Page 4 of Jacob

She did. To her amazement the badge stuck.

“It won’t harm the material of your suit, don’t worry, Dr. Hethering.”

Her hand opened and closed on the handle of her briefcase, trying to offload some anxiety. The fate of the world might just hang in the balance of what she did in the next hour. Millions of lives could be saved or lost. A mussed suit jacket was the least of her worries. “No problem. Thank you.”

He nodded and indicated security.

She walked straight through the metal detector with no issues and rode the elevator to the 8thfloor. The elevator was as sumptuous as the rest of the building—reflective, polished steel plates with black marble inserts. She watched herself in the steel plates which might as well have been mirrors. There was no sign of her inner turmoil. She looked neat and pulled together. Except for the fact that she wasn’t wearing her lab coat, she could be on her way to a routine day in the lab.

Good.

Maybe some of the confidence she felt on the job could translate into what she was doing here, because she was skating on thin ice. The last time she’d felt so shaky and lost had been the day she buried her parents and her best friend—the boy she’d loved—abandoned her. She flashed for a second on her last image of Jake—face stonily turned forward, refusing even to acknowledge her. She’d had no idea why he was rejecting her.

She still didn’t.

A familiar jab to the heart accompanied that thought.Stop that!she told herself sharply, as she’d done a billion times before. Her parents were dead and buried and wherever they were, they were at peace. Jake was who knew where, and a dim memory. Well, he wasn’t a dim memory, but he should be. God knew enough time had gone by. She’d done well, worked hard, was a respected scientist. She was no longer a grief-stricken girl aching for her boyfriend in her hour of need.

The sharp pain in her heart eased immediately. It had taken years to get to this point. Now the thought of him was like a small burr that couldn’t be dislodged but did no damage. No biggie.

She was unsettled. That was why she was channeling her 16-year-old self. Something strange, potentially very dangerous, was happening and she didn’t have the tools to handle it herself. Which was why she was here, in this sumptuous black building. She worked with the best of the best in her field and now when she was out of her depth, she was turning to the best of the best in this field.

The metallic sound of a drop of water falling and the elevator doors opened. She faced another black marble wall with8th flooretched in gold italic script.

“Turn right, four doors down, Room 84, Dylan Gardner,” a voice said from her chest. The badge. Four doors down she stopped, raised her fist and a small speaker with superb sound clicked on.

“Please come in, Dr. Hethering,” a pleasant male baritone said, and the door slid open.

A tall, broad-shouldered man stood up, walked around his desk and met her halfway across the enormous room. “Please sit, Doctor.” He led her to a comfortable chair and sat down again behind his desk. “So, Dr. Hethering, how can we help you?”

Alex forced herself to breath normally. “It’s—it’s a complex situation, Mr. Gardner?—”

“Dylan,” he said.

She nodded. “Dylan. Please call me Alex. As I was saying, what has brought me here is very complex, and I must be assured of the confidentiality of what I tell you.”

He placed two big hands in front of him on the shiny desktop. “You can rest assured, Alex. This is a security company, and we don’t use that term lightly. I’m assuming you want to keep this confidential even from the CDC.”

Very clever of them and of him to know who she worked for. She’d only called half an hour ago, giving only her name and they probably had a complete dossier on her, including her college grades. “Yes, even from the CDC, though it is a work-related issue.”

“We have experience working with the CDC. But we guarantee absolute confidentiality in all our dealings with clients.”

Yes, they had experience with the CDC, that was why she was here. Black Inc. was the go-to company of choice when CDC teams had to operate in difficult places. Last month ten BI men had led a CDC team into Sierra Leone where there were reports of a mutated form of Marburg. In the area, two rebel armies and government forces who were as cruel and ferocious as the rebels, were fighting each other. And the CDC team had to operate in bulky hazmat suits. Her friend Karen Morris had led the team and she told Alex that the BI men had been outstanding, getting them in and out safely. “In and out, slicker’n shit through a goose,” Karen, who had grown up in Texas, had said admiringly. “Not even a spider bite.”

Black Inc. had been in the city for as long as she had worked at the CDC. As a matter of fact, the day she started her job, the company had broken ground on this building, which had gone up in record time.

Alex swallowed. “The, um, issue revolves around a colleague, Elias Field. If you looked me up, you know that I work in the Office of Infectious Diseases, the OID, and Dr. Field does, too.”

Dylan nodded. “And you two are friends? Enemies?”

“Friends,” she answered quickly. “Not enemies.” She looked him in the eyes. “Colleagues.”

He nodded slightly and she knew he’d received the message loud and clear. This was not a jealous mistress asking a topflight security company to skulk around corners to find out if her lover was cheating on her.

Though Eliashadmade it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t mind upgrading their relationship to friends with benefits. Alex didn’t do casual sex. Actually, she didn’t do much sex at all, she thought with an inward sigh.

“Pickier’n hell,” was the way Karen put it.Trust issues, was the way the psychotherapist she’d once consulted put it. Either way, her love life was pathetic, and since she wasn’t ugly or nasty and she showered daily, she could only assume that she was indeed picky and had deep trust issues.

She’d trusted one person with her heart and that was Jake. And then he’d run away, and she’d never given her heart again. God, that sounded so pathetic. She was tired and stressed, that was why Jake re-emerged in her head, like a dragon that slept until it felt the princess was vulnerable. Then it flew up, scaly wings unfurling, ready to attack.

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