Acceptable Risks (9 page)

She paced and studied the office through the window, calling up old training as she checked details Jason had already cataloged. There was no mess, no overturned furniture, no crack in the glass or skewing of the computer’s placement. The computer’s external drive was in place, and the safe where he kept important files was closed. She watched Jason check the computer and try the drawers of the desk. He shook his head and came out to her.

“Why isn’t he answering his phone?” She fought to keep her voice steady. Jason rested his hand on the back of her neck, and the firm grip, the warmth and slight scrape of callus, seemed to draw tension right out of her. He wasn’t pretending to be calm, he
was
calm, and that, more than anything else, dissolved the panic back to a sliver.

“You tried the house?” he asked her.

“Twice.”

He released her to look at his watch. “It’s still early.” They’d left Boston at five-thirty, Jason driving at maniac speeds but with precision that had made it feel like a Sunday drive. It was only a little after noon now, slightly before her father had expected them. But he was
always
there long before he was supposed to be.
He could be anywhere here. Or maybe he had unexpected lunch plans. Or a meeting. Anything
. She pressed her fingertips hard against her forehead. If her father had changed plans, he’d have let them know.

“We need to go home.” It came out as a demand and she half expected Jason to argue, to say her safety came first, but he only nodded.

“Can you handle a gun?”

She stood from where she’d been perched on the edge of Caitlyn’s desk. “Of course.”

Jason went back into the office and behind her father’s desk. He opened a cabinet in the credenza and worked a combination, added a thumbprint and spoke his name. The safe opened, revealing carefully placed weapons. He removed a small semi-automatic pistol and a box of clips, then reversed the process and came back out to her.

“Show me.” He handed her the weapon, butt first, and the box.

She set the box on the table. The gun already had a clip in it. She checked the safety and made sure to keep the barrel pointed away from Jason. Pulled back the slide to check the chamber, then carefully released it. Hit the clip release, checked the clip, and slammed it home.

Except she missed, and the clip clattered across the top of Caitlyn’s empty desk.

She froze. Jason didn’t move. She waited, willing the clip to come soaring back to her hand. “Uh…”

Jason cleared his throat. “Okay, you can handle a gun.”

Lark glared at him, but his amusement stayed behind his Captain Action façade. Still, the moment dissipated her tension a fraction.

“Can you shoot one?” he asked.

“I have.” Not memorably, but she could aim and fire.

He hesitated, and she expected him to take the weapon back. But his hand fell to his side and he said only, “All right. Let’s go.”

It was a fifteen-minute drive to her father’s house, the house where she grew up. Where her mother had died. That wasn’t something she thought about every time she came back, and she didn’t want to consider why it came to mind now. There was no reason to think her father was dead. She’d called Caitlyn’s cell phone, and Jason had tried a couple of people, but they mostly got voice mail and no one they reached had seen Matthew since he left the evening before.

Lark inhaled deeply, trying to remain calm as they pulled into the circular driveway in front of the house. Then she gasped and barely refrained from grabbing Jason’s arm again.

“Jason.”

“I see it.” The front door was open. “Stay here.”

Not even
. She got out of the car and stopped. She didn’t want to get in his way, but she wasn’t sure how long she could suffer the swelling in her throat before she charged in shouting “Dad!” She counted the seconds, forcing herself to keep them slow, and ignoring the images flashing in her head. All the things Jason could find in there.

Amazingly, he appeared back on the porch way before she expected him, and waved her in. Relief made her stumble as she dashed across the macadam and up the steps to the front door. He wouldn’t call her in if her father was dead in there.

“What?” she asked breathlessly.

“Come here.”

Lark followed him to her father’s home office, the relief already having run its course. He’d found something. He stayed close beside her, as if ready to support her. Or catch her.

But there was nothing in the office to explain his concern. No blood on the floor, smashed computer, or scattered papers. The desk and files were as tidy as they always were. The computer was off.

But Jason didn’t follow her to the desk. He stood in the far corner, where there was a sofa and television, a remote in his hand. There was a sticky note on the table where the remote usually lay.

“Don’t tell me.” She circled back around the desk and stood next to him, folding her arms around herself.

He looked grim. “I won’t.” He aimed the remote at the DVD player and pressed a button.

Her father’s image appeared on the screen. He wasn’t battered or unkempt, but his eyes looked dull and he didn’t blink as he spoke in a near monotone.

“Larkspur. JT. I know you’ll find this. The situation has gotten dire and I have decided to remove myself from your proximity to keep you both safe. I’ll contact you when I get to Mexico. JT, I completed the investigation into the employee you mentioned. He was the only insider feeding Kemmerling. I want you to return to Dr. Berwell and complete your testing and immunizations. We need the results as soon as possible. Nothing is more important. I love you both.”

The last words rang with truth, a stark contrast to the rest of what he said.

“It’s all bullshit,” Lark said. She couldn’t catch a breath. Her chest burned. “He doesn’t call me Larkspur.”

“And he never calls me JT. Only the agents do.”

