Covert Attraction

by Linda O. Johnston

  Especially after shifting gears so adamantly from where they’d been back to where they should be.

  But what he had told her was right. If he stayed, he would want to continue holding her. Touching her. And after that bout of incredible sex, one thing would undoubtedly lead to another once more. Or at least he’d wind up attempting to seduce her again, for the physical experience only. But anything like that was a bad idea.

  She had to cooperate with him as long as she was here.

  He remained outside her apartment building for a while, sitting in his small well-used car, which was part of his undercover disguise.

  It wasn’t likely that Preston Corcoris or anyone else had followed her home that night—not any more than he might have any other night. On the other hand, there’d been that minor interaction when he’d been there to redirect it.

  Could Corcoris have recognized Beth?

  He hadn’t seemed to. Plus, Daniel had kept his eyes open as he’d driven here before. There’d been no indication that Beth was being followed.

  Of course, the company would have her home address on file. That was one good reason for Daniel to check for strangers driving in this area now. But the street was quiet. He was the only one around, watching things.

  Even so, he sat for maybe half an hour. A couple of cars drove by. Another one stopped and parked, and its driver, a woman, went into a similar-looking apartment building across the street.

  Another woman parked and got a kid out of the backseat, then entered Beth’s building.

  Everything seemed fine. He was overreacting.

  Maybe because he had an urge to see Beth one more time that night, and...

  He gave a snort as he turned the key in the ignition. He had way overstayed his welcome around here.

  He drove off, steering his car toward the Moravo Beach apartment he rented while pretending to be a lab rat at Corcoris. It was only about five miles from her apartment. Even so, it might have been across the state. He couldn’t cross that distance again—at least not until he felt certain that he could control his own body from pouncing on her while they were alone.

  Unless, of course, he had a genuine reason to believe she was in danger, and his being near her wasn’t the result of his sexual interest in her.

  When they were both at the Corcoris headquarters, their minds would be occupied enough to sublimate any physical attraction between them. At least his mind would be, and he trusted Beth and her intent to work to put Corcoris down to do the same.

  As he drove, he thought about his presence here. He had been working with CIU for a couple of years. He liked Judge Treena and her attitude. Enjoyed working with her, so far, at least.

  But he had initially wondered about the value of CIU.

  Why protect people who couldn’t contribute anything other than disclosing that there might be a problem of great interest to the government or its agencies—like, in this case, the Food and Drug Administration—without being able to prove it?

  People like Beth, who might really have been threatened but had only heard rumors about what was wrong with an outfit like Corcoris.

  On the other hand, if what she claimed was right, and Corcoris was cutting a lot of corners and doing such a good job of hiding it that the FDA had initially been fooled, many people who took their medications could be in danger.

  It didn’t hurt to check things out and look for proof.

  Besides, going undercover like this was fun—and now, he admitted to himself, the job was even better since he had met the person who’d made the claims and was now being protected.

  Would he have decided he liked what he was doing as much as he did at the moment if that person under protection was someone other than the sexy Beth Jones?

  Didn’t matter. He would do his job anyway. And add to the protection in any manner that was needed.

  No one else was going to die under his watch.

  He soon turned onto the side alley that led to the entrance of his building’s parking lot. He saw no one out and about. A good thing. He needed time and solitude to digest what Beth had told him—and to ensure that his body stopped reacting just because he thought about her.

  He pulled his car into his designated space, parked and headed up the stairs.

  * * *

  To her surprise, Beth had slept reasonably well last night.

  Maybe it was because she knew someone was not only aware of her real identity but willing to protect it and, perhaps, her.

  Maybe it was because of happy exhaustion after her temporary but utterly enjoyable physical interlude with Daniel.

  In any event, she’d had sweet dreams and smiled a lot to herself—until she reached the Corcoris Pharmaceuticals campus that morning.

  She parked in the employees’ lot, pulled her bland Corcoris Cleaning Staff T-shirt down over her jeans and at the same time turned her expression into something just as bland.

  She was back. Here, where she had work to do—two kinds of work. And she didn’t dare get them confused.

  That was enough to stick a nail into any balloon of cheerfulness.

  Would she see Daniel today? She suspected they would both find a way to be sure of it. That gave her a warm feeling inside, but she quickly shoved it off.

  She approached the rear of the main office and lab building as usual, via the rear door. She swiped her ID card, then headed downstairs to the basement and its cleaning-gear storage area.

  Once again she punched in at the computer to show that Beth Jones had reported for work this Wednesday right on time.

  Would she wind up with another miserable assignment today like the awful one she had wound up with yesterday—cleaning up after someone had trashed a lab area?

  She still wondered who had done that—and why.

  Mary Cantrera approached from where she’d been talking to another member of the cleaning crew beside a cart.

  “Good morning,” Beth said brightly, then looked down at the floor in shock. She had sounded chipper, happy, not the shy little thing she was supposed to be here.

