Covert Threat (paperback)

Chapter One

Jules

The storm raged. Days like those toyed with my sanity, as I was ripe with fear from a past that hovered just out of reach. Thunder boomed across the sky in an explosion that sounded like a giant whip, shaking the walls of my California beach bungalow. I sank onto a kitchen chair and wrapped my cardigan tightly around my body. A shiver coursed through me, and the small hairs along my arms rose from the electrically charged air. I curled my hands around my coffee cup, willing the warmth to seep into my chilled body.

Rattled by the intensity of the rolling waves half an acre from my bay window, I sat unblinking. The only thing that gave me even a minuscule amount of comfort were my small sips of cinnamon-and-cream-laced coffee.

Another loud boom caused my hand to jerk, and I spilled some of the hot liquid onto the kitchen table. The sky opened up in a barrage of pounding rain, hitting the roof like an onslaught of bullets. Screw this. Slipping my cell from my pocket, I shot off a text to my boss: Forget the boat race. He’d promised the weather would settle, but I knew it wouldn’t.

Why did I agree to go in the first place? Oh right, bribery. We’d been promised additional funding simply for being on the yacht and in the race. Truth was, Carl was loaded, and if I’d asked, he would’ve given the extra funds to my team. I felt ridiculous for my commitment to participate in a team-building exercise—I was afraid of being out in deep water during any sort of stormy weather. The race wasn’t about bonding, not really. Male egos were the driving force.

The waves rose and crashed against the shore, and my body trembled. Excess saliva filled my mouth, and I fought the urge to throw up. I’d worked hard with my therapist over the years, fighting tooth and nail to overcome my fears. Living near the water brought peace, and the possibility of lost years returned to fill empty memories, but violent weather over an unpredictable sea was still a no-go. My symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder hit me hard when the ocean churned violently, bringing back the feelings of helplessness and loss from a tragic boating accident during an unexpected storm when I was young.

Another bolt streaked across the sky, and I almost fell out of my chair. My heart beat overtime. Is that a person? I narrowed my eyes, scrutinizing the edge of my property, where I thought I’d seen the outline of a man. Again, the sky lit up, revealing nothing unusual. I was getting too worked up over nothing.

I took another sip of coffee. I’m safe.

Dark clouds rolled in an ominous sky that should’ve been lit by then with the rising sun. A bolt of lightning violently stabbed them. Thunder answered close behind. Again, the walls shook. God, I hate this. Needing a distraction, I tugged on the overflowing binder I’d left out the night before. A small smile spread on my face when I touched the book, along with a surge of longing. Mom’s recipes were inside.

The night before, I’d made her sauce, the perfect food to comfort me through what I thought I would have to endure today, but the race so wasn’t happening. My boss had to have been certifiable. Then again, so was I to even consider stepping foot on his million-dollar sailboat. Competition did strange things to men. There were moments when I thought Carl existed merely to come up with crazy plots against Zen Pharmaceuticals. “Healthy competition,” he called it, but it was far from healthy. Our team had an agreement with our rivals—we stayed out of each other’s hair while our employers engaged in pissing contests.

We had pulled ahead of Zen with the large government contract we’d secured months before. Carl liked to rub that into Gary’s face. We’d learned they were old college nemeses, and they were both trust-fund millionaires.

I led a team of epidemiologists and biochemists for an elite, privately owned research facility. Our research had been groundbreaking all year and had gained the attention of the US government. Carl jumped on the contract, and we forged ahead with the primary goal of keeping our military safe when on high-risk missions. When the contract expired, we were free to take the CRISPR tool kit I developed—a specific delivery method that genetically altered the CCR5 gene to become CCR5-delta 32—to the public. In doing so, we could safeguard against viral disease that accessed the immune system through the CCR5 gene.

Our lab's collective work ethic and environment were stellar. I couldn’t imagine what else we needed to make us a better, more well-oiled machine.

My phone pinged, and I pulled it from my pocket, hoping the race was canceled. The excursion was an all-around bad idea. We should have been in the lab. I snorted as I skimmed over my boss’s text: It’ll pass. But we’ll reschedule for tomorrow to be sure. I couldn’t believe he’d even considered taking his favorite genetic epidemiologists on a sailboat race when the waves were so dangerously high. I cursed him for being an idiot and wondered whether I should agree to go.

