Emotionally Compromised (Emotionally Compromised Series) (18 page)

Update

ALEX TURNER

Jeremy’s close proximity is always intoxicating to my logic, and seeking a release and knowing time is of the essence
I sprint back to the car, needing a rush of adrenaline to flush these emotions away.

As
I approach the vehicle at the end of the long driveway the chauffeur is taking out what little luggage we have, and I spot my backpack in his hands.

I snag it out of his grasp. He flinches at the move
.

"Sor
ry. I need this." I turn around, pausing a beat to look for somewhere secluded, I spot a barn in the back. I make a run for it, loving every minute of every in and out breath as my heart rate picks up with each stride. It is a comical taste of the adrenaline I crave in comparison to the one I’d prefer, but I’ll take it.

Making it through the large
wooden doors I pull out my cell phone and dial Derek. Eyeing the many stalls, each harboring a horse, I decide the floor will do. I take my laptop out of my backpack and begin setting up on small pile of straw, wrinkling my nose at the wafting smell of manure.

"Agent Turner, how nice of you to call."

"Shut up, Derek. I am not in the mood. I’ve got to get back, so let’s make this quick."

"
Don’t forget you’re still on duty, Turner. Is there trouble in paradise?”

"I said shut up. What's going on? I am almost logged in."

He laughs and it irks me. I hate that he takes great joy in aggravating me. "Did Jeremy agree, then?"

"Yes."

There is an awkward pause as if Derek is waiting for some snarky remark, but eventually he continues, "Good. We couldn't wait any longer and hacked into Sunscape's security system."

"You what?" I can't help sounding annoyed.

"Well, it doesn't matter now since he's on board. I just couldn't wait on this, so I had us look into the security at Sunscape. And there is a lot of weird shit going on."

I pull up my e-mail and skim the brief message from Alvarado
. "Marcus transferred five thousand dollars to a Swiss bank account?" I ask. "What the hell is that for? I thought they were going to pay him?"

"Right? I don't know what he is doing. And get this: that bank account belongs to Luc Olivier, a contractor for the Parisian bio company that Sunscape just renewed a five-year contract with. I ran his name
, and coincidentally, Luc Olivier is linked to a series of different government hacking gigs, but was never pinned. He's big money and a smooth talker. He was arrested once for drug possession, but since he makes so many people so much money, they hushed the story."

I feel myself leveling out. I’m eager to tell Derek of the new development.
"Speaking of drugs, I found out Gibbs has a cocaine addiction. He's more volatile than maybe we originally thought."

"How bad?"

"Hard to say. My plan is to find out more on Saturday."

"Saturday?"

"The moment you've been waiting for is here. Jeremy got us tickets to this charity art benefit. We will have to wire Jeremy for the event so we can track who says what. Apparently, everyone on our suspect list will be there. Though, a Luc Olivier was never mentioned."

"He wouldn't be. Customs says he made it back to Paris
on Sunday night. We don't have enough on him to do anything."

"My plan is to put that tracker on Gibbs'
s phone at the art gala. We can tap his phone conversations then, and maybe get into his personal e-mail. It could reveal enough to get Olivier extradited to the United States for interrogation—if the French cooperate."

"Yea
h, that sounds perfect. Tell Hunt that I want to get into his building this weekend too."

"Will do. So what happened with the security hacking?"

"Well, there are no cameras in the labs, but I can see Gibbs entering and exiting his lab. He is in there almost twenty-four hours a day. It makes sense if he's doing coke. Must keep the juices flowing. I don't know what he is doing in there. I either need in that lab or I need to tap into his phone. It’s imperative.".

"What evidence are we looking for in order to close this case?"

"Other than the obvious stop it before it gets into the wrong hands sort of thing, Alvarado mentioned dragging it out to make sure all who are involved are held accountable and charged with contributing to terrorism. If we get lucky, Turner, we might get a medal." I can hear his charming grin.

