Noelle pinned the new badge to the lapel of her crisp, button down shirt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn such stifling clothing. It had to have been the fifties, she thought, when she was still living with her sister. Women’s clothing backup until the sixties, in order to be presentable, had been constricting in Noelle’s opinion.
She found herself wishing Marc was beside her, but their jobs had not coincided the way he wanted. She’d been handed a nice job as a secretary. Although, Noelle didn’t consider it too nice. She was not one for smiling all day or taking neat notes and sending memos. Marc had gotten a job as a janitor and it irked him more than it would have for Noelle. Part of her almost wanted to trade.
She stood in the facility lobby, feeling her heart pound inside her ribcage. All around her were agents of GOE. A man dressed in head to toe black, including a bullet proof vest, stood by the front door. Another stood at the end of the hall by a window-less door. Noelle wondered if the door the security guard stood before led into the experimental portion of the facility.
From Quinn’s deductions over their web chat, this facility was almost certainly the one GOE was holding Lucia in. If this was the wrong facility, if the wire taped to Noelle’s stomach was useless, she didn’t know what to do. Noelle wasn’t the brains of this operation. Sure, she’d help set up some of what needed to happen to get here, but she couldn’t formulate a plan if this went south.
Before she could dwell on her own thoughts much longer, a man in a suit appeared before her. His face was sharp, as if pinched from either end and pulled taut. His nose was more like a beak, thin and pointed at the end. A small patch of hair on his chin pointed toward the floor. He gave her a curt smile that lasted no more than a single second.
“Good morning, Miss Liu. I’m glad to see you’re on time.”
Noelle didn’t know what to say to that. She eyed this man and studied the stern expression on his face. He was going to be a joy to work for, she decided. He clearly was not happy with the punctuality of his last employee. Noelle stood up straighter, raising her chin.
“My parents taught me that on time was ten to fifteen minutes before you’re supposed to be there.”
The man nodded in appreciation before turning on his heel. He said nothing, but the receptionist behind the counter, a panicked expression on her face, made a silent motion for Noelle to follow him. Noelle nodded and jogged to catch up.
“I’m glad to see you can speak English. In fact, your comprehension of the language is very good.”
Noelle glared daggers into the back of the man’s head. She already wanted to bite his head off. While Noelle had been born in China, that was not what her new ID card and paperwork said. According to all her paperwork, Victoria Liu had been born in the States in 1992. The fact that he’d assumed she wouldn’t speak English based on her appearance irked her.
But, she couldn’t say anything. Victoria Liu was supposed to be a meek and innocent secretary. It was an image she would have to work to uphold. It seemed she might have her work cut out for her.
She let her eyes graze over her surroundings. Part of her wanted to catch any little clue she could while another part of her wanted to find Marc in this mess of unfamiliar faces. She knew she shouldn’t, but the leftover ache in her body reminded her of him with every step.
She’d decided to jump in head first and that made her nervous. Noelle did not want to disappoint him. She’d been unable to help her sister and now she stood in a similar situation where she was expected to rescue someone. Noelle couldn’t help but wonder if she’d fail Lucia the same way she failed Mary.
No, that wasn’t the right way to think. Not when she was neck deep in GOE agents. Noelle needed to keep her head about her.
“You will be expected to keep track of my appointments throughout the day as well as take notes on all of my meetings. When I leave my office, I expect you to get up and follow me. You are my eyes and ears for all the things I might miss and I expect to be able to read your notes. If they are illegible, you are to convert them to a document file, print them, and leave them in my office.”
Noelle definitely wanted to bite this man’s head off. He was commanding her to be his shadow. She expected him be the kind of employer who was offended by bathroom breaks. She knew not all GOE agents and employees were like this as she’d met Anya’s father and got to see the new facility he’d made for himself, but this guy was not making a good name for the Guardians.