I gave up on trying to talk sense into him and went to rinse my coffee cup before setting it in the dishwasher, hitting my side on an open drawer. I absently rubbed my hip, which I knew would bruise. I didn’t remember opening that drawer, where I threw stuff I didn’t know what to do with, in the first place—weird. I shoved it closed. I must have opened it by mistake last night. I’m so spacey. Of course I did.

From the table, I hefted the cookbook into my arms and hugged it to my chest, intent on putting it where it belonged. An empty space held the place where the book went on the shelf in my cozy living room. My hand skimmed over the worn binder that Mom and I had made years before she passed away from cancer. Even though Mom was only half Italian, she had many recipes that had been handed down from both her family and Dad’s. My olive skin, something I was grateful to my parents for, was a result of generations of Italian blood.

I lifted the book carefully in my arms just as an envelope fell from its pages. My heart pounded as I fought the sheen of tears that misted over my eyes from the sight of Mom’s handwriting. I set the overflowing cookbook on the table and opened it to the page that’d held the letter. Sparing a second before I put it away again, I traced my fingers over mom’s flowing script, which read Juliana. She was the only one who’d ever called me by my full name. My nickname, Jules, had stuck hard when we’d moved from Italy to California.

With the ink beneath my fingertips, her words played through my mind: “Think of this as a sort of Pandora’s box, or a Pandora’s letter, if you will. Only open it—and I mean only—if strange and unexplainable things are happening. And especially if you feel you are in danger.”

I had heeded Mom’s warning despite my deep desire to read what she’d penned. She’d confessed that it contained a secret from our past, one my mind conveniently withheld from me. I rubbed my chest, attempting to chase the ache away. A year had gone by since she’d died, and I missed her terribly. We’d been close, and her absence left a yawning emptiness inside me, which I filled with work—it was the only thing I could do. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, so I continued to adhere to her cryptic words.

With a deep sigh, I pushed from the table and finished getting ready. In no time at all, I found myself at the lab. Josh, the day security guard, raised his brows at me and mumbled under his breath as I breezed past him, which was odd. I glanced down at the outfit I had on. Yep, I was wearing pants—all good. I’d walked through the entrance and security check just like any other day. Why the look of surprise?

I doubted I would figure it out and supposed it didn’t really matter. Instead, I turned my thoughts to the healing salve I was working on as I rode the elevator to my floor. In front of the secure door, I waved my badge across the access panel to enter the section occupied by the other biochemists, geneticists, and assistants on my team. The door opened with a click and a whoosh.

A few others worked at their desks and absently returned my greeting as I passed them. The starkness of the floor glared at me. Bright-white walls, desks, and glass partitions lacked warmth and personality but suited a research facility. As I rounded my desk, I came to an abrupt stop. What the heck? My gaze glued to an active screen saver on my monitor—the same one I knew I’d shut down before I left work the day before. It wasn’t the one I had set. Instead, words scrolled on repeat across the screen: “Remember me.” That wasn’t normal.

“Morning.” Fran walked in, running a hand over her sleek bobbed hair.

“Did you change my screen saver?”

Her brows furrowed as she slipped her purse from her shoulder. “No. Why?”

A jolt sliced through me, and instead of answering, I headed straight for my boss’s office. Not waiting for a response to my knock, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Anxiety had morphed to irritation as I figured out who’d probably messed with my computer.

Carl lifted his gaze from the papers laid out across his desk. His bushy reddish-blond eyebrows furrowed at my abrupt entry. “How can I help you, Jules?”

I curled my fingers into my palms. My nails pressed into the flesh, no doubt leaving half moons. “This team-building exercise is a mistake. It’s not between you and Gary anymore. I think members of his team are retaliating against ours. Or me, to be specific.” Did he just roll his eyes? Anger sizzled in my gut.

He glanced at my balled-up fists.

I crossed my arms and tapped my foot in response.

“And how is that?” He leaned back in his chair, his voice dripping with feigned patience.

