Acceptable Risks (12 page)

“Did you?” Lark demanded.

“Lark, I didn’t—” Jason started.

“Did you?” she repeated, stepping closer to Gabby, stretching the scant couple of inches she had over the doctor in height. “Did you give the information to Jason or someone looking like him? Or did you in fact collude with—”

“That’s enough, Lark.”

She backed off, slightly ashamed at the devastated look on Gabby’s face. “Too far, huh?”

“A little.” Jason slid off the table. “The first part was good, though.”

“What the hell is going on?” Gabby stiffened. No longer flushed, she fisted her hands on her hips and swiveled her head back and forth between them. “Of course I didn’t give the information to Jason or anyone looking like him. I’ve been alone all morning, until you called and told me to come here.”

“Where is the information now?” Jason asked her more gently.

“Here.” She pulled a flash drive out of her tiny purse. “Since I was seeing you, I figured I should hand it over.”

“Don’t.” Jason curled his hand over Gabby’s. Lark’s fingers twitched. She wanted to see the data, dive into the miracle her work had helped create. But there’d be time for that later. Her father, and the bigger mess his disappearance was tied to, came first.

“But Matthew said—”

“It wasn’t him,” Jason interrupted. “Or he was coerced. Keep it, and don’t give it to
any
one. Understand me? In fact, it’s probably best if you disappear for a few days.”

But despite her security gaffes, Gabby was no dummy. “No one coerces Matthew,” she asserted. “If he gave me instructions under duress, he’s drugged, or worse.” She pushed the flash drive deep into her bag again and frowned, as if thinking hard. A moment later, she shook her head. “I think it wasn’t him. His speech patterns were off. The whole message seemed strange, but I decided it was just because I—” She blushed again, even darker than before. “I’m going back to the lab—I mean, the facility. Someone needs to guard it.”

“Hummingbird has perfect security,” Lark said, knowing there was no such thing. “Your work is safe.”

“You think I care about my work?” She glared at Lark through her glasses. “I care about Jason. And about your father. If someone wants my research and it would save either man’s life, they can have it.”

“Gabby—”

“Chill, Jason, I’m not going to give it up. If someone tries to steal it, they’ll get a corrupted file they won’t be able to access for shit. The real risk is them getting their hands on information about your vulnerabilities. I have to go protect that stuff.”

Jason nodded. “All right. We’ll drive you back.”

“To my car. Then you go find Matthew and stay far away from Hummingbird.”

Lark had to admit she liked the woman, after all.

* * *

Jason followed Gabby long enough to make sure she wasn’t followed—easy enough to determine on these small-town streets—then headed for the highway. He’d have preferred going with Gabby back to the lab to help her secure the data, but they had more than one calculated risk to consider. Matt was in more immediate danger.

“What next?” Lark asked.

“Kemmerling’s office.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Isn’t that a little, oh, nuts?”

He glanced over his shoulder for traffic and merged onto the moderately busy highway. “We need information. We have no idea where to start looking for your father.”

“What about the woman who was at the house this morning?”

“I don’t think we’ll get a lead on her from the shade of lipstick on the mug.”

Lark sighed. “What I meant was, unless she showed up out of the blue, there’s got to be a record somewhere of her contacting Dad.”

Jason’s hands clenched and released on the wheel. “True. But we can’t go back to Hummingbird to check the call log on Matt’s phone. Gabby can’t get into the office. Caitlyn won’t be in until Monday. And his cell phone is probably gone. The lead is too vague to follow right now.”

“You think Isaac has information at his office? Or even Dad?”

Jason hated the hopefulness in her voice. “Not Matt, no.” Isaac wouldn’t be dumb enough to keep Matt someplace he could easily get out of. But Isaac was also unreasonably cocky, and would probably think his own ground couldn’t be penetrated. He might have something in his office Jason could use.

The problem was what to do with Lark. He couldn’t leave her vulnerable on the outside, and he didn’t want to take her inside with him.

“Where’s his office?” Lark asked.

