Chapter Seventeen
Iris tipped her head in confusion for a moment. “Wait, you’re saying Walter created Ignis Cerebri?”
Bec nodded slowly, her lips drawing into a thin line.
“I want to know why. Why was I deceived? Am I that gullible? What is wrong with me? I should have done more research, but my research and the people I talked to said this center was cutting-edge. It might look like a sleeper facility, but it was doing big things.”
“Were they wrong?” she asked as she returned to the computer to keep working. She didn’t have time to waste in case the battery died.
“Not about it being a sleeper facility and cutting-edge. I can’t say the part about doing big things.
I’ve only worked on a project steeped in controversy and deceit.
I should have seen this as a too-good-to-be-true situation,” Bec chastised herself.
“Why would anyone hire me to create a vaccine for a yet unknown virus? Why wouldn’t they hire an entire team to do that? ”
Iris turned to her again. “Did you know you’d work alone when you took the job?”
“No, not exactly. I knew I would be the head scientist in charge of gathering the data and directing workflow. I expected there to be others who would contribute, like medical, clinical and public health microbiologists, all working together to look at it from every angle. Once I arrived, Walter told me only one lab tech would be available to help me.”
“And you believe you should have suspected that whatever was happening here was nefarious and walked away?”
“At the very least, I should have demanded more answers. Instead, I dove in headfirst, spurred by the very real threat of what another pandemic would do to the world.”
“Fearmongering is real in any form, Bec. If you were led to believe that a vaccine was necessary sooner rather than later, it makes sense you would buckle down and get to work to solve the problem. Don’t beat yourself up because you tried to do good and help millions of people from possible demise.
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, which is why it’s called hindsight. ”
Bec’s laughter was soft when she leaned in and rested her forehead against Iris’s. “You’re right. It’s easy to see now that I was afraid of not being good enough or not measuring up because of what happened when I was a kid.”
“Let me tell you what Mina told me when I started working for Secure Watch and felt the same way. She said they tell us as kids we can be whoever we want to be but show us the exact opposite is true by dictating what we can be and when. We can’t change our past, but we can shape our future by being who we wanted to be as kids. Who did you want to be then, Bec?”
“Myself,” she whispered. “I just wanted to be myself. Someone who helped others, was kind, made a difference and was happy in my skin.”
“You help others, are kind and make a difference. The question is, are you happy in your skin?”
“Yes. Since I met you, I’ve never been happier, Iris.”
“Me, too,” she whispered, leaning in to kiss Bec’s lips. “So let’s work the problem together. No more blame game, okay? Cold, hard facts, just like if this was a science problem you had to solve.”
Bec sat up with a smile. “You’re good at tough love, Iris. I’ll give you that. Okay, no more pity party. Let’s solve this problem so we can get on with our lives.”
Iris turned to the computer, but the screen before her swam as she blinked back the tears that filled her eyes.
She couldn’t let them fall and risk Bec noticing that she was upset.
It wasn’t as though she didn’t know they’d go their separate ways when this was over, but having her confirm it broke her heart.
She tried to tell herself how important it was that she learned she could love someone, but her heart didn’t want to hear it.
Clearing her throat, she focused on the files, running her finger down the screen without looking at the wonderful, intelligent, gorgeous woman beside her who could never be hers. “Do any of these names sound familiar?”
“No,” Bec answered immediately, as though she’d already been reading through them.
“They aren’t abbreviations for diseases or anything?”
“I guess they could be, but I wouldn’t know what without opening them all. If I saw H1N1 or HEV, I would know they were viruses, but that’s not what these are.”
“Then we open them,” she said, clicking the first one. However, the file was empty, as were the next six.
“How can they all be empty?” Bec asked, leaning in close enough that her floral scent tickled Iris’s senses, adding to the sadness already engulfing her.
“Red herrings?” Iris asked, clicking out of the file and hitting the start button before clicking all apps.
“What are you looking for?”
“An app that fronts as something else but is a vault for files and photos. Something tells me Walter wasn’t as bad at technology as he led you all to believe.”
“That’s becoming apparent,” she agreed while shaking her head. “He had me fooled, though.”
“No, he kept you busy. There’s a difference. He could say whatever he wanted, but you were too busy to see what he was doing.” She paused for a moment and then grinned. “There you are.”
“What?”
Iris clicked on an app, which brought up a password box. “Folder Hider. A classic app for hiding and encrypting files.”
“Do you think the password is the same?”
“The hint for this one is Ignis plus Cerebri,” Iris said, pointing at the words under the empty password box. “I doubt he’d make it the same.”
“Brain burning,” Bec said instantly.
With a tip of her head, Iris typed in the two words but was told it was the wrong password.
“Add a hyphen. He always added a hyphen to the two words when he wrote it out.”
Iris added the hyphen. This time, the box opened, revealing files and pictures that weren’t encrypted. She opened the first file and clicked through pictures taken of Walter and his setup in the basement.
“It looks new in these pictures,” Iris pointed out, and Bec nodded.
“Maybe he took them to prove he had a system set up?” Bec asked as Iris kept scanning through them. At the end, there was a video, and Iris clicked Play.
“As you can see, I’m more than prepared to meet your organization’s needs. The lab is complete, and I’ll await your specifications and go ahead.” Walter spoke to the camera as though he was addressing a specific person or place.
“It’s dated one year ago,” Iris said, pointing to the date of the video.
