Chapter Sixteen

Mike

Warren Scientific

MIKE YAWNED AS he pushed open the door to his lab. The lights flickered on, and he peeled off his coat. He hung it on the peg over the trio of umbrellas that he’d gotten as a joke after the last time he’d shown up soaked. He needed to remember to take at least one home with him before spring showers arrived in a couple of months.

Today was the day Sam should have the answer from the DNA test. Knowing that they’d have the results soon had been the five hundred pound gorilla in the room last night when he brought in Mexican to share with Gabby. Maybe that’s why he’d bought extra food again. He’d suggested Mr. Shepard join them for supper so they could tell him about their fun ice skating. The old man’s chatter had filled in any long silences when something reminded him that today was the day they’d find out. And everything had been a reminder.

What amazed him was that he felt as ambivalent about getting the results as Gabby did. It wasn’t as if he were taking care of the baby and had moments of insanity when he thought Carol was his.

No, insanity was too strong a word. Gabby hadn’t said anything about Carol being her child since she’d brought him the DNA samples. She simply was enjoying the baby, and she was far more competent than she’d been when Carol first arrived.

But that didn’t explain his own mixed feelings about the impending results. Yes, the past week had been great. Sam had teased him about not being the last one out of the building, but leaving when everyone else did.

“Looks as if you’ve got some reason to go home,” Sam had said more than once. “And it’s about time.”

He wouldn’t admit it to his friend, but he looked forward to heading to Maple Street and the chance to spend some time with Gabby. It wasn’t that he thought his work was less valuable. If he could prove his hypothesis, then what he was doing here could help a lot of people. Yet his work no longer gave him as much satisfaction as bringing takeout to Gabby and seeing her grateful smile.

And even better were the kisses they’d shared the past couple of nights. At the time, running his hands along her soft curves hadn’t reminded him how long it’d been since he’d seduced a woman. He’d been thinking too much about the pleasure of hearing her breath catch in reaction to his touch. But he was remembering now how long it’d been. Almost two years. No wonder Sam had teased him that it was about time.

But now everything he and Gabby had enjoyed was about to come to an abrupt crossroads. Once Sam brought him the results of the DNA testing, everything had to change. Handing Carol over to children’s services would rip Gabby apart. He hated the idea, too, because he didn’t like thinking that he’d never see another of Carol’s silly expressions or that he wouldn’t have to worry about getting spit up on another lab coat. The baby had wiggled her way into his heart as surely as she had into Gabby’s. To lose her now... Lord, he didn’t want to think of that.

And, if Gabby forced the issue with the social worker, what would happen? Would they come and take the baby now? Would the pain of losing Carol rip him and Gabby apart, too? He could always share dinner occasionally with Gabby, even after the baby found her real family. There wasn’t anything preventing that.

There hadn’t been before either, he reminded himself, but somehow he and Gabby had never been able to get past the barrier of their dual closed doors separated by the hall. He’d been lost in his work, and she’d been caught up in her own life.

He’d stopped by Sam’s office on the way to his own lab. Sam had worked very late last night and wouldn’t be coming in until afternoon. His secretary wouldn’t release any test results without his okay.

Mike’s cell vibrated against his side. He flipped it open and read, Thanks for last night.

His breath caught as he wondered if Gabby would have said the same thing if he’d given into his longings and hadn’t restrained himself. She’d felt so amazing in his arms. His fingers along her lithe lines, her beguiling curves, and feeling them against him.

Then he read the rest of her message. Let me know as soon as you get the results from Sam.

His first reaction was irritation. Did she think he’d keep her in the dark on something so important?

“Calm down, Archer,” he growled to himself as he typed in a response. “She’s just as anxious as you are to know the truth.”

He looked down at the cell’s screen. Will do. Sam out until after lunch. Talk to him then. It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but how could he tell her that he hoped that she wouldn’t be heartbroken by the results when he knew she would? He wouldn’t be dishonest with her. He sent the message. The coward’s way out would be to text her the results, too, and it was a tempting thought. He hoped he’d have more guts than that.

