Bad Nerd Falling (39 page)

One of them appeared to find Anna
attractive and actually flirted with her. Anna kept her eyes down
and appeared timid and a little gauche, so she fooled the jerk. The
odd feelings convinced her to keep her distance, in a polite
way.

Between the three jerks and Anna, she
would choose the jerks. They were obvious and unpleasant, but not
dangerous. She wasn’t so certain about Anna.

***

“
This woman, Anna
Barstow,” Beaumont said, pounding away on the keys later that
afternoon.

“
Yes?”

“
She comes out
clean.”

He noted that. “What about the other
woman?”

“
Charlene Morgan has a
murky past, but it’s nothing serious. Looks like she went back to
school a little later in life and has only been a lab tech for five
years.”

That made him pause. “She doesn’t have
a lot of lab experience?”

“
Helena has
more.”

He nodded as he stared at his
computer. “What about Barstow?”

“
It took her longer to
finish her degree, probably because she did some traveling during
her college years, but she’s got five years of lab experience as
well.”

“
That leaves the men.” He
hit the button to print out the results. The other SEALs were
throwing the names against some databases they had access to. None
of them expected to come up with anything.

It was still necessary. Leave no stone
unturned. Sometimes they were disgusted by what skittered from
under that stone.

“
I’ve got nothing on the
two new guys.” Tigger finished typing then leaned back in his
chair.

“
Shouldn’t Ben be back by
now?” Beaumont didn’t pause his typing.

“
Not if he’s being
thorough.”

They all smiled. Ben
was
quite
thorough. He was out on patrol, watching and listening. They
were taking turns doing this, around the clock.

“
He’s missing out on some
interesting stuff,” Tigger commented dryly and they all laughed but
kept doggedly at their task.

“
There’s got to be
something.” He stretched his tight shoulders.

“
I’m not having any luck
finding the military traitor, either.” Beaumont rubbed the nape of
his neck.

That startled him.
“Nothing?”

Beaumont’s scowl should have melted
his computer screen. “Nothing. It’s like this guy has ceased to
exist.”

“
Does he have to be a part
of the military now?” He continued tapping keys.

“
He used a military email
address.” Tigger was busy clicking through screens. “If a person
was good enough with a computer, they could use a military
address.”

“
They’re heavily encrypted
in Rurikstan. It’d be hard to hack but possible.”

“
Whoever the traitor is is
at least smart enough to know that much.” Beaumont’s eyes remained
on his screen.

“
There’s another way to
get a military address,” Tigger surmised. “Or at least another way
to use one.”

“
Use a family member’s?”
That was utterly possible.

Tigger’s nod wasn’t reassuring. “This
could be bad.”

“
It’d be a lot easier to
use someone’s address you know.” He hated the spewing
possibilities.

“
We’ll never be able to
track down all the family members.” Tigger didn’t sound happy and
rightfully so.

“
Not to mention friends or
employees who have access,” Beaumont added.

“
There are also people who
work for the military who aren’t active but have an address.” He
made some notes to ask Aleksi.

Beaumont took a sip of his cooling
coffee. “And then there are all the retired military
people.”

“
That’s every male in
Rurikstan.”

“
Oh yeah, this isn’t a
volunteer basis.” Tigger took a sip of coffee, made a face of utter
distaste, then promptly set the mug down.

He rose and strode to the coffee pot.
He could make more and then it might be fresh for when Ben returned
from his sneak and peek. A small hunt through the cabinet he hung
on the wall also revealed a box of doughnuts.

While the coffee brewed, he returned
to his computer.

“
Are you looking at the
three creeps, Welly?” Tigger slid his mug to the end of the
desk.

“
Yeah. For all the good
it’s doing me. There’s nothing here other than some miscellaneous
reports about improper conduct.”

Beaumont muttered over in his
corner.

“
What are you working on?”
Tigger turned to Beaumont.

“
Still trying to find a
path back to this traitor.”

“
How many paths have you
tried?”

“
All of them.” Beaumont’s
frustrated tone told them all they needed to know.

“
You’re the best man for
this job,” Tigger said.

“
Hopefully this means
Helena is likely safe.” He took a measure of comfort from that. Yet
that antsy, unsettled feeling he woke up with hadn’t dissipated. If
anything, it was coalescing into something nastier.

The coffee maker stopped brewing so he
rose from his desk, which he was starting to think of as the enemy,
and stalked to the pot. He tossed the remains of his cold brew, did
the same with his colleague’s sludge, and then passed the doughnuts
around.

They munched for a few minutes, and
all too soon he returned to his computer.

Ben breezed in ten minutes later. Just
as all their frustration levels were rising again. Their leader
helped himself to the coffee and doughnuts before giving them a sit
rep and listening to theirs.

“
No luck on the traitor
search, and nothing on these people Helena works with.” Ben bit
into his doughnut and chewed before he turned to him. “That’s good
on the people Helena works with. At least you can
relax.”

“
Yeah.” But the edgy
feeling bade him not to. He kept stoically at his search, helping
Beaumont after he finished pinging people against their databases.
When it was time to pick up Helena, he was grateful for the
break.

The other guys all rose with him and
stretched for real. When he sent them a look of inquiry, Ben
explained. “We’ll have your back. We can all do with a stretch and
a break.”

He nodded as he hefted the car
keys.

“
Let’s go.”

The team disappeared once he crawled
into the car and fired up the engine.

