Protect Me (7 page)

No,
wait. First order of business was Trinity, who had left three missed calls and
a voicemail on her phone. Hope wanted to just call, but she shoved down the
impulse and made herself listen to the voicemail first.

“Where
did you get that phone?” Rick asked. He sounded horrified. “That’s not the one
I gave you. That one is from the stone age. Cavemen would be embarrassed to
carry that thing.”

“It’s
mine and I like it,” Hope informed him just before the recording started.

“Hey
there honey, just wanted to let you know I set the blasted fire alarm off. I
wanted to try out these biscuits - oh, well, you don’t need to know that, I
suppose. Anyway, don’t work yourself into a tizzy over it. Everything’s fine!”

“What
did she say? What did she say?” Hope ignored him and moved to the control
panel, flicking on screens.

Sure
enough, the kitchen view showed a bunch of smoke issuing from the oven and a
harassed-looking Trinity opening windows and flapping a towel at the dark smog.
As she watched, Trinity opened the last big window, and the alarm finally
stopped.

Hope
heaved a sigh of relief. She checked all of the screens, just to be sure, but
there was no activity on any of the rest.

“Sorry,
what were you saying?”

She
turned just in time to see Rick disappearing through the panic room door.

After a
moment of hesitation Hope turned everything off and headed for the door. She
stepped through it and pulled it carefully closed just in time to see Rick
jogging around the corner.

The
internal debate was short-lived.

Hope
had learned a long time ago how to move quietly, and stealth was barely
necessary even at a run on these plush carpets.

One of
the most common client complaints was feeling smothered by their protection. In
a world of tell-alls and leaks to TMZ, it made sense that clients demanded a
degree of privacy. Generally, the common wisdom was to give your client as much
space as possible. If it wouldn’t affect the mission, then you didn’t push.

It had
never to Hope’s knowledge been recommended to sneak after your client to find
out his secrets.

Rick
was moving fast, at a flat-out run now. But he was untrained; his run was less
efficient than Hope’s jog and he didn’t know how to be truly quiet. So she
followed him through the halls and into the west wing with little effort.

As she
suspected, his footsteps drew to a halt just outside his bedroom.

From
around the corner Hope heard Rick swear quietly and fumble at the lock. Then
there was the click of the door closing, and the snick of it locking behind
him.

She
moved immediately to her door and opened it silently. On tip-toes she moved
across the room and listened at their shared door. Hope fingered the key ring
in her pocket.

There
was a long, low creak from the other side of the door. Hope glanced
automatically at the entrance to her bedroom, but no, there were no footsteps
near it. A third door? She dropped to the floor and stared underneath. All she
could see was a rush of shadow before there was another creak and a slam, and
the solid line of light under the door restored.

A trap
door?

Hope
pulled out the ring of keys and stared up at the doorknob. She was almost
certain this wasn’t illegal, but it was almost certainly amoral, even if it was
for Rick’s own good. It might even be enough to get her fired from the case.

But Hope
believed firmly in doing whatever she had to in order to best protect her
client. It made her a pain in the ass (she was informed of this on a fairly
regular basis), but it also made her very good at her job.

Besides
which, she found herself caring a lot - caring too much - about the dark haired
man with the easy smile and baffling interest in her.

Decision
made before she’d truly debated it, Hope slid the key into the lock and
twisted.

If
she’d had any expectations about Rick’s bedroom, they were thwarted. The room
was relatively bare, just a cluttered desk, a bed with nondescript black
sheets, and an overly large closet. Hope trailed her fingers over the edge of
the bed sheet; it was no softer than her own.

The
only thing to distinguish the room from any other one in the mansion was the
trapdoor in the closet. It took Hope a couple minutes to find it, but maybe the
trip to the library had jogged something in her memory, because she remembered
Narnia and crawled underneath a rack of coats. The sensitive pads of her
fingers found a subtle break in the wood that was easily pried up with a slip
of leather cleverly designed to look as if it had accidentally dropped from the
garments overhead.

When
she tugged up the trapdoor she managed to keep the noise to a minimum. Mostly
by pulling it up painfully slowly. Patience was a virtue, if a boring one.

She
peered down. There appeared to be a short flight of stairs that led to a dimly
lit tunnel. Hope grabbed the edges of the trapdoor and swung her whole upper
body down to take a look.

Yep, a
tunnel. One that looked quite old and hewn into the rock underneath the house.
It would be tricky to avoid echoes in there. Thankfully the tunnel appeared to
be quite short, since Hope could see bright light emanating from the end of it.

Only
one way to find out what Rick was doing in there.

She
really hoped this wasn’t some sort of secret sex dungeon, or things were about
to get real awkward.

Ignoring
the ladder entirely, Hope lowered herself into the tunnel and dropped cat-like
onto her feet. Her right food caught an edge of rock and she stumbled, but
managed to right herself. She flattened her body against the side of the
tunnel, but there was no noise from the end of it, and no movement. After
waiting a second she moved forward cautiously.

As she
drew closer to the end of the tunnel Hope saw that there was a veil of plastic
sheeting acting as a door between her and whatever was on the other side. She
paused in front of it and listened, but could hear nothing except faint beeping
on the other side, which told her nothing. Machinery of some sort, but that
could mean a number of things, from life support to video games.

It was
impossible to see through the filmy plastic. Hope swallowed a sigh. In one
fluid movement she tore the sheet aside and stepped through. If her only
advantage was surprise, she would take it.

Bright
light assaulted her eyes and she dodged to one side, blinking past dark
blotches.

When
her vision cleared, Hope saw that she was standing alone at the front of a… laboratory?

