Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Callie’s gaze darted between the men at the table. Four big men, two of whom she’d met before and two she hadn’t. Chance Hughes seemed less distracted today. He was kind and made jokes that put her at ease.
Alex Bishop was most likely the boss. She thought so by the way the other three deferred to him. Tall, handsome, and aloof. Intense.
Blaze Connolly asked her how she liked Sutton’s Creek, did she eat at The Salty Dawg Tavern often, was she a fan of the Kiss My Grits Café, and what did she think of Colleen Wright’s crystal shop and all things woo-woo emporium. That last one made her laugh despite herself.
She hadn’t actually been in Colleen’s shop, but Nikki had. Her sister was a fan of the crystals.
Then there was Seth King. He was nicer this time, smiled more. He spoke soothingly as he urged her to tell his guys what she’d told him.
She did, but she was beginning to think she’d made a huge mistake. If Mikhail could get to her in the lab, he’d surely know she was here, talking to a bunch of security professionals. Then what?
But she’d started this, so she had to finish it. Then she needed to get the hell out of town.
She didn’t miss the looks the men exchanged when she mentioned that someone set the fire to target her. She felt foolish saying it now that she’d done so twice. It sounded outrageous. Griffin Research Labs was a top-secret facility, and though they’d had some trouble with access recently—which these guys had caught and fixed—access to the secure labs had always been well controlled.
These men talking their way past building security, which they’d done, was one thing. Getting into a SCIF behind a coded door was another. The only way Chance had walked into her lab the day he had was with permission and a controlled access card. Thanks to their work those few days, it was even harder to get into the building now.
Which meant they must think she was paranoid.
Four faces looked at her, expressions hard. They didn’t look like they thought she was lying though. Her heart pounded in her chest as she waited for one of them to speak.
“We can help you,” Alex said. “But you’re going to have to tell us who you think did this. And what he wants from you.”
Fear spiked. “I-I can’t.”
“Find a way,” Seth said. “You work in a facility with sensitive information. You don’t have to tell us specifically about a program, because we understand you can’t talk about it outside the security of a SCIF or to people who aren’t read in, but you can tell us who this man is and give us an idea what he wants.”
He leaned toward her, put his big, warm hand over her cold one as if realizing he’d sounded brusque. She thought she should pull away, but she was rooted to the spot. For the second time that day, she felt a tingle when his skin touched hers. As if he were made of lightning and she was merely waiting for the spark to make her glow.
“You came here for a reason, Callie. You thought we could help. We can.” He darted a look at the other men. Something seemed to pass between them before he spoke again. “We’re all former military. Former special forces. We’ve done protection details for high profile clients, and we’ve seen a lot of shit in our time. There’s nobody else equipped to deal with your situation the way we are.”
Hope. It was hope that flared in her soul as she gazed into eyes that were fathomless pools of gray. She wanted to lose herself in those eyes. Wanted to see them spark with that lightning bottled inside him whenever he gazed at her.
Callie shook herself. And then she plunged because she’d already come this far and she couldn’t see a way out.
“Mikhail Volkov. That’s his name. I-I don’t know much about him, not really. I know he’s American, and I know he’s a fluent Russian and Polish speaker, like me. I worked in Poland for a year, instructing civil engineers in software tools and development. My mother was an immigrant. I learned Polish and Russian from her, and I studied Russian in school along with programming. I sometimes went out for drinks and dinner with my students—I mean as a group. I met Mikhail at one of the clubs we went to. He was also working on the base as a translator for the Dashevsky Group.”
She drew in a breath, surprised at all she’d said. And also relieved. It was like she’d been swelling with information, but the pressure had eased. Not completely, because simply speaking his name wasn’t fixing anything, but she could breathe again.
Think.
“He was charming. I went out with him a few times. We were just kind of casually dating, getting to know each other. He asked questions about my work, about my background. He talked a lot about changing the world, making it better. One day he told me he knew about a job I should apply for. With Griffin Research Labs.”
The room was quiet. She dragged in a breath.
“He knew someone. He said he could give them a call and I’d get the job. I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave Poland at that time, but then my parents died and I needed to provide a good home for my sister. I returned home and had to settle their estate, which took some time. I applied for jobs locally, hoping to keep my sister in the town she’d grown up in.”
She didn’t mention how hard that was when it turned out her parents owed money to so many businesses in their town. People weren’t precisely unkind, but they kept expecting to be paid when the estate was finalized. Some of them had been, but many had not. She’d felt responsible enough that she’d used her own money to pay as many as she could.
Which was why she didn’t have the savings she’d once had. Mikhail, who’d remained a friend after their relationship went nowhere, told her she shouldn’t do it. Maybe she shouldn’t have, but she’d grown up with some of those people and it hadn’t seemed fair not to try and pay them.
