Acceptable Risks (13 page)

Hurry.

What the fuck did that mean? Did he need to abandon what he was doing and rush recklessly to Lark’s side?
Hurry
could mean she was bored, or in danger. Matt would kill him if he let anything happen to her, but there was a bigger picture. Jason could race up the street and still not get there fast enough, and then he’d have abandoned his only chance at a lead. He checked the computer screen. The flash drive contained one folder, labeled “untitled.” They’d be better off if he could check it here and leave the drive where he’d found it, but if it was protected, it could take him a while to crack.

He backed out of the file and yanked the drive from the port, shutting down the computer and wiping away his prints as simultaneously as possible. He set the chair right and relocked the bar safe, putting everything back and cleaning up after himself. Then he deactivated the power saver on the other computer—the one connected to the network—accessed the alarm, shut it down, and set it to reactivate in one minute. That gave him enough time to get out of the office. He couldn’t lock the door behind him, but hopefully Hector would think he’d forgotten in his rush.

Elevators had memory of what floors they went to when, but Jason couldn’t handle the stairwell again. The guard didn’t even notice him leaving.

He flipped his cell phone open as he walked as fast as he could toward Sixteenth Street. He speed-dialed Lark’s phone, but she didn’t answer it. And when he got to National Geographic, he saw why.

* * *

Gabby sat in her car in the Hummingbird garage for half an hour, trying to coach herself through what she had to do. She wasn’t afraid she’d been followed. She was no Hummingbird agent, but it’s easy to spot a tail on an empty road. Nor was she afraid someone would attack her in the lab. Hummingbird’s security was as impenetrable as possible, especially for the lab almost no one in the company knew about.

No, she was nervous about her ability to act normal. She was high-strung at the best of times, and knowing Matthew was missing… Not that anyone had confirmed he
was
missing. She’d inferred it from their behavior and questions, but they hadn’t come right out and said it. She supposed it was better she not have any information, then she couldn’t inadvertently reveal it to anyone. Certainly they’d want to keep Matthew’s disappearance a secret.

Her breath hitched at the thought. Things happened so fast. Options you thought you had could disappear in an instant. She could have made a move with him last night, let him know she liked him. Even if he’d rebuffed her, he’d have known he didn’t have to be alone.

Maybe he wasn’t, her freaking-out brain whispered. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to go out because he was meeting someone. Maybe he’d been in bed with her when—

“Arrrgh!” She slammed the flat of her hand on the steering wheel. “You’re such an idiot, Abigail.” She yanked her keys out of the ignition and flung herself from the car. Her frustration and self-annoyance propelled her past the security desk and two politely smiling operatives she passed on her way to the special elevator that took her, with the swipe of her ID card and fingerprint, down into the lab. When the doors opened she wiped the print pad clean and stepped out into the corridor.

The doors soughed closed behind her, and the engine of the machine whirred as the car returned to the lobby. She waited, listening, feeling. But it was as quiet as it should be on a Saturday, and felt normal. Except it didn’t, really. It was only in the last two days that “alone” was normal. Jason had always been here, and a variable number of medical personnel. Now the quiet was sinister, frightening.

She moved toward her office, the tap of her shoes echoing softly. She wasn’t stupid. She understood why Jason hadn’t wanted to talk to her here, why it was so important to protect the data.

Hummingbird was compromised.

She wished now she’d asked more questions. How much Jason knew about Matthew’s disappearance. Who might be the traitor within the company. It could be someone she worked with every day, trusted to keep Jason’s secrets safe. The idea made her sick to her stomach.

She reached her office and stood in the doorway, looking for anything out of place. She’d only been gone an hour, maybe a little more, but now everything was different. Had she left that file drawer open an inch? The files on her desk were stacked neatly, but she could have done that. She just didn’t remember.

She crossed to the file cabinet and pulled the open drawer out with one finger. The files appeared as usual. One stuck up slightly, but it was the last one she’d put in, and the drawer was pretty full. It would have taken extra effort to shove down all the way.

