Chapter 23
Daisy rode to Richmond with Jon Regan, Florence Cisco, and Harry Marcus in an old panel van that sported ladders and advertisement banners for painters out of the historic city. Harry sat on the floor, showing her the basics of what to look for in a detonator or explosives.
“Looks like blocks of putty.”
“Exactly.”
“So you can shape it however you want?”
“Within reason.” Harry wiped his hands on a rag.
She leaned closer and wrinkled her nose. “It smells kind of nice. Like ether or nail polish remover, but more flowery.” She laughed at herself. “Eau d’C4.”
“That’s right.” Harry nodded approvingly then pulled out a few detonators to show her. He explained how they worked.
She grimaced as she handed them back. “And people say my work is dangerous.”
Harry laughed at that. “In my opinion, this kind of thing isn’t that dangerous if you know what you’re doing, but—” he tapped his nose, “—never assume you know everything.”
“Knowledge is power, but don’t get cocky.”
“Exactly.”
The drive wasn’t that long but they stopped at a fast-food joint on the way because apparently nerves made her hungry, and she had to admit to being nervous. And a little bit glum.
You’d think worrying about a potential attack on a nuclear facility would be enough to occupy her brain but no. Her mind kept drifting back to Jordan’s expression when she’d left. Those damned eyes of his.
What she’d seen there had churned up her insides, and she didn’t want churn. She wanted cool and unruffled waters and sayonara, baby.
She did not want hurt.
She did not want the emotional vulnerability.
Perhaps it was simply how she was built, in which case it was best she avoid relationships altogether.
She could live without sex if that was the price.
The sex she and Jordan had shared had been better and more intense than anything she’d experienced before—but the pain seemed commensurate with the pleasure, and that wasn’t what she’d signed up for.
She’d started to really fall for the guy.
Her mouth went dry.
He could never know.
She was wrong to have seduced him. Wrong to have used sex as a weapon of payback, especially one that might drive a wedge between Jordan and her father because of their old-fashioned notions.
As much as she wanted to assert her independence, she should have used words, not actions to articulate how she felt—no matter how attractive she found the guy.
Note to self: Avoid attractive men in the future and definitely do not have sex with any of them.
How would Jordan react knowing her cavalier words had backfired on her after only a few days?
He’d probably pity her and gently disengage while sacrificing himself to her father’s wrath for sullying her honor.
The thought made her roll her eyes and then push all the feelings pin-balling through her mind like a cascading chain reaction firmly into their own lead-lined box.
She didn’t need him, and she certainly didn’t need her father’s input on who she had sex with.
Which was going to be no-one from now on.
“Daisy?”
She jolted out of her self-absorbed thoughts as Regan said her name and obviously not for the first time. “Yes?”
“You ready?”
She put her head firmly back in the game. “Absolutely.”
If one of these people meant to cause harm, she was more than ready to weed them out. The last place they should be working was in the realm of nuclear safety.
They stopped at her car, dropped her suitcase in the trunk, then grabbed her parking pass and drove past the Country Club and onto the beautiful campus of University of Richmond.
They headed to the Science Center, where she did most of her work in her advisor’s lab.
They didn’t store hazardous materials here.
This was where they designed prototypes to test new materials and designs.
They then tested the prototypes in a test reactor on a larger scale and analyzed the performance of their designs at various government facilities, including at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which had been built specifically for the Manhattan Project.
Successful prototypes were then scaled up and installed in actual working nuclear reactors.
This was what they were scheduled to do this week.
Insert the new rod technology into a reactor and monitor performance.
Roger and Amed would virtually live at Moses Lake for the next month, keeping an eye on readings, and then cut back to weekly visits with remote monitoring done in conjunction with the on-site staff who ran the facility and managed each reactor.
They parked out front of the pretty red brick building with its unusual Gothic buttresses. Leaves had started to bud on the maples, and pockets of purple and yellow spring crocuses provided a defiant pop of color beneath.
Cisco and Regan immediately began climbing into white coveralls.
“What would you like me to do?” asked Harry.
“Stay with the vehicle.” Regan zipped up the front of the paint-smeared cotton.