They paused before a closed door. The hall had opened into a small lobby area. There was a line of uncomfortable looking chairs on one side of the lobby and a small desk on the other. The placard on the door read: Charles Patterson, Head of Facility. Noelle swallowed as she realized just how high up the ladder she’d been placed.
“The desk is yours, but I do not condone personalization. It is a distraction from our purpose here at the Facility. Try to keep things simple and clean so that you may better do your job. Also, I would prefer it if you tried to wear flat heeled shoes. Women’s shoes with heels may be visually appealing, but they are in no way practical as you do your job.”
Noelle nodded because she had no words for Charles Patterson. He was a man who seemed to have little real joy in his life. Was his home as grey and bleak as his view of the world?
Charles Patterson finally turned to face her. His eyes narrowed as he studied her face and, for a moment, Noelle feared he might see through her. She didn’t know how he could see to the truth of her, but it didn’t abate the fear any. Then, the man simply shook his head and turned to disappear into his office.
Noelle was left wondering what the man had seen in her. It made her skin crawl and her stomach churn, but she took her seat at the desk. The seat in question was a cold and uncomfortable metal chair. If this was what the last secretary had to sit in, it was no wonder she had a punctuality problem. Noelle didn’t want to sit in it all day, either.
On the back of her plastic GOE identification badge was a short numerical code written in permanent marker. The receptionist told her the codes would change monthly so it was a good idea to jot them down on the back of the card. She’d also hinted that the permanent marker would stay in place and would wipe away with the swipe of a dry erase marker. Noelle was stunned when she realized it was true.
The access code opened the computer on her desk. She wished she was Isaac in that moment. The electrical dragon would know what to do with the hunk of metal and plastic before her. Noelle had a fair understanding of the machines, but she wished she knew how to unlock GOE’s secrets through it. Perhaps that would set off alarms.
She was too eager to unearth all of GOE’s secrets because she realized the screen on her computer faced the office window behind her. She felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle and when she turned around, she found Patterson watching her. It was a good thing she didn’t know how to do the things Isaac did or else she would have been fried right then and there.
Noelle smiled nervously at the man behind the glass, a bit of the truth leaking into her smile as she pretended to be an innocent young woman. This was going to be interesting, she thought. How long would she have to play this ruse before she found the access codes she needed? Could she move the screen without Patterson yelling at her? Noelle’s instincts told her the monitor was metaphorically nailed down and if she moved it even and inch, he would appear and put it back where it’d been.
All she could do was turn toward the screen and start shuffling through the introductory PDF files she’d been emailed. They were so boring she was almost grateful when Patterson thrust open his door and started marching down the hall. She quickly gathered up her notebook and pen and jogged to keep up with him.
He was right, the heels she wore were going to quickly become a pain in her feet.
***
The room Marc was led into smelled atrocious. It made him wish he could rip his own nose off his face. It was probably the heightened sense of smell he had because of the beast inside of him, but the room smelled like body odor and rotten trash and he could not escape it no matter how hard he tried.
The men showed him the small cart he would have to push around the facility, laden with all sorts of cleaning chemicals that made his throat tighten. There was a sticky trash bag in the front of the cart for him to dump the office waste bins into and a duster that looked as if it was older than Marc was attached to the side of the cart. He knew he was going to hate his life and hoped, prayed to any force in the world that would listen, that he wouldn’t have to do this for long.
The man who was training him was older and had a small belly, what women these days called the ‘dad bod’. His hair was thinning and when a woman dressed from head to toe in menacing business attire came down to complain about the smell in the women’s bathroom, Marc figured he knew why.
“This job isn’t the greatest, but it pays the bills. I’m sure your kids are grateful for that. You might even be able to put some away for their college tuition later.” The man shuffled the bottles of chemicals around his car as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands.
“I don’t have any kids,” Marc replied. He didn’t want any, not until GOE ended its war on their existence.
The man nodded. “Then you haven’t found the right woman is all.”