  Just because yesterday—and its evening—had held surprises, including some that were more than pleasant, didn’t mean she could dare to break her cover.

  But Mary gave a return “Good morning” in her usual snide tone, which made Beth feel a little better.

  “What would you like me to do today, Mary?” Beth kept her head down, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “You can start out in the cafeteria again,” Mary ordered. “Gabrielle and John are already there but we need to finish cleaning it fast today. There’s some kind of lunch being thrown there by the execs.” Her tone sounded almost accusatory, as if Beth somehow held up finishing the cleaning by arriving not early but on time.

  “Of course.” Beth hurried to the nearest cart, where she started inventorying the equipment and supplies. She was joined immediately by Mary, who began moving things around to fit more liquid cleaners on the shelves below.

  Slowing Beth down. But of course she didn’t complain about it. All she did was murmur, “Thank you.” And hurriedly push the cart out the door as soon as her boss completed her interference.

  Although it wasn’t as bad as cleaning the trashed lab, this wasn’t an assignment Beth particularly wanted, either. Working in the cafeteria was repetitious. There was virtually no possibility of snooping into formulations, computer data or lab notes for something that could eventually be used as evidence against the company or its executives.

  And there was more possibility of running into some of those executives again—thereby increasing her risk of being recognized as Andrea.

  But objecting wasn’t in her job description. Nor did it fit with Beth Jones’s personality.

  She headed for the service elevator and pushed the button.
The door opened in just a few seconds. The car wasn’t empty, which didn’t surprise Beth.

  Nor should she have been completely surprised to see that one of the three people on it was Daniel, even though he could have just as easily taken one of the regular elevators here. Or the stairway.

  He wasn’t on the cleaning staff, so why use the service elevator?

  Maybe it was part of the role he played here in his undercover capacity.

  Besides, this wasn’t the Daniel she had spent time with late yesterday. No, this was the man she’d first met. The nerdy, slouched guy with the white lab jacket and black-rimmed glasses who smiled endlessly and geekily.

  Her mind immediately shot back to the previous day here. She’d interacted with this guy then, particularly when he had diverted Preston Corcoris’s attention from her and on to other lab-related things.

  The fact she’d run into him before meant it was okay to acknowledge him.

  “Good morning,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes as she bent her head in her shiest persona.

  “Hi,” came the loud, happy response. “Need any help with all that stuff?”

  Was that his way of saying they needed to get together and talk? If so, why?

  In case it was important, she wouldn’t negate the possibility. “No, I’m fine,” she said. “I won’t have to push it far anyway. The cafeteria is near the elevator.”

  That told him where she was going. And if he did happen to show up there, she’d know she needed to take a restroom break or otherwise figure out a benign way to leave her fellow janitorial-staff members.

  She got into the elevator and pushed the button for the third floor. She squeezed herself behind the cart and turned.

  Through the still-open door, she saw that Daniel the geek was still in the hallway. He was talking to the two guys he’d ridden in the elevator with. Both wore suits. Were they executives? Then what were they doing on that floor?

  Or could they be security? Beth felt uneasy seeing them there, too.

  But sometime, preferably later today, she’d find a way to quiz him about who those guys were—and what they’d been talking about.

  * * *

  Interesting, Daniel thought as he stood in the downstairs hallway, forcing himself not to look toward the departed elevator.

  Not to think about Beth and last night, let alone why they both were here...

  He quickly faced the guys he was showing around. They were doctors, here for a lunchtime meeting in the Corcoris Pharmaceuticals cafeteria. They’d asked for a tour of the headquarters building, and Ivan Rissinger, right-hand man to Preston Corcoris, had given Daniel the honor.

  Did Rissinger even know who Daniel supposedly was, what he ostensibly did here? Why give a lab rat like he was supposed to be the duty of giving people the company hoped to impress an exciting tour?

  Obviously these guys didn’t rate highly with the company execs.

  Or maybe there was more to it. Maybe they had the execs’ ears and he was on trial.

  Which made him regret that he’d offered to help Beth and thereby put her, even for an instant, on their radar.

  “Not much to show you down here,” he told his charges, Dr. Kresge from Riverside and Dr. Adams from Bakersfield. He shrugged and smiled. “I don’t get here often myself. The labs where I work are mostly on the second floor. There’s just support stuff around here, as far as I know—storage, cleaning equipment, offices for the janitorial and maintenance staff, that kind of thing. Now, if you’re ready to go up to the second floor, where I hang out, it’s a lot sexier than this.” His gesture took in the wide hallway with its clean but well-worn floors and the door-riddled walls that also could use some updating.

  No people were around at the moment, a good thing. No distractions as Beth had been a few minutes ago.

  “Sounds good,” Dr. Adams said. What was his first name? Rissinger had mumbled it when he’d introduced Daniel to these guys. Kresge’s, too. But obviously Daniel wasn’t their equal, so he was just to call them each “Doctor.”

