Page 52 of Fighting His Fate
“You should try to go back to sleep.”
There was a cold chance in hell of that happening, especially with Brett and HERO Force snooping around Lamont Scientific in the dead of night. “I’m wide awake. What time are you leaving?”
“Guys should be here in twenty.”
She nodded. It would be a hell of a night, worrying for their safety. But all she said was, “I’ll make sure I’m out by then.”
28
It was pouringrain as Brett, Trace, and Razorback made their way through the thick woods that separated Lamont Scientific from a residential neighborhood some quarter mile away. They wore full camouflage and face paint, making them vanish into their surroundings. So far, the thunderstorms had stayed to their south, but they were still a threat—one they had little choice but to accept.
“Parking lot’s empty,” said Mac, coming over Brett’s comm set. Mac was in a separate vehicle with no plans to enter the building. He was monitoring police channels and would run interference if they were found out. “If anyone’s watching the security feed, they’re off-site, which buys us some time.”
“Roger that,” said Brett.
“By the way, I started to go through that box from Joni’s house,” said Razorback. “It’s a gold mine of scientific research. From what I’ve read so far, Joni knew her technique to modify sperm could result in genetic abnormalities. She even suspected they were most likely to occur on gene eighteen, the exact location of the mutation for Damon’s Disorder.”
Brett furrowed his brow. “Does she say anything about the twins?”
“I haven’t seen anything about them yet. It seems like she’s writing a journal article. She may have been preparing to publish her findings.”
“That would explain why Fleming wanted to keep her quiet. If she came up with a way to make infertile sperm fertile again, that could make him a shit-ton of money, but not if the resulting children had genetic mutations.”
Razorback clucked his tongue. “This kind of work is cutting-edge. Her knowledge could have contributed greatly to science, no matter what it did to Lamont Scientific’s stock value.”
Brett knew his friend all too well. “That’s what she would have cared about, not the dollar signs, which gives Fleming motive to kill her and the twins.”
“Exactly. Any big scientific journal would jump at the chance to publish this information. Your fertility journals, of course, but something like this could get you into the big leagues.Cell,The New England Journal of Medicine,Nature. She could have written her own pass.”
Brett stopped walking. “Nature? Like nature-cage?”
Razorback shrugged. “That’s interesting. Could be an editor or someone associated with the journal.”
They encountered a ten-foot chain-link fence, the men easily scaling it and dropping to the ground on the other side. They’d just set foot across enemy lines, and the enemy probably knew it. “Clock’s ticking, gentlemen.”
They picked up the pace as the first crack of thunder sounded overhead. “Piece of shit fucking thunderstorm,” Mac grumbled in their ears.
Brett was in the lead, moving quickly toward one of three fire doors on the back of the building. He had several bars of C4 in his pack, but he also had Joni’s employee badge and was hoping against hope it would unlock the door. He climbed the metal stairs two at a time. “Here goes nothing.” He held the badge to a card reader beside the door.
It opened, and he sighed with relief, his feet already propelling him forward. Trace would search Joni’s office to the left, while Razorback took the lab and Brett took apart Fleming’s innermost sanctum.
Razorback was hot on his heels, the men hoping to gain access to the lab through Fleming’s office. Brett was acutely aware of the passage of time as he tried Joni’s badge on Fleming’s electronic door lock. It didn’t work. He took a block of C4 from his pack and quickly set the charges, taking great pleasure in the small explosion that dented the steel and popped the lock. “I’m in.”
The room was large, with a wide desk glowing in the dim security lights, a wall full of cabinets, and floor-to-ceiling windows to an even larger laboratory. Razorback tried the door to the lab, found it open, and went inside. Brett headed straight for Fleming’s desk.
Mac’s voice crackled in his ear. “Cops are on their way, gentlemen. Reports of multiple intruders on the premises. ETA, seven minutes at top speed.”
Brett checked his watch. So, they had eyes inside the building. He flipped on a light. The idea of Fleming watching him pleased him immensely as he searched through the other man’s personal effects, haphazardly throwing them over his shoulder as he went.
There were office supplies and forms. Receipts that he fisted in his palm and tucked into his pack. Nothing struck him as unusual. He headed for the cabinets, finding shelf after shelf of scientific equipment, beakers and pipettes and Bunson burners. Boxes of gloves and chemicals. He swiped each shelf onto the floor as he went, finally coming to three cabinets that were locked.
He pulled a short crowbar from his back, making quick work of the flimsy cupboard latches. He opened the first cabinet and froze.
Son of a bitch.
It was full of photos of Joni, like a high school locker decorated with images of friends. He picked up a stunning geode filled with green crystals, knowing instantly Fleming had stolen it from her. He held it up and turned it 360 degrees, smiling for the imagined camera before he popped it in his pack. Damned if that bastard got to keep anything that had been important to his friend.
The second cupboard was tightly packed with two dozen files stacked one on top of another. He pulled them out and looked at them, immediately recognizing Joni’s handwriting and stuffing them in his pack.