Walking across his lab, he knew he had to get Gabby and Carol and the whole situation off his mind. Odd how he hadn’t thought once last evening about how he should be getting the results today to the next stage of his experiment. If the samples reacted to the dyes he’d injected into them, it would be the initial proof that he was on the right track with the gene therapy. It’d taken him two years to get to this point, a long struggle with trials and failures and trying again. He didn’t get discouraged, because he knew one positive result would make all the mistrials worthwhile.

His phone beeped. Voice mail. Gabby? He glanced at it and saw it was a call from a number he didn’t recognize. He was becoming obsessed with Gabby, hoping every call was from her. She also had obligations at work and couldn’t make calls just to chat. He wasn’t even certain she’d be thinking about him as he was about her. Her mouth was eager against his, but she could be enjoying the moment. Not all women were as determined to tie a man down as Donna, the last woman he’d been involved with, had been.

He flipped the phone open and took the call, determined to forget about women—past and present—while he got to work. The call was from a headhunter interested in seeing if Mike would consider a job move.

“The job is close by,” the headhunter said in his ear, sounding as excited as a kid with a new toy.

Telling the headhunter that he’d fax him a resume, he hung up. He always gave that answer, knowing it was the simplest and quickest way to get off the phone. He didn’t have any real intention of leaving Warren Scientific, not when he was at such a critical point in his research.

Mike set the phone aside and drew on the gloves he used while handling the samples. “Okay, guys,” he said as he raised the protective lid. “Let’s see what you’ve been up to for the past few days.”

He drew out the first one. His brows lowered in a frown. There was no sign of any dye in the tube. Drawing out a sterile slide, he used an eyedropper to put a bit of the vial’s contents on it. He slid it beneath his microscope and examined the slide, moving it back and forth to find out what had happened.

There was nothing but fluid on the slide. No sign of the cells he had been manipulating. No sign of the mixture in which they were suspended. Nothing but what appeared to be pristine water.

Had he mistakenly put an empty vial in with the others? That wasn’t like him, but he had been distracted by Gabby and the baby lately. Or maybe he simply hadn’t filled that vial. Again he was puzzled. That wasn’t like him either.

Picking up another tube, he made another slide. It was the same result. He wouldn’t have left two empty vials among his samples.

He lifted out another sample vial, then the next, staring at each one. All of them were as clean as if he’d never put a sample inside. What had happened? Had someone sabotaged his work?

“Don’t be stupid,” he warned himself aloud. There had to be a logical explanation. He was a scientist. He’d taught himself that there was always an explanation, even if he couldn’t see it at first.

Pushing back his stool, he swung around to look at the table behind him. Had someone moved his experiments into another environment? He shoved aside the pages of his experiment log and picked up some vials from beneath them. They’d never been used. Putting them into a box beneath the table, he gathered up the most recent pages of his log. He grabbed a handful of the vials that should be holding his samples. He paged through the log and compared the numbers written on the vials.

“Damn,” he muttered as he saw the numbers he had logged in matched the ones on the vials. These vials were supposed to contain the samples he’d injected at the end of last week.

For a moment, he hoped someone had mixed up vials, but the labels had his handwriting on them. They were the same ones. What had happened? There should have been some reaction, but the liquid looked the same in all of them.

How about one of the older samples? The ones from which he’d taken the new samples to mix with the dye. He lifted out one of the vials and swore under his breath. It looked as lifeless as the tubes he’d made up last week.

But he couldn’t eyeball the samples and know anything for sure. He made up a quick slide and put it under his microscope. Nothing, not even a microbe. It was as if the samples had been washed away.

What had happened? The cleaning staff knew better than to touch any of the equipment or the samples in storage. What could have destroyed them and the dye injected into them? He couldn’t think of a single answer to that question.

Maintenance’s cleaning crews were the only ones who came into the lab after he left. Then what—or who—had ruined his work?

He wouldn’t get an answer staring at the vials and cursing. He must focus. Forget the questions about Carol. Disregard his craving for Gabby. Stop thinking of all the “what ifs” and “if onlys”.

Mike bent to his work, concentrating on finding the answer to the puzzle in front of him.

