Chapter Thirteen
Iris put her arm around Bec’s shoulders, hoping it would stop her quaking. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Tell us why you think that?”
“He was the same height and build,” Bec said, her words shaky. “I know that doesn’t mean anything since there are plenty of six-foot-tall skinny guys in the world, but not as many who know how to navigate this facility in silence or where Walter’s office is.”
“Did the kidnapper have to walk past you to get to Walter’s office?” Cal asked, and Bec nodded immediately. Iris held her tighter, hoping to offer her strength and warmth.
“Yes, yes,” Bec said, turning in the chair and pointing to the spot by the lab door. “I was there when the flash-bang went off.”
“That’s close to the hallway,” Cal said, walking over there. “But you didn’t see anyone down here?”
“No, but I had just half turned back toward Walter’s office to answer a question he’d asked me. Then the bang and the light disoriented me until I caught a glimpse of the kidnapper in the office with Walter.”
“Which means the kidnapping was targeted because it would have been easier to take you and run,” Mina said.
“Unless it was opportunity driven,” Cal said to her point. “He may have realized that she was stunned, so better to take the guy who could still move quickly and call for help.”
Someone handed Mina a piece of paper off camera, and everyone was silent while she read it. When she glanced up, Iris knew the game had changed.
“Unless the good doctor was in on it.” Mina waved the paper in the air.
“In on what?” Bec looked around, confused, until Mina clarified.
“A fifty-million-dollar payday.”
“No.” Bec shook her head. “Absolutely not. Walter wasn’t hurting for money and was close to retirement.”
“You’re correct. He wasn’t hurting for money now.” Mina shook the paper in her hand. “But Walter Hoerman was deep in debt until a few years ago.”
“Does it say to who?” Cal asked.
“According to this, just about everyone, including the taxman.”
“What on earth?” Bec asked. “Where was all his money going?”
“Gambling?” Selina suggested.
“That’s possible, though I can only see his verifiable debts.”
Cal shook his head as he leaned on the lab table. “Regardless, I smell a rat or two, but they aren’t in Poland.”
“Same,” Mina, Iris and Selina said in unison, giving them a moment of levity in a situation that was anything but funny.
“I think that Walter got in over his head with something, then took a payoff to clear his debt. Chances are, that payoff came with stipulations, and he devised a way to get out from under the thumb of his creditors. He befriends a young, impressionable kid and convinces him he’ll get half of the big payday for writing some malware and fake kidnapping him. ”
Mina shrugged as she leaned on her desk, fatigue written on her face. “Anything is possible, but what concerns me is that Zafar is untraceable, which feels like a—”
“Setup,” Selina finished. Since she’d been set up not too long ago by her thought-to-be-dead sister, she would smell a similar ploy from a mile away.
“Zafar was playing ball for two bad guys?” Iris asked, glancing at Selina. “But who?”
“That’s the fifty-million-dollar question,” Mina said.
“You mean the sixty-four-dollar question,” Iris corrected, then she noticed Mina’s raised brow. “Oh, right. Fifty-million-dollar ransom.”
“The problem is, there’s no way to confirm this,” Bec pointed out. “We conveniently cannot access Walter’s computer, and the cameras were off during the kidnapping.”
“I tried tracing Zafar’s phone, but the last time it pinged was a week ago. That lines up with the dates you said he’d be gone to Poland,” Mina said to Bec, who nodded. “But it also says it’s no longer in service, so I believe he ditched the phone rather than flying off to Poland.”
Cal nodded. “Agreed.”
“Did you track Walter’s phone?” Iris asked.
“Walter has his phone?” Mina asked, but Bec answered.
“I believe he does. He was holding it when the kidnapper broke in, and it’s nowhere to be found here.”
Mina grinned, which told Iris she was pleased with this information. “I have the number. Do you know if he has the find-my-phone feature on it?”
“It was the latest model, so I’m sure it’s there. I don’t know if it’s on. Don’t you think he’d shut it off, though? Everyone knows cell phones can’t be traced if they’re off.”
“Everyone should know that,” Selina said with a snicker. “But not everyone has a Mina Jacobs on their team who can get around pesky things like powered down phones.”
Mina winked. “Whiskey, out.”
“That was a strange turn of events.” Bec turned to look up at Iris. “I’m concerned.”
“We’re all concerned,” Cal agreed. “But until Mina gets back to us, there isn’t much we can do. Selina will take you to the apartment to check your arm while we’re waiting. Then we can get together once Mina calls back.”
Bec pushed herself up from the chair and patted Iris’s shoulder as she walked by with Selina.
Once they were gone, Cal sighed. “I was afraid this could be an inside job.”
“You were? Why?” Iris asked, surprised to hear him say that.
“Nothing quite added up. If it had been one thing, I could have written it off, but not all of this.”
