Chapter Ten
spent the hours just before dawn watching Ryan sleep, and when I was fairly sure that he wasn't going to have another nightmare, I slid out from underneath him and pushed a soft down pillow under his head. He stirred a little, but didn't wake up as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom and caught the last hour of sleep before I had to get up and get ready for work.
By the time I woke an hour later, the apartment was filled with the smell of fresh coffee brewing and I could hear Ryan moving around down in the kitchen. I grabbed my office clothes and descended the stairs to find him standing in front of the stove making pancakes as he sung to himself.
"Good morning," I said quietly trying not to startle him.
"Well, good morning, sleepyhead!" he replied as he flipped a pancake and set the pan back on the stove. "Did you sleep okay?"
"Not bad, and you?" I asked eyeing the stack of pancakes sitting on a plate next to the stove.
"I did okay the second time around," he said quietly, then added, "Thanks for the assist, Echo."
"My pleasure," I replied as I watched him flip the cooked pancake out of the pan onto the top of the waiting stack next to it. "Do I have time to shower and change?"
"Depends on how long you're going to take," he grinned. "Do a SEAL spit bath and you'll be good to go."
"Uh, no thanks," I laughed. "I'm a civilized girl not a warrior. I need my creature comforts."
"Yeah, go ahead, I'll keep it all warm," he smiled as he scooped up another spoonful of batter and spread it in the pan.
I quickly showered and got ready for work, and when I emerged from the bathroom, Ryan let loose a low wolf whistle that made me blush before he handed me a plate full of more pancakes than I could ever hope to eat.
"I'm heading to an office job, Powell," I laughed. "Not a dessert mission!"
"Oh, give me a break," he grinned. "Who doesn't love pancakes?"
We sat down on the couch and I tucked a napkin into the neck of my dress before tucking into the plate. The pancakes were light and fluffy, and I ate with gusto finishing off my plate before Ryan finished his.
"See, I told you so," he said as he took my plate and headed to the kitchen. "More coffee?"
"Yes, please," I replied. He returned with the pot and filled my cup before sitting back down. "So, I was thinking..."
"Uh huh," he said as his face dropped and he looked at the floor. "I know, I told you I'd find another place to crash today, and I will."
"Well, as a mind reader, you suck, my friend," I said as I sipped the hot coffee. "I was going to say that I was thinking that you should stay with me at least until you can get things settled with your father's estate."
"But what about last night?" he asked. The look on his face was heartbreakingly vulnerable.
"What about it?" I asked.
"I could have really hurt you," he said looking down again.
"Yeah, but you didn't," I replied. "Maybe you need to talk to your commander about getting a therapist to talk to so you can let go of the nightmares. It's just a thought. Anyway, I could use a roommate right now since things at work are going to get dicey."
"How do you know that?"
"I just have a feeling that Mr. Baines is up to something that is going to spell trouble for me," I said. "I'm just not sure what that is yet."
"Yeah, Baines is a wild card all right," he replied. "He's been part of my life since I was small, but I've never felt like I really knew him. I'm not sure my father did either."
"Ryan, I have to ask you something, and I'm sorry if it sounds a little insensitive," I said as I dove into the thoughts that had been twisting around in my brain since Julian told me that Dr. Powell was dead. "Why did Baines not want you in your father's office yesterday? Have you done something that would make him suspect you were going to steal from the company? Did your father tell you anything about what he was working on?"
"Not that I know of," he said. "But then we weren't in very close contact the past few years. We had a falling out after he married my stepmother, and we didn't talk much. I can't think of any conversation we'd had that would have crossed a line in terms of classified materials. Hell, you probably know far more about what he was doing in the lab that I ever did."
"No, actually, he never shared his lab work with me," I said. "I took care of his office details, his schedule, his email and his mail, and I did some programming for him when he needed certain computer functions for his research, but I never input any data or worked on any files."
"I wonder what Julian is hiding," Ryan said. "I suppose it's possible that he's just a paranoid guy. My father told me Julian had had a rough upbringing, but he'd never told me exactly what that entailed. I supposed he could be in shock over my father's death and be freaking out about how he's going to manage the company without him."
"Anything is possible, I suppose," I said as I got up and dug my phone out of my purse. "I'll try to dig up more information today and see what's going on. Give me your cell number so we can keep in contact, okay?"