“Nobody was hiring. I needed work so I could take care of my sister, so I let Mikhail help me get the job at the lab because it was one less thing to worry about. Nikki and I moved here ten months ago.”
“I’m guessing you don’t know who his contact is.”
She shook her head, spreading her fingers on the table. Seth’s hand was nearby, ready to reach for her again. She pulled her hands back, afraid if he touched her she’d say more than she should.
“I got promoted to a new project, a new team, after a couple of months. That’s when Mikhail started to press me for information. I told him the things I could, thinking we were just talking, but he kept asking for more as the months went by. For things I can’t talk about. When I didn’t tell him what he wanted to know, he got angry.”
“Where is he living now?” Alex asked.
Callie closed her eyes a second. It all sounded so stupid, like one of those romance scams that people fell for on Facebook. A dashing man of the world wormed his way into her life, but the currency he wanted was information and access, not to drain her bank account.
“I don’t know. He travels a lot, but I know he has an apartment in the DC area where he stays when he’s meeting with lobbyists and lawyers for the Dashevsky Group.”
“Does he ever come to Huntsville?”
“Yes. He was here ten days ago.”
He’d been angry with her. So very angry. He’d given her a simple power cable and told her what he wanted her to do. She hadn’t done it. She’d made excuses because she’d needed time to think. When he’d texted her a few days ago, she’d finally told him she couldn’t swap it out. She wasn’t a hacker, but she knew what that cable could do.
Completely indistinguishable from a normal cable, it had a keystroke logger and a Wi-Fi signal embedded in the connection device. If she replaced any cable in the secure area with that one, Mikhail would have access to the Griffin Research Labs internal secure network. He could steal proprietary information. Share it.
Sell it.
Worse, he would have access to the defense satellite project her team had been working on for the past several months. They were close to debugging the code, which meant the system was that much closer to deployment. There was a lot of pressure from Washington to get it done as quickly as possible. If anyone stole that information, even with the code in the state it was currently in, they could do a lot of harm in a very short amount of time. And if they had unfiltered access to the work Callie was doing? They’d know when the debugging was successful and the project nearly complete.
She didn’t know the entire scope of the satellite system because Washington was very secretive about it, but it was incredibly important to national defense. She knew what her instructions were, and she knew the theoretical idea behind the project as an advanced warning system.
She wasn’t about to give anyone access to that kind of information. Callie might be a lot of things—a workaholic, a bumbling sister, an incompetent replacement for a mom and dad, a very bad judge of character—but a traitor wasn’t one of them.
“If you think the fire last night was in response to your refusal to cooperate, how do you think he staged it?”
Callie swallowed. The more she talked about this, the more unbelievable it sounded.
“I think he probably paid someone. Someone on the janitorial staff, maybe. They’re vetted and they have to pass background checks, but it’d be easier to bribe someone, or place his own people there, than to get inside himself.”
“We’ll look into the backgrounds of everyone who was working last night,” Seth said. “Including your coworkers. Just to be thorough.”
Callie blinked in surprise. “How will you do that? You aren’t cops.”
Seth smiled, and her heart did an extra thump. Very inconvenient. She reminded herself that he’d been a dick to her when he’d been at the lab. Not only that, but he hadn’t seemed to remember her when she’d introduced herself. Not until she’d told him they’d met before.
“Told you we’re equipped to deal with your situation. I have contacts in law enforcement. I’ll get the background info.”
“I don’t even know who was there last night.”
“I’ll find that information, too.”
She stared at him, at the utter confidence in his expression. She believed him. Completely. A little flame of relief burned brighter then.
But not bright enough.
“I’m afraid to go home. To be out there by myself. And later, when Nikki comes home…”
She wasn’t sure what she was asking. She just knew she didn’t want to be alone if Mikhail came looking for her. He might not kill her yet, but she didn’t doubt he’d hurt her. Or hurt Nikki to make her comply. More than anything, that’s what she feared would happen next.
“Do you have a security system?”
“No. I’m leasing the farm. It didn’t come with anything like that.”
“We can put one in for you.”
Her throat squeezed. “I’d like that, but I have to get permission from the owner. And a price before I commit.”
She couldn’t spend much since she suspected she’d need nearly everything she had now to disappear, but an alarm was reasonable for the week or two they had left. She hadn’t changed her mind about leaving, no matter what these men said. If they could slow Mikhail down, keep her safe, it’d give her time to make a foolproof plan.
“We don’t have to cut holes in the walls to provide you with security. Give me the owner’s contact information, and I’ll arrange permission. We’ll give you a price before we do any work,” Alex said. “Meanwhile, if you’ve got an extra room, one of us can stay with you for a couple days until the system goes in. Or you can stay in town where we can keep an eye on you if you prefer.”