“M Street in DC.”

“How are you getting in?”

“I don’t know yet. I have to scope it out.” A cramp shot across his shoulders, and he loosened his hold on the wheel. Lark wasn’t bombarding him with questions to annoy him. She was worried. But understanding didn’t make the interrogation less grating.

But then he glanced at her and forgot his irritation. She was gnawing her full lower lip. When it slid from between her teeth it was reddened, and for a second he imagined soothing it with his tongue.
Stop that
. He looked away from her mouth, but his gaze fell to her tightly folded arms plumping her chest into the V of her light blue T-shirt.

Damn. He tore his eyes away and back to the road.

“I wonder what happened to Nils,” Lark mused.

Jason frowned and struggled to trace the conversation back. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Nils is the gopher I told you about. And you texted Dad about it?”

The memory popped. “Yeah.”

“Dad said in his message that he was taken care of. But it had to be a lie, right? Something the kidnapper made him say.”

“I forgot about him,” Jason admitted.

Lark snorted, making his lips twitch. It must be catching.

“Not in top form, huh Templeton?”

Now, that was unfair. Especially since she was the reason. “Cut me some slack. I nearly died. I’ve been out of the field for six months.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

Now Jason snorted and Lark laughed, and pretty soon they were both a little beyond normal.

“Oh, Jason,” Lark finished with a slight whimper. “I don’t want…Dad…”

“I know.” He put his hand on her leg again, and she put her hand on top of his, and it was starting to feel familiar.

Chapter Ten

Kemmerling Security turned out to be on the fourth floor of a building down the street from the National Geographic Society, whose museum was open. It was a good spot for Lark to wait. Public and random, and she wouldn’t look out of place loitering over the exhibits.

Jason walked the two blocks back to Kemmerling Security. He gained entry into the building by signing in to visit the accountant on the second floor, and took the elevator to the third instead. As soon as the door opened he swung out and to his left, reaching for the stairwell door. He didn’t even think about it until he’d walked through. Even then, he was up three steps toward the fourth floor before it hit him. The cement stairs, painted cinderblock walls and metal rail spun. He tipped and had to grab the rail to keep from falling over. Panic slammed into him and he threw himself against the wall, away from the rail. His breathing rasped, echoing around him, duetting with the churning pulse in his ears. For God knew how long he stood frozen, halfway between the third and fourth floor landings.

It’s different,
rationality told him.
There’s a wall there, no hole. You can’t fall.

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t in control. At least, not enough to stave off the panic attack and move his body. Only enough to argue with rationality.

You’re stuck in the middle, jerk. You want to be here forever?

Stupid question. He wanted out of here more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. He could race down the steps and through that door in seconds. But he flinched when his imagination supplied black-clad attackers coming through before he reached the door. He should go up. A few seconds, and he’d be out and where he needed to be. But he couldn’t make himself move.

Asshole. Too much at stake for this. Go. Up. Now.

Still frozen.

Do I need to start parading the names of everyone counting on you?

He dragged his left foot up a step and pushed. This would go faster if he closed his eyes. Maybe. He tried it, turning to run up the steps, and his hand smacked into the doorknob on the landing. He grabbed it and twisted. Locked.

His back crawling about all the possible things that could be coming up behind him, he crouched to pick the lock. Normally it would only take him a couple of minutes, but his hands shook. A few forced deep breaths later, equally forced concentration to block out everything but the lock, and it snicked. He eased the door open and peered through the crack. As soon as he could see something other than stairwell, the panic eased.

A gray industrial-grade carpet lined a hallway with windows along one side and cubicle walls on the other. No voices carried to him, and only one bank of overhead lights was on.

Kemmerling wasn’t this much of an idiot.

Jason checked the inside of the doorway for evidence of an alarm, but saw nothing. His angle was bad to look for motion detectors, but at least one had to be aimed at this door. He counted on two things. First that Kemmerling, like many security services, saw little need to invest in big ticket systems for their own offices because no one would invade, expecting them to be impenetrable. Second, that he would also make the mistake of assuming an intruder would walk in like a normal person.

