Saving Serena (Hawk Security #1)

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

Serena

“Where’s your car?” Duke asked as we pulled into the federal building parking lot.

I pointed. “Far corner. I don’t want to risk door dings. I only just got it.” I directed him until we found a spot nearby and parked. “See? It’s just like I left it.” My baby was a pretty blue and only three years old, bought used with my hard-earned money.

“I still want to check it out.”

This didn’t surprise me. Check the car, check the house. What was next, checking my underwear drawer for explosives? Duke and my underwear drawer —the thought made my core clench. I had to lock down thoughts like that before they got me into trouble.

“Open it up,” he commanded.

I crossed my arms, determined to make a point.

“Please,” he added.

With a smile, I pressed the button twice and unlocked the car, then released the trunk for him. I waited patiently as he examined the trunk and the interior of the car, including under the seats and under the hood, before finally getting on the ground to look underneath.

“Satisfied?” I asked as he brushed himself off.

He scowled. “You might have a tracker. I’m going to have Terry check it out.”

“Are you kidding?” Suddenly, I felt less confident that his efforts were overkill.

“In the movies, they have blinking red lights. In real life, it’s not that simple. Let’s go.” He waited a few steps before repeating himself. “Until we’ve vetted people, remember?—”

“I got it. You don’t recommend I tell anybody the details of what happened today.” I used air quotes while reciting what he’d drilled into me at least three times on the drive over, explaining that none of us knew our co-workers as well we thought, and someone slipping up with a piece of information they shouldn’t have known sometimes solves a case. “I ran off the road, avoiding Bambi. Oh, silly me,” I intoned in a falsetto. I wouldn’t like lying to my friends and coworkers, especially Katelyn, but at least the bit about the deer was true.

“See? That wasn’t so hard.”

“What?” I asked.

“Agreeing with me for once.”

I huffed and angled my walk slightly farther away from him.

He adjusted to stay close. “Except for going to work, do you have anything on your calendar for the next week?”

“A barbecue at my parents’ house, and before you ask, no, there’s no way I can get out of it. I promised. But you can’t introduce yourself as my guard dog.”

“Protection detail.” Duke adopted his sour-lemon face again.

“What? You think the guy will invade my dad’s compound to get to me?”

Lemon face still in place, Duke announced, “I’ll be sending Constance with you to that. She can go as your friend.”

“It’s not a bring-a-random-guest kind of party,” I countered. Then I remembered Zach’s advice about how to avoid hookup attempts. “You can come as my boyfriend. That would work.” A little tingle went up my spine.

The suggestion did nothing to improve Duke’s mood. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Sure it would. My mom and dad are making noises about me getting back together with George, and with you there, it’ll totally stop that.” I liked the idea better with each step we took toward the building.

Duke shook his head. “You shouldn’t go.”

“I have to. I promised my dad.”

“We’ll talk about this later.” He pulled me to a stop before we entered the building. “I’ll be nearby. I’m getting set up in an office down on Wellworth.”

“I know. I’m an adult. I heard you the first two times.”

“And call me,” he said, completely ignoring my complaint, “before you’re ready to leave the building.”

I saluted him. “Yes, sir, and I won’t accept packages from strangers, or drink or eat anything offered to me by anybody else, or go into any rooms alone, and I’ll avoid all dark spaces?—”

“This is not a joke,” he said, gripping my shoulder.

Once again, his touch seared me through the fabric. Down, girl. The way my body reacted to him was unreal.

“You need to take this seriously.” He moved closer and whispered in my ear. “Just because this isn’t a country road in the hills doesn’t mean there can’t be danger.”

I cringed at the memory of the crash earlier today. “I get it. Begin by suspecting everybody. Trust nobody.”

He nodded, backed away, and watched as I went inside and through the metal detectors and security.

Once in the elevator, I waved to him as the doors closed. When the doors opened upstairs, it was just my luck to have my boss walking by.

He checked his watch. “It’s about time.”

“Sorry, Dr. Powell. I got here as soon as I could.” The ostentatious snob insisted on being called doctor , which struck me as weird, given that his doctorate was in metaphysical philosophy.

Once, I’d overheard my coworker, Nick, forget the doctor part and call him Mr. Powell. That had not been a good day to be Nick Butcher. He’d gotten a dressing down like he’d missed a week of work.

“If you can’t drive without getting into an accident, perhaps we should reevaluate whether or not you’re suited to be an external auditor,” he clipped out. “I’m not issuing you another vehicle just yet.”