She couldn’t burn money on a hotel. She wasn’t sure she wanted to spend it on an alarm system either, but she could hardly say no if it meant these guys would help her. If one of them would stay at her place for the next few days, listening for things that went bump in the night, it’d be worth the price.
Callie shot a look at Seth from beneath her lashes. No, it wouldn’t be him. They would not send him.
“I have an extra room. One of my sister’s horses is at the farm with us. We need to feed him, so it’s better for us to stay out there.”
She’d have to explain to Nikki why there was a man staying with them, but she’d think of something.
“That’s fine.” He tipped his chin at Seth. “You follow her home, get the lay of the place. I’ll take your shift on the range, and Kane or Ethan can take your class tonight.”
Callie’s stomach dropped. She didn’t miss the look on Seth’s face either. He was fine being nice to her in the moment, but he didn’t want to spend a few days with her any more than she did with him.
If she asked for someone else, would she sound ungrateful?
“I, um—how much will it cost to have personal security like that?”
Because she needed to know. She was prepared to pay them for their help, but there was a limit to what she could spare. She still had board for Nikki’s horse at the riding academy, rent and the usual bills, plus feed and hay for the horse at the farm.
“No charge,” Alex said. “It’s what we do.”
She blinked, her gaze sliding over four stern faces. “But you have to make money. Living isn’t free.”
“It’s not,” Alex said. “But we’re talking an evaluation here. Seth will figure out what kind of system you need, and we’ll give you a price for that. The personal security aspect is free of charge. If you need us around the clock for months, that’s different and we’ll negotiate. But right now, it’s part of the service.”
A tremor shuddered through her. She wouldn’t have to stay awake all night with her dad’s old shotgun over her lap and one eye on the driveway and road beyond, praying she didn’t nod off.
“Thank you. And thank you for believing me. I know I sound crazy thinking someone set a fire in a secure facility to get to me when I’m nobody important.” She paused. “Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I’m just paranoid for no reason.”
“Did a man get you a job and then pressure you for information about that job? And did he get angry when you didn’t cooperate?” Chance asked.
“Yes,” she said, her throat tight.
“Think you were justified in coming here then.”
“We’ve heard crazier things,” Blaze said. “It was smart of you not to dismiss your fears.”
“If you want to wait here,” Seth said as he pushed his chair back, “I’ll go grab some things and join you in a few minutes.”
Her pulse throbbed. “Of course. Whenever you’re ready.”
The men stood and each took time to lightly shake her hand and reassure her she’d done the right thing in coming to see them. She felt like she had, but the minute they walked out of the conference room and left her alone, doubts began to creep in.
The voice in her head whispered to her like raindrops on a boulder, wearing the surface away.
Nobody can help you. Run, run, run.
Run. Before he finds you….
She was on the verge of obeying when the redhead named Daphne walked in with a smile on her face and two hot cups of coffee in her hand.
“I thought you might like something while you wait. We have tea if you’d prefer.”
Tension gripped her body in icy talons, but she forced herself to smile. “Coffee’s fine. Thank you.”
She thought Daphne would leave, but she didn’t. She pulled out a chair and sat. “Have you been in town long?”
Callie wrapped chilled hands around the mug. “A few months.”
“Me too. I was passing through when my car kinda gave up the ghost. The guys offered me a job, and here I am.”
Callie took a sip and tilted her head to look at the pretty woman opposite. “They were worried I was going to run out the door, weren’t they?”
Daphne nodded and gave her a grin. “They kind of have an instinct for it.”
“So you’re here to make sure I don’t leave?”
“I can’t stop you if you want to go. But I can tell you that without these guys looking out for me, I’d have made a lot of mistakes that might have landed me in more trouble than I could handle. But they took one look at me and pulled me into the fold. Gave me a place to stay, food, and security. They’re good men. I thought you should know that.”
Callie’s throat tightened. “I appreciate you saying so.” She hesitated. “I don’t think Seth likes me, though. He was kind of a dick when I met him before. I wish it was one of the other guys I was waiting for.”
Daphne snorted. “Poor Seth. He’s so gorgeous to look at, but he’s perpetually grumpy. If I had to label him, I’d call him the serious one. He doesn’t say a whole lot. He watches though. I don’t think he misses much. But don’t take the grumpiness personally. He’s like that with everyone.”
“I’ll try not to then.”
She suspected it was going to be easier said than done. Especially when the man in question showed up a couple of minutes later wearing a scowl.
“You ready?” he asked.
Callie got to her feet. “Yes.”
“Let’s go then.”
He strode out the door, leaving her to follow him. She shot a look at Daphne, who shrugged and smiled apologetically. “Perpetually grumpy. Told you so. Just remember his bark is worse than his bite.”