30

“I knew you could do it.”

“Well, I sort of did it.” Rhonda continued pecking away at the keyboard. It was closing in on three p.m., and she’d been at this for several hours. “You said you wanted to physically get into the room.”

“And we will, eventually,” Cooper said, peering over her shoulder at the monitor. “For now, a little covert camera surveillance is the next best thing to being there.”

Since they’d been given full access to everything in the facility except the “No Admittance” rooms, as long as Rhonda could access a computer connected to the network, she could get into any part of the system she wanted—even the one place they’d been told was completely off limits.

She’d known there had to be cameras in the “No Admittance” areas. What if something went haywire in there? A test went wrong? A fire broke out? No way would they not have something in place to confirm exactly what happened.

“Hold on a sec, and I’ll see if I can figure out how to control the camera.”

After the long process of identifying the cameras and then isolating the one she wanted, this part was a breeze. She quickly wrote a simple script, then fed it to the camera so that anyone monitoring it would see only what she wanted seen: a shot of an empty hallway, which she’d created to block what was really going on while she manipulated the camera to scan the lab.

Piece of cake. Well, not for everyone. For whatever reason, hacking had always been easy for her. She’d never been able to explain her techy instincts, but when it came to computers and networks, she generally knew exactly what to do and how to do it.

“Okay.” She keyed in the final command. “Here we go.”

With the dummy shot in place, she guided the real-time camera and started panning the large room.

Six office cubes were lined up against the closest wall. Computers, the occasional plant, the messy desk, the OCD clean desk, and some in between. To the right of the cubicle, a long stainless-steel worktable was set up with more computer monitors, intricate robotics, and a variety of hand tools.

“Wait. Stop it there.”

Rhonda stopped and squinted at the object that had caught Cooper’s eye.

“Can you enlarge that shot?”

“Can a cow moo?” She zoomed in on the object and gave it a good once-over. “Is that what I think it is?”

“If you’re thinking missile, you get the grand prize.” Cooper leaned in closer. “Can you make a screen print of that? And a shot of the worktable?”

“Give me a sec.”

She froze the frame, sent it to the printer, then zoomed in and froze several other frames, which she also printed.

“Can you access any of the computers in that room?”

“You don’t ask for much, do you?”

He rubbed her shoulders as if she was a prizefighter about to step into the ring. And damn if she didn’t feel one of those electric, sexual zings shoot through her. He must have felt it, too, or noticed when she stiffened, because he gave her shoulders a final squeeze and dropped his hands. “Can you do it?”

“Of course, I can do it.”

He chuckled, probably because she’d sounded offended that he’d even asked. “All right, hotshot, check out the nameplates on the first cubicle. We want to look for the mad scientist who’s creating this ‘No Admittance’ project. Holy shit—stop right there,” he said abruptly. He not only sounded surprised, but he looked puzzled when she glanced up at him.

“What?”

“Does that say ‘Corbet’? ‘Dr. A. Corbet’?”

“Yeah. That’s what it says. You know him?”

“Yeah, I know him. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now, I figure we’re running out of time.”

“You figure right.”

She didn’t have to tell him why. While she’d been locating the camera that covered the inside of the lab and scrambling to get access, Cooper had been watching the hallway camera. He’d timed the fourth-floor guard’s rotational pattern at every half an hour, which meant she originally had thirty minutes on her fake loop. If the surveillance team saw an empty hallway when there should be a guard making the rounds, they’d get real suspicious real fast.

“I’ve only got about five minutes left.” She ran a quick search on the network’s addresses, found Adolph Corbet, and scanned the directory for the most up-to-date files. Then she started copying.

“How’s it going?”

“Almost got it,” she said, willing the system to move faster.

“Better make it quick.” He nodded toward the screen.

A balding, weary-looking man in a white lab coat and worn black shoes shuffled into the room.

“It’s Corbet. And he’s heading for his desk. Hurry up, Buttercup.”

“I told you not to call me that,” she muttered without looking away from the computer or losing focus. “Yes! I’ve got it.”

She quickly saved the file, named it, and reset the camera view to real time. Then she copied Corbet’s saved files to a zip drive, deleted the logs and files she’d generated, along with her spoofing script, and backed completely out of the system. If staff security dug hard enough, they might find traces of her handiwork, but she’d covered her tracks pretty well. Even if someone found it, they’d never know what she’d been up to. Most likely chalk it up to some system glitch.

With a relieved breath, she leaned back and handed Cooper the drive. “That was a little too close.”

“Welcome to the wild side.”

She laughed. “Too late. I crossed over around four this morning.”

To be more exact, she’d crossed over when she’d knocked on his hotel-room door, invited herself inside, and then attacked him. Libido, chemistry, abstinence—­they’d all been in play. But she had never let her physical needs overrule her common sense before.

So why had she done it? And why with him? Because his story about what had happened in Afghanistan had touched her? Had made him real to her? Had made her remember what it felt like to relate and care?

Maybe all of the above. And maybe it had something to do with Cooper himself. He was more than she’d thought, more than she’d wanted him to be. And now she had more things to think about than she wanted to.

