briefing set up for ten. You’ll definitely meet him then. I think you’ll like him. Dempsey’s sharp. A UCLA graduate with about twenty years’ experience. A little gruff, but a good man to have on our side.”
“Sounds charming.”
“Right.”
Ignoring him, Julia looked around. Three offices, a conference room, an employee’s lounge, several sets of restrooms, a showering facility, and a detox sterilization chamber formed the outer perimeter, and the hub—the inner lab—at the complex’s center. An admin section stood in the southeast corner, across from the three offices. In it, she saw an unmanned desk—administrative assistance was banned in the inner lab—a keyed copier that tracked who made copies, when, how many, and of what, and a one-way fax. Anything could come into the Black Box, but nothing went out.
“The computers in here are on a closed system,” Seth said. “No networking to the outside, no Internet access. We have two offices outside the vault with access and e-mail. You can use those, but on nothing regarding the project, of course.”
“Electronic mail wasn’t a big deal before I left.”
“It is now.”
As she had thought. In three years, a lot had changed.
Seth ducked in through an open door. “Your office. Mine’s next door.”
“Terrific.” She stepped inside and sat down at her desk. It felt good. Strange, but good. Almost like home.
“Why don’t you settle in? Files on the desk there relate to the project and team members. Specific project files, you’ll have to sign out one by one. Greta handles that for us. You’ll meet her at the briefing.”
“Fine.”
A frown knit Seth’s brow. He seemed hesitant. Finally, he worked his way up to asking what he wanted to know. “Julia, why have you dropped—” He stopped suddenly. “Never mind.”
He looked at her, seeking encouragement to finish his question. Knowing what it was—why she’d dropped Karl’s surname—she didn’t give it.
“Well.” He motioned to the far wall. “Conference room is on the other side of the lab. See you there at ten.”
Julia nodded, and then watched him through the glass wall, giving her a view of the lab. He walked straight to his office. Seth had done everything in the world to make her comfortable—at the apartment and here. He even had quelled his curiosity about her name change. Grateful for that small mercy, she shoved her hair back from her face and looked around.
The office was decent. About twenty feet long and twelve wide. Tiled, like everything else, but the far white wall had been decorated with a mural of an English garden. Pretty scene. And her desk even faced the door.
Seth had remembered. He’d often remarked on her “fetish” for seeing what was coming. He had no idea how on-target he had been, of course, and it wasn’t so much what but who. His not knowing had been one of the reasons they had worked together with such comfort and ease.
Don’t be a coward, Julia. There were a lot of reasons you were at ease with Seth. Admit it.
There were. She loved his honesty. Knowing that if Seth said something, she could bank on it. Anyone could. He always played straight. And he had courage. When necessary, he would go toe to toe with anyone short of God, and yet he genuinely respected other people’s ideas, views, and opinions. He seldom teased, but often laughed.
You always loved Seth’s laughter.
She had. For some strange reason, in it she heard hope. After she had left, when times had gotten really, really tough, and the urge to quit trying overwhelmed her, she would hear Seth’s laughter in her mind and find the strength she needed to keep struggling. Without his laughter, she might have given up.
Special.
Yes, but only in a general sense. Nothing personal or remotely intimate. She’d have to be crazy to ever let herself get personal or intimate again.
Julia, Julia, Julia. Wake up, woman. You already have.
No way. No damn way. Not now, not ever again. She’d nearly died, for God’s sake.
Whatever you say.
Oh, shut up.
Her conscience had to be wrong about this. Had to be.
Slightly nauseous, she stretched to the stack of files, pulled out one labeled Profiles, and dug in, eager to get her mind off Seth and familiarize herself with the team and the project.
“Okay,” she said, lifting a page with an unsteady hand.
“First, let’s get a fix on you, Dempsey Morse . . .”
Chapter Three
Julia entered the conference room promptly at ten.
Seven people were already seated, waiting for her. Seth had taken the chair at the foot of the table, leaving the opposite end free for her. As project head, she would occupy that seat in the future, but not wanting exert authority before it had officially been given to her, or before introductions, she walked on and sat down in the empty chair at Seth’s right.
From the gleam in his eyes, Seth understood. He should. This was a management technique she had learned from him.
“Everyone, this is Dr. Julia Warner,” Seth said. “You have her profile before you.” He nodded to the single sheet of paper on the conference table at each seat.
“Julia, this is the team.” Seth started on his left. “Dempsey Morse.”
“Welcome to the Zone, Doctor.”
Morse was shorter than Seth, about fifty, and round bellied. He had nice eyes. Gray-blue with a kind twinkle in them. He looked pleasant natured, and Julia hoped he was, though she had her doubts. Dempsey Morse had been married and divorced four times. But that could be the job. It was demanding and hell on a family. Morse was profiled to be sharp, devoted, and disciplined. That sounded good in her book. “Thank you, Mr. Morse,” she said. “It’s good to be here.”