As Jason had said to Lark just yesterday, he wasn’t normal.

Luckily the building was an older one, with a vent over the door. He removed the screwdriver from his pick kit and climbed on the handrail next to the stairs, balancing on his toes and using one hand to grip the top of the doorframe while he unscrewed the vent. He pulled it out into the stairwell and lowered it to the landing, then stuck the screwdriver in his back pocket to leave both hands free to pull himself through the space. Piece of cake.

He’d been right. One motion sensor was aimed at the base of the door. It was possible, but improbable given the state of the external security, that Isaac had infrared beams crisscrossing the cubicle farm filling the entire floor.

The metal frame of the opening cut into Jason’s midriff. He gauged the distance between the door and the corner of the cubicle, but it was too far. He couldn’t get the leverage to leap it. The motion sensor sat at the left of the corner of the cubicle, and the corridor ahead of him was clear. If he could pull himself through, flip over and fling his body forward, he might make it. Impossible seven months ago, but now…

It was ugly, but he did it. The new muscle tissue in his arms, abs and legs gave him more strength and control than a gymnast. He did a slow roll through the vent, holding his legs up above the field of the sensor and gripping the edge above him with hands screaming in pain. He tensed his abs, arched and tumbled the two feet he needed, landing in a heap on the rough rug. Man, he was glad Lark hadn’t seen that. He must have looked like a cat tossed through the air, flailing and twisting.

Jason scrambled up and over the top of one of the cubicles to avoid any other sensors. Dropping into the rolling desk chair, he tapped the keyboard of the cube’s computer, activating it. After a bit of searching the network, he found the controls for the security system.

Huh. Maybe he was wrong about Isaac’s brains. He used software Hummingbird technicians had designed—and abandoned because it was too easy to compromise. Jason inserted a few commands to make the system think it was still on, then deactivated it. Now he could move around without Isaac being alerted.

“Hello?”

Unless, of course, there was someone else in the room. Damn, he was an idiot.

Jason froze, listening. There were no footsteps, no rustle of fabric or shoe leather on carpet. No one called out again. He waited. They waited. Finally, the guy sighed, muttered something about “stupid supernatural TV show,” and closed a door.

Jason’s mind raced. The closing door had to belong to an office. From his look around at ceiling height, he thought the only two offices were near the main entrance. The voice hadn’t been Kemmerling’s, so probably hadn’t come from Kemmerling’s office. Searching it while someone was in the room next door was stretching the definition of acceptable risk, but at this point, doing nothing was worse.

He didn’t have many options. He could sit right here and hope the guy left soon. But he might not, and every minute Jason was here was a minute he left Lark alone. Other people might come in, including the occupant of this cubicle.

Maybe he could access what he needed from here. He dug into the network, finding the central server and plenty of client files protected by passwords, but nothing of Isaac’s. It had been worth a try, but it stood to reason the boss would have a stand-alone unit not connected to the server or the outside world. Jason had to get into his office, and he had to do it now.

Keeping low, he hurried up the aisle on the far side of the room from the offices. The main entrance area held a reception desk and a few chairs and plants. A couple of landscape prints hung on the walls. The glass-fronted entryway gave view to the elevators across a narrow foyer. A red light blinked on an alarm box next to the door. The system thought it was on.

Jason couldn’t see the offices from here. He belly-crawled as quietly as possible to the corner, balancing speed and stealth. The second door had a strip of light under it and a small placard with “Hector Ramirez, Vice President” on it. The first door was Isaac’s. Good.

Jason lingered for a few minutes, listening and looking. He heard a few murmurs, and the click of a phone being hung up. Some papers rustling, then low music.