Partitioned
off with glass walls was a vast array of equipment positioned on and around
shining metal counters. Even when she peered at the beeping boxes and
blender-looking things, Hope couldn’t make out what they might be used for.
Nothing looked very familiar except the petri dishes stacked on the large metal
table in the center of the room.

Hope
crouched down on her haunches, taking herself a little further out of easy
view, though in a glass room it wasn’t likely to be of much use if anyone was
really looking.

She was
trying to decide whether to move forward or back when Rick walked in.

The
glass doors twisted off into a hallway at the back that acted like a mirror
maze, so Hope was surprised when he strode through the door wearing a lab coat
and carrying… samples? He had something horribly flesh-colored in what looked
like a large square petri dish. She craned her neck, trying to get a better
view.

Rick
set the sample down on the table and moved toward the row of machines. He
flicked switches and tapped buttons with practiced ease. Hope stared at him,
her mind running a thousand miles a minute.

She
didn’t think that he was stupid anymore, not really. The papers Rick studied in
the morning hadn’t escaped her notice, and it would make little sense for a
shallow man to find reading sexy.

But
that didn’t mean he was a genius, and Hope didn’t know nearly enough about…
whatever this was… to determine whether Rick’s invention was a reality or
whether he was a dabbler who was just fooling himself, obsessed with strange
experiments in an underground lab.

The
hairs on the back of her neck stood up at the thought of it. Did she trust Rick
enough to assume the best? Did she trust him at all?

Machines
beeped and whirred in front of her as Rick turned his back to punch a code into
a large keyboard. Hope’s muscles tensed. This was the time to run, if she
wanted to. She could work around this; do her best to protect Rick without
insisting on knowing every single important detail.

Rick
turned his head to glance at a screen projected to his left, exposing his
profile. His usually carefree expression was creased in concentration, and his
lips were set in a straight, determined line.

Something
settled in Hope’s gut, deep inside where she drew her instincts from. This
unfamiliar expression still looked like Rick, even without his normal easy
smiles. Hope liked those smiles. She liked the Rick that she knew enough to
want to know this more serious Rick, too.

Hope
waited until Rick drew his hands away from his machinery. Then slowly she stood
up and walked forward just past the entrance to the glass room. She stayed
silent, letting her footsteps announce her presence.

She saw
the instant that Rick became aware of her. His shoulders snapped into a
straight line and he tensed, shoving one hand into his coat pocket. He whirled
around and stared at her. Those same brown eyes that were usually alight with
curiosity and good humor were blazing with an intensity almost like
protectiveness. Of what? His laboratory?

When he
saw that it was just Hope, Rick's eyes went wide and then narrowed.

"I
gave you that key so you'd feel comfortable, not so you could sneak into places
you weren't invited," he said after it became clear that Hope was going to
wait for him to speak. The ice in his voice should have been no surprise, but
it was, somehow. Hope knew that she'd grown too used to his gentle words and
kind looks. Neither of them could afford that.

"I'm
sorry," she said, and she was, a little. "But I need all the details
if I'm going to do my job correctly. If you're trying to run off here every
time there's a threat, then it's relevant. Too relevant for me to ignore."

Rick
set his jaw and out of the corner of her eye Hope noticed his hands clenching
into fists at his sides, his knuckles turning white. He bit his lip, not like
he was nervous, but like he was biting back words best left unsaid. His eyes
were hard - more like impenetrable tar than the soft brown she’d become
accustomed to seeing trained on her.

She
found herself studying Rick’s face, memorizing it. It was already too late for
her to see what Rick looked like when he was happy. But it didn’t matter. The
memory of his smile seemed to be burned onto the inside of her brain.

This
was what Rick looked like when he hated her, when he wished she was gone. Hope
made herself commit it to memory. This was what she needed to remember. Things
were better this way. This was safer.

“We
don’t have to drag this out,” Hope said quietly. “Tell me what I need to know
and I’ll get out of your hair. The invention you mentioned in your file. Is it
- what is it?”

The
coolness on Rick’s face didn’t fade, but he relaxed fractionally. His shoulders
slumped and he stuck both hands into the pockets of his lab coat. He barked out
a bitter laugh that sounded strange coming from his mouth and turned away from
Hope to face the counter.

“I
know, you think I’m a liar. That’s the beauty of it, really. If I’m just some
idiot then the trustees leave me alone and I can do heavy lifting for R&D
in peace.”

Nothing
he’d said was really wrong – or particularly comprehensible –  so Hope simply
asked, “R&D?”

Rick
squared his shoulders and glanced at her with a kind of obstinate pride.
“Research and Development. Stone Industries has the most advanced scientific
technology in the world. We fund - ”

Hope
held up a hand. “Right, okay, I’m not looking to drink the company Kool-Aid. I
just need to know what this particular thing is, why somebody else would want
it, and why we can’t fob it off on somebody else instead.”

His
forehead crumpled in a frown. He looked almost disappointed, like a child cut
off in the middle of a passionate explanation of something important. For a
moment Hope felt guilty.

Then
Rick was moving purposefully toward the counter. His body language was cool,
his shoulders angled away from Hope. But when he picked up a test tube off the
counter and looked at her again, his face was set, his jaw hard and lines
creased around his eyes, making him look unexpectedly determined.

“Do you
trust me?” Rick asked. His tone was almost brusque; a far cry from the gentle
murmurs in the library. His eyes were shielded and suspicious. He held out a
hand. It hovered between them and he stared at her mockingly. Hope knew without
having to ask that this was a test. There was one shot at this.