Wrong Place (The Wrong Series) (5 page)

“Look
, I’m going to go in there and do what I’m supposed to do tomorrow, regardless of what anyone in Washington or anywhere else says. I didn’t come here to sit in a hotel room for two days and then do nothing.”

“Oh
, come on. You wouldn’t have a cover. Driver has already been told that this op is off. What are you going to do? How will you even get any time alone in the office? Just let this one go, and we’ll have you on something new and even more exciting in a few days.”

“Fine,” Sam said in a not too convincing way.

“Look, I have to go, but don’t get yourself into too much trouble. I’ll have something for you soon.”

“
All right, bye,” Sam said and hung up the phone.

In that moment, only two things were clear to her. She was not eating breakfast at the same place tomorrow
morning, and she was definitely going to show up to her interview and get this job done, with or without the agency’s permission.

Chapter 5

The following morning Sam woke up and was clearly on a mission, both literally and figuratively. She showered, dressed, and was out the door as quickly as possible. She left with plenty of time so the traffic wouldn’t keep her from arriving at her destination on time. She pulled into the plant parking lot about thirty minutes early. She parked and then began to walk inside. A thought occurred to her as she was walking. What exactly am I going to do? I mean, I really could use this Driver guy’s help. Once she was inside, she noticed a short heavyset woman behind the front desk, and a sign-in sheet.

“I’m here fo
r the interview with Mr. Fields,” Sam said while approaching the desk.

“Sign in here,” t
he heavyset woman, otherwise known as Margaret, said while never really looking up but motioning to the sign-in sheet in front of her.

Normally the wom
an’s inability to greet someone who came in with even a look would have been construed as rudeness, but it was extremely early, and honestly, Sam was too lost in her own thoughts that revolved around one simple question. How was she going to pull this off without any assistance? As Sam was signing the page, a thought came to her and then left her lips before she could even process whether it was a good idea or not.

“Dan
Driver works here, doesn’t he?” Sam asked.

“Yes. He just started here a few weeks ago. I assume that you two know each other?
”

“Yes. I
f it isn’t too much trouble, tell him that Samantha said hello.”

“I will. You can wait over there for the time being. Mr. Fields should be with you in a few minutes.” 

Sam walked over to the small waiting room and took a seat. She could only hope that Margaret would give the message to the only help she had on this mission. If not, she could always take what she needed by force, but then again, what if she found absolutely no evidence of any wrong doing? Then she would just be a random psycho who forced her way into the filing cabinet of some corporate guy. In that case, it’s not as if the agency would take any responsibility for her actions.  Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, but there’s no turning back now, she thought while sighing.

Dan Driver was in the break room on this very early morning. In truth, he spent as much of his time in the break room as
possible. He wasn’t concerned about how good or bad of a job he was doing here because his job here wasn’t technically real. Oddly enough, no one ever seemed to notice his constant slacking off. As he poured a cup of coffee for himself, he felt a presence enter the room. When he turned his head to see who it was, he saw that it was none other than Margaret.

“Well hello, Margaret,” Dan said in his normal cheerful voice as he turned to grab another
cup for her.

“Oh
, no thanks. I think I’ll have decaf today,” she said while grabbing the other pot of coffee.

“So
what’s on the agenda today?” 

“Pretty much just interviews, unfortunately. Of course
, there are only two candidates, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.”

Margaret
thought of Dan as a fun and outgoing friend at the office. She pitied him because she thought he had no idea what really went on in this place. Little did she know, he was there to investigate just that.

“Well, that’s good to hear!
You deserve to have an easy day for once,” Dan said.

Margaret
turned to exit the break room but suddenly turned back to Dan.

“Oh, there’s
someone named Samantha out in the waiting room, and she wanted me to say hello to you.”

At first he was a little dumbfounded until he remembered the name of the operative he had previously been scheduled to help out. But wasn’t that operation off? Well
, I can’t really leave her high and dry, he thought. As he snapped back to reality, he realized that Margaret was still standing there, so he quickly responded.

“Oh yeah
, Samantha. Tell her I said hi.”

“Um,
all right,” she said, puzzled by where he may have gone in his mind for so long.

Smooth, Dan thought to himself sarcastically.

Back in the waiting room, Sam was sitting and waiting very impatiently when someone came through the door and walked to the front desk. He exchanged a few words with the secretary and then started to move toward the waiting room. He looked at Sam as if he were in a daze. It was almost like he was mesmerized by something. It made her feel both uncomfortable and also oddly excited. What are you doing? Stop staring at the guy who is ogling you. You probably won’t even be able to understand him, she thought. As he sat down, she felt compelled to speak to him, but didn’t. Some time passed in awkward silence. She didn’t know why, but she had to make some kind of small talk or say something in general. Otherwise, the awkwardness that had filled the air between them would just continue. Wait! Is this moment only strange to me? Certainly he feels strange, too, she thought, while looking up at the face of the man across from her. She then spoke to him, and although he did speak with a certain accent, he also spoke very clearly. It hadn’t really occurred to her before now, but it wasn’t the actual accent that made people in the south hard to understand. It was the fact that they often left off the last part of every word they spoke. He seemed nervous when he talked to her, but it was in the cutest way possible, she thought. Time passed, and that same awkward silence returned, but she was glad she had spoken up. This was the first person here that she had actually desired to speak to. After a short time, her name was called, and she was shown back to the office where Mr. Fields was.

Dan had been waiting around within hearing distance of Margaret so he would know when Samantha was called back for her interview. He was racking his brain. How could he get Mr. Fields out of his office for any amount of time? Just then
, he heard it. “Samantha Fisher, Mr. Fields will see you now.”