That steamed me, but like a good girl, I kept my mouth shut. Since he went left, I turned right, taking the long way to my new double-size cubicle. I’d been looking forward to having a car to drive to and from work. It was newer than my Camry.

Remy stopped in his tracks when I turned the corner. “My God, girl, what happened to you?”

I lifted a shoulder. “A deer ran in front of my car.”

Katelyn appeared. “A deer on the freeway?”

She was followed by Nick and several others.

“The freeway was backed up,” I explained. “So I got off and took the route through the hills.”

They bombarded me with questions about where, when, whether my car was okay, and if the deer had died.

“I barely clipped him,” I assured them. “He ran off into the bushes, so I guess he’s okay.”

Remy shook his head. “Remind me never to drive that road. Jacques would kill me if I hurt a deer.”

“Are we having a party?” Powell asked over the top of the cubicles.

The group scattered, and in a moment, it was just me and Katelyn. She had the cubicle across the aisle from mine. She turned away and started on her computer.

Explaining the crash without being able to vent about its true nature had triggered me. My leg bounced in a big way. The memories of what happened played over and over again in my head. I’d nearly died three times, first with the crash and rollover, second with the threat of being cooked alive, and then in the hospital, I’d almost become a surprising fatality. I had no doubt that Black Jacket Guy would’ve given me a fatal injection, no matter what I said or how I pleaded, if he’d had the chance. In the movies, the villain always cleaned up loose ends, and that’s exactly what I would’ve been.

After a long, deep breath, I pushed back from my desk and headed for the breakroom, with a dollar in my hand just in case. When I got there, the coffee machine looked a lot less appealing than it normally did, so I chose hot water to make peppermint tea instead. The tea basket on the counter didn’t contain any peppermint, and when I stretched to reach the shelf with the teabags, a sharp pain erupted in my side. Why didn’t I get the step ladder?

Finally, the first sip from my aromatic cup hit the spot. I then fed the candy machine my dollar and indulged in a bag of peanut M&Ms.

As I returned, I heard Katelyn whispering on the phone, “I don’t care what happened. You screw up a job, you have to do it over, you dumbshit. No more delaying. Get it done, or I’m finding somebody else… Since I’m paying, I’ll call you whatever I want.” Noticing me, she ended the call with, “Later in the week… Bye.”

When she looked up, I noticed tears in her eyes. “Problems?” It was a rhetorical question. I knew the woman had problems up to her eyeballs, ever since her fiancé, Leo Gambino, had died in an auto accident.

Leo had been a kind soul who’d debated EPA policy with me numerous times, slowly coming around to my views on some issues. But then he fell asleep at the wheel six months ago. I missed our debates.

Katelyn shook her head. “Don’t ever buy a historic fixer-upper. It means everything is way too old, and it all needs replacing or fixing. And, fixing old shit costs twice as much, and these contractors are rip-off artists. Nothing ever gets done right or on time.” The tears started. “With Leo gone, I don’t see how I can finish the remodel and keep up with the mortgage. But we did the demo work, so I can’t sell it in the current condition.”

“I’m sorry.” It was all I could think of to say. Today I could sympathize with her plight—not the money part, but the hopelessness. I’d always had enough money, but now I was faced with a danger money couldn’t solve.

She threw her hands up. “And with the distance my section is from home, I can’t drop in to supervise the A-holes.”

I didn’t respond to her obvious plea to switch territories with me. After the way my morning had gone, I knew a request to switch would be all Powell needed to declare me unfit for the job and hand it to Remy. No, I had to stick it out with my current area.

“Maybe we could go out after work,” she suggested. “Talk a little bit.”

“I can’t. I have a…” I was not missing the meeting with Duke and the whole Hawk Security crew this evening.

“A date?” she guessed.

“A meeting.”

She narrowed her eyes. “With a guy?”

My cheeks flamed, thinking of Duke.

“By the way…” She wiped away her tears and scooted her chair around to face me across the aisle. “If the car got totaled, how’d you get here?”

I stumbled over my answer. “A friend dropped me off.”

“Your face is turning mighty red, girlfriend, so I take it this friend is of the male persuasion, and you’re meeting him tonight?”

I nodded, trying to keep from showing any more embarrassment. Duke was definitely all male, and hot as fuck. I couldn’t allow my thoughts to go there.

She laughed and waved me off. “Go on your date, girl. We can go out another day.”

I was relieved when she returned to her work. I swiveled away as well. What would it be like if tonight actually was a date with Duke? Would he be a quick and rough lover, patient and thorough, clumsy and clueless? No, that last one definitely didn’t fit Duke Hawk. But the dampness in my panties every time I thought about him was a dead giveaway that I wanted to find out.

