SEALs of Honor: Dane (13 page)

Chapter 18

“I
PRESUME THEY
have gone to talk to her?”

“And check out other leads,” Dane said.

“And what do we do while they’re gone?”

“You are supposed to heal. Rest, relax and get better.”

She snorted. “So everyone else gets to do something useful, and I get to lie here and do nothing.” She threw her hands up in the air. “I hate that. I want something to do. Something proactive. I hate waiting and I hate being a victim.”

“But you like being alive and that’s the point we’re at right now. Keeping you alive.”

“But they are trying to kill me – why? If they wanted what I know then they would try to kidnap me. If they have my research they don’t need me. And they wouldn’t need to kill me.”

“Unless they figure that Michaels told you something about who they are, and so they are cleaning up.”

She stared at him wordlessly. “Just because of that? Do people kill over such little things?”

“You put their whole organization at risk. Imagine a big company selling chemical warfare to our enemies.”

She paled. “That’s terrible. I don’t want my research to be involved in something like that,” she cried. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.”

“But it’s what is happening, so we have to nip it in the bud before that is the end result.”

He stood up and tugged her into his arms. “We can’t think about what you would have preferred to have happened but rather deal with what
is
happening.”

She snuggled in close then reared back to look up at him. “We have to stop this.”

“We are working on it.”

“No, let’s go to the company and destroy my research.”

“There’s a couple of things wrong with that idea. First, I doubt you own it. Second, there will be copies of it, third, it’s likely already been stolen and fourth, we need to know what it might all be so that our people can develop some type of defense against it.” He pulled her in tight and just held her. “Remember,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”

“And yet it feels like I’m to blame.”

“Because of your research?”

She nodded.

“But this isn’t what you planned to do. It happened. In many ways, this discovery could be brilliant,” he admitted. “Particularly if used against our enemies. Like anything, we wouldn’t want it turned against us, so we need to know the details so we can come up with a line of defense against it.”

“Or I destroy it completely,” she said in a small voice. “Then no one needs to get hurt.”

He hugged her close. “We should be so lucky to live in a world without war. I could hope that it would happen in my lifetime – at least in my children’s lifetime.”

At the word children, she froze, then lifted her head. “Do you have children?”

“No.” He laughed. “But maybe one day I will.”

“Yeah, me too.”

She lay her head against his chest, appreciating the moment. There’d been so few lately.

“Now considering that you’ve given us several leads, I need to track some of them down.” He looked around. “Maybe in the kitchen. Where are you going to be? I can work anywhere, so pick a room and I’ll move with you.”

“The table here is fine.” She stepped back and gathered up her laptop and workbooks and set up on one end of the table. “I’ll work here.” As she brought up her work, he shifted so he took over the other side of the table. Settled, she got down to refreshing her mind on where she’d finished on her research paper. There were several work oriented emails. Thankfully there were no other nasty ones. She could tell from the way Dane stared at her as she got started that he was expecting something less than pleasant. She smiled up at him. “Just the normal emails.”

“Good.” He disappeared into his work.

She spent a pleasant hour working on her paper until Hawk walked in the door.

He sniffed the air. “I missed breakfast, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Dane said from behind his computer. “But there are cold sausages in the fridge beside the eggs.”

Surprised, she watched Hawk prepare a hefty breakfast for himself. He caught her looking at him at one point and smiled curiously at her. “What’s the matter?”

“I was surprised you are cooking,” she admitted. “But I shouldn’t be. You are all so damn capable it’s scary.”

“How can capable be scary?” Hawk scoffed. “It should make you feel better to know we can handle many situations.”

“Oh it does,” she teased. “It makes you guys ideal men.”

“Hawk is, but he’s taken now,” Dane said. “Our last set of days off ended up being worse than many of our missions, but the end result is he found someone special. Isn’t that right, Hawk?”

“It is,” Hawk said cheerfully. “Talk about a life event.”

“Really, you guys have long-term partners?”

Both men looked at her. She flushed. “Sorry, I just figured that with the stress and danger you’d avoid long-term relationships. Not that you couldn’t have them or wouldn’t have them just…” she stopped and shrugged, “I’m an idiot…”

“Not at all,” Hawk said gently. “It
is
an issue with us. Many don’t do well married. Some military wives can’t handle the stress and uncertainty of sending their men off to war every day. Same goes for law enforcement of all kinds. It’s a problem. However, there are many successful marriages. Special women who can handle it. I lucked out.”

“And so did Mason,” Dane said quietly. “He’s been the leader in this area.”

“Really?” She thought about the man and smiled. “Makes sense.”

Dane looked at her suspiciously. “What makes sense?”

“That Mason is in a committed relationship. There isn’t the same roaming eye on him that there is in many of the other men. He’s not only in a relationship, he’s happy to be with
her
.”

The other two men nodded. “It’s an ideal situation, but so few military men manage to get it.”

“And I’m keeping you from her,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s the job. And if it wasn’t you, it would be something or someone else. She knows it and so do I.”

“Still…” she felt odd realizing that as much as she really liked these men they all had lives she wasn’t a part of. Lives they could go to when the job was done. She needed the reminder. Right now she was a job to them.

And they would get to go home at some time when the “job” was over.

They were nice to have as friends and Dane…well she’d love to have him as more than a friend but it wasn’t likely to happen. She cast a look in his direction and found him staring at her.

She raised an eyebrow in question, but he shrugged and went back to working on his laptop.

She understood how he felt. There was no understanding or explaining this inexplicable draw to each other. Attraction was one thing. This…was something else. She wondered at Hawk and Mason and their relationships. What were the women like? Would she like them? She had so few friends and most were men. She’d love to have a core group of women friends.