  “No need to use the service elevator this time,” Daniel said. “Fun to ride it now and then for the experience, but the regular elevators are much nicer, and two come down to this level.”

  He had been surprised when Rissinger had pointed to it while sending Daniel on his way with these two. But other people had been walking around then near the other elevator bank, so maybe he’d figured they’d be able to use the service elevator more quickly.

  A short while later Daniel took the doctors in one of the nicer elevators to the second floor. Once again he showed them around. He wasn’t surprised to see a few of his fellow lab assistants doing the same thing with other suited people—women and men—who must be there for the luncheon, too. The low buzz of voices permeated everywhere. People wandered in and out of a lot of the labs.

  Hardly sanitary, Daniel thought. But no one seemed to be going through the doors into the most secured and highly clean areas.

  He had a feeling that Beth and her fellow cleaning staff would be busy here later in the day, or even tonight.

  And in the labs, too? Beth had enough on her mind around here, and he hadn’t wanted to add to her angst by talking about yesterday’s mess she’d had to clean, but he suspected there’d been more to it than some kind of weird accident. He’d started putting out feelers to some of the guys who’d been there awhile and had two impressions so far. One: that wasn’t the first time it had happened. And two: no one wanted—or dared—to talk about it.

  But he’d listen and nudge and find out more about it.

  For now, though, he wasn’t pleased that he and his fellow lab geeks weren’t important enough to get notice of the lunch meeting, let alone hear what it was all about. Which didn’t mean that he couldn’t find this out, too. Maybe even finagle some kind of invitation.

  One way or another, he would watch, and listen to, what was going on.

  * * *

  With only one set of steps to get these guys up to the third-floor cafeteria, Daniel led them to a close-by stairwell as it neared eleven o’clock.

  The doctors had seemed particularly interested in one of the labs that Daniel had told them was primarily used for quality control.

  “What kinds of medications are being tested there right now?” Adams asked.

  “It varies,” Daniel parried. “I was working on an existing antibiotic and also assisting a bit on our new diet med. I think it’s okay to mention that to you as long as I don’t go into any detail. You know that our company, as well as most others, is pretty proprietary about what we’re doing.”

  “But that’s exactly why we’re here,” Kresge said, smiling. “We’re both weight-loss specialists and we were told that the meeting today is to get our input about what we’d like to see more of in assistive medications.” He was maybe Daniel’s age, early thirties, and looked bright eyed and excited about the possibilities, as if he were a kid who’d been handed some new technological gadget to try.

  His counterpart, Adams, was probably twenty years older and tried to look jaded, although Daniel had seen some interest as he pointed out some of the newest testing devices.

  Interesting news about the lunch meeting, Daniel thought. Even though he hadn’t been officially invited, he decided he would become best friends to these two guys so he could hear what was going on.

  “That’s right,” he said to Kresge, smiling as if he knew what he was talking about. “We’re all interested in what you physicians who’ll be in a position to prescribe our latest formulations want to see. And I’ll just bet our new diet drug that just came on the market will fit your needs.” No one could say that Daniel was anything but a company guy if they overheard that.

  If they only knew.

  Both doctors nodded noncommittally, and Daniel showed them around
just a little more before ushering them to the stairwell to walk up one flight to the cafeteria floor.

  The two doctors were chattering then about what they both would be saying at the meeting. Daniel tuned them out, at least partially. That wasn’t what he was here for.

  But maybe something that occurred during or after the meeting would prove useful.

  When he opened the door to the hallway, he saw that farther down it Beth was standing beside her cart, waiting for a service elevator. He had an urge to go offer his help again but knew she wouldn’t appreciate it. It would only call attention to her once more.

  And he’d be doing it more for himself than for her.

  Instead, he ignored her and led his charges down the hallway in the other direction, which was fairly crowded. He stayed with them as they entered the cafeteria and noticed that there was an executive at each of the dozens of tables, apparently holding a guest list or seating chart.

  That didn’t bode well for his ability to stay and listen.

  But what if this assembly led into a discussion about things the doctors’ patients had experienced that indicated problems with prior Corcoris medications?

  He needed to at least hear that, just in case.

  He decided to take another approach. After helping Drs. Kresge and Adams find their seats, he said goodbye to them and wended his way back through the noisy and apparently exuberant crowd.

  He suddenly had an urge to help the kitchen crew.

  They could always use another pair of hands, couldn’t they?

  It turned out they couldn’t. But Daniel happened to be in the right place at the right time. As he maneuvered his way back among the tables, one of the executives he hadn’t met before, a woman dressed in a black business suit, stood up and blocked his way.

  “We had a cancellation at my table,” she said softly but urgently. “You’re one of the quality-control test guys, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.” The description was close enough to what he was purportedly doing here.

  “Then join us for lunch. And get ready to answer a bunch of questions.”

  Daniel wanted to collect answers, not give them.