When she nudged her mouse, her dark computer screen flashed onto the document she’d been working on when Jason called her. It was an outline of a plan for continuing their research, but she hadn’t yet included any details that would benefit anyone outside the team. The recent documents list didn’t show anything it shouldn’t, but she didn’t know how to determine if anyone had accessed other files, such as downloading them to a flash drive without opening them or something. But then, there wasn’t any reason for anyone to be here on a Saturday, and they’d have to log in…

“Idiot,” she muttered. After a few strokes on the keyboard, the personnel system came up. She was a supervisor in this department and had access to every employee’s time records. No one could come into the lab without swiping their card and being biometrically identified. She scanned the list, saw she was the only one to come in today, and finally relaxed.

Now she could get to work. The research data was vast and housed on secure servers separate from the rest of the company. As she’d told Jason, if anyone tried to download the data to any external device, it would corrupt. She took a few minutes to test it, satisfied when gobbledygook scrawled across her screen.

Jason’s most recent test data and final report were here in her computer. It didn’t contain any information about his treatment and therapy, but described the end results. Which meant anyone who accessed it would know about his immunity issues and the weakness in his sternum. If someone was trying to tell her to give the data to Jason, she assumed they had plans to go after him. If it were up to her, he’d be locked up down here where he was safe.

She exhaled heavily and propped her forehead on the heel of her hand. He wouldn’t be any safer down here than anywhere else. The building was as unbreachable as possible, but nothing was perfect. As evidenced by Matthew’s apparent abduction from his own home.

She wondered why Lark hadn’t reported it to the police. But then, what would she have said? She could easily imagine an authoritative, skeptical officer blowing it off because Matthew hadn’t been missing for twenty-four hours, there was no sign of a struggle, and his message, taken at face value, said he was leaving of his own volition.

She missed him.

“Ridiculous.” But she did. Maybe it was a stupid, adolescent crush, but she always sensed his presence. Even when he was out of town, she knew when he’d be back, and he called her frequently to check on Jason’s progress. Now she didn’t know if she’d ever see or talk to him again, and it hurt.

All she could do was what she could do. She squared her shoulders and went back to work, sending the final report on Jason into the secure server and erasing it from her unit. She ran the flash drive through a secure delete utility to wipe it clean, then reformatted it.

And that was it. She sat back and stared at the empty screen and blinking cursor, wondering what the hell came next.

Chapter Eleven

Lark paced behind the barricade set up by the police half an hour ago. All the people who’d been in the museum at the time the fire alarm went off milled around her. There weren’t many, but ten minutes ago they’d confiscated all their cell phones and electronic devices. Best she could tell, someone had pulled the fire alarm falsely, and the police were holding the people who’d been in the museum at the time so they could prosecute whoever did it. She’d barely gotten a text message off to Jason before the police took her phone and had no idea if he’d received it.

The firefighters did their own milling outside the barricaded area. The immediate threat was over—the tension had dissipated when someone came out of the building and shook his head. And
she
hadn’t pulled the alarm, so she wasn’t worried about that. But not only was the detention frustrating, the incident had drawn crowds and news teams, and Lark was afraid someone would see her face on the news and come after her. Being captured or actively on the run would kind of hinder her ability to save her father.

If she weren’t so worried, the thought would be amusing. Her whole life he’d been a superhero to her, indestructible. When her mother died, he’d become her best friend. She didn’t care that most girls that age were finding their parents totally flawed. That was how it had been.

Until she decided to be a botanist instead of a security expert. Her father had never made her feel his disappointment, but she knew it was there. It changed their relationship—it had to—but she’d never regretted it until now. Now, when she didn’t have the skills she needed, or the knowledge or connections.

That’s what Jason’s for.

As she thought it, she spotted him on the far side of the crowd. He looked anxious. Lark pushed past an elderly couple quarreling about whose idea it was to come here instead of the Smithsonian and pressed against the sawhorse at the edge of the barricade.

Jason spotted her immediately, and the lines between his eyes smoothed away. He held up a finger, and she nodded. He was telling her to stay put. She agreed with him. The police had her name, and if she disappeared or tried to, they’d be after her, too.