So far it hadn’t happened. There were a few at work but they were older. Less on the friendly side. She’d thought she’d make more friends at the university but had found that studies had completely taken up most of her time and she’d not been a party animal. That hadn’t left much opportunity or time to meet other women. Men were easier to be friends with. And she’d naturally gravitated toward the men, so it had been an easy choice.

Now at her age, she found herself wishing for more women in her life.

*

D
ANE DRILLED THROUGH
the layers of hierarchy in Tenesco’s history. The company had connections. Did they know what their people were doing? Or were they actively requiring this type of behavior, as the company itself was involved in things it shouldn’t be? He hadn’t been able to find anything odd on the surface of course, and even now as he checked deeper into their history and the roots of the company, nothing was raising red flags. Except it was involved in a major takeover a few years ago. The previous board of directors had been fired and the new company replaced every one of the top management personnel. He was still checking the old versus the new. He asked Marielle about it.

“Oh, that’s right. I’d worked there the summer before I went to university over the winter and went back early spring and all the upper management staff were gone. Not that I have much to do with any of them, but there’d been a lot of talk. The new owners were taking the company in a new direction. Although I have no idea what that meant. There was a lot of talk as people worried about their jobs for months then as a big boom wasn’t lowered, they eased up. I’m not sure I ever met anyone in the new management team. Hudson wasn’t happy with the changes though and was fairly voluble about it in private. He was always perfect when the company bosses wandered the floor but wouldn’t say anything nice about them later.”

“It happens that way sometimes. Mergers and takeovers are not always welcome, and people often lose their jobs in the shuffle.”

“Several jobs were lost and several people were ugly about it, but it’s not like they are going to steal information from the company as a way to pay it back for losing their job,” she protested lightly.

Dane just stared at her. “That’s exactly what they do.”

“Really?” Her shoulders sagged and she muttered, “Why are people so…much like people?”

“You are just living in a world full of sunshine and rainbows.”

Silence at the table had him looking up at her. Had he upset her? “What?”

“I
was
living in a world like that,” she said. “But I’m not anymore.”

Hawk brought his plate to the table, changing the tone of the conversation.

“Did you see anything out there, Hawk?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Peaceful and calm. Sunshine and rainbows all the way.” And he grinned at her.

She laughed. Dane shook his head.

The peaceful camaraderie set the tone for the rest of the afternoon.

Chapter 19

S
HE CLOSED HER
books and yawned. “I hardly did anything but I’m tired already.” She stacked up her books and set them at the back of the table. “I think I should go to the company and get the rest of my stuff.”

He lifted his head from his laptop and said, “I thought you said it was all on the servers.”

“It is there too but my own stuff is on my keys.”

“Who would know this?”

“No idea. It’s not like I’ve been hiding my work all these years. They’d have seen me use keys over time. Stuff I was bringing back and forth to work on at home. Backups. Copies for presentations.”

“But all the work is on the servers at the company as well?”

She nodded. “We have a login to the server and like any company they have security safeguards in place.”

“But…” He waited.

“I work on my laptop a lot. And work from home even more so I needed a way to carry the information back and forth.” She shrugged. “That’s not new or different.”

“Not if this research is important and people are trying to get it. Then it’s a case of needing to know how many copies of the material there are.”

“Two. The servers and my key.”

“And your laptop?”

“Not really. Bits and pieces I suppose but I work off the key.”

“And yet you don’t have your key with you.”

She flushed. “Right. I switched to cloud storage a little while ago.”

He just stared at her. “So you don’t need the key anymore?”

She threw up her hands. “Hey, it’s got some stuff on it I need, so I usually have all of it available just in case. I’ve been transferring some to cloud storage, but I’m only using the free space and it’s not very big so the key, cloud, laptop and work.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very good system.”

“It’s not, but I was a student and viewing my work more along the lines of schoolwork not chemical warfare,” she snapped. “I’d be happy to change this and put it all on the cloud and the server but that means going to the lab.” She brightened. “That’s actually a really good idea.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes it is. I’ll be able to grab my other books I need too,” she waved a hand at the stack on the table. “I didn’t bring home everything I wanted last time so could use a couple more of my textbooks.”

“I’m not sure you showing up at the company is a good idea at all,” he admitted. “It might trigger another attack.”

“That would mean people are watching Tenesco, so if that’s the case, what about the fate of the other people who work there? Are they in danger too?” She shook her head, sending her hair flying. “I can’t have that on my conscious too.”

She stood up. “That’s enough. Let’s go to my company, I can grab the stuff I need and you’ll be able to see what the layout and system is like. It’s not chemical warfare there.”

“If not there,” he said standing up, “then how about at a sister site? Where different work is carried out but still sits under the same umbrella corporation.”

“I hate the sound of any of it. I don’t want to believe the company I’ve been working for is involved in anything so horrible.”

“You work in chemistry. What did you think they worked on?”

“They develop industrial chemicals,” she said in a harsh tone. “Not weapons.”

Hawk’s head continued to flip from one side to the other as he listened to the conversation and the two glaring adversaries. Marielle wanted to comment but figured it would make things worse. She slumped back down. “Whatever.”

Dane sat down opposite her.

Hawk smirked. Marielle caught the look and frowned at him. “What are you smiling about?”

“You two.” He got up from the table and walked to the sink where he washed his dishes. “Lots of energy between you two.”

“So? He’s irritating as hell.” When Hawk laughed she frowned. “Whatever.”

“Let’s go to Tenesco,” Dane said.

She brightened. “Really?”

Dane nodded. “You’re not going to rest until you can grab your stuff.”

“Well, it is my work,” she said apologetically. She bounced toward the doorway. “Let me grab my jacket.”

*