Page 100 of Lesson In Honesty

“Dean Holewinski.”

That wasn’t ringing any bells in Mack’s memory. He stepped over to the phone, brought up the note app, and typed it in. “What did he look like?”

“Five-nine, brown on brown, glasses. Lean, narrow-faced, maybe in his middle-twenties?”

Definitely not someone Mack was acquainted with, that was for sure. “All right, go on.”

“They came in, demanded access to the top levels of development. Areas you refused to let them see last time due to the clearance required. We denied them again on that basis and they got… aggressive. Threatened all manner of things. Hannah and Daisy took the brunt of it, Mack, and they haven’t been back to work.”

Fuck. Mack pinched the bridge of his nose. Hannah and Daisy were instrumental to the development of the new security system the company was due to roll out in less than six months—if they weren’t in the lab, they’d soon fall behind schedule. “Are they okay?”

“Traumatized.”

Heads were gonna roll, he thought. “Get them whatever they need, Tim. Hire a goddamn therapist to come into the breakroom and sit down with them. Give them my assurances that it will not happen again; I’ll apologize to them personally when I get back.”

“That’s not what has everyone in a panic, Mack. That was just the tip of a very sharp, very scary iceberg.” Tim’s voice was getting high and tight. “The men took over one of the conference rooms, locked everyone out. We got suspicious, so Rick decided to test out the fly drone he’s been working on. Man, that thing is a game changer.”

“We can discuss that later, Tim.”

“Yeah, yeah. Uh, he got it through the air vent and attached it to the wall. The visual and audio is fucking amazing—he recorded their entire conversation.” He sounded like he wanted to cry. “They want to fire ninety percent of the staff to start. Somehow they got wind of the top secret stuff—they know all about the Nimbus project, Mack. Athena, Bogart, Titus. They don’t have the specific details, but theyknowthey’re indevelopment. What they’re planning on doing with them is not what they were designed for. It’ll be catastrophic on so many levels.”

Wait a minute. Anger kindled in his belly. Nimbus, Athena, Bogart, and Titus were all what he classed as need-to-know projects. Access to them required a background check that took three months to complete, a special form of identification to take the elevator to the top floor of the building and open the doors to the classified labs, and biosecurity measures to retrieve files and physical models.

There were three people other than Tim and himself with that clearance.

“Find out who sold their loyalty, Tim, and how much it was worth.” Voice vibrating with fury, he fisted his hands on the rail, suddenly grateful for the cold. “Take someone off one of the smaller projects and put them to fucking work tracking down who betrayed us. I want to know who, and I want to know how deep the damage to the projects runs. Check all the files, make sure nothing’s missing.”

“Already on it, Mack. As soon as I realized there was a breach, I started digging. There are no files missing but…” Tim hesitated.

“But?”

“I, ah, checked the hard drive of the copy machine on Level Twelve. Someone made copies of the first five pages of each project file.”

Mack frowned. The first five pages contained no real data pertaining to the research—there was a brief synopsis, hypothetical data, all the boring shit that acted as a precursor to the main event.

The meat of the files, the stuff that was worth millions of dollars, was tucked further back in the folders. At least, in the hardcopy versions.

“Whose access code was on the machine?”

“See, that’s the thing. Each file was copied under a different code—mine, Rupi’s, Trevor’s, and Sonja’s. The only Level Twelve code that wasn’t used is yours.”

Because no one knew it, just like no one else on that team should have any knowledge of anyone else’s security codes,goddamnit. “Lock them out of the system. Until this is cleared up, Level Twelve is on lockdown. Pull them all into an office and tell them I said if the one responsible contacts me in the next twenty-four hours to confess what they’ve done and how badly they’ve fucked the projects, I won’t gut them like trout and leave their entrails swinging in the wind for the FBI to scoop up.”

“I’ll pass the message along, boss. Why would they just copy those few pages when they had the entire files at their disposal?”

Mack’s lip curled. If he stole files for an unscrupulous bunch of assholes, he wouldn’t give them everything at once. Tease their appetites with that brief taste, then withhold the rest until he got what he wanted.

Maximize the financial gain.

“Money. My guess is it all comes down to money.”

“Shit. Anything else you want me to do, Mack?”

“No, this is in my hands now. If the assholes come back and make demands again, call in security and then the cops. Don’t let them, or any representative from the lawyers, past the goddamn lobby.”

Tim’s sigh of relief was tangible. “Got it. Are you coming back early?”

“Not right now.” Leaving Denver wouldn’t achieve anything but murder. “Tell everyone not to worry.” The decision he’d been chewing on for months was suddenly as easy as the one he’d made twenty minutes ago. “MVM Tech is no longer for sale, especially to those duplicitous bastards.”

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