Marc didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to argue with this man’s view of the world. It wasn’t his place to tell him if he was right or wrong. To each their own, he reminded himself. He had found the right woman, but their life wasn’t all that amenable to the idea of children. Neither of the quite knew the perfect way to temper their anger and that was not a way to raise children. Add to that the threat of kidnapping from GOE, and Marc was off the idea altogether.
It made him think of his brother. Luc clearly prescribed by this ideal. It was a blow Marc had never seen coming. The prankster twin seemed like he would forever be the goofy bachelor. Even Anya seemed persistent that she finish her precious degree and become a human voice for the dragons.
Adding a child into that life… well, it was a move Marc never would have predicted.
They began on the first floor. The man with the Dad Bod let Marc push the cart from room to room. Each step made the inseam of his jumpsuit press uncomfortably on his man parts which resulted in a funny walk just to ease the irritation. The janitor with him laughed under his breath. He knew Marc’s pain.
“Let’s hit the agent’s desks first,” the janitor, whose name Marc would have to remember at some point, suggested. “The room full of desks is usually empty as they’re always off in the fields or in the other sections of the facility. Surprisingly enough, it can often be the filthiest place in the whole facility.”
“Why would the agents be in other parts of the facility?” Marc asked, feigning a bored curiosity when, on the inside, his attention had been piqued.
The janitor shrugged and bent to pick up a small trash bin. “Beats me. All I know is that stuffy asses in lab coats appear and crook their finger and the agents follow. I don’t pay much attention to where they go after that.”
Marc’s eyes grazed over the room. He took in the desks, lined up one after the other with almost no personal effects on their surfaces. The janitor handed him the ancient duster and pointed toward the vents high on the walls. It allowed him to peek at the shelves on the walls as he approached. There were awards from the local towns and photos of the agents as a smiling family or of the agents at a kid’s sports game. It looked like any office, he thought. Well, at least the one’s he’d seen on TV or in the Embassy. It didn’t look like the kind of place where GOE agents gathered to plot their next diabolical move.
Not all agents were evil masterminds with the desire to wipe dragons off the face of the earth, but it certainly felt like it. This wasn’t where the evil happened, Marc reminded himself. His feet padded over the tile flooring and all the while he knew he might be walking over his mother’s head. The experiments happened below ground where they could be easily hidden and guarded.
“Do you ever have to clean downstairs?” Marc asked.
The janitor perked up. “Downstairs? Now, why would I clean the basement?”
Marc’s heart sank. “There aren’t offices below?” He tried to cover his steps.
“There’s three floors above ground,” The janitor informed him. “No use for the basement, son.”
At this rate, he was never going to get into the experimental levels. Who cleaned up after them? Who emptied their trash bins once they were finished picking dragons apart piece by piece? He knew his anger was getting out of control when he slammed the duster onto the vent. The dirt and debris blasted into the air and rained down around his head.
Behind him, the janitor just laughed.
“Hey, son.” The janitor jabbed Marc in the ribs with his elbow and pointed toward the sound of heels clicking on the floor. “Perhaps that’s the right woman for you. She looks about your age and I think she’s about as green as you are.”
She’s gold, Marc wanted to jest. The janitor’s finger followed Noelle scampering behind a man with his chin in the air. His long legs gave him a stride much faster than Noelle’s shorter legs could get with a simple walk. She could be much faster than the man, but she had pretend she was human and the stressed, half-jog was a good act.
“She’s… pretty,” Marc said.
“Pfft,” the janitor made a sound through his lips. “That girl is more than just pretty. She’d be a show stopper if she wanted.”
Marc smiled with pride. Noelle didn’t have to try; she was already a show stopper. Marc had to admit, though, he wasn’t a fan of the clothing she’d borrowed from Anya. He missed the ripped jeans and buttery concert tees that she liked to wear. He wanted to play with the skin exposed through her jeans, tracing his fingers along the circles. He wanted to snuggle up to the buttery t-shirts while his hands slid beneath the fabric and across her bare skin.