As we exchanged numbers, I looked at the clock and realized I was going to be late if I didn't get going. I gathered my purse and put on my shoes and headed for the door.
"Hey Echo?" Ryan called as I opened the door.
"Yeah?"
"Be safe, okay?" he said. The look on his face was so serious that I had to smile. He shrugged, "I don't know, that's what my father always said to me every time I headed out on a mission."
"It's all going to be fine, I promise," I said, then added with a reassuring smile, "My mission is a boring desk job at TriCorp, so there's no real danger involved."
"You know what I mean," he said.
"Hey, if I leave my keys, can you get an extra set made for the apartment?" I called before I headed out the door.
"I guess you made the decision for me, then?" he grinned.
"Damn right, sailor," I nodded as I slapped the keys down on the bar then headed out the door and off to work.
On the subway, I thought about how terrified Ryan had looked the night before and how scared I'd been when he'd held my wrists as he wrestled with the enemy. I wondered if I'd made the right call letting him stay, and then I thought about how warm and comforting it had felt to let him fall asleep in my lap.
There was no doubt about it, I was attracted to Lieutenant Ryan Powell, and that attraction might be clouding my better judgment.
#
I walked through the front doors, I knew something was wrong. There were small groups of people clustered around desks talking in hushed tones, but they scattered when the saw me. No one actually spoke to me, so I knew something big was happening.
I walked into my office and saw that someone had pulled apart my desk and left my things in haphazard piles. I shook my head as I set my things down and before I started to clean up the mess, I opened the door to Dr. Powell's office and found that whoever had rifled through my things had done an even deeper search in his office. The space looked like a small tornado had hit it overnight. Files had been removed from drawers, books had been pulled off shelves and even the awards he'd had hanging on his walls had been pulled apart. It was as if someone had been looking for something very specific and had grown frustrated when they hadn't found it.
I called downstairs and let Butch know that the office had been burglarized. He told me he'd be up to take a report, and that I wasn't to touch anything before he got there. I assured him that I would leave everything just as I'd found it, and hung up.
A few minutes later, Ruth called and said that Mr. Baines wanted to see me in his office. I wrote a note for Butch telling him where I'd gone, taped to the door and headed down the hall. Ruth waved me into Mr. Baines's office with a grim smile.
"Good morning, Miss Frost, so good of you to come," he said gesturing to a chair. "Do have a seat."
"Good morning, Mr. Baines," I said eyeing him warily as I sat down. He was wearing a dark grey suit with a crisp white dress shirt that had been pressed with in an inch of its life and a bright red tie that all combined to make him look like the world's sleaziest car sales man. Even in an expensive suit, Julian Baines looked cheap.
"Miss Frost, it has come to my attention that you have been hiding information from the company," he began as he watched to see how I would respond.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," I said truly mystified as to what he thought I could possibly be hiding.
"Oh, I'm fairly certain you do," he said as he rested his elbows on the edge of his desk and leaned forward. "Dr. Powell was working on some top secret research in the lab on seventeen, and I'm sure that you had access to the documents he worked with and that you've been hiding said documents from the company."
"Mr. Baines, I can assure you that Dr. Powell never gave me any research data from the lab nor did he ask me to handle any top secret documents," I said suddenly wondering what Baines was after. I hadn't had access to any of Dr. Powell's research and he'd never involved me in anything beyond his general correspondence regarding funding and grants or business related to TriCorp. "Why don't you talk with the lab assistants? Certainly they would know what he had been doing and where he kept his information."
"Ah, playing coy, I see," he said leaning back as he ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, this isn't going to help you at all."
"I'm not doing anything wrong!" I protested. "I'm an office assistant who is trying to clean up the last of the paperwork for my boss, who is dead."
"Miss Frost, don't get emotional with me," he said in a bored tone. "It's tedious. What I need from you are all of the files that Alan gave you in the past six months."
"They are all on the hard drive on my computer, and obviously someone has hacked into that and recovered them," I said in a frustrated tone. I had no idea what he thought I had, but the fact that he was insinuating that I did, made me wonder whether I had something somewhere that I didn't know about.
"That computer is company property so you have no right to be irritated about the company recovering data from it," he snapped. His fingers were drumming a rhythm on his desk and it was obvious that he was expecting me to break down and confess.
"I'm not irritated," I replied calmly. This seemed to irritate him and he increased the tempo of his finger tapping. "I simply don't know what you're talking about or what you want, Mr. Baines."
