Page 9 of Devil
CHAPTERSIX
Darius leanedback in his chair and put his hands behind his head, stretching out his shoulders. It was well past the end of the business day, but as he had nothing else to occupy his time, he’d been staying late most nights. He tipped his head back and stretched his neck, smiling at himself. The extra hours at the centerwerehelpful to his learning. But he recognized an avoidance technique if ever there was one.
It had been four weeks since he’d walked with Lily to get coffee. He’d put her on edge with his careless comment about Smith House, and she’d barely acknowledged him since. It was starting to make him a little crazy. He wanted to know so much about her; he wanted to know all the things that weren’t in her file. But he had yet to find a way to break through her cool—some might say chilly—facade. Being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he wouldeverfigure it out. And so late nights at work seemed a viable option to take his mind off the problem.
He was about to call it a night and turn his computer off when an alert dinged. He opened the feed to the security system and saw two cleaning women exit through a service entrance door and enter the garage. He frowned. Nothing about them leaving the building should have triggered the alarm. Unless they hadn’t used their access cards as they’d left.
Typing in a few commands, he brought up the system that monitored traffic into and out of the building. Sure enough, the women had keyed in an hour ago but had not keyed out.
The hairs on his neck went on end when he scanned the video monitors. Based on the feed, all three cleaning teams were present and accounted for. But if one of the crews had left the building, who were the two women who’d taken their place?
Wanting to identify the rogue duo, he clicked on an image and zoomed in on one of the crews. He started to compare their faces to their badges, but then he paused. This was exactly the kind of situation he was supposed to alert Lily to without alerting her to his role. Cursing the constraints put on him, he took thirty seconds to come up with a decent cover story. Then picking up his phone, he sent a text to a number he had memorized but had never used.
“There’s been a data breach,”he wrote.“Two months of data seem to have disappeared.”
A beat passed, then bubbles appeared letting him know Lily had both seen his message and was responding.“Disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“I agree.”
“I assume you’re telling me because my lab was hit?”
“Yes, one of five labs.”
“I’ll be right there.”
He felt bad knowing the anxiety his text had caused. But it wasn’t as though he could just tell her something hinky was going on with the cleaning staff and suggest she come in and have a look. She’d likely think him crazy if he shared that. At least this way, he’d ensured she’d come to the center, and he’d tell her it was a false alarm as soon as she arrived. In the meantime, though, he needed to think of some way for her to discover the odd behavior of the staff.
Forty-five minutes later, her car appeared on the security screen in the garage. He couldn’t help the smile that curved his lips. Cos Cob was, at minimum, an hour away. But in her Porsche, and no doubt with the help of a radar detector, she’d made it in record time.
Flickering his gaze to another monitor, he zeroed in on the cleaning crew he’d been watching—the two with access cards that didn’t match their faces. Oddly, they had, in fact, been cleaning. Which made him wonder if maybe they were legitimate employees of the cleaning service who’d just forgotten their own cards. But even if they were, that didn’t explain why they’d switched places with the original crew mid-shift.
With a frustrated grunt, he locked his computer, then started down the stairs. In his prior role, he would have run facial recognition on the two women and gathered his own intel. But since his orders were clear that he was not to engage unless Lily needed him, he pushed that thought aside and considered how best to orchestrate getting Lily in their path.
Slipping quietly from the stairwell into the hall, he made sure the two women couldn’t see him before using his master key card to access another lab. Pulling his phone out, he glanced at the security app and saw that Lily had entered the building and was starting up the stairs to her lab. Taking a deep breath, he took a chance and sent a text, keeping his fingers crossed that it would work out.
* * *
Devil entered the stairwell as her phone dinged with a text. Pulling it from her pocket, she paused at the bottom of the stairs and opened a message from Darius. Although she knew her night wasn’t over yet, relief flooded through her as she read.
“The data have been restored. There was a glitch with the bank of servers, not a security breach. A power issue, they think. IT security is doing a root cause analysis but wanted to let you know ASAP.”
“Thank you, glad to hear this, though I’ll still check my data,”she answered.
“I’m in Lab 3 on the fourth floor, come up and I’ll give you all the details I have.”
She debated for half a second whether to meet him. The last thing she needed in her life was someone whose intentions she didn’t have a good handle on. But right now, it was business, and this business was important. It wasn’t so much that she was concerned aboutherlab—the data were sensitive, but not dangerous. But shewasconcerned about the security of the lab as a whole. If she wanted to know precisely what had happened, she’d need to talk to Darius.
With a sigh, she started up the stairs as she texted her response.“In the stairwell now, be there in a few mins.”She didn’t wait to see if he acknowledged her response, and slipping the phone into her pocket, she climbed to the fourth floor.
The first thing Devil noticed when she exited the stairwell was an unstaffed cleaning cart beside Lab 14. Frowning at the sight, she slowed her steps as she approached. The distinct sound of a stool being moved across the industrial flooring filtered through the door that wasn’t quite closed, and she paused.
For two seconds, she considered walking into the lab and confronting whoever was in there. But instead, she grabbed her phone, opened a listening app that would enable her to hear through the wall, and set her earbuds in her ears. Hovering ten feet from the door, she’d be able to eavesdrop on any conversation taking place in the lab. A much better way to figure out exactly what was going on.
“She said she’d leave it,” a woman said.
