Covert Intents: A Branson Family Novella (4 page)

“Yeah. I got invited to go out, so thought seeing everyone in a different setting might give me a clue.”

“You don’t know what time Powell left?”

“No, had to be before nine o’clock.” Seth said. “Why?”

“We have a computer system at Omega that continuously runs local police stations and hospitals for any names we put in. Ryan Powell’s name came up a few minutes ago.”

Now Seth was wide-awake. “He’s been arrested?”

“No. He’s in the hospital. He was beaten pretty severely and is in a coma.”

Different ramifications were floating around in Seth’s mind. “There was an incident with an elevator on campus yesterday too.”

Seth told Sawyer the story, conveniently leaving out the part about Rachel being in there with him.

Sawyer whistled through his teeth. “Something’s going down, that’s for sure. I’ll have Cameron and Juliet ready in case we have to make a move quickly.”

“I’ll keep you posted if anything changes.”

“We’ll do the same,” Sawyer replied. “And Seth, be careful. It’s getting crazy around there.”

Seth thought of his scorching kiss with Rachel. Yeah, things were getting crazy.

CHAPTER FIVE

The
next morning Rachel was still trying to process everything that had happened the night before. She’d been kissed. By two different men. In the same evening.

That had never happened in her entire life.

Not that Rachel had ever really been one for much dating. She’d had a couple of boyfriends in college and while she’d found the physical relationships to be… pleasant… they hadn’t been anything that had made her want to turn away from her studies.

Not like her kiss with Seth last night that had her so engrossed she had forgotten just about everything.

Like her name.

She hadn’t been expecting Seth’s kiss any more than she had expected Ryan’s. Seth seemed to have had a fine time with her university colleagues. They had certainly enjoyed having him around —especially the women— but it had all felt so clinical to Rachel. Like Seth was studying them all. But maybe that’s just how he behaved in social situations. It wasn’t like Rachel was an expert on social graces.

So she’d been ready to just shake his hand and tell him she’d see him around. It was obvious that the two of them were too many worlds apart to really ever be a couple. She could see that everyone around them agreed — they’d all been watching to see how the evening would end.

Was someone as masculine, as handsome, a
s
sexy
,
as Seth really on a date with someone as plain as Rachel?

She wouldn’t have been surprised if her colleagues were taking bets on how the evening would end. Handshake? Hug? Either of those were what would Rachel would’ve bet on.

So yeah, that kiss had surprised her. Had curled her toes and scorched through her, but had also surprised her.

And if she wasn’t mistaken, it had surprised him too. Maybe the heat between them? Seth had looked just as shaken as she’d felt.

She brought her fingers up to her lips. She wasn’t sure where thi
s
situatio
n
—because she certainly couldn’t call it a relationship— with Seth was going. There was so much about him she didn’t know. Not that she judged career choices, after all she’d never actually had one, she’d been in one school or another since kindergarten. After graduating high school she’d gone straight on to college, then the Masters program, then the doctoral program. She was twenty-six years old and had been in school since she was five.

But there had to be a reason a man of Seth’s caliber chose to be a custodian. She was pretty certain if he put his mind to it he could be anything he wanted.

But as much as she couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss with Seth, couldn’t get him out of her mind at all, it was Ryan’s kiss that had her worried this morning.

The situation with Seth, wild and crazy as it was, would work itself out. If things went bad with him and she had to avoid him every time she saw him on campus with his cart, she would do that.

Ryan was a different story. She was not interested in him at all and whatever she had done to give him that impression needed to be fixed. She needed to let him down gently. Even though he’d been a jerk.

Rachel was currently ABD —all but dissertation— in the literature Ph.D. program. Once she had completed her dissertation, she hoped to apply for a job at Virginia State, to stay here in D.C.

But rumors flying around that she had affairs with colleagues? That would not help her in her job hunting. Not to mention the thought of kissing Ryan on a regular basis did nothing to her libido whatsoever. Rachel was not interested and would let him know next time she saw him.

She took the metro to campus, making it just in time for the nine o’clock class she taught. Normally she would’ve stopped by her office, had another cup a coffee, been more prepared for her day. But she was late. Last night had thrown her for a loop and she was still feeling its effects this morning. Most college instructors didn’t come in on Fridays unless they had to. Rachel had to since she was low man on the totem pole and had a class.

The class wasn’t bad as far as freshman lit went; the only difficulty was that it only met once a week, so it was nearly three hours in length. By the time the class was over, Rachel was feeling the effect of her unpreparedness even more. She didn’t think the students had noticed, but she didn’t plan to let it happen again.

She needed to focus on school and not on Seth. Or on Ryan. She needed to just focus on her work and let everything else go. Rachel was quite good at avoiding reality when she wanted to —give her a book and she could get lost for days— so she shouldn’t have any problem now.

She took the stairs —still not quite ready to take the elevator— the three floors up from the classrooms to the level that held her office. She dug inside her bag to find her office key but as she pushed it in the lock, the door slid open before she could turn it.

Why was her office door unlocked?

Rachel walked cautiously into the space. “Hello?”

Her office, like those of most the graduate assistants, wasn’t very large, maybe twelve feet squared. There was barely room for her desk, a bookshelf and another small worktable.

Nobody could be hiding in here, unless they were under her desk. She walked quickly around to look.

Nothing.

Of course, nothing. She was letting the fact that she hadn’t gotten any decent sleep last night take another toll on her. She’d just left her office unlocked. It happened.

Okay, she didn’t ever remember doing that before, but it could’ve happened.

She set her two bags full of books and class materials down on her desk and shrugged off her sweater. She needed some coffee and something to eat. Both could be found in the break room down the hall.