I can't help myself. I giggle
. "Hmm ... let's not hold our breaths on that one." There is a long pause, and I know this is Derek's way of saying he wants to say something he shouldn't. I take a deep breath, bracing myself for whatever it might be. "What is it, Derek?"

He sighs
. "Are you OK?"

My heart clenches
. "I've been better." Jeremy isn't the only one who deserves the truth.

"Hope he is treating you good."

I smile. "He is. It's all a little complicated."

"Hmm."

"I better go, Derek."

"Call me if you need anything. I will look into figuring out why Marcus gave Olivier that money. Hurry up and get back here."

"I'll be back tomorrow. Don't miss me too much."

"Too late. I
want to beat the shit out of someone and you're not around."

I let out an honest laugh
. "Goodbye, Derek."

I hang up, close my
computer, and sigh. Time to face the Hunt family.

Father & Son

JEREMY HUNT

I take a seat on a barstool and run both my hands through my hair, exasperated.

"So, let's talk, son."

I rub my eyes, feeling terrible again. I look over at my dad on the other side of the kitchen counter
, and he is extending an open beer toward me. I take it without saying anything.

"Attaboy."

"Dad, what am I supposed to do?" I sigh, feeling resigned to this life.

His eyebrows wrinkle in confusion
. "I don't think I'm following, son." I have never really been honest with my dad, so all I can do is glare at him and take another sip of my beer. "Talk to me, Jere. You seem lost."

"In a way, I feel found." I feel
stupid as soon as the words come out of my mouth.

"
Ah
,
the girl. This is what this is about?" He laughs in his deep, baritone.

I shake my head, feeling like a hormonal teen
. "No, well, yes. Actually, isn't the girl at the root of all this?"

"You lost me again." It's hard for me to keep up too, dad.

"Well, how the hell do you think I met her?" I take another sip.

"I
bet it's a long story," he chortles, obviously thinking himself funny.

I raise a brow
. "What has she said? How much do you even know about her? How is it you always know everything!" My defenses are going up, and I feel crowded all of a sudden.

He raises his hands defensively, beer in one of them. "Calm down, cowboy. I don't know anything, and I don't know much about the girl, either. These type
of people tend to be quite secretive, so it's not as if we swapped war stories or anything. I've never seen you so riled up. I know I like her. She seems like a nice, grounded young woman."

I feel loopy. "Nice is not the word I would use."

He laughs again. "Sounds like you finally met a girl who dances circles around you rather than the other way round, huh?"

We
sip our beers, and I feel more on his level for the first time in a while. He always makes me feel like I am still eighteen, but right now we are equals and I am compelled to be honest with him.

"I didn't know she was an agent when I met her. I guess she was trying to seduce Marcus." As the words tumble out of my
mouth, I realize the truth bites sometimes.

He laughs again, but this time it’s apologetic. "Ah, Marcus." The troublemaker.

"I think I got in the way, but I couldn't leave her alone. Then one thing led to another. We started a … I don't know"—I shrug, pausing to take another sip of my beer, then continue—"a relationship, and in the end she had to confess everything. And now I am helping out, and all I really want is the girl."

I notice that my dad's mouth is now set in a hard line. "You like the complicated ones, don't you? You couldn't have chosen a more complicated situation."

"I'm aware, Dad, but I've never liked a girl the way I like this one."

"Who wouldn't? You be careful with that one though
."

His ringing tone is a reminder of what I already suspect. Then I remember the real reason I am here, Alex aside. "What do you think about what Marcus is doing? How did you know what he was up to?" I'm curious.

He sets his beer down, and runs his hand through his graying hair. "That's the thing. I didn't really. I stumbled upon it. A routine e-mail profiling flagged some of Marcus's e-mails, and upon further investigation, it wasn't looking good. There were suspicious e-mails about a task with no real identifying verbiage, and then there were odd shipment orders. Eventually, the e-mail communication stopped right in the middle of what they were discussing. I assume this is because it involved something that couldn't be discussed on a private, monitored server like ours. And combine that with the incident report of what Marcus did when he found out he lost the Nobel Prize nomination."