“Dempsey.”
She nodded, then looked to the man at his side.
“Cracker.” The youngest member of the team, a chilling twenty-three, swiped a hand over his shaved head. “I do computers.”
An understatement, if ever she’d heard one. Cracker was a computer-guru genius. He didn’t drink or smoke. He wasn’t married, had no permanent relationships going, and he considered computing a recreational activity as well as his life’s work. He could hack into, or block out, any known security system, and had earned his nickname by proving it to the CIA. In a little friendly rivalry competition, the Defense Intelligence Agency bet the CIA that he could crack their security system. He’d won—which came as no surprise to the DIA because he had already cracked their system. “Hi, Cracker,” Julia said, then glanced on around the table.
“Greta.” A pretty redhead introduced herself. Her hair was short and spiky, a little on the funky side, yet her clothing was extremely conservative. “Booster systems specialist and secure-file liaison.”
“Hello, Greta.” Thirty-five, beautiful, brainy, and no wedding ring. Why hadn’t Seth latched onto her?
The thought came, and an unexpected streak of jealousy came with it. Tight-chested and surprised, Julia banished both. The idea of Seth and Greta—or him and any woman, for that matter—should not make Julia jealous. Ridiculous reaction.
Ridiculous. It was not personal. She looked on.
“Mr. Sandlis.” The oldest member of the team, hovering sixty, paused rapping his pen against the tabletop
to push his glasses up on his nose. “Trajectory specialist.”
Julia nodded, and her gaze locked on a forty-year-old man with dark, leathery skin and even darker eyes.
“Marcus.” He slumped in his chair. “Explosives.”
A shiver prickled up Julia’s spine, and she quickly looked away, to the gorgeous African-American woman dressed in red, who could pass for thirty though she was over forty.
“Linda,” she said in a rich, husky voice. “Interceptor/Tracker specialist and Saudi widow.” She sighed. “Again.”
“Ouch.” Julia flinched. Seth had told her about Linda being married to Mac, an active-duty Air Force pilot, who had just been deployed for his fourth remote tour in Saudi Arabia. “Sorry to hear it.”
“Sorry to have to say it.” Linda sighed deeper. “Again.”
Julia sent her an empathetic look. The long separations during remote tours, when the spouse and family were left behind, were part of the norm for military families, but that didn’t make them, or the readjustments on returning home from them, easier for the service members or their families. In Linda’s case, she was being left behind for the fourth time in just over three years with two rebellious teenage sons who seemed bent on driving her nuts by pushing every boundary possible to see what they could get away with while their dad was away. “If you need a shoulder, mine’s here.”
Genuine appreciation shone in Linda’s eyes. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” Julia said, then addressed the entire team. “I’m looking forward to working with all of you. Right now, the U.S. lacks a missile-defense system and is vulnerable to attack. When we’re done, we’ll have the most advanced system in operation worldwide. We can feel good about the security that system offers and what it means in real terms to Main Street America.” She offered them a smile.
Marcus and Dempsey Morse didn’t smile back.
It was an interesting group with impressive credentials. With the exception of Dempsey Morse and Mr. Sandlis, who offered no first name, none of the team offered their surname, and all around they had avoided disclosing their official titles. Seth definitely had compiled another winning team. She glanced over at him and tugged at her right earlobe.
Understanding lit in his eyes, and he tugged back.
It was a signal common between them in the old days, and he had remembered. She almost laughed out loud, and she probably would have, but something about him wasn’t . . . right.
She scanned him, and her gaze stuck at his collar. His ID badge. The overhead light glared on it, so she couldn’t see it clearly, but she could tell the man pictured did not have black hair. She checked, and everyone else had their badges. So whose did Seth have?
More importantly, who had his?
Seth took over, spoke a few words about the day’s goals, and then ended the meeting.
It had been brief. A formality, really. A chance for her to meet the team and officially take over the project.
They filed out of the conference room and returned to their offices and workstations. Julia lingered, intending to ask Seth about the badge, but he pulled Linda aside and asked her something about her kids. From his tone, it sounded serious, and, not wanting to interrupt, Julia decided to wait until they had finished their conversation to talk to him about his badge. Waiting should be safe enough. They were in the inner lab, for God’s sake.
She walked on to her own office, thoughtful, and sat down at her desk. Seth had seemed genuinely interested in Linda and her children, and he certainly had been genuinely concerned about Jeff. What if when Julia’s troubles had started she had gone to Seth with them? What if she hadn’t felt so ashamed and embarrassed and certain her problems had been her fault? She had refused to even acknowledge there were problems until it was too late. But what if she hadn’t?
Seth would have helped her. Just as he had helped her with Jeff. Just as he helped Linda. Julia wouldn’t have had to deal with . . .
Stop it. Just stop it. Done is done.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Done was done. Dragging Seth into hell with her would have been a stupid thing to do. It couldn’t have worked out much worse than it had for her, but involving Seth would only have made him intimate friends with misery, too. She’d done the right thing, keeping him out of it.