“What can we do in the meantime?” She stared at the floor, wishing to be with Bec, but she didn’t want to look clingy or needy.
“How close are you to regaining access to the labs?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Less than an hour is my hope. But I don’t want to unlock the labs until Bec is ready to go in and be sure everything is locked down.”
“And once that’s done, where are we with the systems?”
“Once we can get into the labs, we’d control all the important systems, including the biometrics.
I don’t want to take full control back and unlock the computers in case he’s paying attention to his code.
If he thinks we’ve got control of the facility again, thereby rendering his hostage useless, then he has no reason to keep him alive. ”
“Unless his hostage is in on it.” Cal used air quotes around hostage, to which she nodded. “I agree with you, though. Let’s work on access to the labs while we wait for Mina. We can make a better plan once she gets back to us.”
Iris checked her watch. “We have twenty-seven hours until the ransom is due, and we haven’t heard from the board, either. That doesn’t give us much time.”
“It sure doesn’t, but you do your job, and I’ll do mine. Hopefully, the two will align so we can get to the bottom of this before anyone else gets hurt.”
Cal patted her on the shoulder and left the room, allowing her to ponder if that was true. Leaving here—leaving Bec—was going to hurt.
* * *
“ARE YOU SURE this is okay?” Iris asked as she was nearly finished with the code to unlock the labs.
Bec knelt before her and grasped her chin, forcing eye contact with her for a second before Iris looked over her shoulder.
“I’m positive, Iris. The lab is a level three lab, which means there’s an airlock between the door you’re going to open and the one that holds the bad guys.
Only I can open the one that holds the bad guys.
I’ll go in, get dressed, put on my ventilator and then use my biometrics to enter the lab. ”
“But what about anything that escapes when you open the second door? Something bad could happen to you. That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Nothing can escape because of air pressure. I’ll wear my safety equipment, so I’m protected even if something is floating around the lab that didn’t get trapped in the filters, but I don’t believe that’s the case.
It’s a lot to explain right now, but trust me, there’s no risk to me or you if you open that door. ”
“Can I talk to you when you’re in the lab?” Iris asked, still unsure how she felt about letting her go in there alone. Not that she had any choice in the matter, but she didn’t have to like it.
“Unfortunately, no. Normally, we have a comms system that allows for that, but you don’t have time to get that working, so we’ll use sign language. I’ll give you a thumbs-up once I’m in the lab and know everything is good, okay?”
“And if it’s not good?”
“I’ll give you a thumbs-down, but we’ll have bigger problems on our hands at that point,” she said with a wink. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes, but I’m also concerned about you getting hurt.”
Bec took her hands and leaned up, passionately kissing her but without lingering. “That’s one thing you don’t have to be concerned about. I plan to kiss you ten thousand more times, so I will follow every safety protocol and take zero risks. Okay?”
“For the first time in my life, I want to hold someone to a promise like that, Bec.”
“And I want to be the first one who doesn’t break one to you.” Bec caressed her face before she dropped her hand and walked to the lab door. “Ready when you are, sweetheart.”
With butterflies in her belly, Iris put her hands on the keyboard and finished the code before she hit Enter.
The light over the door switched to red, and Bec used her credentials to open the door.
She gave her a thumbs-up and blew her a kiss before the door slid closed again and locked the woman she cared about inside a room with dangerous pathogens.
The thought struck her, and she stilled.
She cared about Bec, and not just as a friend or colleague. She cared about her as a love interest.
The surprise was less from the idea that she could care about Bec as a love interest and more from the fact that she could care about her as a lifelong partner.
Her past relationships had all ended for the same reason, at least according to what they told Iris as they broke up with her.
They were convinced she couldn’t care about another person deeply in a lasting relationship.
They tried to break it to her in an “it’s not your fault” kind of way, but over time, it ate at her until she believed that she could never love someone deeply enough for them to stay.
Now, gazing at Bec as she worked inside the lab protected by the bubbled hazmat suit, she could see she was waiting for the right woman to love deeply.
Too bad the right woman was one she could never have even if she would always care about her.
They were too different in both experiences and distance.
Bec lived here, and even if she left the facility after this situation, she would work somewhere else at a college or university far from Secure Inc.
While Iris could work remotely and remain employed by Secure Watch, she worried the stress would be too much for her, and she’d fail at the relationship and her job.
After protecting her patch for the doors, she pushed herself to standing and blew out a breath.
It was time to quarantine those thoughts to the background, as they had too much to do to worry about what would happen after this case was over.
If they didn’t get a bead on Walter or Zafar before the end of today, she couldn’t predict what would happen.
They didn’t have fifty million dollars, and convincing the investors to give that up for one man, when they already knew they had control of the facility again, would take more time than they had.
With one last glance at Bec, still working inside the lab, Iris walked to Walter’s office. It was time to get to the bottom of this so everyone could safely move on with their lives. Well, everyone but Walter.