Ah yes, Marcus's first explosion. He received the call that
the committee wasn't considering him for the award, and the next thing you know he'd busted into his lab and broke things. Chucking beakers and petri dishes across the room, spilling samples and hazardous materials everywhere. The company had to have a small hazmat team come in and sanitize his lab. Company policy dictated that he had to have a psychiatric evaluation, which he wasn't too thrilled about. Alex must have known about that too.

My dad takes a nervous sip of his beer
, and I notice his eyes scanning the open doors and windows. "What the agents don't know is how I really figured out we had a bigger problem on our hands. It was Marcus's lab partner, David, who noticed us snooping around. At the time, we had no idea what was really going on, but he was worried. David spilled the beans to someone, who I won't rat out, and it was enough for us to begin looking into it. We pieced it together. David is implicated in the investigation because he knows about the project, but luckily, Marcus doesn't know we know. I had only been snooping and doing my own investigating from afar, here in Arizona, via e-mail and teleconference. I have been having Tom, our head of security, monitor the situation. Then I passed it off to the appropriate authorities, and I’m sure Marcus doesn't see it coming. He thinks he is smarter than everyone, always has."

"Dad, why do you think he's doing this? It must bother you. He was practically part of this family." I know it bothers me. He is
—was—like a brother to me.

An expression of pain
etches across his face. "I'm extremely bothered. I don't know what possessed him to do such a thing, and a part of me thought I owed it to him to protect him. Then I realized, no, no, no, Marcus is a grown man and I have done the best I could. Marcus has always had this chip on his shoulder, looking for that moment to prove himself. As if he could still prove his parents wrong in their afterlife. And what he doesn't realize is he doesn't have to prove anything to anyone. I have done my best to show him love, but I can't control who he becomes. I can only guide him. I thought things were going well. Though, I knew something was up when he had that shit-fit in his lab. That hazmat team was a fortune." He shrugs as if he has already had this deliberation with himself many times. "I spent many a sleepless night feeling guilty about it, but I had to remind myself what was at stake. I love him, but he is the one who brought himself to the brink."

I take a moment to absorb what my father has spilled to me. He's right. I feel terrible about it, but how bad should I really feel?

"I didn't tell you, because I knew you would have the same dilemma I had. Marcus is your best friend. In this situation, I thought ignorance might be bliss.” My dad rubs at his stubbly jaw, as if questioning his words, but continues, “You've been doing great at work. The board is proud—I’m proud; stock is up, and we are growing exponentially. Why would I add more to your plate by pinning all this on Marcus? Granted, thinking about it now, it feels foolish. I wanted you to focus on things that are more important. I was hoping I could nip this in the bud before it became a problem, but then again, it was a lot more than it seemed. Hell, I didn’t know I was going to uncover Marcus working on creating a biological weapon. The thought never crossed my mind, and even now, I cannot believe it is happening. That being said, I would have told you eventually. I regret not telling you from the start.” He repeats himself sternly, as if scolding himself. “It was damn foolish of me. And now, well"—he lets out what seems like a cathartic laugh—"now you seem to have managed to get right in the middle of it, and I worry about you."

His last statement catches my attention. "I'm not upset you didn't tell me
. Well, I was, and I have to admit I originally came here to yell at you, but it doesn't really matter now. But why would you worry? I’ve obviously got it under control." Do I?

He finishes off his beer and tosses it in the recycle bin
. "Isn't it obvious? We've come full circle, haven't we? Isn't this about the girl?"

"What are you
guys talking about?"
The voice wraps around me like a warm blanket fresh from the dryer.

Our heads whip toward the patio door to see Alex with that slow, lazy smile directed at me as she leans against the doorframe.

How long has she been standing there?