by Lexi Blake
The man whose nametag proclaimed him to be Ernie stood and picked up his walkie-talkie. “Scott, we might have a medical emergency on six. I’m going up. We have a couple of guests I need you to watch after.”
Damn it. “Please let me come with you.”
Ernie shook his head. “I can’t. The building is technically closed. We have protocols to follow. Scotty should be down soon. You stay here and I’ll go up and check on her.”
That was not happening.
His heart rate ticked up, adrenaline priming his system. It was a good thing he’d kept up his workout routine. He mostly did it because if he didn’t Big Tag pointed out his soft middle, and it was irritating to always be the paunchiest guy in the room.
And he remembered a time when there had been pain and punishment involved in letting himself go even the tiniest bit.
“Of course.” He managed to get the words out like a man who actually meant them. “I’ll keep trying to get her on the phone.”
Ernie nodded. “She’s probably in her lab. Sometimes those labs can be hard to get a signal in depending on what they’re working on. I’ll be back with some news.”
He waited until the guard was out of sight and then took a quick look-see at the system sitting on the security desk. There were monitors and a laptop. And manual releases for both the outer doors and the first floor stairwells. Thank god for fire codes.
Hutch pulled the wireless earbuds out of his pocket and shoved them in his ears as he dialed MaeBe’s number. One of the things they’d done earlier was to set up how this op was going to work. “Kyle, when I’m close to the stairs, you hit that stairwell button to release the lock and then keep the other guard off my back. Don’t let him watch the security cameras.”
Kyle frowned his way. “What are you… This is a tech thing, isn’t it? Go. I’ll handle things down here.”
“Hey, boss. What’s up?” MaeBe asked.
“I need you to walk me through the Genedyne building.” He didn’t wait for her to pull up the schematics. He needed to go. “I’m starting in the west staircase. I think I need to get to the private gym.”
He started up the first flight. Ernie would head for her lab, probably stopping to talk to whatever guard worked that floor. He was sure they had some serious security. He prayed the gym wasn’t at the freaking top of the building.
“It’s on seven,” MaeBe announced.
He could handle seven. That was a painful but doable number of stairs. Still, he was going to spank Noelle if he ran up seven flights of stairs only to find her drying her hair. Or fixing the world’s helium problems. Yep, he’d spank her for that, too. Hard. She would cry and beg forgiveness and he would think about it. Hard.
Sprinting upstairs was fucking hard.
“Okay, I’ve got them up on my tablet.” MaeBe’s voice was steady in his ears. He’d made sure she had the schematics to the Genedyne building and to Noelle’s apartment building just in case. “Are you going through security or trying to avoid it?”
“I’m going to break down a fucking wall if I have to.”
“All right. The easiest way there is to take a left when you hit the seventh floor. The gym isn’t far, but it’s got keycard access into the locker rooms. The locker rooms open to the gym. The women’s locker is on the right about halfway down that first hall.”
In the background he could hear the sound of MaeBe’s microwave pinging. At least she was home and was working on her own system. That meant she would have access to some of Noelle’s data. “I need you to get into her smartwatch and tell me if you see anything weird.”
This was the part he hadn’t exactly told Noelle. When she’d given him permission to track her phone, he’d kind of let himself in the back door to pretty much everything in her cloud. He could see every piece of data her phone and watch collected, and it was a shocking amount.
“I think you’re right about her being at the gym. She logged thirty minutes of exercise about fifteen minutes ago, but then it gets weird. Her heart rate goes crazy up, like way more than the exercise, and then it drops.”
He upped his pace even as his quads and hamstrings started to burn. The smartwatch had health components and tracked the user’s heart rate and minutes of exercise. “What do you mean by drops?”
“I mean her heart rate was in the seventies and then it shot up to almost a hundred and thirty, and now it’s sixty. And all in the course of two minutes.”
Shit. “But we’re still getting a heartbeat?”
“Yes. It updated thirty seconds ago. Now it’s fifty beats per minute. I would bet she’s not conscious,” MaeBe said, tension coming into her tone.
He hit the seventh floor and blasted through the door. The hallway was quiet, almost eerily so. “I’ll call you if I need anything else. Keep monitoring her.”
Before she could reply, he shut the phone down and dialed Noelle again. “Come on, pick up.”
Panic was starting to get to him as he reached the women’s locker room door and was confronted with the first security he’d had to get through. He didn’t have a keycard. He didn’t have his kit. He should take the box apart and connect to it, but he didn’t have what he needed and there wasn’t time to MacGyver anything.
“Hey, you okay?” A tall man walked out of the men’s locker room, a gym bag in his hand. “Aren’t you the guy Noelle was with earlier?”
“I think she’s in trouble.” He didn’t care who this guy was. If he’d been in the locker room, he had a keycard. “Can you get me in?”
A brow rose but he seemed to get that this was an emergency. “Uh, sure. What’s going on? I saw her in the gym a couple of minutes ago and she was fine.”
“I know this sounds crazy, but I monitor her smartwatch and her heart rate dropped. Like a lot.”