“Last thing we need is the wrong person finding this lot.” He swept his hand to indicate all the high-tech equipment.
“If we discover anything suspicious, we’ll call you in, okay?
” They’d brought monitors that sniffed out any chemicals involved in bomb making.
Harry nodded. He’d had a supply of a non-explosive substitute for C4. Should they discover the worst, and if circumstances allowed, he would swap out the explosives for the benign putty. That was the main reason Harry was here.
Regan handed her an earpiece. “This connects us all to one another. Just don’t do anything dumb like they do in the movies and touch it every time someone speaks.”
Daisy slipped the tiny, transparent device into position, fluffed her hair, and then put two fingers against her ear. “Gotcha. Over and out.”
Regan grinned and shook his head. “Smartass.” He handed her something that looked a lot like a watch battery. “Put this in your pocket. It serves as a tracker and a bug.”
“What happens when I need to use the washroom?”
Regan pulled a face. “You ever seen Casablanca?”
She shook her head.
“Just whistle.”
The parking lot was empty except for one car that she didn’t recognize. “No guarantee there’s no one here though. A lot of us bike or walk to campus.” Her apartment—the top floor of a beautiful old Victorian—was only a five-minute bike ride away.
Regan slipped a rubber wedge into her palm. “You head inside but leave the door ajar with this. We’ll get the ladder and paint pots before we head inside to…?”
“Labs are on the second floor as is Williams’ office. Student space third floor. I want to start there if it’s empty.”
“Okay. We’re gonna set up outside the labs in any space that looks paintable.”
“All clear outside.” Cisco scanned the monitors.
Daisy nodded and climbed out the side of the van that couldn’t be seen from the windows of the massive building.
She strode across the arch-shaped lot and jogged up the steps. Used her keycard to buzz in, checked for anyone around—there was no one—and quickly bent and placed the wedge in position to leave the door open for Regan and Cisco.
She checked her snail mail slot on the way past, habit more than anything. She rarely got mail. Emilia had a small package, and Daisy desperately wanted to know what was inside.
It was difficult not to imagine something nefarious when in reality, it was probably a small gift from home—her mom lived in California—or a retail sample or something completely innocent and mundane. Perhaps she’d swipe it on the way out or ask Regan to take a peek.
She headed for the stairs and jogged her way up to the third floor and the area where all the grad students had their cubicles.
She set her bag on her seat and took a good look around to make sure no one was sleeping under a cubby, which had been known to happen.
“See anyone around?” She had to resist the natural urge to touch her ear.
“Not a soul,” Regan assured her.
Daisy started at Mira Jahood’s desk, checking her lab book for anything suspicious. Rifling through the pile of books on the desk, she recognized one she had requested from the library that she needed for her lit review. She’d ask Mira on Monday if she could borrow it.
Next was Amed Hussein. Both he and Mira were second year PhD students from Pakistan. There was a photo of his wife and child tacked to the side of the cubby and a prayer mat under his desk.
Nothing suspicious.
Then she noticed a thick, white envelope hidden between two textbooks. Her heart thumped as if she’d been running, and she checked over her shoulder. “I’ve found an envelope on Amed’s desk. What should I do?”
“Opened?”
“No.”
“Shit. You have any gloves up there?”
There was a random box on the table from Halloween last year when they’d made stupid balloon decorations. It seemed like a thousand years ago now. A lifetime ago.
“Yep.”
“Suit up. Find a plastic bag and put it inside. We’ll open it later and then seal it again. You’ll need to put it back exactly as you found it, so pay attention to detail. Be careful.”
The warning filled her with dread and pushed away her qualms about invading Amed’s privacy. The letter was probably something completely innocent, but she certainly wouldn’t reveal any secrets.
Where did the buck stop though?
Did the price of liberty justify poking, not just her nose, but the federal government’s nose, into personal matters?
If the consequences of ignoring the letter wasn’t the potential destruction of a swathe of the East Coast and the people living there, she’d have refused. But it was.
She hated doing this to someone she liked and admired. She forced herself to pull on gloves and then found a fresh unused garbage bag in the base of the trash can. She put the letter inside it, then inside her bag.