Playing For Keeps (Emerald Lake Billionaires 2) (22 page)

She was learning that sometimes you had to live dangerously to find a little sunshine.

***

Tess was sitting at the back of the café when Sophie walked inside. It was barely nine o’clock, but most of the tables were already full of customers.

“You’re busy.”

Tess looked up and smiled. “It’s our usual Saturday morning crowd. Kate and Caitlin are working this morning. The boss has got the weekend off.”

“Why are you here, then?”

“I’m meeting you. Besides, it’s nice being able to see business from our customers’ perspective. Tell me about last night and don’t leave anything out.”

Tanner stood beside their table. Sophie looked around the room, but there were no spare seats.

Tess closed the newspaper she’d been reading and stood up. “Let’s have our coffee in the kitchen. Tanner can enjoy something to eat, too.

Sophie smiled at Tanner. “We’re getting preferential treatment.”

“I’m paid to keep you safe. But if a slice of chocolate cake came my way I wouldn’t say no.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Sophie followed Tess, and Tanner went with them.

The kitchen was just as spotless as the front of the café. A large stainless steel counter ran down the center of the room. Shelves were filled with everything a café could need.

Kate smiled as she took some muffins out of the oven. “Hi Sophie. It’s good to see you. You haven’t visited us in a while.”

“I’ve been busy helping Ryan. Kate, this is Tanner. He’s…he’s looking after me.”

Kate grinned at the six-foot-five bodyguard. “Ryan called. He said you’d be coming with Sophie.”

Sophie looked between Kate and Tess. “He called?”

Tess smiled. “He wanted to make sure we were okay with Tanner looking for escape routes and kidnappers. He worries too much.”

Tanner walked to the back of the kitchen and unlocked a door. “You can never worry too much.” He looked in the parking lot and at the stairs that led to Tess’ old apartment.

Sophie watched Tanner open another door to a large storage area. “Are you happy?”

“As happy as I’ll ever be,” he said.

Kate put the last muffin on a plate. “What can I get everyone to drink?”

Tess had brought her coffee with her into the kitchen. Sophie ordered a hot chocolate and Tanner decided to have a short black.

“I’ll be back soon.” Kate smiled as she passed Tanner. “Would you like your usual?”

A blush skimmed Tanner’s cheeks. He nodded at Kate before she left the kitchen.

Sophie stared at him. “I didn’t know you were a regular customer?”

Tanner cleared his throat. “I don’t come here that often.”

“Come and have a seat, Sophie, and tell me what happened last night.” Tess pulled two stools away from the counter and sat down on one of them. “You looked just as surprised as I did when Ryan said you were engaged.”

“I…I didn’t know he was going to say anything.”

“Really?”

Sophie buried her head in her hands, “Okay, I’m lying. I can’t stand not telling you what really happened.”

Tanner walked toward the doors leading into the dining area and kept an eye on the people coming in and out of the café.

Sophie took a deep breath. “We’re not getting married. Ryan just blurted out that we’re engaged. Reporters have been calling his house since five o’clock this morning. Dorothy, his publicist, has a list of television producers who want an exclusive interview, but it’s not true. We’re not engaged.”

“Why did he say you were?”

Sophie shook her head. “I don’t know. He told me I’d be safer if people thought he was looking after me. I don’t need looking after.”

Tanner turned his head toward her.

“It’s true. If Hayley was here she’d tell everyone how resourceful I am.”

Tanner lips twitched before he turned his attention back to the café.

“There must be a reason Ryan thinks you’re in danger?” The kitchen doors opened and Kate brought their coffees and hot chocolate across to them.

Sophie smiled her thanks. “Someone went into mom’s nursing home and was asking questions about her. Ryan called John, and John sent a security person to look after them. They moved out of the nursing home a couple of weeks ago. They’re staying somewhere that’s safer.”

“Are they okay?”

“I think so. I haven’t spoken to Hayley for more than a week. I’m getting worried about how mom is. She doesn’t like change. It makes her nervous and stressed.”

“Is that part of the Alzheimer’s disease?”

“I’m not sure. She doesn’t remember anything, so maybe she picks up on everyone else’s stress. Whatever it is, it isn’t good for her. Ryan suggested bringing them back to his home, but John thinks that’s too big a risk.”

Tess sipped her coffee. “So where does that leave you and Ryan?”

“Sitting in a mansion overlooking a lake. He said he would tell everyone we’re not engaged.”

“You don’t look too happy about that? Do you want to be engaged to him?”

“No.” Sophie took a deep breath. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Now that Ryan’s home is nearly finished, I should be moving out. But I’m worried about leaving. What if someone finds me?”

“Does Ryan know how you feel?”

Sophie shook her head. “And I want to keep it that way,” she whispered.

“I think you’re making a mistake. You need to tell Ryan how worried you are.”

Sophie leaned her elbows on the counter. “I could ask him if I could stay for another couple of days. The patent for my supplement should be finalized soon. Once that’s done, no one can copy the formula. My life will go back to normal and mom and Hayley will be safe.”

“That sounds much better. How do you feel about Ryan?”

“He’s a good person. I feel guilty about all of the money it must be costing him to keep us safe. I’ve asked John to give me a copy of his bill. I’m going to try and pay back every last dollar.”

“Does Ryan want your money?”

“That isn’t the point.” Sophie frowned at the beeping noise coming from her bag. “That’s my cell phone.” She scrambled inside the compartments, looking for her phone. “Hayley isn’t supposed to call me. Ryan and the security guards are the only other people that have this number.”