Isaac’s door didn’t appear to be wired, but he did have more than a standard office handle and keyed lock. The keypad above the handle wasn’t too sophisticated, though. No fingerprint pad or retinal scanner. He probably had a two-code failsafe. One to allow for typing error, and a cutoff after the second “mistake.” Jason thought for a while, trying to remember Isaac’s habits. Jason had access to all the agents’ passwords and codes, but could hardly memorize all of them.

Still, Isaac had been a special case.

He took a deep breath, checked behind him and down the hall, readied his lockpicks and moved.

One second to the door. Three seconds to key in Isaac’s birthday in reverse plus the numbers corresponding to the first three letters of his first name. The red light flicked to green, and he started picking the lock. Thirty long seconds later, the tumblers fell. And the light turned red. Dammit.

“For God’s sake, I’m coming home now!”

Jason jerked, adrenaline flooding him at the sudden loud voice in the office next door. The phone slammed down, and Hector muttered as he moved around his office. “Try…work…shrew…wonder why…” The light shining under the door went out.

Closing his mouth around another curse, Jason keyed the numbers again, as fast as he could without making a mistake. The light flashed green. He twisted the handle and eased the door open, cursing again when it creaked.

He barely got inside and eased the door closed before Hector’s opened. Jason didn’t want to click the latch and alert Hector. He held his breath, his heart pounding, and watched through the crack as the man stalked by.

Jason waited while Hector “disarmed” the alarm, opened the door with a
whoosh
of air, armed it again, and locked the door behind him. The alarm reset would have overridden the commands Jason put in, but at least he was inside the system now. He’d worry about getting out when the time came. He eased the door closed and turned to survey the room he stood in. He made out the shape of a desk in the center of the room, a tall shelf or something in one corner. Darkness hid the details.

The office had one window, but the metal blinds covering it kept out any light. Jason didn’t want to turn on the light, because if someone came in they’d see it under the door. But opening the blinds would be obvious from the street to someone who knew they should be closed. He compromised by fiddling with a few of the slats on the bottom, letting in just enough light to see.

The desk held two computers, one a match to the kind on all the cubicle desks, and one a higher-end model, stand-alone, as he’d expected. Being careful what he touched—he hadn’t had any gloves or the time to buy some—Jason sat and powered up the stand-alone. He kept his senses tuned to the silence outside the office and his focus on the hard drive.

After an hour and a half of hunting and pecking with the very tips of his fingers, he still had nothing. He’d managed to partially break into the files, but they were all client based and had nothing to do with Matt, the RT-24, or Hummingbird in any way. There was a double-protected section Jason couldn’t get into, no matter what he did. And he was afraid to try harder and get closed out of the system.

He cursed and shoved the chair back as he got to his feet and skimmed the room for files or safes. Isaac apparently didn’t keep many paper files on the premises, if any. He had no filing cabinets or shelves, and the modern-style desk had no drawers. But there was a freestanding dry bar. Jason circled behind it. The top shelf held the usual glasses and liquor bottles as well as a pile of bar cloths. The second shelf was for swizzle sticks and napkins, but the base of the bar, from the second shelf down, was solid.

Jason crouched and started lifting piles of napkins and plastic-bagged packages. In the back right corner, under a large box of toothpicks, he found an indent in the resin the entire bar was made of. He pressed it, and a small cover popped up, exposing a keypad.

He sighed. More codes. He tried the one that had gotten him into the room, with no luck. He reversed it, then tried each part of it. Luckily, this keypad didn’t have an attempt limit. Finally, using the numbers for all of the letters of Isaac’s first name—919113—worked. The bottom of the bar clicked open. Jason lifted the cover off and set it aside. There was another lock, this one pickable, though it took long enough for sweat to bead on his upper lip. He worried about Lark being alone for too long at the museum.

The space filled the bottom of the bar. Isaac stored the usual things in here—money, weapons, ID both real and fake. Some contracts, papers relating to the business loan that had gotten Kemmerling Security started and the property the company owned. And a flash drive.

“Bingo.” Jason strode to the computer and connected the drive, clicking fast to access it. His phone buzzed in his pocket, so he straightened to pull it out and check the text from Lark.