THE DOOR SWUNG open so hard that it crashed into the wall. Mike didn’t look up from his experiment log, still searching for a clue—any clue at all—why his samples had vanished. Glass rattled as the door hit the wall a second time, but what did it matter? His latest samples and the ones before that and even the previous generation were irrevocably gone. He’d have to recreate at least a month’s work to get back to where he’d been yesterday.

“What’s the status of your experiments?” came a roar from the doorway.

Mike recognized his boss’s voice and turned. Dan Krantz was seldom without a smile, but he didn’t have one now. His face looked drawn and lined. It was as if his face were putty and someone had dug deeply into it with a sculpting knife. His usually neat lab coat had wrinkles as sharp as the ones on his face. The hair he wore pulled back in a neat ponytail was flying all around his face, giving him the appearance of a mad, and maddened, scientist.

“You probably don’t want to ask that question now,” Mike said. “There seems to have been some sort of catastrophic failure with my samples.”

Dan snarled a single word that Mike had never heard him use. Going to the microscope, he adjusted it and peered through it.

“You won’t see anything,” Mike said with a sigh. “Everything’s gone. Wiped clean.”

“All of it?”

“The past four generations. It’s as if the clock has been turned back a month.”

Dan nodded and headed for the door.

Mike stood. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’m trying to rule out sabotage. I’ll get back to you.” He vanished down the hall.

Mike heard another door crash open. Jane’s lab, by the sound of it.

Sabotage! It was such an ugly word, and it suggested that his ruined experiment wasn’t a singular event. What was going on?

He bent over logs, looking for an answer to the puzzle, more determined than ever to find it.

“HEY, MIKE!”

Swearing under his breath, Mike looked toward the door. His head banged into the table. He’d crawled under here half an hour ago, looking for some mechanical or electrical reason for the disaster. Whispers were rushing from one lab to the next. His weren’t the only experiments that had gone horribly wrong. Several of the people working along the hall had stopped in to tell him their tales of disaster.

“Hey, Mike!” came the call, this time louder.

“Not now, Sam! Something’s wrong with my equipment.” He jiggled another plug. The connection was good. Just like the rest. So what had happened? He needed an answer before he started over and had the same thing happen.

“Join the club.”

“You got hit, too? I didn’t think you had any active experiments going now.”

“I don’t, but every computer in my lab has gone crazy.”

“All of them?” He crawled out from beneath the table to see his friend’s long face. “You look horrible.

“I was up all night and then came back to this mess.” Sam lurched to the table, pulled out a stool, and sat. “Did you check your link-up with the Wiz?”

“No, I haven’t had a chance.” He clicked on the icon to bring up the Wiz, the acronym for the Warren Intranet Zone, the internal communications system for the building. The screen blinked twice, then went blank. “Nothing.”

“No surprise. The IT guys had a system-wide failure last night.”

He stared. A system-wide failure in the information technology section of the labs would have a further impact on everyone’s work. “A virus?”

“No, that was the first thing they checked on. I asked, but they can’t explain it other than to say the whole computer has had a nervous breakdown. It won’t run even the simplest applications, and every bit of data is inaccessible.”

“Every bit?”

Sam looked down at the pages scattered across the table. “Don’t worry about your experiment records. I’ve been assured most of our information is still there. We just can’t access it until they get the system up and running again.”

“What could cause something like that to happen to the computers?”

“Who knows?” Sam shrugged. “Electromagnetic pulse caused by UFOs.”

“No, seriously. What caused it?”

“I was being serious. That’s the only answer I’ve come up with that fits the situation. Maybe the guys in systems have another answer, but I doubt it the way they’re standing around and scratching their heads and using terms like ‘cascade effect’ and ‘total reboot.’” Sam folded his arms on the table and yawned. “Why are you so interested in the cause of the computer trouble?”

“Because it’s not the only systems failure in the building.” Mike quickly outlined what he’d discovered and heard.

Sam sat up straighter. “You know such failures can’t be related.”

“What are you suggesting? A coincidence? That’s a dirty word in scientific research.”

“But it does exist on occasion.”

Mike shook his head and sat on the other stool. “I’m not buying that. Whatever caused the systems failure may have had an effect on the experiments in the building. There’s no other logical explanation.”

“How much did you lose?”

“Four generations. I should be up and running again in about a month.”