“This explains why the other scientist didn’t know what Mina was talking about when she mentioned Ignis. He hadn’t made it yet. I was the sucker he brought in to make the vaccine for it.”
“Why would they need a vaccine for it if they’re terrorists?” Iris asked. “That part confuses me.”
“Simple. They don’t want to die. They’ll take the vaccine and protect themselves and those they love while sentencing everyone else to death.”
A shudder racked Iris at the thought. “We know that Walter set the lab up at someone else’s request, so now we need to find out who that was. If I were Walter, I’d want a contract, right? Let’s see if we can find one.”
She clicked open several more files, but Bec shook her head each time, telling her they were information about the base viruses she had seen in the freezer at Walter’s house.
None of it told them why he was mutating a new virus or for whom.
After ten minutes of searching, Bec blew out a frustrated breath.
“Maybe he didn’t have a contract or never uploaded it.”
“There had to be a contract, but maybe it’s smarter to follow the money trail. Mina said he went from being deeply in debt to being debt-free almost overnight. Unless she discovers a rich dead relative, it’s a bit suspicious.”
Bec snorted, but it wasn’t out of amusement. “Walter doesn’t have a rich relative.”
“My gut says the same unless his rich relative is very much alive and very much a bad player. So far, we have proof that he set the lab up at someone’s request. There has to be another file here to tell us who—”
A loud bang made them both jump. “What was that?” Bec asked.
Iris grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Secure Watch, India.” She released the button and waited but got no response. “Secure Watch, India!” She waited but still didn’t get a response. “Something’s wrong, Bec.”
“Let’s give them a minute in case they can’t stop doing what they’re doing to respond.”
Her heart pounding, she closed the laptop and set it aside, grabbing the tablet to call Cal when the stairwell door slammed open.
“Thank God,” Iris said, but the rest of the thought died on her lips.
Four men, dressed head to toe in black with only their eyes showing, marched into the lab, assault rifles aimed at them as they approached.
“Who are you?” Bec asked, putting herself between the men and Iris. “You have no right to be here.”
“Walter sent us,” one of the men sneered. “We’re here for Ignis.”
“You can’t take a dangerous pathogen out of the lab. That’s suicide.”
“He said you completed the vaccine,” another one said from the left.
“Completed, yes—proved its effectiveness, no. That will take years.”
“We’ll take our chances,” the first guy said. “Open the door to the lab.”
Iris shook with fear as the men aimed their rifles at them, making it almost impossible to think about what to do next.
Were Declan and Zac alive? Had they been hurt?
Had Cal arrived yet? Cal! The thought penetrated her terror, and she leaned over to cough, hoping it didn’t sound fake.
While bent over, she hit the panic button under her shirt, alerting everyone at Secure Watch that she was in trouble.
If Cal was still at Walter’s or headed back, he’d know they needed help.
“Where’s Walter?” Bec asked. “I won’t do anything until I talk to him.”
“We’d like to know the same thing,” the ringleader said. “We’ve been trying to reach him since he missed our scheduled call. We’re not waiting any longer.”
Was Walter planning to double-cross them by taking off and leaving Bec holding the bag? It was starting to look that way to her.
Slowly, Iris stood up, enraged at the thought that her friends could be hurt or worse. “What did you do to my friends?”
“Relax. They’re fine. Or they will be once they wake up from their little nap and find a way to untie themselves. We aren’t here to hurt anyone. That includes you. As long as you do what we say.”
Iris could hear the hint of an accent but couldn’t pinpoint where it was from. Bec reached behind her and took her hand, squeezing it.
“What do you want us to do?” Bec asked, and the guy motioned to the lab with his gun.
“Open the lab door, but don’t make any sudden moves.”
Bec nodded. “I’m going to turn around and explain to my friend what she needs to do on the computer so I can use my metrics to open the door. I’m not trying anything. We’ve had some computer difficulties. Not everything is working properly.”
“Hands where we can see them,” he responded, and Bec raised her hands before she turned to face Iris.
“You’re okay?” she asked, and Iris nodded, her eyes wide. She wasn’t okay, but she didn’t want to freak Bec out and make her worry when she had four guns aimed at her back. “I’m going to need you to go through the sequence just like last time so I can enter my biometrics at the door.”
“But Bec, that’s dangerous.”
Trust me, she mouthed, and Iris snapped her lips shut, even if they continued to tremble as she faced off with the woman who had taught her so much about herself in such a short time.
“Just sit down slowly and wait for me to get to the lab door, then type everything in exactly as you did last time.”
Bec turned around, and the guys walked her to the door, where she waited.
Iris was confused because she didn’t need her to open the door.
Since she didn’t know what she had planned, she sat down and typed away on the laptop as though she was doing something important.
She occasionally glanced at Bec, who had moved to the side while the guys lined up in front of the lab door.
She kept typing, hoping to buy time in case Cal got her SOS alert and was on his way.
“Come on already, we don’t have all day,” the ringleader growled.
Bec gave her a nod, so with shaking hands, she hit the enter key dramatically.
The woman Iris realized she had big feelings for entered her biometrics and waited for the door to slide open.
From there, everything happened at once.
The door opened, and Bec pushed the men into the room, sidestepping the ringleader as he yelled, but she didn’t get him into the room before he looped an arm around her neck and dragged her backward, training his gun on Iris.