But it didn’t matter what made her do it. It didn’t matter what she felt or even if she thought he might care, even a little bit.

What mattered was what was real—and love wasn’t. No matter how hard she’d once tried to make herself believe it, no matter how completely she’d given herself over to it, it just wasn’t.

The only thing that was lasting and real was the pain that came with that truth.

•    •    •

Dr. Adolph Corbet. Coop could hardly believe it. A man he’d never thought he’d see again—at least, not alive.

“So what’s the deal with Corbet?” Rhonda asked.

Her curiosity level was off the charts, but Coop wasn’t ready to talk about Corbet yet. “Later,” he said. “When we can be sure we won’t be interrupted.”

While he was itching to get back to their temporary living quarters and read the doctor’s files, he suddenly felt an urgent need to run through some of their security.

“Can you keep yourself busy in the computer lab?” he asked Rhonda.

“Of course,” she said, looking a bit perplexed.

“Then go do your thing. We’ll meet up around 5:00 p.m., and I’ll fill you in on Corbet then.”

“You’re the boss,” she said, and headed for the elevator.

He stood and watched her go, suddenly filled with a niggling sense of dread for her safety.

Top-security facility.

“No Admittance” lab.

Credible threat.

Dr. Adolph Corbet.

His inclusion in this tableau was a game changer. His presence upped the stakes and the possibility of an imminent threat by about one hundred notches on the danger meter.

For that reason, Coop spent the rest of the afternoon running intense spot checks on security protocols. He poked for holes and felt only a modicum of relief when he found none.

He interviewed a number of staff about everything from food delivery to shift changes, all the time wondering about Corbet and what his role was in the “No Admittance” room. Unfortunately, he thought he had a pretty good idea.

By the time he was finished and met up with Rhonda in the computer lab, it was close to 5:00 p.m. Except for a small weekend crew, everyone else was making preparations to go home.

“I didn’t think the military punched a clock,” she said as several workers passed them in the hallway, heading for the elevators.

“I did some more extensive reading this afternoon, so I can fill you in on that. Most of the staff are civilian contractors. For them, it’s a five-day workweek and an eight-hour day. It’s Friday night. Except for a skeleton crew, this place will be a ghost town from tonight through Monday morning.”

“The staff doesn’t live on the base?”

“Through the week, yeah. But in about five minutes, they’ll all be hopping on a jet and heading home to Vegas for the weekend.”

“A jet?”

“Special transport just for them. Most likely the same one we flew in on.”

“I’d have thought they’d be locked down here, given the secrecy of the projects.”

Coop shook his head. “Everyone on staff is fully vetted before they even get an employment interview. Once they’re hired, they sign their life over to confidentiality clauses. And we’re not talking fines for a breach of confidentiality here. We’re talking treason if a leak is traced back to an employee. Treason and very hard time.

“You’ve got to remember, too, that the facility is highly compartmentalized,” he continued. “Everyone has their place and job, and they are not to cross boundaries into other people’s business. There could be a major project going on at one section and no one would know anything about it at another section—or admit it if they did. That compartmentalization is a fail-safe in itself.”

“So how many staff remain?”

“Inside, there’ll be just one guard per floor, most likely civilian contractors overseen by an Air Force MP at the main door. Outside, they’ll have one guard positioned every eighth of a mile around the perimeter fence, which is five miles out. Another three directly outside the bunker, patrolling the building, with direct radio contact to the AFB five miles away. If anyone tries to breach the outside perimeter, this place will be crawling with armed Air Force personnel within minutes. And some mighty big guns will be aimed at any vehicle not marked with paint that can only be ID’d through specially fitted lenses.”

These security measures were reassuring, now that he knew Corbet was in the mix. If anyone came within a quarter-mile of the perimeter fence or dared to breach the no-fly zone, World War III would break out before a bad guy ever got close enough to try to get inside the building.

“So you think most of the staff are gone now?” Rhonda’s question broke into his thoughts.

“There’s one way to find out.”

They hit the elevator and rode to the first floor.

“Access log, please.” Coop waited for the MP manning Helen’s desk to hand it over.

Coop scanned the list of personnel still inside the building, taking note of several things of interest before nodding his thanks. Then he gripped Rhonda’s elbow and walked back toward the elevator.

“So?” she asked, once they were inside and heading down to level five.

“It’s just us—except our names were removed from the log per Sec Def’s request, so officially, we aren’t even here. Only the MP and the five floor guards. And Dr. Corbet, who never logged out.”

“Corbet’s here? Isn’t that unusual?”

“Apparently not. When I saw his name on the log, I looked back a few weeks. He works a lot of weekends.”

“That’s kind of sad. Why wouldn’t he want to go home to his family?”

“Because he doesn’t have a family to go home to,” he said soberly.

He could see she was dying to know what he knew about Corbet, but she didn’t ask again. So he gave her an opening.

“Before you dig into the data you ‘borrowed’ from his computer, why don’t you see what you can dig up on Corbet and his family?”