Letting go of the past, she reached for a file.
The rest of the morning breezed by with Julia rereading the profiles, looking for personal strengths and potential weaknesses in the team members that could create challenges. More often than not, problems originated with the staff, not the work, and if she could spot weaknesses and negate them, she would take a lot of pressure off herself and spare the whole team headaches.
At noon, she scarfed down a sandwich at her desk and shifted her focus to policy changes that had occurred during her absence. Those, she had to get a grip on quickly. Nothing could sabotage a program faster than breaching policy, stepping on toes, and ticking off powerful people.
Finally, about four, she began reviewing the actual project files. By tomorrow night, she estimated, she’d be up to speed.
She could have made the transition sooner, but none of the project files she needed to review could be removed from the vault, and no crisis on the horizon warranted her pulling an all-nighter. Her day officially ended at sixteen thirty—four-thirty P.M. Naturally, she would work until her usual six.
Just after five, Seth appeared in her doorway. “Julia.”
The concern in his voice jerked her attention from the file in her hands to him. Long ago, she had become accustomed to Seth’s shielding his emotions, to his expression appearing dark, remote, and distant. But now it looked ten times darker than Marcus’s, and the worry she had seen in Seth’s eyes at the beach had doubled. That chilled her to the bone. “What is it?”
He closed her office door, then turned and jammed a fist into his pocket. “We’ve got a serious problem.”
With Seth, serious meant serious. Her skin crawled. And what he had told her at the picnic area came to mind.
Millions could pay with their lives.
Julia prodded him. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s made copies of Home Base’s sensor codes.”
“Who?” They had a keyed copier, for God’s sake.
“According to the log”—Seth’s grim expression turned sickly, and cold fury glinted in his eyes—“me.”
Julia mentally flashed back to the conference room, to the briefing. To Seth’s name badge. “Oh, hell.” She stared up at him. “We’re being set up.”
Chapter Four
“We need to lock down the vault.”
Julia considered it, then rubbed her hands together atop her desk. “I think that would be a mistake, Seth.”
“A mistake?” He paced between her visitor’s chair and office door. “Don’t you understand? They’ve got the damn sensor codes.”
“I understand.” Grave news. Home Base’s sensor codes controlled its sensory perceptions, much like a human’s eyes and ears. It collected visual, audio, and magnetic energy data, verified it, and then transmitted the verified data back to them—one day, to the duty monitor at the Battle Management Center—giving them a clear picture, except for the type of warhead of the incoming hostile missile’s capability.
Definitely grave news. Dangerous news. “Sit down, okay?” She motioned to the green visitor’s chair and then waited.
“Sit down?” He leaned against her desk. “We need to move on this.”
“Seth,” she said more firmly. “Sit down.”
He stared at her as if she’d lost her mind and then plopped down on the leather chair. Air gushed out of it. “We’re wasting time.”
“No, we’re not.” She leaned toward him. “If we lock down the lab, odds double that we’ll never find out who copied the codes.” Convinced she was right, she pressed on. “We need to keep this quiet.”
“Quiet?” Seth dragged a hand through his hair. It gleamed black in the fluorescent light. “Julia, w
ould you think? Whoever took those codes—”
“Can’t do a damn thing with them until the project is developed and activated.”
“What if they get to whoever’s got the Rogue? Hostiles could develop the technology before we do. We’d have no damn defense.”
The thought chilled her to the marrow of her bones. “Not with only the codes. They’d need more. System designs, specs, schematics.” She spun through scenarios. “Look, I agree that we’ve got a serious problem, but we can’t react out of fear—not if we want to identify the thief.”
Seth visibly calmed down, and some of the color returned to his face. “We’re compelled to notify Security and the OSI. How do you propose we do that and keep this quiet?”
“We don’t break protocol, we just slow it down a little.” Julia lifted a pen from the blotter. She always thought better with a pen in her hand. “You noted irregularities before the project was funded. Who assisted you in developing the prototype and is now on the team?”
“Dempsey Morse, Cracker, and Marcus. Everyone else is new.”
“Then it seems plausible that one of them copied the codes.”
“That’s a hell of an assumption.”
“Yes, it is.” She slumped back. “But irregularities manifested then and now. We’re too new into the project for someone unfamiliar with it to have gathered much info outside his or her own area. Crossover seems far more probable.” She waited for that disclosure to sink in, and then went on. “Also, during the briefing this morning, I noticed your ID badge wasn’t yours.”
“What?” Startled, Seth looked down to the badge. “It’s mine.”
“Now it is. Then, it wasn’t,” Julia insisted. “The photo caught my eye.”
“Whose was it?”
“I couldn’t tell. The lights caused a glare,” she said. Now, of course, she wished she had immediately pursued finding out. But she had blown that opportunity.