Duke

Serena’s suggestion that I go to this Benson family event as her fake boyfriend had thrown me. If I went as her fake boyfriend, it would probably get me killed, considering how her father felt about me.

I could fight my way out of almost any situation, but Lloyd Benson was not a forgiving man, and he had the resources to hire a big enough army to take me down. He also had the resources to make a body disappear.

In this day and age, weighting down a body and dumping it in a lake or river had too many modes of failure, which then gave the authorities forensic evidence to work with. But someone rich enough to have a body dumped out of a plane a hundred miles offshore stood an excellent chance of getting away with it.

I’d completely forgotten to get Serena’s phone from her before she went into the building. Checking her message history would have to wait.

So, I met with the real estate lady and signed the lease for the office Jordy had located nearby.

My first item of business should have been a threat assessment of Serena’s message and email history, but without her phone, I was stuck with the mundane task of ordering the basics for my office. Constance had agreed to hang out there tomorrow so at least one of us would be there to receive deliveries in case I needed to leave. Next, I arranged for Jordy to set us up with computers. After that, I was stuck watching the clock and waiting for Serena’s call. Twice, I got on Amazon to order the book she was reading to find out what was on page 208. Twice I chickened out.

Serena

I’d just settled into a groove at my computer when an interoffice message from Powell appeared on my screen.

Meeting in my office - five minutes

I pulled my mouse over and opened up the files on Knife Creek Chemical, the likely topic of this meeting since I’d failed to get the requested data. Work would cleanse my brain of naughty Duke thoughts.

Sophia Rossi had been the last one on the account, but I didn’t find anything from her. Katelyn’s fiancé, Leo, had been the auditor before her, and I reviewed his notes on the visits to their facility.

The Knife Creek guys—in particular the COO, Aiden Pons—had been real jerks to me. It was discouraging not to find any mention of assholery in Leo’s notes. It could only mean I was the issue. Either Pons disliked having to deal with a woman in authority, or it was my other cross to bear.

I got asked pretty often if I was one of those Bensons. When the question came up, it could either work in my favor, or against me. They’d asked during my visit at Knife Creek, and the way things had gone, I’d put them in the not-helpful category.

Going over the prior data, I didn’t find anything concerning about the contamination levels of the original spill, or the trends from the monitoring wells. At least getting rolled by them on the latest data wasn’t putting anyone in jeopardy, and I could endure Powell’s inevitable criticism for coming back empty-handed. All Leo’s reports, co-signed by Powell, showed a groundwater contamination site that had been almost completely cleaned up and didn’t even extend to the edge of their property.

Delays were the hardest part of this job, as the system we had was slow as molasses and risked endangering children with fouled drinking water or contaminated soil while we gave polluters the time the regulations allowed. But in this case, having delayed data would not endanger anyone other than me.

I pulled their business cards from my purse and dialed the number for Gabriel Woodward, the person I’d been told to interface with at Knife Creek.

It went to voicemail. “You’ve reached Gabe’s phone. I’m probably busy with astronaut training. If this is an urgent matter, take two aspirin and call me in the morning. If you’re calling to solicit money, don’t bother leaving a message. My ex-wife took it all. Have a wonderful day.” At least he had a sense of humor.

I waited for the beep. “Gabe, this is Serena Benson from the EPA. We met earlier, and I was wondering when you’d be able to send over the testing-well data that was missing at our meeting. I’d like to give you guys a passing grade. You have my number and email. Don’t be shy.” There was no passing or failing grade for me to assign, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Benson, my office,” Powell bellowed, probably from his doorway. Far be it for him to actually walk the distance to my workspace and say what he had to say at a conversational volume.

Before going, I opened my wallet, pulling out my inspiration for this job—the faded photo of Carmen at age five. My eyes watered. A study partner from college, Marisol, had become Carmen’s mother as a young teenager. During our friendship, I’d learned a lot about grit and determination in the face of obstacles as Marisol navigated being a single mother and a college student at the same time.

Marisol’s grief when Carmen passed away from bladder cancer at age six had torn at me. Their water had come from a well next to a known toxic site. The company that owned the land had delayed cleaning it up for years. That tragic outcome had led me to join the EPA. I would do everything I could to prevent the death of another child or the suffering of another parent from the effects of contaminated drinking water.

“Benson,” Powell shouted again.

“Coming, Dr. Powell.” Spine stiffened by the photograph, I wiped my eyes with a tissue, returned the picture to its resting place, and rose. Time to face the music.