The man moved forward quickly, pulling his card out and swiping it. “Here you go. I work in her lab. I hope she’s okay.”
He was in the minute that door opened. He slammed through and didn’t care that he might walk in on a bunch of women changing. They could scream at him later.
Then nothing mattered but the fact that Noelle was on the ground. She was still dressed in her gym clothes, her hair in a ponytail. She was limp on the floor of the locker room, her face away from him. He dropped to his knees as he heard the man behind him start to dial 911.
He reached for her arm, needing to feel her pulse.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Hutch?”
Relief flooded his system and he clutched her hand. “It’s okay. You’re okay, but we’ve got someone coming to check on you.”
“Pete?” She started to sit up, but Hutch settled her back down.
“I’ve got an ambulance coming,” the man named Pete said. “I’m going to meet them. I’ll bring them up as quick as possible.”
He ran out of the room.
She started to try to push up again.
“No. You are staying down until the EMTs get here.” He moved so she could rest her head on his leg.
Her eyes closed again. “I’m glad you’re here.”
And Hutch was left holding her hand as he started to sort through what had happened.
Chapter Five
Noelle sipped her tea and tried to wrap her head around the fact that she’d been choked out.
Choked out. That was the term Hutch had used.
It was also apparently why he wanted her to be careful about what she said.
“This is something the police do? My father has been a cop all of my life and I’ve never heard anyone at the station talk about choking someone out.” The mug warmed her hands, but nothing had made her feel safer than looking up and seeing Hutch’s blue eyes staring down at her. She’d started to panic as she’d come back to consciousness, but then she’d felt his hand in hers, seen his eyes, and known she would be okay.
He was a rat fink for not bothering to mention that he could now tell when her heart rate went up or down and how much exercise she got, but she wasn’t e
ven going to argue. He’d been able to find her. He’d known she was in trouble and he’d come for her.
It made her realize how alone she’d felt for the last year.
“Not anymore.” Hutch was pacing the floor of her living room. “The practice was outlawed completely a few years back, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still know how to do it. It’s not something you learn in a typical self-defense class. I would bet this guy is either a cop or former military.”
“Did you get any kind of look at him?” Kyle asked. “There were mirrors in the locker room. Did you see him?”
“It could have been a woman. She was in the women’s locker room.” Hutch walked ten steps to the left, taking him past her dining room table.
She thought about the moment she’d realized she was caught and there wasn’t anything she could do. She forced herself to take a long breath. “No. I didn’t get a look. I knew someone was in the room with me. I saw my locker was open and a minute later I lost consciousness. I think it was a man. I was pulled back against a muscular chest. He was definitely taller than me.”
“You’re five foot two, sweetheart. Everyone is taller than you,” Hutch pointed out.
“I still think it was a guy.” Something about the way he’d smelled. She’d been going over and over it. “He smelled like…sandalwood. That doesn’t tell me a lot, though. It’s the smell of the soap they have in the men’s locker room. The women’s is lavender. We voted.”
“So we think at some point he took a shower that day.” Hutch seemed to mull that over. “In the men’s locker room. I need to see a list of everyone who used a key to get into that locker room. Better yet, I saw a security cam on that hall.”
“I’m sure we can probably figure out a way to get a copy,” Kyle said.
“Oh, I’ll get whatever data I need.” Hutch started to pace again.
There were some problems with that scenario. “I don’t know that it will help. First of all, at least half the company uses the gym at some point of time in the day.”
“But I’m only interested in the hour around the attack on you, and I’m interested in who was in the men’s locker room,” Hutch pointed out.
“The locker rooms can be opened by any key,” she explained. “It was why Pete could get in. So a man could use his keycard to walk in, but I doubt he would use the hallway entrance. It would be simple to enter through the men’s locker room and then come around to the gym entrance. You don’t need a keycard to get into the locker room from the gym.”
“Would there be a record of who came in and out of the locker rooms?” Kyle was seemingly calmer than Hutch. He’d come up with the EMTs and Pete, who’d hovered around, too. Pete hadn’t left until the EMTs had.
“I would bet my life there’s a record for who went in,” she replied. Genedyne was big on records. The one place they didn’t have security cameras were the locker rooms.
“Let’s not joke about that right now since you almost lost yours.” Hutch had his hands on his hips and looked as prim as a really hot guy could manage.
From what she could tell it hadn’t been all that close. Yes, she’d lost consciousness briefly due to her carotid artery being squeezed, but all of her vitals had been stable and she felt perfectly fine now. Physically, at least. Emotionally she was kind of a mess. “All I’m saying is the keycard would tell you when a person went in, but it doesn’t keep track of people going out. There’s also the possibility that whoever did this was smart enough to enter with another employee. Then his keycard wouldn’t show him going in. And the EMTs said I was all right. I didn’t even need to go to the hospital.”
Hutch had argued with her over that call, but she’d done everything else he’d asked her to do. She’d kept her answers short when she’d talked to the police, who didn’t seem all that interested. She’d stayed close to Hutch, letting him hold her hand while they’d talked to both the cops and security.
