Drained: The Lucid (41 page)

“You know what,” Riley said with sudden excitement. If the partners had known about the downtime that early on, it could only mean someone had tipped them off. She grabbed her purse from the ground. “I have to go.”

“Riley, you look like you have an idea.” For the first time, the stress lifted from Josh’s face. “Where are you running off to?”

“Just keep your phone on.” She checked the time on her watch. “Before I go, do you happen to know who said that stuff about the reserves?”

Josh shook his head. “No. I was standing on the toilet once I realized what they were talking about.”

“I need you to find out who visited the reserves last.”

“I can’t do that!” His eyes bulged. “I’ll end up in a body bag.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she challenged. “It’s up to us to figure out what the hell has been going on with this company lately.” She opened the office door to let herself out. “Those zombies are going down, right?”

Josh mustered a smile before turning his attention to his computer.

On the other end of the phone call, Riley was met with endless ringing. Every call went to voicemail. She wasn’t the type of girl to bombard other people with repeated calls, but this was an emergency. If Trusics was a step ahead of her, she might have been too late. At best, they could have wiped Amber’s memories, or done the unthinkable at worst. These cyber attacks were a direct threat to the corporation and their livelihood. She didn’t want to believe that her employer was capable of questionable recourse, but the darker thoughts plagued her mind.

Riley called Amber again. This time, she picked up.

“Hey you. I was just getting some gas,” the redhead said over the jangling of car keys in the background. “What’s up?”

“Are you home now?”

“No, but I’m not far.”

“Meet me there.”

Riley drove at a maddening speed to get to Amber’s home. If she was involved with this latest round of attacks, Amber’s safety depended on Riley finding her before Trusics found out. She could have warned her over the phone, but Riley didn’t have confidence that either or both of their phones weren’t bugged.

She arrived at Amber’s rental home before her return. The house was dark inside, and a single streetlamp illuminated the driveway. Parked in front of the house, Riley flexed her fingers around the leather steering wheel as she waited for Amber.

The familiar silver Honda Civic rattled down the residential street and pulled into the driveway. Riley cut the engine on her Jaguar and strode in the direction of Amber’s car, her senses on alert. There were no suspicious vehicles parked in the street besides her own, but anyone could have been lurking in the ample shadows or crouched behind an overgrown shrub. She was at Amber’s driver’s side door the moment she turned off her car.

When Amber climbed out, Riley wrapped her arms around the smaller woman.

“Hello to you, too.” Amber chuckled at the unexpected show of emotion.

Even if Amber was tangled in this mess, Riley didn’t want to see her hurt.

Riley’s eyes shifted around the neighborhood again, looking for any sign that they were being watched. “Let’s go inside,” she murmured into Amber’s hair. She dropped the embrace, and her fingers curled around Amber’s arm to pull her towards the back door.

“Sure. I have to get my bag out of the trunk though.”

Riley’s grip on Amber’s forearm tightened. “It can wait.”

Amber led them into the quiet home. She flipped on the overhead light in the kitchen and tossed her ring of keys onto the eat-in table. “Mind telling me why you’re being so weird?”

Riley couldn’t relax, not even inside. “Give me a second.” Just because the house had been dark with no signs of activity or a break-in, that didn’t mean that they were alone. “Where are your roommates?”

“With family for Christmas. It’s just us.”

Riley turned her back to Amber and embraced the adrenaline that coursed her veins; the primordial cubare instincts overtook her. She rarely let it happen outside of the realm. Physically there were no visible signs of a change except the pure black of her eyes, but the transition heightened her senses. She waited a moment longer, straining her hearing. Satisfied that they were alone—free from roommates and Trusics henchmen—she turned to face Amber once the ebb of the cubare senses faded. Amber stared back at her with concern.

In the safety of the small rental, Riley skipped the pleasantries of a proper conversation. “I need you to tell me the truth.” Her eyes hardened to hinder the possibility of tears. “Are you still involved with those journalists? The Truthseekers?”

Amber visibly flinched. Instead of a verbal response, however, she took off her jacket and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair.