“You can’t tell me you aren’t interested.”
Marc smiled. “Maybe just a little, but I’m here to work. Interoffice relationships never end well.”
“Fair enough, son. The wife works at a deli across town. She swears the distance is what makes us work for as long as we have. I think she just likes to get away from the kids from time to time, but doesn’t want to admit it to anyone.”
Once they were finished with the agents’ office, in which they’d found a number of filthy items Marc would rather try to forget about, they moved on to some of the personal offices. Marc knew he was close to Noelle’s desk when he scented her in the air. It still amazed him that she smelled like such a bright flower.
The desk in question was angled so that whoever was in the office behind it would see everything she did. Marc’s stomach churned with unease and he couldn’t help but wonder where she’d gone. He prodded the feeling while he wiped down her desk and realized it was worry. There’d never been a time in which Noelle couldn’t take care of herself, yet Marc couldn’t help but worry.
The janitor cautiously knocked on the door behind the desk while glancing over his shoulder. When no one appeared, he eased the door open and slipped inside, directing Marc to do the same with the cart.
“Now, you never want to let this man catch you inside his office. Normally, all of this, the thorough kind of cleaning, is done after hours, but regulation says you need to get familiar with how the facility works during the daytime hours.”
“Why wouldn’t I want this man to know I’m here? I’m just doing my job.”
“Mr. Patterson is the head of the facility and he bites harder than a pit bull defending its family. He blacklisted his last secretary so that she couldn’t get a job anywhere. Last I heard, she was scooping ice-cream for kids and letting her bachelor’s degree gather dust.”
Marc raised a brow. “That sounds a bit harsh. What she did do to deserve that kind of retaliation?”
The janitor stood up straight and looked over his shoulder at Marc. “The woman was late because her dog had been hit by a car.”
That was a bit extreme punishment for a family emergency. Marc looked back toward where Noelle and the head of the facility had disappeared. His heart clenched and his hands tightened around the thin handle of the duster.
“You alright there, son?” The janitor reached for the duster in Marc’s hands, gently plucking it from his tight grasp. “The girl will be okay, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s not like she’s a dragon.”
The janitor laughed at his own joke while Marc’s heart threatened to stop altogether. Noelle was a capable woman, he reminded himself. Thoughts of the night before slipped into his mind. He’d claimed his mate once and for all, letting their souls mingle into one force for a brief time, but what dominated his mind was her worry.
Noelle had been afraid the night before. She’d claimed to not want to hurt him, but he knew it was more than that. What they were doing was dangerous for them. They should have left it up to some of the human mates, but neither of them would have been happy putting others in danger.
He had to trust her. If he was going to go about his own part of the mission, Marc was going to have to trust that Noelle was capable of holding her own. His mind could not be clouded by worry with every step. His eyes were supposed to be on his surroundings. It frustrated him that he would not get access to the lower levels.
That was, undoubtedly, where they were keeping his mother. Marc drifted back, through time, and tried to picture her face, but the memory was a blur. At this point, the brothers spent more time with Dane than they had with their own parents. The man they’d met was not the one they’d remembered.
Their father had been strong and determined. He’d led them over the border with promises of a better life than the one they’d had in Southern America, a place that was barely more than a memory of sounds in his mind. His father wouldn’t have known anything about GOE’s ambitions in the U.S. when he led them into the new country.
Marc turned his attention to the world outside his own mind and found the janitor walking away. He half-jogged to catch up and laid out a soft apology. The man said nothing, just kept moving forward with his orientation.
***
Charles Patterson was an upright man who thought everything he did was the absolute right thing to do. He did not clutch to a book of gospel when he spoke, he held firm to a strict set of beliefs in how the world should work. Noelle found, half way through the day that she wanted to grab hold of that set of beliefs and tear them asunder.
