The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (6 page)

Munroe woke to Bradford’s rustling. The texture in the air, the fewer sounds reaching through the windows from the street, told her that he was up earlier than usual. He leaned over to kiss her, as he did every morning, but this time he stayed beside her, propped up on an elbow, tracing a finger around her belly button.

He whispered, “Come to work with me today?”

Munroe opened an eye and looked at him, beautiful in the shadows, muscled and half naked. They’d become like ships passing in the dark as the weeks dragged on and he left earlier, came home later, or sometimes not at all, leaving them to seek stolen moments and the occasional Sunday afternoon to collide in their own isolated ocean.

“I have to stay overnight,” he said. “Take me in and spend the day with me?”

Munroe brought his hand to her lips, and held it there longer than a kiss warranted. She didn’t have to use words to say no because he wouldn’t have asked the way he had if he hadn’t already known her answer. He’d known it from the day he’d invited her into the office and made his very carefully crafted point, deliberately excluding her, fully aware that as the minute hands ticked their slow painful march around the clock, she’d hurt more than if he’d simply said
Maybe tomorrow
and had left her at home.

He’d gotten what he wanted: she’d never asked to be a part of his assignment again. She couldn’t fault him for what he’d done. Life had a way of screwing things up for them, and work had a way of becoming life. From his point of view, keeping her away from his job was best for them both, might keep them together longer this time around.

Bradford shifted, sat up on the bed beside her. He pulled her hand back with his, putting it to his cheek. “If I said I’m sorry, would it matter?”

She leaned over and bit his thigh. He twitched and said, “Ow,” but it came out more as a question than an exclamation.

She glanced up and smiled and said, “Sorry.”

“Am I missing the analogy?”

“No,” she said, and traced her finger around the indentation, “I just wanted to bite you.” Then she rolled back and put her head on the pillow. “You’ve already apologized and I’ve accepted your apology. I’ve got no grudge.”

“Then you’ll come with me today?”

She sighed and turned toward the window: her version of
Maybe tomorrow.

“It’ll be different,” he said. “You’ll be with me all day and I’ll give you something to do. Real work,” he said, “not busywork.” He held his little finger up in front of her face so she couldn’t avoid it. “Pinkie promise.”

She batted him away.

He was such a cheater.

“Okay,” she whispered, and slid around him, off his side of the bed, and reached for the armoire. She pulled the one modest dress off its hanger, the same outfit she’d worn the first time, same outfit she’d have to wear again if Bradford ever offered another invitation. The lack of alternatives had come from the mistaken assumption that she could do as she’d always done in the past: travel light and source what she needed locally. Instead she’d discovered a robust fashion industry that had no concept of women her height and size, which turned online shopping with international shipping into her only option for women’s clothes and shoes.

She hadn’t bothered. Men’s clothing worked fine, anyway.

“Hey,” Bradford said. He tugged her hand and pulled her to him. He wrapped his arms around her thighs and rested his cheek on her stomach. “I know the way things turned out hasn’t been easy for you—hasn’t been easy on us—not what I imagined the workload would be when I signed on and definitely not what I described when I asked you to come.”

She rested a hand on his head and ran her fingers through his hair. “I’m a big girl and I can deal with it,” she said. She leaned down and kissed him, then left him for the
ofuro
.

Bradford held true to his promise and kept Munroe with him throughout the day. If Tai Okada questioned her involvement, he never let on, and in those first hours, the three of them poring over old documents, Munroe grasped what Bradford’s role within the company had become.

Behind its run-down and dilapidated appearance, behind the show of cameras that didn’t do much more than intimidate, was an invisible state-of-the-art network that monitored phone calls, protected data from cyber attacks, and analyzed employee connections and patterns based on the RFID chips embedded in the badges.

The strongest security features protected the underground labs, where the sensitive research and development took place. In addition to the multiple biometric stations that an employee had to pass through after the single point of entry, reinforced construction turned the lower levels into a bunker, making it impossible for technology to be stolen remotely through keystrokes or for monitor frequencies to be grabbed through the air. Nothing, data included, went in or came out that wasn’t carried—and for that there were additional protocols.

The company’s own personnel was the only route secrets might travel into competitors’ hands, and although each employee had been heavily vetted, reviews were conducted regularly, and no thief or spy had been uncovered, the suspicion of theft persisted.