“You need to stop lying to me, Am,” Riley calmly pled. “Because now it directly involves both of our lives.”

Amber looked worried at the mention of their joint safety. “What do you mean?”

“What do you know about what’s happened to Trusics today?” Riley gravely asked. She hoped Amber knew nothing and had nothing to do with the cyber attack, but her more cynical side warned her that she had never stopped her relationship with the Truthseekers.

Amber continued her silent vigil.

“There are people that could possibly hurt you over this information.” Riley’s worry was quickly turning to frustrated anger. “And I need you to tell me the truth before they find out.”

“You’re starting to scare me.”

“Please, answer my question.”

Amber wet her lips. “It wasn’t the Truthseekers directly—at least not all of the group. They’ve recently acquired a financial backer who claims to have the same goals—to take Trusics down. Since then, the group has been more proactive in their approach. But don’t ask me why Kenner Dunbar got involved with them. The first time I met him was at dinner with you; I didn’t know him before and haven’t talked to him since.”

“Kenner Dunbar?” Riley repeated the information in disbelief. “As in Clay & Dunbar?”

Amber nodded.

Riley thought over the situation. Kenner knew what he was doing, who he was getting involved with, and what beehive he was poking at. Amber and the rest of the Truthseekers, or the bloggers, or the hackers, or whatever they were, didn’t.

“We’re really over now, aren’t we?”

“Yeah.” She discovered that she wasn’t angry with Amber or even sad about this second betrayal—just disappointed. She suspected her mounting feelings for Morgan were responsible for that.

Reaching into her purse, Riley pulled out her wallet. She pulled out every bill that she had. It didn’t amount to much, but it was enough to buy her time until the bank opened in the morning. She tossed the money onto the kitchen table.

Amber’s brow furrowed. “What’s this for?”

“Pack your bags and get out of town for a while.”

“I’m supposed to work at the café tomorrow,” Amber protested.

“Amber, this is your life. You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. Wait until this storm blows over if you want to come back. I can wire you more money in the morning.”

Amber’s body stiffened. “I don’t want your money.”

“Don’t fight me on this.”

As she walked out to her car, Riley pulled her phone out of her pocket. She debated on calling this new information in or not. If Kenner Dunbar was behind this, Trusics wouldn’t take kindly to the news. She didn’t know to what lengths her company would go, but they had a department full of employees with weapons that were not props in an elaborate roleplay; these people were ready to preserve the company’s existence.

Her fingers found Josh’s name in her contact list and she called. “Any leads yet?”

“They’re still working on it. But I was able to gain access to the reserve room logs.” He sighed heavily with the burden of knowledge. “It looks like an inside job, Riley. There’s no sign of a break-in. Whoever did this, they had clearance to that room.”

“Couldn’t anyone use a code though?” Riley proposed as she unlocked her car and slid into the driver’s seat. “Someone could steal that.”

“Sure, but stealing that, as well as Niall Price’s fingerprints and retinal scans?” He blew out another long breath. “This is insane. What can of worms have you opened up, Riles?”

“I’m sorry.” Riley stared out her car window at Amber’s house. The front of the house was still dark as were the upstairs windows. She could have stayed and packed Amber’s bags for her and driven her out of town herself to keep her safe, but Amber was on her own now. She could only hope that she took the warning words seriously.

“No, no. This is pretty cool.” He laughed. “It’s like I’m a CIA agent or something.”

“I’m glad you find this amusing. Remind me to buy you a beer after this is over.” She took a moment to absorb the new information. “We’ll let the company deal with Niall. But text me a heads up if you hear anything new about this.”

Whatever Niall Price was doing with a year’s supply of energy was the least of her concerns for the moment. If he wanted to screw the company over, that would be Trusics’s problem.