She made her way to the back of the crowd, where Jason waited. Her heart rate picked up, and her skin prickled with awareness.

“Did you find anything?” she asked as soon as she reached him. He gave a weird, tiny nod-and-shake she took to mean he had, but they wouldn’t talk about it here.

She moved a little closer. “Do you think this is coincidence?”

Jason shrugged. “It’s got to be. No way they could have set this up. We didn’t even know you’d be here.”

“We could have been followed.”

He gave her a look.

“Okay, okay, we weren’t followed.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, a scream building inside her. She couldn’t stand here doing nothing when her father needed her.

Jason’s warm hand landed on her shoulder and the scream subsided, as did the tension driving it.

“It’s okay,” Jason murmured into her ear. “We’ll get to him.”

Lark nodded, shivering a little when the movement made his lips caress her ear.

“I’ll be in the truck trying to read what I found.” He pulled back, and Lark opened her eyes to see he’d moved the truck to just outside the roped-off area. How he’d managed to get this close, she had no idea.

“I’ll be there as soon as they let us go,” she said.

When Jason retreated, he seemed to take any warmth with him.

* * *

Jason propped his laptop on the center console and alternated his attention between the computer and the group of people around Lark. He could have pulled strings to get her out of there, but calling attention to either one of them was foolish at this point, and the situation wasn’t dangerous as long as she kept her face averted from the cameras. The news teams were more intent on filming the firefighters and cops than the hapless museum-goers.

The computer beeped its readiness and he slid the flash drive into the USB port. It opened automatically, listing options for accessing the files. He clicked “open folder to view files” and dove in.

Half an hour later a uniformed cop led a teenager in an AC/DC shirt out of the crowd, and moments after that Lark climbed into the truck. Jason handed her the laptop and started the vehicle. Before he could pull into the steady but light stream of traffic, Lark passed him a bottle of hand sanitizer.

“What’s this?” he asked, rather stupidly.

“Dad said you have to be careful of germs. They had some in the gift shop. The stuff is everywhere since the H1N1 scare.”

She’d said it casually, not looking at him while she scrolled through the list of files on the flash drive, and she didn’t notice Jason had a hard time swallowing all of a sudden. He wasn’t used to people taking care of him. Not outside the lab, anyway.

He cleared his throat, rubbed the sanitizer over his hands until it evaporated, and pulled away from the curb to head for his house just across the river in Arlington.

“Did you find anything helpful?” Lark opened a file, frowning.

“Only Isaac’s entire plan, written out.”

“Yeah, right.” She swirled her finger around the touchpad and selected another file. “Seriously.”

“Seriously, I think it’s all there. I just can’t read it.” Frustration burned under his skin so he had to keep an eye on the speed limit and his foot light on the gas pedal.

“It’s encoded?”

He slowed for the turn onto the bridge. “Not in the traditional sense. He has his own means of hiding what the information really is. But I think we can figure it out if we work at it.”

Lark shook her head and slapped the laptop closed. “You can, maybe. You know him. I can’t make sense of any of it. Brown Bunny? Manderlay? Why are you laughing?”

Jason grinned at her. “I think that file was his favorite movie list.” He grinned harder when she glowered at him. “You never heard of those movies? Lars von Trier? Vincent Gallo?”

“It disturbs me that you have.” She turned to face front and flattened her hands on top of the computer. “Why would he have a movie list in these files?”

“I scanned through most of them briefly. A lot of it is personal stuff. A packing list, some letters, images.”

“Porn?”

“That would be expected, wouldn’t it? But no. I think it’s camouflage, to hide the important stuff.” He turned down the shady street his house was on and swallowed against the lump swelling in his throat. He hadn’t been home since the accident. Until yesterday, he hadn’t expected to be able to go home. He pulled into the driveway and sat, engine running, and tried to concentrate. Sentimentality was stupid at the best of times; it could be more than dangerous right now.