She looked at the caller display and frowned. “I don’t know who —”

Tanner took the phone out of her hand and listened to the person talking to him. Within seconds he’d ended the call and put her phone in his pocket. “We’re going back to the house.”

“Who was on the phone?”

“Someone you don’t want to talk to. Let’s go.” Tanner marched her toward the back door.

“I’ll call you later, Tess.”

“Be safe.”

If the look on Tanner’s face was anything to go by, keeping safe wouldn’t be as easy as Sophie thought.

***

Within minutes of arriving at Ryan’s home, John Fletcher pulled into the front yard. Tanner was sent to check the property and John stayed with Sophie and Ryan in the kitchen.

Sophie read the newspaper article John had given to her. It wasn’t the phone call
in Tess’ café that had brought him out to Ryan’s property. It was something much worse.

She handed John’s newspaper back to him. “How did they find out what’s in the supplement?”

“We don’t know. The first thing we knew about the article was when it appeared in the newspaper.”

Sophie rubbed her forehead. “This is bad. Really bad.”

“How bad?” John asked.

“Bad enough that if my patent doesn’t come through in the next couple of weeks, then it could be too late. Pharmaceutical companies have entire teams of people at their disposal. With the information that’s been leaked, they could replicate my supplement faster than I developed it.”

Ryan paced backward and forward. “There must be rules about proving they made the supplement first? They can’t just turn up at the patent office and expect their application to be approved.”

Sophie bit her bottom lip. “They can and they do. The revenue they could earn from the supplement far outweighs any legal issues.”

Ryan glanced at John. “What can we do?”

“We need to find the person who leaked the information.” John looked at Sophie. “You told me that the newspaper didn’t publish the entire list of ingredients, so it’s got to be someone who doesn’t have full access to the supplement. Apart from Ryan’s kitchen, where else have you worked on the formula?”

Sophie took a glass out of the pantry and walked across to the sink. Her heart was beating so fast she thought she was going to pass out. “I started making the formula in my lab. Chicago University has strict protocols about what students can work on and what they can’t. Everything I did had to go past my supervisor for approval.”

“Could your supervisor have leaked the information to the press?”

Sophie gulped back her glass of water. “He could have, but I made a lot of changes to the ingredients. The early formula is a lot different from what I’m using now.”

John tapped his pen on the counter. “What about research notes, reports, computer files? Is there anything that would give someone information about the latest formula?”

Sophie leaned against the kitchen cabinets and thought of every place she’d saved her research information. “The University’s computer servers will have back-up data. My original research paper, my thesis, and the post-trial evaluation papers will all be there. But access to any post-trial evaluations is available only through the supervising professor. Dr. Bernard thought I was wasting university resources by continuing my trials. He pulled me completely off my research topic and put me with another team.”

Ryan stood in front of her. “Is there any way he could have continued testing your formula using the information you left behind?”

Sophie frowned. “I think that’s what he planned on doing. I walked in on him talking to someone on the phone. It sounded as though he was trying to get them to start private trials using the supplement.”

Ryan froze. “When did that happen?”

“Just before I left Chicago. I asked him what he was doing.”

“You confronted him? Tell me you had someone with you?”

She shook her head. “It was late. No one was in the lab.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Don’t yell at me. Nothing happened.”

Ryan took a deep breath. “If nothing happened, why did you leave Chicago in the middle of the night?”

“I didn’t leave in the middle of the night.”

Ryan growled at her through his clenched jaw. “You could have been killed.”

Sophie threw her arms wide. “I’m here, aren’t I? Dr. Bernard wasn’t able to sell the formula because he didn’t have the right one. I worked on the supplement in my own time. He knew what I was doing. Every time I bought a new supply of medicinal plants and herbs he’d ask me about my progress. At first I thought he was interested in what I was doing. Then one day, another research assistant told me that he’d been meeting with some pharmaceutical executives. He’d discovered something that was going to bring a lot of money into the University.”

John glanced at R
yan, then turned to Sophie.
“And you thought he was talking about your supplement?”

“Not straight away.” She looked down at her sneakers. If Ryan had been angry before, it was going to be worse when he heard what she’d done next. “One night, when no one else was in the lab, I went into his office and looked at the files on his computer.”

She didn’t have to wait long to see his reaction.

“You what?”

“He’d been copying all of my research notes and sending them to another email address.”

Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “How did you get into his emails? Didn’t he have his computer password protected?”

This was where their conversation was going to get tricky. Sophie had always justified her actions by saying she was protecting herself, but that didn’t change what she’d done. She’d broken the law. And she’d do it again if she had to.

She looked between John and Ryan. “I used a modified keylogger to copy his password.”

Ryan didn’t look impressed. “A what?”

“It’s a program that records what keys someone pushes when they type their password into a computer. It doesn’t tell you the order the keys are pushed, but it gives you a better chance of cracking the password.”

“How did you modify the program, Sophie?” Ryan’s voice was flat and hard.

“The computers in the lab only give you two chances to get the password right. I manipulated the code so that it told me what order the keys were pushed.”

John choked back a laugh. “I need you on my team.”

Ryan scowled. “No you don’t.”

Sophie lifted her chin. “It’s not like you haven’t done anything illegal.”

“Parading down the street buck naked isn’t the same as stealing someone’s password. You went through his files and checked his email.”

“I had valid reasons.”