The break room was a great place. A fridge, microwave and pretty fancy coffee maker took care of her hunger and thirst needs. But mostly Rachel liked it because of the stacks of books everywhere. There were bookshelves in rows, in essence its own library. The large freestanding shelves were haphazardly placed all over the room, almost creating a maze.

All the books people couldn’t fit in their offices were placed here. And they were everywhere: the shelves, stacks on floors, tables, windowsills.

Rachel had always loved books, and loved these, even if most of them had to do with computer science. She felt like this room had more character than any other she’d been in on campus, so hanging out here was never a problem.

She grabbed her coffee and warmed up leftovers and headed back toward her office, still trying to shake her spooked feeling. But between what happened in the elevator yesterday, and lack of sleep last night, she just couldn’t get rid of it. Normally she loved that no one was around on Friday. Today it was just making her nervous.

She’d eat her lunch then go home. Forget about her posted office hours. Students never came by during office hours anyway. And this way she wouldn’t have to worry about running into Seth or Ryan.

Walking faster with her new plan in mind, she turned the corner to find her office door cracked open again.

Sh
e
kne
w
she had closed it when she left for the break room.

“Hello?”

She pushed the door open all the way. There was a man standing behind her desk. All the drawers in her desk were open and the textbooks she had brought up from the classroom were spread out all over.

She kept herself very close to the door so she could run if needed, but relaxed marginally when the man had the same green coveralls Seth normally wore.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

The man moved behind her desk slightly. “I’m with maintenance. Just a routine search of offices for any pests or rodents.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you guys did stuff like that.” Or know why he would be looking through her drawers for bugs. “You’re not the normal guy who works this floor.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “No, I’m not normally on this floor.”

“Yeah, Patrick usually works here. Where’s he today?” There was no Patrick working here, as far as Rachel knew. There especially wasn’t one who worked on this floor in the last two months. Rachel didn’t know why she lied. All she knew was that this guy was lying too.

He shrugged. “I talked to Patrick a few minutes ago. He’ll be up here to help with some of the other offices in just a few.”

She needed to get out of here, to call security to figure out what was going on, but her cell phone was in her cardigan pocket.

“I’ll just go work somewhere else. Get out of your hair so you can do your job. Can you just toss me my sweater?”

The man turned his back to her and reached down to get her sweater off the back of her chair, but when he turned back around, instead of handing her the jacket, he had a gun in his hand.

She took a step back.

“Where’s the chip?” He made his way around the desk, the gun still pointed directly at her.

“What chip?”

“You’re Rachel Branson, right? This is your office?”

“Who are you?”

The man took a step forward and grabbed her arm, eyes flinty. “Where is the microchip?”

Rachel had no idea what he was talking about. “Listen, I know I work on the floor with mostly computer faculty, but I’m a literature instructor. I don’t know anything about microchips and stuff like that.”

He took a step towards her, arms raised to strike. They both heard the bell of the elevator chime and creaky wheels of a cart.

Seth.

The man quickly peeled off his coveralls and grabbed her by the arm again. He kept his gun pointed at her ribs, the clothing covering it from view.

“You’re coming with me. If you say anything to anyone as we leave, I will kill that person and shoot you in your kneecap. Got it?”

Rachel nodded, not trusting herself to talk. She couldn’t allow Seth to get hurt.

He led her out of her office, closing the door behind them. It didn’t take long before she could see Seth and his cleaning cart down the hallway near the elevator, coming toward them.

“I have to say hi to Patrick, or else he’ll get suspicious. We always say hello to each other.” She didn’t want to take a chance on Seth getting shot just because he said hello to her.

As they neared Seth, the man gripped her arm tighter. Seth was whistling, although stopped when he saw Rachel and the man.

“Hi Patrick. Have a good weekend, okay?”

What was she doing? Calling him by another name wasn’t going to do anything but confuse Seth. There was no reason he would think something was wrong, he would just think she’s crazy.

She prayed he wouldn’t bring up last night or their kiss. She glanced up at his green eyes. His face was neutral, but his eyes were just slightly narrowed.

“See you later Dr. Branson. Have a good day.”

Seth had caught on that something wasn’t right. He never called her Dr. Branson,
ever
since she had explained she wasn’t a doctor yet. Not until she finished her dissertation. He always called her “Dr. Almost-Branson.”

But what was he going to do, squirt the bad guy with window cleaner? The man had a gun. Seth had a custodial cart.

Rachel didn’t know what microchip the man wanted, but she didn’t have it. And she knew leaving the building with him would be disastrous. She’d have to take a chance that the man wasn’t willing to shoot her since he thought she had something he wanted.

They were coming up on the break room. It was the only room on the floor Rachel knew of that had two doors. It was her best bet.

She pulled from the man just as they passed the door.

“Hey—“ he lurched for her, but missed.

She ran into the room and pulled down a huge pile of books on the table by the door. Although he wasn’t shooting, she realized the books weren’t slowing him down.

She ducked behind one of the large shelves, but knew it wouldn’t take long for the guy to find her. She needed a way out. She dipped her head around one side and didn’t see him so stepped all the way around the shelf.

He was standing right there. “There you are.”

He lunged for her again, but just as he was about to grab her he went flying through the air landing diagonal to her.

Seth was on top of him, somehow having managed a silent flying tackle from the side.

“Be careful, he has a gun.” Rachel wasn’t sure how she could best help Seth. This guy was obviously a trained criminal.

But it didn’t take more than a few moments to realize Seth didn’t need much help. He was giving as good as he got.

“Get out, call security,” Seth muttered between taking a punch right in the gut and flipping around on the ground so he could elbow the guy in the face.

Rachel turned to run, but the thug grabbed her ankle and pulled hard, sending her sprawling to the ground. Rachel scampered away but the battle between Seth and the guy knocked into the bookshelf causing huge piles of books to topple over onto her. She cried out as the heavy books cascaded down.