• • •

Christmas Day was turning out to be the longest day of the year. Riley drove away from Amber’s home with her in-car navigation system programmed to the offices of Clay & Dunbar. She had no loyalty to the rival company, especially now that she knew Kenner Dunbar had been fiscally supporting the Truthseekers and the cyber attack, but she had always had a soft spot for Darren Clay. After his discretion about seeing her at the Red Sea Tavern and the subsequent extracted energy care-package, she felt an obligation to at least warn him what Kenner had been up to; Darren himself might have been involved in trying to take down Trusics, but if not, she didn’t want him to be an innocent casualty in a cubare war if she could help it.

The navigational voice chimed as she approached the onramp to the highway, a robotic reminder which resurfaced the fear of being watched by her employer. It was a nagging alarm that set off in her head. If Trusics could track her by way of watch, their company vehicles would be no different.

Her eyes darted around the surrounding neighborhood and she jerked the car away from the shoulder of the road to pull into a fast-food parking lot. A warning message appeared on the dashboard alerting her to the automated rerouting.

“Please, be quiet,” Riley grumbled as the voice of the GPS continued to navigate her in a calm manner that grated on her nerves. The car idled as her fingers moved across the touchscreen to delete her destination.

Riley unfastened her seatbelt and climbed out from the confines of the company vehicle. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. The luxury of time was not on her side. Trusics would discover who was behind the web attack and punish those responsible. She breathed out deeply to collect her thoughts and emotions. There were a number of people she could call to get a ride, but only one who wouldn’t try to divert her from confronting Clay & Dunbar.

She pulled out her phone and found the number in her contacts. “Henry?”

“Yes, Miss Riley?” her go-to taxi man answered.

“I need a ride.”

It was about fifteen minutes later before Henry’s black Lincoln Town Car pulled up behind her vehicle. It felt longer than that to Riley, however, as she stared down each minute that passed on her phone. She jumped into the backseat of Henry’s taxi before the vehicle even pulled to a complete stop.

“Miss Riley, it’s been too long.” Henry smiled at her via the rearview mirror. “Car problems again?”

Riley glanced out the window at the abandoned Jaguar. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“Where to tonight? A cubare club or one of the human ones you like?”

“Not a club.” Riley looked out the rear window at the lights of passing traffic. Henry was a responsible driver, always careful with his cargo, but right now she needed him to be like every other taxi driver she’d ever encountered. “I need you take me to the Clay & Dunbar office.”

Henry put on his blinker and pulled out into the street. “Which one? The one near Trusics or the warehouse?”

“Warehouse? When did they get a second office?”

Henry’s eyes were focused on the road ahead, but he flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror periodically. “I don’t know if it’s Mr. Dunbar’s property, but I’ve taken him there more than a few times in the last month.”

Riley tugged her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t know which one to go to.”

“May I suggest the warehouse then? The main building has been a ghost town for the last month.”

“What are you talking about?”

Riley could see Henry’s bushy eyebrows raise in the rearview mirror. “You didn’t hear? Rumor among the cubare is that the Clay & Dunbar partnership dissolved.”

• • •

Riley stared out the taxi window at a darkened brick building in a less than savory part of the city. “You brought Kenner Dunbar
here
?” Street lighting was sparse, but Riley could make out the chain-link fence that surrounded the building and a nearly vacant parking lot. The building in the center, which looked to be four or five stories high, had been a former feed and seed warehouse if the painted signage on the brick spoke true. No light came from the bottom three levels, but a pale yellow glow emitted from the fourth floor.

Henry turned around in his seat. “Not exactly his scene, am I right?”

Riley nodded and continued to gaze out the window. She trusted Henry. He was cubare, like herself, but an independent who relied on his taxi services to pay the bills. He had no direct affiliation with either Trusics or C&D beyond providing car services to several cubare employed at each company.

She felt for the door handle.

“Do you want me to wait for you?” Henry offered. Riley knew it was a struggle for him not to pry into why she had asked to be taken here this night.

If Kenner or Darren were inside, this wouldn’t take long. “Wait twenty minutes,” she said. “If I don’t come out, I need you to call my friend Josh and tell him where you dropped me off. Can you do that for me, Henry?” She scribbled down Josh’s cell number on a piece of paper and handed it over.