“A month? That sucks.”

“Tell me about it.” Mike hesitated, then asked, “What about the samples I gave you for the DNA test? I’m assuming you were working overtime trying to get the computers back up to speed and you don’t have anything for me yet.”

“Sorry, Mike. Before I could get the tests run through the system, everything went crazy. And I’ve got to warn you. By the time the systems guys get everything running, there’s going to be a backlog of reports that need to be done. I’d say you’re looking at another week minimum, maybe longer.” He grimaced. “I’m really sorry, Mike. Maybe you should take some more samples and send them to another lab.”

“I’d rather have you do the testing because it’s such a sensitive issue.”

“For your friend.”

“Yeah, for my friend.” He knew by Sam’s smile that he’d keep pressing unless Mike revealed some information. “It’s the woman who lives across from me.”

“Gabby what’s-her-name?”

“You know her?”

“No, but you’ve mentioned her about a hundred times over the past year.”

“I have?” He could not recall a single time he’d talked about Gabby before now.

Sam laughed. “Well, not exactly by name, but you’ve said a bunch of times about how the old guy downstairs is trying to match you up with her. And, one time when I came over, you weren’t there, and I saw her in the hall.”

“So you struck up a conversation?”

“Hey, you’re my best friend. I need to know about any woman who’s gotten under your skin. I wanted to see if she was into you.” His brows lowered in a leer. “Now it sounds as if you’ve gotten into her.”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“Duh, Mike. Out of the blue you want a DNA test on some kid, but you don’t want me to test the father.” His leer fell away, and he said, “So how I figure it is there are two choices. Either you’re a first-class SOB and don’t want to be proven to be the father. so you’re going through all the steps but testing yourself. That way you can persuade her that you’re a nice guy, and you don’t have to lie when you say there’s no proof you’re daddy to her kid. Or maybe you’re being a really nice guy and helping her get information to force the real father into being tested, so he’ll have to pay child support. Which is it? Knowing you, I’d bet on choice number two.”

“Neither.”

“Then...”

“Neither. Just leave it alone.”

When Sam frowned, Mike realized he couldn’t ask his friend to put his curiosity aside. Not that Sam would. If he didn’t give Sam some information, Sam would show up at Gabby’s door on any flimsy pretense Sam could devise and try to wheedle the information out of her. Sam was a good friend, but his curiosity—an asset in research— made him a pain in the butt way too often.

“Look,” Mike said, “she asked me to get the information on the QT for her because...” He lowered his voice and leaned toward his friend. He hated coming up with more lies, especially about Mr. Shepard who’d been so supportive of Gabby... and him. But he wasn’t sure what else he could tell Sam to get his friend to believe his story. Sam certainly wouldn’t believe the truth! “Our landlord is somewhat of a gossip, and Gabby wants to make sure she can counter his supposition with the truth.”

“She really doesn’t know who the father is? Busy girl.”

“Cut it out, Sam. She’s a good person.”

“Very good, it sounds.”

He grasped his friend’s lapels and yanked him up off the stool. When he saw Sam’s eyes widen, he realized he’d let go of one lapel and was drawing back his fist to slam it into his friend. He growled a curse, then released Sam. Lowering his arm, he said, “Sorry.”

“Will you deck me if I say I think you’ve got something more than the hots for Gabby?”

“Just get the hell out of here. I’ve got so much work to do, and I don’t have time for this now.”

“Mike, be careful. If she’s got a kid and you’re getting involved, it could get messy.”

He waved toward the door. “Get out before I toss you out. I’ve got too much on my mind now to worry about anything but what happened to my experiment.”

“I’m sorry to hear about that.” Sam’s face grew long again. “I really am.”

“Thanks.”

When Sam left, closing the door behind him, Mike sat on the stool again and stared at the pages in front of him. The whole day was a disaster. First his experiment, now he’d almost clobbered his best friend, and then he’d lied to Sam.

He wasn’t worried just about his experiment. He was worried about what was going to happen as a result of this delay. Every day, Gabby was becoming more attached to the baby. When they finally had the truth... He sighed. No matter how he looked at it, the answer was always the same. It wasn’t going to be easy for any of them.