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“Be safe,” Miranda urged her before she left.
Around ten p.m., Joey waved to the security guard at the front desk.
“Late night?” he asked.
She nodded. “No rest for the weary,” she said with a friendly smile. She tapped her newly re-coded access card to open the lobby doors. Please work. Please work.
It flashed red and beeped once.
She tapped again. Red. Sweat beaded on her forehead.
She said a silent prayer. She’d taken her own access badge back to BTS and re-keyed the encryption to grant her full access. It hadn’t been too difficult, since it was Raven Tech equipment she’d developed during her time working for Flint’s Tech business. It was long before Black Tower Security, but the skeleton of his security technology still carried the company. And it was still the best.
The security guard stood up.
“Finicky cards. Probably due for a new one.”
She moved the card toward the reader again. The light flashed green, and she opened the door with her back and smiled at the guard before hurrying toward the elevator. Her picture and information would still flash on his screen. But behind the scenes, in the access logs? There would be no record of Joey Rodriguez from the fourth floor being in the building.
In minutes, she was back in the server room. Her bag was full of tricks: a cellphone with no signal, to avoid being seen by the fortress-level signal detection system Zia used, a flashdrive that would leave no footprint, and several other programs that she could use to sniff out the things she was interested in.
First things first. Kensington’s emails.
She searched through the text for familiar names. From Flint’s first run-in with the Syndicate three years ago and Ryder’s incident with them last spring, she’d been building a dossier on the people involved. Senator Morris. Trip Harrington. Patrick Derulo from QuinTech Missiles. In his inbox she got a few hits. Trip Harrington especially. But as she skimmed each email, there was nothing suspicious. Trip wanted to handle finance for Zia. She searched again, her fingers a little too rough on the keyboard in her frustration. Nothing on the trust payouts either. She just had to keep digging. If there was nothing in this email, it was because he was too smart for that. He would be careful. Probably another personal account. What she really needed was his cell phone.
After an hour of fruitless searching in his inbox, Joey threw her hands up. She kicked her toe against the hard tile floor. She blew the hair out of her face and moved on to the task she had been assigned. Kensington had given her the specific protein injection codes she was looking for. Entering those into our search program pulled up mountains and mountains of data. A few names kept showing up on the documents. The team members no doubt. She wrote down their information so she could run background checks on all of them the next time she was at BTS. Surely, the ITS team at Zia had done that, but she was guaranteed to be more thorough. She found a few files that looked like summary reports of data. This is what she needed to duplicate with new fake results. With a brief glance, she copied the relevant documents. Most of it was nonsense gibberish to her.
She frowned at the realization that she was going to have to ask Kensington for help creating the fake reports. Great. As though she needed to spend more time with him.
To her left, she heard a beep, and the door opened. Her heart stopped. A security guard in a dark-blue uniform glared at her, then blinded her with a flashlight. She shielded her eyes instinctively.
“Who are you?”
* * *
After spending a few hours catching up and then going through the most recent data he had from the project, he sent a meeting invite to Laura, the head researcher on the CPB-PGI gene project, requesting a full update on the status. Cole ran his hands through his hair, tugging it in frustration. He’d dropped the ball, and there was nothing he hated more. He should have gotten this update before his meeting with the FDA, but he’d been distracted by the appearance of a certain cyber security specialist. He glanced at the empty space across his office that had been filled with boxes earlier. The stack of flat cardboard was still by the door. He couldn’t remember the last time someone played a prank on him. Admittedly, he’d been amused—at least slightly. But now he was just frustrated. He’d spent almost an hour dealing with that and his discussion with Joey afterward. When he should have been preparing for this meeting with the FDA. Even if it had been a super last-minute addition to his calendar for the week, it was no excuse.
He didn’t know how he was going to put up with Joey long enough for her to finish what she’d been hired for. Or if he could resist trying to get to know her better.
He couldn’t blame Joey entirely for his lack of preparation. Even if he’d spent the better part of the last several days either with her or thinking about her, it was his own fault. As much as he wanted to remain unaffected, he couldn’t deny that Joey was a mystery he wanted to solve.
And it drove him crazy that she was able to get him to share things that he didn’t typically share with anyone. He had almost told her about Jared, for crying out loud.
With more force than necessary, he logged out of his computer and shut it down. Time to call it a night. Or at least go have these circular thoughts from the comfort of his bed.
He texted Jared and flipped through his phone as he rode the elevator down to the lobby. When the elevator doors opened, he was greeted with the sight of one of his security guards. Cole’s eyes widened. The guard had a woman, her arm pulled behind her back, and was forcing her down the hallway. She was struggling against him with little success. Seeing such force from his employee flooded him with horror in disbelief. What was going on?
“Let me go. I work here! This is all a big misunderstanding. Owww!”
Cole’s blood ran cold as he recognized her voice.
Joey.
“Let her go. Immediately.” It was bad enough that the guard was hurting anyone, let alone Joey.
The guard turned back. Joey stopped pulling, but the man didn’t release her.
His voice hardened. “I said: Let. Her. Go!” He ground out each word through his tight jaw.