Bradford had been brought in to use his skills in the low-tech world of blood-and-guts security to seek out gaps that the high-tech guys might be missing. He was there for face-to-face interaction, to spot the combat enemy in peacetime the way he was trained to search out threat in war.

On the way to the break room, where most of the employees took lunch in one form or another, Munroe said, “You could have really used me on this assignment.”

Bradford nodded. “Maybe I should have,” he said, “but you know why I couldn’t—still can’t.”

“Not can’t, Miles, won’t.”

Bradford stopped and faced her, hurt in his eyes, pain in his posture. “It’s the same thing,” he said.

“I get that you’re trying to keep me away from triggers,” she said. “I get that our odds are better this way, but I’ve got nothing here, Miles. I’m going through the motions, trying to find friends, taking up hobbies, but come on, this is me we’re talking about.”

“A month or two and I’ll be out of here,” he said.

“You’re missing the point. Another location isn’t going to change anything, and as much as I love you, neither will spending more time together if I’m not working. Let me help you,” she said. “Utilize my brain. Please?”

He searched her eyes, then took her hand and stared at their fingers, while inner debate marched across his face. Finally he said, “I just can’t, Michael. Not the way things are right now. It’s complicated. Let me finish this out, a few more months, that’s all. Can you last that long—for me? For us?”

Munroe stood silent, arms crossed and motionless.

Bradford released her hand, cupped her chin, and lifted her face toward his. “I won’t blame you if you feel you need to walk away again,” he said, “if that’s what you need to be all right. But I don’t want you to leave, Michael, I really don’t. Please stay until this is over and then we’ll find a middle ground—something that works for both of us, I promise.”

They stood there, face-to-face, at the end of the hall, communicating through the silence. She studied him, searched him, and then sighed, giving in because she knew that Bradford’s reasons were drawn from a well of love and concern, and because, for the first time in her life, leaving was no longer possible.

Bradford stuck out his bottom lip, quivering with puppy-dog adorableness, and that forced her to smile. Then his focus ticked up and passed over her shoulder, and his eyes, like sharks cutting through water, began roaming, as was his way: always aware, always searching the surroundings. He put his arm around her shoulders and said, “Let’s grab food.”

Munroe stole a glimpse toward the hall junction, searching for what had arrested his attention: two women with lunch bags in hand, walking side by side, their expressions contorting with the curves and lines of deep, earnest conversation.

The break room was a rectangle with half a long wall open instead of a door. One of the shorter walls was adorned with a sink and a counter, which was topped with microwave, toaster, and hot water pot, and its opposite was lined with vending machines that offered a universe of drink options, instant noodles, and instant hot junk food.

Bradford threaded between round tables and mostly filled folding chairs to the back of the room, while twenty or so faces did everything possible to avoid making eye contact.

Munroe whispered, “No one seems to like you much anymore.”

“They’re scared of me.”

“Wasn’t like that the last time I was here.”

Bradford pulled out a seat and offered it to her. “I wasn’t a hatchet man the last time you were here.”

“Might not be fear,” she said. “Might be avoidance and embarrassment.”

“Yeah?” he said.

She shrugged. She hadn’t been in the facility long enough, hadn’t seen enough, to know. She said, “Americans—Texans in particular—come with a lot of stereotypes beyond the clothes and the imagined horse and cattle ranches.”

“Dumb country boy?” he said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.” And the way he said it implied that, if anything, he’d gone to lengths to cultivate that myth. “But I’m still a hatchet man.”

Munroe scooted between chairs to the vending machines, cleaner and more modern than any other equipment she’d seen in the facility, exchanged coins for liquid nourishment, then returned to their table.

The two women who’d caught Bradford’s attention in the hall walked in, broke their discussion long enough to take seats, then continued conversing in low, earnest tones as they set out their home-packed bento boxes of a dozen tiny portions and picked at their food, eating with dainty bites.

Bradford, steaming Styrofoam cup in hand, sat beside Munroe. His eyes ticked once in the direction of the women.

“What’s up with them?” Munroe said.

“Trying to figure them out.”

Munroe took a sip, stole a glance.

