Page 13 of Devil
“Are you sure?” Cyn drew out the words and Devil paused, mid-type.
“Is there a problem?” Had Cyn already found something?
“No.” Again, she drew the word out.
“You’re irritating me, Cyn. I have shit to do, what’s the problem?”
Cyn chuckled. “No problem. You go right ahead and check into Commander Darius Washington. I’ll dig a little more into Sonia Trimble and Nadia Mitchel. At least until Joe gets back, and then I’ll be distracted.”
Devil let out a small laugh. Cyn made no secret of the fact that she and Joe had a healthy sex life. Devil was happy for them. And maybe even a little jealous of all the orgasms her friend was having. But not jealous enough to want it for herself. If having regular orgasms meant she had to share her space with someone, well, that wasn’t a trade-off she was going to make, thank you very much. Especially not when said orgasms could be self-induced.
“I’m sure Joe will be happy to hear that. Thank you for your help tonight. As always, I appreciate it,” Devil said.
“We’ll talk tomorrow?”
“Is there ever a day that goes by that wedon’ttalk?” Devil pointed out.
Cyn snorted. “True, but I meant about this. About Sonia and Nadia and Darius Washington.”
Devil wasn’t keen to bring Darius into the conversation, butnottalking about him was flat-out not possible with her group of friends. “Tomorrow,” she promised.
“Tomorrow,” Cyn agreed.
When her phone was silent, Devil returned her attention to the database she’d accessed. Eyeing the search command, she hesitated, unsure she wanted to learn what it might reveal. Darius wasn’t a threat to the lab, of that she was certain. But he did know more about her than he should given their tenuous relationship.
Her cursor hovered over the search box. Finally, she entered his name. She needed to be sure whohewas. And more specifically, she needed to be sure he wasn’t a threat to her, her friends, and the secrets they held.
* * *
Devil looked up from the microscope in front of her and let her eyes focus on the distance. She’d had a late night learning all sorts of interesting things about Darius. And an early morning had followed. It was now nearing the end of the workday, and her eyes weren’t the only thing fatigued.
A few minutes passed as she daydreamed about taking a long walk in the woods by her house. Then, turning back to the microscope, she removed the slide. Dispensing it into the biohazard container, she then prepped her solutions. All she needed to do now was run them through the mass spectrometer, and she’d be done for the day.
Well, her lab work would be done.
She’d been keeping an eye on Sonia Trimble’s and Nadia Mitchel’s movements for the past twelve hours. At ten in the morning, Sonia had gone to the grocery store, then at one in the afternoon, Nadia had gone to a nail salon. Aside from those trips, there’d been no other movement. With the women accounted for, Devil turned her mind to Dr. Jennifer Pritchard and Lab 14.
Dr. Pritchard had joined the center two years earlier, and Devil knew very little about her. Sonia and Nadia had been speaking about a “she.” But aside from Jennifer, there was another woman who worked in that lab, a new grad student who was in two days a week.
So who was the “she” they’d been talking about? The student or Dr. Pritchard?
She drummed her fingers on the counter and looked at the clock. It was five o’clock. She could go home. Curling into bed and turning her fireplace on held a lot of appeal.
Or she could go plant a bug in Dr. Pritchard’s lab. It wasn’t a sure bet, but it was the best way she could think of to identify who the “she” was that Nadia and Sonia had been referring to.
Devil would bet her fortune that whatever paper “she” was supposed to have left wasn’t a grocery list. And that made her nervous. And when she was nervous, she wanted intel—the kind of intel a bug would help her obtain. The problem was, Pritchard and her team were probably in the lab and not likely to leave for at least a couple of hours.
Leaving the mass spectrometer to do its thing, Devil walked to her locker and pulled her phone from her bag. Starting a group text, she typed,“Any chance any of you can get eyes on the lab and also find me a reliable source for a bug?”
“Bug?”Nora asked.
“We need to know who the cleaners were referring to when they were talking in the lab,”Six chimed in, seamlessly picking up Devil’s logic. She’d been supporting Heather through the trial for the past few weeks, and Devil hadn’t seen much of her. But the trial had successfully concluded the day of the security breach—in fact, they’d all been celebrating when she’d received Darius’s text—and she was now fully up to date.
“Right, of course,”Nora wrote.“I’m literally looking at beetles right now, which is where my mind went.”
“Beetles?”All three of them asked at the same time, the three texts rolling in one right after the other. Nora was a vet, but beetles weren’t her thing.
“Not important. And believe me, you don’t want to know,”she answered.“I would imagine Lucy or the DeMarcos could set you up.”