He was sure they hadn’t been followed, but Kemmerling’s men could have been scouting his place. Property records and other public information would have led Isaac here. Even if the man knew Jason hadn’t been here in months, any trained tracker knew that everyone wanted to be home, even if it was the worst place to go.

Jason hoped counter logic would come into play here. Isaac knew Jason knew it was stupid to go home, therefore Jason wouldn’t go home, therefore Isaac might not bother surveilling it. Which would make it a safe place to go.

A few cars were parked on the street, all apparently unoccupied. There was only one other house on the street’s cul-de-sac, the house Matt had said was empty. That would make it a perfect site for surveillance, but Matt had probably taken care of that. In fact, Jason wouldn’t put it past his friend to have purchased the house to ensure it stayed vacant and secure.

The housekeeper Matt had continued paying wouldn’t be here on the weekend, which could have made it easier for one of Isaac’s people to be inside. Except they wouldn’t have prepared for what awaited them. If someone was inside, Jason would know.

“Stay in the truck. Actually, come over here.” Jason opened the door and slid out, motioning for Lark to climb over into his place. He had to be absolutely certain everything was safe before he brought her inside. “Be ready. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Checking things out.” He motioned to the street, and Lark nodded, settling herself in the driver’s seat. He waited until the door locks clicked, then started walking.

The end of the cul-de-sac was empty, as was the next-door driveway. The nearest car was a four-door Saab, with a crew cab pickup several yards behind it on the other side of the street. Jason stayed loose as he passed the Saab, peering into the empty interior and checking the trunk as he crossed behind the car. The crew cab was harder to be casual about, but there was no one inside it, either.

He made his way to the end of the street. No cars left. There were no blankets bunched up in back seats, or suspicious piles of junk on the floor of the front passenger side. If Isaac had assigned anyone to watch his house, they weren’t doing it from a vehicle.

Returning to the cul-de-sac and circling both empty houses took a few more minutes. Every glimpse he got of Lark showed him more evidence of her waning patience. She bit her nails. Swiveled back and forth in her seat. Put the truck into gear, then back into park. Adjusted her seat belt and the position of her seat. As Jason approached her window, he could see she was cursing.

“Are you done yet?” she demanded before the window was halfway down.

“Almost. When I signal you, open the garage door.” He pointed at the opener clipped to his visor. “I’ll check it out inside and then you can pull in.”

“Finally.” She poised her thumb over the button. “Well? Go on. Get into position.”

Jason smiled, but hesitated when her expression changed. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. I told you to stop—never mind.”

That just made him smile more.

Lark held her breath, watching Jason carefully as he positioned himself to the left of the garage door and crouched, his pistol drawn and ready. He’d have a good view of the inside of the garage, plus the entry door into the house, from where he stood. He glanced at Lark and nodded once. She hit the button.

And then hit herself. Dammit, she
had
to stop having palpitations every time he smiled at her. Nothing. Was. Going. To. Happen. Period.

Jason disappeared into the garage. Lark waited, unnerved by the suburban stillness around them. The trees dappled the sunshine so every breeze made shadows flutter inside the truck and across the front of the house. Every time the branch over the driveway waved, Lark jumped and gunned the engine. But besides that, there were no people jogging or mowing lawns or heading out to boat on the river or anything else Saturday-ish. It creeped her out.

Or maybe it was just the situation.

Jason leaned out the door into the house and motioned for her to pull into the garage. She did, staying centered in the two-car space, afraid her vibrating arms would jerk the wheel and knock over the motorcycle sitting under a tarp on her left. This level of tension was going to destroy her.

She hit the button to close the door, shut off the truck and heaved a giant breath to settle herself. If Jason knew how tense she’d been, he’d be less likely to keep her involved, more likely to want to stash her somewhere and just watch over her while he let her father get himself out of whatever he’d gotten into. That was unacceptable.

She grabbed the laptop as she climbed out of the truck, and went around to the back to get her files. Jason met her there and carried the heavy box while she slung her overnight bag over her shoulder.

“Do you have somewhere safe we can stow those?” she asked. “I don’t want to haul them around, it’s too risky.”

He shepherded her into the house. “I have a hidden safe.”