She’d told the police she thought someone was trying to steal from the lockers. She didn’t mention any of the other odd happenings because Hutch had explained that he was worried about the police. He was concerned about the guy who sometimes worked the second shift here at her building. He’d freaked out even more when she’d told him Chris had been hired on only a few weeks before.
“It would have been better if we went to the hospital,” Hutch insisted. “It would make things easier when I walk you up to work tomorrow and start getting people used to seeing me around.”
“Or I could take the maneater up on her offer.” Kyle watched Hutch as though trying to figure out exactly how to deal with him. “I could potentially be in that building with a keycard all of my own in a couple of days.”
Hutch shook his head. “I don’t want anyone close to that woman. Especially not you. I saw how she looked at you.”
“Jessica pretty much looks at every hot guy that way, from what I’ve been told.” She’d heard the rumors about Jessica’s men.
Kyle gave her a smooth smile. “Thanks for the compliment.”
“She said Jessica Layne thinks you’re hot. Not that Noelle does,” Hutch complained. “And you shouldn’t view it as a compliment. From what I’ve read, Ms. Layne never keeps a man for long.”
“I mean he’s hot,” she heard herself saying. “In a purely aesthetic way. But Hutch is right. Jessica isn’t like looking for a long-term thing. And Kyle is her type. She likes the all-American beefcake guy. She’s not into…” How did she put this nicely? “I mean she’s really looking for men who don’t work in the tech industry.”
“Or the medical industry or legal,” Hutch continued. “She likes himbos, Kyle. Are you a himbo?”
Kyle shrugged as if he didn’t care whether someone thought he was all abs and no brain or not. “Depends on who you talk to. My brother would definitely say yes. But you two are acting like I’m going to sleep with the woman. I’m not. However, I can use the attraction to get me where we need to be, which is in that building. Noelle, we haven’t talked about why you were attacked. I understand why Hutch wanted you to be careful around the cops. We’re both worried that a DPD officer showed up in your building a few weeks before we think someone screwed up a break-in.”
“But Chris would have my accurate address.” She didn’t understand why a guy working a second job was such a concern. “He knows where I live.”
“I’m not at all saying he would have done the break-in himself.” Hutch stopped in front of the mantel over her fireplace, his eyes seeming to catch on the framed picture of her and her stepmom and dad. It was a graduation photo, and she was in her cap and gown. She was also in her old wheelchair.
“We’re more worried that he’s here to facilitate someone Ms. Layne or someone in her organization might hire.” Kyle crossed one muscular leg over the other. As wound up as Hutch seemed, Kyle was the opposite. “We’ll know more when we talk to some people we trust at DPD tomorrow. We have some questions they may or may not be willing to answer.”
Hutch turned, catching Kyle’s gaze. “Yeah, I’m worried about that, too.”
They seemed to know something she didn’t. “Worried about what?”
Hutch’s arms went over his chest. “I’m worried that we either found a guy who’s on Layne’s payroll or we walked into the middle of an active investigation and you’re part of it.”
She felt her eyes go wide. “I’m not part of any investigation.”
“You wouldn’t know you’re a part of this investigation because you’re a potential target.” Kyle made the pronouncement like he was talking about how nice it was outside.
Was he talking about a criminal investigation? “Why would I be a target? Why would Dallas police care about me? And for that matter, why would they care about Genedyne?”
“Because it’s a big tech company that has rumors around it. You’ve heard some of them, right?” Hutch asked.
“We do not have labs where anyone experiments on people. Not in a non-FDA approved way.” She’d heard
the urban legends. “We’re basically a big old think tank where a crazy, rich lady funds our wildest dreams.”
“One person’s dream can be another’s nightmare.” Hutch started moving again. “There’s also rumors that her finances aren’t as good as she says they are. Genedyne is her most famous business, but she’s had others.”
She probably didn’t know as much as she should about her boss. “I still don’t see what that has to do with me. I study helium.”
“You run a lab at Genedyne. You knew the woman who recently died under what some people would call mysterious circumstances,” Kyle mused. “If I was running an investigation into Genedyne, I would put you under surveillance.”
“Someone’s been watching me?” She could feel panic start to surge.
Hutch stopped in front of her, his expression softening. “Hey, it’s okay. From what I can tell, there were no bugs in this apartment, no hidden cameras. We went over every inch of this place and you’re good. If they are surveilling you, I think they’re doing it to figure out where you fit into the picture. The truth is we don’t know what’s going on, but I’m going to figure it out. You’re going to be okay.”
She wanted to reach out and touch that strong jawline, run her hands over the scruff that hadn’t been there earlier in the day. That face of his was a work of art. And she was honest enough to know that she wasn’t even close to being in his league. That knowledge didn’t make her stop remembering how good it had felt when he’d hugged her. The whole time with the EMTs and Pete and security asking her questions, Hutch had played the boyfriend role to perfection. He’d held her close and made sure she was comfortable. He’d been the one to find her cane.
She would have to use her braces tomorrow. She could feel it. There were days she needed more support than others, and typically they came after a fall. She could already feel the ache in her hips from hitting the floor of the locker room.