He figured he wouldn’t see them again
until he returned to their control room. Beaumont was scheduled to
do the next watch, but guessed he’d finish the surveillance with
Ben and Tigger first.

Once he pulled into a parking space he
sat for a moment and assessed the area before exiting the car. He
continued taking in information as he crossed the parking lot to
the side door. He hadn’t spent much time here in his life, but he
still knew the layout.

In three minutes, he was outside the
door to Helena’s lab. He wanted to get another feel for the lab and
the people working there. A quick scout of the outside revealed
nothing so he entered, taking note of every space around the lab,
and exit and entrance points. A quick scan told him it would be
easy to enter this space virtually undetected.

He sent that message to the team,
because it was cause for concern. Then, after he finished his
survey of the area, entered Helena’s lab. She didn’t see him at
first, because she was working at a huge hood in the furtherest
corner of the room. But everyone else was in sight. Or mostly. One
of the jerks worked in a glassed in area to the right and slightly
down the hallway.

The hallway led to an office area
crammed with desks. He kept his body language casual as he seated
himself at Helena’s lab bench, but took in everything. The overall
atmosphere in the lab upped his sense of impending doom.

There was something not quite right
here.

Helena finished what she was doing and
soon cleaned up the sterile hood. It was when she turned to walk
away from the hood that he noted she didn’t seem surprised to see
him.

She smiled, and it warmed him. He’d
like to bask in that warmth all day, but he kept alert because the
feeling of non-wellbeing increased.

As though he hadn’t a care in the
world, he watched her stroll across the lab toward him. She stopped
at various places to store the items she carried. When she reached
him, he read in her eyes that she wanted to kiss him but
refrained.

“
Is it four o’clock
already?”

“
Nearly so.” He smiled at
her.

Without appearing to do so, he
detected menace from someone on the other side of the bench. He
wasn’t obvious about it, but performed a thorough scan of that
sector followed by the entire room.

Both women and one of the new men
occupied that quadrant. The three idiots were on the other side,
one of them still working in the glassed room off the hall. That
left the other new man who was seated at the computer behind him.
He hated sitting in the middle of a room like this, with someone
behind him.

As soon as Helena approached, he
backed up until his back was to the wall, the door to his left.
Everyone was in clear view now. The new man at the computer was
closest, although he could be on Helena in seconds.

“
I have to record what
I’ve done today.” Helena indicated a notebook on the
bench.

He nodded. “Take your time.” He meant
that literally. It was a prime opportunity to observe
everyone.

He started with the man at the
computer. He was the younger one, and seemed intent on the computer
screen. The young man was busy writing something because his
fingers flew across the keys and it wasn’t gibberish on the screen.
To him it was, but the scientific words displaying across the
glowing screen probably made sense to other scientists.

Still keeping the man in his
periphery, he settled on the younger woman whose bench was right
across from Helena. He pretended to keep watch on Helena, which
wasn’t much of a pretense. But he also watched Anna
Barstow.

Although he couldn’t quite pinpoint
what it was, something about her bothered him. He tugged out his
phone and pretending to check it, sent the SEALs a message about
her. Without any sound or flash, he took several photos which he
then sent.

Wishing he could also take a snapshot
of the ominous atmosphere in this lab, he assimilated the
information all around him. This was supposed to be a safer place
for Helena, his mother, and Jorge than the palace. That’s why his
team and Aleksi wanted them here until they finished securing the
palace. Now he wasn’t so certain.

Helena leaned over her bench and wrote
furiously. She rose a few times to retrieve pages from the printer
nearby.

She snipped edges and taped the pages
into her lab notebook, with the air of one who has done this
multiple times. Then she made notes and wrote for a while. The
older man and woman were also busy doing the exact same
thing.

The younger woman… maybe that’s what
bothered him. She wasn’t doing anything although on the surface she
appeared busy. In the time he’d been here, she had flipped through
her lab notebook, then another book. Written some things down on a
notepad, rearranged some items on her bench, then wiped the bench
down. Not once did her eyes stray to the clock on the wall across
the lab.

The man who’d been working in the
glassed-in room finished up there, because he wiped down the bench,
then shut out the light and turned left to saunter down the hall.
He disappeared into the office area. One of the other idiots soon
followed him, carrying several pages and a lab notebook. The head
jerk was seated at a bench behind Helena’s, not far from the
computer. There were several books spread out around him and he
worked steadily at whatever he was doing.

No one talked, and other than Barstow,
everyone stayed busy. With one last piece of tape, Helena secured
the final page then recorded some additional notes, dated the page,
added her name and lab number then closed the book.

“
I’m finished,” she
announced. She rose to gather a few things, remove her lab coat,
and then momentarily disappeared down the hallway to the office
before she returned carrying her purse. The older woman followed
her out of the office. Barstow remained seated. She watched the
proceedings, but appeared not to.

His eyes narrowed, he continued his
own surveillance. Again, nothing was outright wrong, but he didn’t
like how she pretended to be busy while apparently keeping track of
everyone.

Helena stopped in front of him and
smiled again. His heart stalled before he took her hand and waited
while she said goodnight.

Then he swept her out of the lab and
took his first real breath since entering the space. They didn’t
speak as he hurried her down the stairs and out of the hospital,
across the parking lot, and into the car. After she hooked her
seatbelt, he asked, “How do you stand being in that lab all
day?”