The
time had come to act, even if he didn’t really have a plan. He waited a minute so Samantha could get settled into the office. He went back to the main office where a few cubicles were set up for the employees, and noticed that everyone was accounted for. Well, everyone except Adrian. He walked to the men’s room, and sure enough, there was Adrian. He casually nodded at Adrian as he walked a little past him. Dan formed a fist and waited for Adrian to turn his back, and that’s when he struck. He was taught back in his training days how and where to hit someone to temporarily knock them unconscious without causing extreme damage, but he had never actually had to do such a thing. Honestly, he half expected to see Adrian lying on the floor in a daze, looking up at him, and wondering what the heck that was for. Much to his surprise, though, when he struck, Adrian hit the floor and didn’t move. Wow, it actually worked! I hope I didn’t just kill him, Dan thought. He quickly exited the bathroom and made a straight line for Mr. Fields’ office. He pushed open the door to see Mr. Fields’ surprised but also irritated face. Before Fields could even scold him for bursting into his office unannounced, Dan began to talk.

“Mr. Fields, you h
ave to come quick. I think something’s seriously wrong with Adrian.”

Fields had to control the urge to say
, “Who?” After all, he didn’t actually take the time to get to know his fake employees. He knew that he had to at least pretend to care, so he asked Samantha to give him a moment, and then he hurried out of his office.

Sam
had gotten the opportunity she wanted, and now it was time to work and work quickly. The first thing she did was open Mr. Field’s laptop and insert the flash drive that she had received in the black bag from Zane. It had initially been puzzling why she would find a flash drive in a bag full of mainly weapons, but this little thing was going to come in handy. It looked like a standard flash drive, but it held a massive amount of data and automatically began transferring files upon insertion. After she inserted the drive, she started going through filing cabinets and taking pictures of files that looked unimportant while stuffing the more vital looking ones into her bag. Once she had done as much prying as she felt safe doing, in what was more than likely going to be a short time limit, she quickly began putting the unimportant files back where they were. The flash drive had finished the transfer, and now she could hear footsteps. She quickly pulled the flash drive out of the computer and threw it in her bag on top of everything else and headed for the door. As she exited the room, Mr. Fields caught her.

“Where are you going, M
s. Fisher?”

“I’m sorry
, but I’m on a strict schedule, and I really have to be going. Hopefully my resume will speak for itself.”

“Very well. You’
ll be hearing from us soon,” he said, even though he found the situation to be slightly suspicious.

Sam then turned, walked to the front of the plant, and walked through the front doors without ev
er looking back or even noticing that her precious flash drive had fallen out of her bag.

*
* * * *

While Sam was taking care of everything in the office, Fields
walked into the bathroom to find an unconscious, but starting to stir, Adrian. God, I don’t have time for this, he thought while scowling. Just then Adrian opened his eyes. Dan was the first to speak.

“Are you okay
, buddy? You just passed out suddenly.”

“My head’s
killing me.”

“Yeah, you probably hit your head on the floor.”

The truth was that Dan felt pretty bad about having to do what he did, but he had to create some type of distraction, and in the spur of the moment, this was the best thing he could come up with.

“Here, Mr. Fields,
can you help me get him off the floor and to his desk?” Dan asked.

“Are you sure
we should move him?” 

“Trust me,
I would rather be anywhere other than on the men’s room floor. Help me up,” Adrian said.

The two men helped him up and assisted him to his desk where Fields made a call to the hospital, despite Adrian’s protests. After the phone call, Fields told the two men that he had to get back
to his interview, but asked Dan to sit with Adrian until someone arrived. Dan was already planning on doing that, if nothing else out of sheer guilt. As Fields made his way back to his office, he saw a very hurried looking Sam exiting his office. After exchanging a few words with her, and ultimately seeing her leave, he entered his office. He sat down at his desk and moved the mouse. The message he saw on the computer was very disturbing to him. It read
transfer complete
.

*
* * * *

Sam couldn’t believe that the flash drive was gone
, and she was just hopeful that the guy in the waiting room had picked it up. She made a call to Jason to explain the situation and hopefully get an address to the guy’s house.

“Hello
,” Jason said.

“Hey, I have a huge problem.” 

“Let me guess, you actually went through with it.” 

“Well, yeah.
Obviously.” 

Jason sighed.

“Did you find anything interesting?” 

“Maybe, but you see, that’s
the problem. I got all the information off the computer.”

“That’s actually great. W
ell, I mean that was part of the goal, although technically you shouldn’t have even done any of this.”

“There’s more. You see, I sort
of lost the flash drive,” Sam said timidly.

“Amazing. H
ow did you manage to do that?” 

“I don’t know!
I was in a hurry, so I just threw it in my bag that was full of files. It must have just fallen out. God, I feel stupid!”

“Look, this operation technically does
n’t even exist. This little, or should I say large, misstep can just stay between us. Just step away from this one like you should have in the first place.”

“I think there’s
a chance that a guy named Nathan Grey could have picked it up. Can you run his name and tell me where I can find him?”

“Well first of all, I technically can’t help you out on this one, and second of all, you could just
get the guy’s address by searching for him on any social networking site. Why do you think he would have picked it up?” 

“He was the only person who was in the waiting room, so it stands t
o reason that if anyone saw me drop it, then it would have been him. Of course, that’s assuming that it fell out while I was still in the building. Also, for some reason the guy kept looking at me, so if I dropped anything and he was around, I think he would have seen it.”

“Okay. T
here are so many holes in that logic that I don’t even know where to start, but like I said, unofficially you can probably find him on any social networking site.” 

“Social networking site?” Sam asked
in a puzzled voice.

“Yo
u know, like where you keep up with and find new friends? You really don’t know? We need to get you out more. Anyway, you can just do an online search. You do know how to do that, right?” Jason asked jokingly.