"So, you're playing hardball with me, are you?" he said narrowing his eyes. He started at me for a few seconds and then said, "Miss Frost, your services are no longer required. You will pack up your things and be out of Dr. Powell's office within the hour."
"What?" I said stunned that he'd decided to fire me on the spot. "I didn't do anything! Why are you firing me?"
"I'm not firing you at all," he said with a smile that did not reach his cold eyes. "Your position has been eliminated due to the death of your boss. Therefore, your services are no longer needed. I will have HR prepare your severance package and you will be escorted out of the building."
"Dr. Powell would not have approved of this," I said shaking my head.
"Well, Dr. Powell is not here anymore, is he?" Baines replied bitterly. "Please go to your office and collect your things, and do not take any company property off the premises."
"I wouldn't dream of it," I said sarcastically.
"Sarcasm, though probably satisfying, will not help you in this case, Miss Frost," he warned. "I'd be careful about what you do during the next hour."
"This is completely unfair," I said as I got up and headed for the door.
"Yes, well, life is not fair, Miss Frost," he said as he dismissed me.
I walked back to my office and looked around. There was nothing here I wanted, but something was nagging at me. I sat down at my computer and opened my email account. The inbox had two new messages, so I clicked on it and found one from a colleague of Dr. Powell's and one from Dr. Powell himself.
I shook my head to make sure I wasn't imagining it, and then doubled clicked to open it. It was addressed to me and there was a file attached. The message read:
Miss Frost,
If you're reading this, it means something has gone wrong with the research and I am not there to tell you this in person. This message was released because I haven't signed into the server in 72-hours and I've set up a series of files that will be released at random intervals until the time that I do return or until the last file has been released. The files I will be sending you contain all of the data that has been generated as I've conducted research on SAI 1. I would like you to store it in a safe place so that when I return, I will be able to continue my research. I can't tell you any more than this right now and I would ask that you not read through the data, but instead find a safe place to store it and wait for me to return.
This information is strictly confidential and should not be shared with anyone at TriCorp under any circumstances. Not anyone. I am counting on you to do what you've always done for me; the best job possible.
Regards,
Dr. Alan Powell
I stared at my screen feeling like I'd seen a ghost, and in a way, I had. I quickly realized that I was going to have to find a way to get this email off the server and put it somewhere safe. Not only that, but I was going to have to find a way to divert my email to a new account so that I could receive the rest of Dr. Powell's messages. He hadn't counted on me getting fired so soon after his death.
I looked up at the clock and realized I didn't have much time before Butch would be coming to escort me out of the building. There was no way I could write enough code to shift my account off the server to another location, so I looked at the email program and began quickly coding a bug that would allow me to sneak past the company's firewall from my laptop and access the data. If I could install the bug now, then I could get the information from Dr. Powell as I worked on writing code that would let me shift everything completely off the server later. The only danger was if the bug was found before I could finish writing and installing the code. If that happened, then access would be completely cut off and I'd have to find another way to enter the system. I told myself not to create problems before they happened and got to work setting up the bug.
I finished writing the tiny little program and installing it just as the hands on the clock told me it was time to get going. I pulled my laptop out of my bag, opened the case and logged into my TriCorp account using the dummy account I'd set up on the desktop. The bug had worked and I was able to sneak past the company's security walls to get into the server. I quickly downloaded the first email onto my laptop and then snapped the case shut. I didn't want anyone to see me working on my laptop and raise suspicion about what I was doing.
I deleted the email from the desktop computer and logged out of the company's website for the last time before I pulled all of my personal effects from the desk and shoved them in the box that Ruth had given me on the way out of Mr. Baines's office. I double checked Dr. Powell's office and noticed that his copy of The Art of War was lying in the middle of the floor. I picked it up and tossed it in my box uncertain why, but feeling like it was important.
Then I returned to my desk, picked up my things and took one last look around the office that had been my professional home for the past six years. It was a terrible way to leave, but what other choice did I have?
"You ready, Echo?" Butch said quietly. I simply nodded as I tried hard not to let the tears fall. "It's okay, kiddo. You'll be fine. I just know it."
"Thanks, Butch," I said as I swallowed hard and waited for the elevator doors to open. Once on the ground floor, I set the box down and gave Butch a hug before heading out to hail a cab.
Something at TriCorp was very wrong, and I needed to find Ryan and ask him about it.