Concentrate on the facts. Forget possibilities
. Things her father had taught her. Nausea surged and she swallowed it down. All these quick-change emotions were churning her up. She wouldn’t be any good to her father if she lost it. “He hates Mexico,” she pointed out. “It was where he and Mom went for their honeymoon.”

“They had a horrible time, he got sick and refused to go back,” Jason added.

“He’d never leave us to ‘keep us safe.’ He knows what a crock of shit it is.”

“Nils has to be a low-level connection. Someone else in the company is a traitor.”

She wanted to weep. Her father was so careful about who he trusted, and to get burned this badly… “It sounds like this Dr. Berwell—”

“It’s not Gabby.” Jason cut her off. “But it could be anyone else.”

“How do you know it’s not Gabby?”

He turned his head, his expression intense. “Because she’s in love with your father.”

“Oh.” She worried her bottom lip, letting the revelation join the cauldron of details. “But she could—”

“I’ve just spent three months in intensive contact with her. She’s not part of this,” Jason insisted.

Lark didn’t bother arguing. Men could be stupid, but Jason had to have good instincts to do the job he did. That didn’t mean she would take this Gabby/Dr. Berwell off the list. Jason was right, though. It could be anyone.

He rewound the DVD and replayed it. “He’s wearing a different shirt than the one he was wearing when I saw him yesterday,” he said. “Unless he spilled coffee on himself, this was probably done today. See the light behind him?” He twisted to check the windows. “It came from there, and came across.” He swept his arm past the wall that was behind her father in the recording. “Morning sun. Couldn’t have been too long ago.”

“He was drugged.” Lark moved closer to the TV. “He could have been putting on the monotone and the stare, but he can’t dilate his eyes at will. Especially with that much light.”

“There are two coffee mugs in the kitchen. One has lipstick on it. The other is full.”

“So someone was here. A woman.” She carefully didn’t reference Gabby again. “Any sign—”

“No struggle. I don’t think whoever it was used his coffee to drug him, and he didn’t fight them.”

Lark listened to the end of the speech playing on the DVD. “He wouldn’t send you back to the lab, either. I can’t figure—”

“It’s not a lab,” he said in a low voice, as if considering.

“What?”

“Gabby gets annoyed when I call it a lab. It’s a medical facility. Or something, she never really said.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Okay, whatever. My point is, Dad saved your life for
you
. Not to test the technology. He wouldn’t trap you again.”

“Thanks.” He squeezed her shoulder and let his hand stroke down her hair before focusing on the DVD player again. “Let’s see if we can figure anything else out.”

They sat down and watched the recording half a dozen more times, picking up tiny things that only reinforced what they’d already deduced. After the last time, they sat for a minute.

“What do we do now?”

Jason knew what Matt would have wanted him to do, or at least half of it. “I should hide you someplace and go find your father.”

“But you won’t.” There was no doubt in her voice.

“No.”

“The question is, will you not hide me because you need me as bait, or as help?” It didn’t seem to matter to her one way or the other.

Jason chuckled and shook his head. “I like you, Lark Madrassa.”

Her mouth curved, but she didn’t respond.

“Either or,” he told her. “Except Matt would kill me if I used you as bait. And wouldn’t bring me back this time.”

“He wouldn’t be very happy with using me as a partner, either,” she pointed out.

“No. But I can’t trust anyone else.” That reality burned his gut more than ever. You couldn’t work in this business and be an idealist. They always knew the risk of betrayal. But they hadn’t actually encountered it before, and since they had no idea where the threat lay, they had to believe it was everywhere.

“You said Gabby is in love with Dad,” Lark said. “That she wouldn’t betray him.”

“I believe that. It doesn’t mean I can trust her.”

“But she’s our only lead, right? In that whole speech—” she waved at the TV, “—she’s the only one he mentioned specifically. Do you think she’s back at the facility?”

“Probably. She doesn’t seem to ever go home. But we can’t go down there.”

“Because that’s what he wants us to do.”

“Who?” Jason blurted, disconcerted how closely she followed his train of thought. He wasn’t used to anyone but Matt doing that. Not even Allison, the mission leader he’d worked with longest.

“Kemmerling, if we’re assuming he’s behind this. I don’t know who else it would be, but you might.”

“No, he’s pretty much the Big Bad in this scenario.” Matt had mentioned others who wanted to get their hands on the technology, and maybe on him, but he’d talked about them as if they were distant buyers, not anyone who would actively pursue the information.

“Should we call Gabby to come here?” Lark’s knees bounced in agitation, and Jason could tell he wasn’t going to be able to hold her back. He stood and went to Matt’s desk to boot up the computer.

“Not exactly.” Matt synced his contacts list to a computer file, so Jason should be able to access phone numbers he wouldn’t normally have, like Gabby’s home and cell phones. It took a moment to get through his layers of passwords—Jason had limited access to certain areas of the computer—so to speed things along, he just added Matt’s file to his own, telling the program not to overwrite duplicates, and explaining to Lark what he was doing as he worked. The top-of-the-line system zipped through the download, and a minute later he scrolled through his phone book to double-check they were all there.