I dropped my arms, barely stopping the huff of frustration I wanted to expel. It was going too far. He had to have been aware of what the others in the office thought about his weird rivalry with Gary—none of us liked being put in the middle of it. “When I came in a few minutes ago, my computer was on. There’s a new screen saver now that reads ‘Remember Me.’ The words are on repeat and fill the entire screen.”

His lips pulled down at the corners. “Did Fran change it? Did you leave your monitor on overnight?”

I was known to be a tad spacey. “No. I asked her, and I didn’t leave it on. I’m aware of the security procedures, and it’s not possible that someone could have changed it.” I flailed my arms in frustration. This is stupid. It had to have been the other company. They could’ve gotten access if they were collaborating with another scientist on our floor. “My screen saver was a mix of rolling lavalike rainbow colors, not some weird message.”

“I know you’re conscious of security, Jules. I didn’t mean to imply you’d be careless.” He pushed his chair back and rose before he came around the desk. “We’ll figure out what happened. Let’s go see.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, fighting my annoyance over his careless question. I was aware of how much he respected me, and of course he needed physical proof rather than simply taking my word. My boss had a scientific as well as a business-oriented mind, and I couldn’t take his need to see it himself personally.

Just under six feet tall, I had to scramble to keep up with the much taller Carl’s longer strides. We weren’t far from my desk. Carl’s office was only down the hall. When we made it to my station, my assistant, Fran, stood nearby, her mouth hanging open as she took in my monitor then Carl and I approaching. She must have gotten in while I was in Carl’s office. Confusion flashed across her face as she briefly glanced at us. Both Carl and Fran stared at the words that scrolled across my screen in bright-green text that seemed to be mocking us.

“Do you know anything about this?” He waved his hand at the computer.

Fran looked stunned. “No. I just got here.”

We stood there, clueless until Carl grunted. “Let’s go back to my office, Jules.” I followed him back down the hallway and into his space.

“Even you’ve got to admit this is strange. I mean, how did they even get in here?” I knocked my hand against his desk for emphasis. “And on top of that, do you want any of Gary’s people here, where we’re testing the military delta-32 project?”

“I doubt they were physically here. If at all.”

You’ve got to be kidding me—“doubt”? We’d had incidents in the past, all in the name of good fun. Sandy, one of my colleagues whom I struggled to tolerate, was one of the pranksters. When he closed the door behind us, I pushed for the outcome I wanted most of all. “You’re canceling the team-building race, right?”

He rubbed a hand over his forehead. “No.” To stop the protest that was already forming on my lips, he held up his hand. “I don’t think anyone from Gary’s office did this. There are no collaborative projects at the moment… Although I can’t understand how someone from the outside breeched our firewalls.”

“Wait.” My heart kicked up a gear, pounding loudly in my ears. “You think someone from outside Gary’s office did this?”

“It’s possible, Jules. I’ve heard there’ve been some… issues from the first test group of soldiers. Word got out about that we’re administering the delta-32 tool kit to a select group and not all the units.”

“What do you mean? Issues tied to the gene editing? What kind of issues?” I’d tested it countless times, and each time, it’d performed the way I’d hoped it would.

The tool kit altered a specific gene: CCR5, a coreceptor on the outside of the cell. If the procedure was performed to result in the delta-32 mutation, that person would be resistant, or immune, to many infectious diseases, such as lethal hemorrhagic fevers and even HIV. Since it was expensive to produce, we’d only been given the go-ahead to administer it to military units, per a private contract, for those soldiers who would be going into high-risk zones where enemies were known to use specific kinds of biochemical warfare. For example, we’d learned that a strain of hemorrhagic fever was being used against US soldiers, and our tool kit was one of their best defenses against it.

What I wanted to do next was work on a way to bring the costs way down and open access to the drug for everyone. Carl cleared his throat, and my focus jerked back to him.

“It may be nothing, Jules. A silly office prank.” He ran his hand over his forehead. “But to be sure, I’ll get our tech team on this immediately. Change all your passwords, and please be careful when you’re not in the building.”

What does he mean by that? Does he think I’m in danger?