He removed the cup’s paper lid and then raised the rim to his lips and blew against the steam. “Company executives seem pretty convinced that the theft is coming from China’s direction, and they’re the only two Chinese employees.”

“That would be a bit obvious, wouldn’t it?”

Eyes on the cup, he nodded. “Not to mention that neither of them have access to the lower levels, both have excellent work records, there’s nothing out of order in terms of life habits or patterns, and they are both far too naïve and self-involved to be what I’m looking for. But at this point, I can’t rule anything out.”

Munroe glanced at him, then at the women. “Have you ruled out the possibility that, in spite of what you were told, you weren’t actually hired to find a spy?”

“The thought’s crossed my mind.”

Munroe took another sip, let the conversation thread drop. Bradford jabbed wooden chopsticks into the cup and ate while employees came and went. The women rinsed out their lunch containers in the sink and packed them up and then they, too, were gone. As if there’d been no break in conversation, Bradford said, “What’s your line of reasoning?”

Munroe capped the empty bottle and rolled it between her palms. “Just doesn’t feel right,” she said. “If it was me, and granted, not everyone thinks like I do, I’d hire a team on the sly. Seven or eight people who speak the language and can blend in—
not
foreign—and I’d stagger them in as new hires, maybe over a two- or three-month period. I’d set them loose in key areas of the company—would put at least two of them down in the lower levels—and have them do exactly what they claim you were hired for, but do it invisibly. Even without the belt, the hat, the costume, and the legend, as a foreigner you’re incredibly conspicuous—you might as well wear a bell around your neck.”

“Not too different from my own theory,” Bradford said. He gathered the trash and walked it to the garbage. Sat again. “I figure someone’s watching for something I don’t know anything about,” he continued, “that they’re using my presence like a stick in the bush to flush game, a wedge to split the log, a straw man, a distraction.”

“No idea who or what?” she said.

He shook his head. “I’ll figure it out.”

He was a mask but she read the obfuscations in him all the same. She smiled and let them go for the same reason she agreed to stay until he finished the assignment. In retrospect, it would be difficult to say if that had been a mistake.

He leaned back and brushed his thumb against her cheek. “I was hired to do a job and I’m going to get it done regardless of what the true motives might be.”

“What’s really going on down there in the lab?” she said. “I’ve read the brochures, perused the website, done a rough once-over on the company. None of what they advertise adds up to anything big enough to call in someone like you. What’s worth so much that they guard it so carefully?”

“The Holy Grail of biofabricated engineering,” he said.

“Humor me.”

“Body-part replication through 3-D printing.”

“Can’t be that,” she said. “Biofacturing has been going on for years.”

“Sure, ears and noses, arteries, lots of variants of skin and soft tissue for transplants and pharmaceutical testing,” he said, “even lab-grown muscle as a sustainable meat source, but most everyone is years, maybe decades, away from developing functional, transplantable organs.”

Munroe raised her eyebrows and blew a silent whistle. “They’re close?”

“Dunno. I’m not allowed access to the lab or any of the research.”

“What do you think?”

“Given how much they’ve invested in protecting whatever’s going on down there, I’d say they believe they’re way ahead of anyone else.”

“No donor waiting list,” she said. “Virtually zero chance of transplant rejection. Can you imagine the potential market if they’re able to own and patent the process?”

“Assuming they figure it out,” he said. “Just about every developed nation has companies and nonprofit teams working on the same type of research. Anyway, just because someone hits the finish line first doesn’t mean they’re a winner. There would still be years of clinical safety trials.”

“If
anyone
gets to the finish line, we all win,” Munroe said, “but still…”

Her sentence trailed off and her mind leapt sideways, scanning what she knew of the facility’s security systems, searching for weaknesses, plotting out how she’d steal the data if she’d been the one hired to get at it.

Bradford raised an eyebrow and poked her arm playfully, but hard enough to say he knew what was up. “Don’t forget whose team you’re on,” he said.

She grinned. “It’s tempting,” she said. “Why are they specifically looking at the Chinese?”

Bradford’s gaze tracked over to the half-wall and the empty space where the women had passed through and where other employees continued to arrive and leave at irregular intervals. “I wish I knew,” he said.

So did she. The question of Chinese involvement was one she’d come back to more than once over the coming weeks; the answer could have changed things if she’d had it at the beginning.