They were antiquated and foolish. The world would never function on a perfect time table, he could not command everyone to control every variable life handed to them. He could not ask magic to disappear from the world altogether. Although, she was thinking this man did not want to eliminate the magic of dragons.
Instead, his plans were more geared toward the control of dragon magic. If he could control a thing he did not understand, then he might feel better about it. He was that kind of man, reaching for control in the face of fear and uncertainty.
“Please note, Veronica,” Patters said facing away from Noelle. “Schedule a meeting with Dr. Rutkowski for me. The Doctor should have news on one of our latest ventures that I need to have an update on. The Doctor has not been very forthcoming about her findings and she should be reminded who signs her paychecks and grants.”
Noelle nodded, quickly jotting down the name and the word meeting. She felt a lump rise in her throat at the mention of the word doctor. These days, that could apply to anyone with a doctorate degree in anything. Dr. Rutkowski could have a flimsy doctorate in Dragon Behavior or a doctorate in Sociology. Both would be what society would expect of GOE doctors.
But, this facility was not what society expected. There was far more going on here than society wanted to see. They were happy to turn their attention from the problems that did not concern them. Dragons should be able to protect themselves, the people probably figured, and would never find themselves in such predicaments.
Patterson disappeared behind his door and Noelle watched as he seated himself at his desk to watch her work. Did he do any of his own work, Noelle wondered? Or, did he simply glare at those working around him all day?
She turned away from the window and reached for the phone. There was a directory in her computer, the old rolling directories lost to history, she figured. It was simple to pull up Dr. Rutkowski’s number and punch it into the phone on her desk.
It only rang twice before a bored assistant picked up the phone.
“This is Mr. Patterson’s secretary,” Noelle began, trying to be as formal as possible.
“What do you want?” The bored voice rose an octave, snapping at her.
She sat back in her chair, trying to rein in the urge to punch the voice through the phone. A breath. Hold it. Let it out.
“Mr. Patterson would like to schedule a belated meeting with Dr. Rutkowski.”
Before the voice on the other end could speak, a large clatter filled her ear. It came from wherever the voice was. She heard his chair screech back against the floor as he stood. A long moment passed before he must have decided all was well and returned to his seat.
“Tell him Dr. Rutkowski has been busy with a new project that isn’t reacting in the way she expects.”
Noelle certainly was not going to tell Patterson anything of the sort. He’d likely shoot the messenger in this case. She pressed her lips together, ready to launch into an argument to get this man moving a little faster, when he spoke.
“But, I’ll pencil him in for an eleven AM meeting tomorrow. Inform him he will have to come to her so he might see what she is working with. Will that suffice?”
Noelle almost nodded, then remembered she was on the phone and the man on the other end could not see her. “That will have to work,” she replied.
The phone was nestled back in its black, plastic cradle, but Noelle couldn’t help but wonder what the crash had been. Her ears had not picked up on it on the floor she was on. Could it have been from the lower levels? There was a strong possibility it had. The doctor was most likely one of the scientists in charge of the experiments going on below ground.
Noelle’s teeth ground together. The new project that was not behaving was most likely a dragon. It made her angry. She could feet the air around her starting to warm from the fire inside of her and she had to suck in a breath and hold it to stifle the flame.
The heat of her anger was going to give her away. If she could not master her temper while working for this man, he would figure out exactly what she was and lock her in the labs below ground. Noelle couldn’t risk that. There was too much at stake. Almost absentmindedly, her fingers reached to feel the wire taped to her abdomen.
Would he ask Noelle to follow him downstairs for the meeting tomorrow? Or, would he leave her at the desk and keep her from entering the protected space? She didn’t know. Part of her wanted him to leave her out of it. She didn’t need to see any more of the horrors she’d seen in Anya’s files. Then again, she knew the labs below ground were her best chance of sneaking a code and recording evidence for Liana’s fight.
Noelle would just have to buck up.