Page 7 of A Time & Place for Every Laird (A Laird for All Time #2)
Claire met Hugh’s wide eyes, her heart suddenly pounding with more fear than this Scot had yet to inspire. Hugh might have showered, put on clean clothes, and much improved his smell, but he still looked savage and foreign in her living room. Those who were looking for him would know who he was in a heartbeat, and the thought chased through her mind that maybe she should just let them find him. Her conscience clashed with her good sense, winning out in the end. “Damn! You need to hide!”
she whispered.
“I willnae cower like some …”
“Shhh!”
“Mrs. Manning?”
a voice called insistently as the knocking continued.
“Just a minute, please!”
she called out lightly while glaring at Hugh and jerking her head toward the stairs. The obstinate man just crossed his beefy arms over his chest and glowered right back. “Oh for Pete’s sake!”
Claire hissed, bodily pushing him toward the stairs. “Get up there! Get in the closet and don’t say a word!”
“How do I know ye’ll not …”
“You’ll just have to trust me!”
She half pushed, half led him up the stairs and into her closet, quietly closing the door. Heart pounding, she raced back to the living room, hoping Hugh would remain hidden.
Taking a deep breath, Claire snatched up her phone on the way to the door and held it to her ear. Plastering on a smile, she opened the door and held up a finger with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “I know I need to find a nice man, Mom, but can we talk about this later? There’s someone here. Okay. Okay. I love you, too.”
Claire lowered the phone and shook her head. “Sorry about that. Mothers, you know? Hey, you’re Bryce, right? Bryce Muldoon?”
The words emerged cheerfully, and Claire was thankful for that because her insides were already twisting with fear. She recognized Muldoon right away, a security officer from the lab. The guards were always a step apart from the rest of the lab’s employees. They didn’t smile, gossip, or socialize. No one brought a cake in for their birthdays. How had they found her so quickly? Had someone seen them after all?
“Yes, ma’am. And this is Special Agent Phil Jameson with the NSA.”
Claire was immediately able to assimilate and translate that particular acronym. “The National Security Agency?”
she asked with wide eyes. The owlish expression was no act. She was truly surprised to have a federal agent standing at her door.
“Yes, ma’am,”
Muldoon answered. “Agent Jameson is the NSA liaison to INSCOM.”
Agent Jameson added, “We’ve been called in regarding the security breach at the lab today.”
Fear snaked a path all the way down to her toes, and Claire was hard pressed to control the shudder that followed it. They’d called the Feds in? Already? “Wow,”
she breathed. “That was fast.”
Bryce Muldoon apparently agreed with her. “I told Dr. Holmes that we could handle this internally,”
he said, referring to the director of the entire lab, “but it seems that there was some disagreement on that.”
“It really must have been a big deal then. What happened? I heard the alarms and just figured it was a drill or something.”
Claire shouldered the doorjamb as casually as she could, then straightened again. “How rude of me. Did you guys want to come in? Can I get you something? Coffee, maybe?”
“No, no,”
Muldoon began, but Jameson boldly stepped inside and she studied him as he passed. Beyond the stereotypical dark suit, the agent was tall and lean. He was about forty with a receding hairline and deep furrows in his cheeks and brow that told her he didn’t find much humor in life.
He probably wouldn’t find any in this either.
“We’d like to ask you some questions, Mrs. Manning.”
Claire felt as if she were going to be ill but plowed on. “Sure, come on in! But what can I do?”
“You were present today when the alarm was sounded?”
“Yes. Well, not in the offices. I was in the parking lot.”
“Why did you leave the office early today?”
Jameson asked.
“I wasn’t feeling well,”
Claire answered honestly. “I cleared it with my supervisor before I left. You can ask Dr. Crandel if you like.”
The agent sniffed in such a way that Claire had to assume they already had.
“Did you see anything unusual as you left?”
“No. I heard the alarm but, like I said, I thought it was just a fire drill or something.”
Muldoon shrugged at the intelligence agent in what was clearly an “I told you so”
gesture. Unfortunately the agent was not half so trusting in nature. Jameson drifted about the room, touching and lifting her things as he went. Though Hugh had done the same, the agent’s intrusion delivered a sense of personal violation Claire had never experienced. He wandered toward the stairs and Claire held her breath, but it was quickly evident that the agent was more idly observing her townhouse than executing a thorough search. Still, he lifted the Army sweatshirt Claire had brought down for Hugh off the end of the staircase bannister and held it out by the shoulders curiously, making Claire’s breath catch. He carried the sweatshirt to the mantle and tapped on one of the framed photos. “Mrs. Manning, your personnel file says that your husband was in the Army, killed by an IED in Afghanistan.”
Claire’s lips tightened at the mention of her husband’s death. “Yes, he was.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Three years ago,”
she said tightly.
“Yet you still have his clothes out.”
“You don’t know women very well, do you?”
she asked, countering his question with one of her own as she snatched the sweatshirt away from him.
“Do you wear them?”
Claire bristled at the question even as she hugged the shirt against her. “Is everyone being asked rude questions this afternoon or am I just the lucky one?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Manning,”
Muldoon cut in apologetically. “All the employees are being questioned. It’s not just you.”
“Well, we’ll have to compare notes tomorrow then, won’t we?”
she bit out.
“The lab is closing down until this issue is resolved,”
Muldoon told her. “You should be getting a call from Dr. Crandel this evening.”
“An unexpected vacation. How wonderful,”
Claire said without enthusiasm. “Though it won’t do much for the company’s bottom line. Is that it, then?”
“No,”
Agent Jameson said, cutting off what might have been Muldoon’s more affirmative answer. “I find it curious—given the way your husband died—that an up and coming engineer like yourself would choose to leave a promising career in materials engineering—saving the world, so to speak—to work in weapons development. Mark-Davis is the veritable antithesis of EnviroCom.”
“You think I have a grudge against Mark-Davis and planted a bomb or something this afternoon to shut them down?”
she snapped, resenting the agent’s prodding into her life more and more with each passing moment.
“Did you?”
“Not that it’s any of your business,”
Claire replied, her voice trembling now not in fear but in sick rage, “but I came to Mark-Davis because I thought that perhaps it might be a bit cleaner for widows in the future to have their husbands come back to them in one bag rather than in pieces. Now are we done here?”
The agent’s eyes narrowed as he studied her, his expression carefully blank. “We are … for now. But Mrs. Manning, be warned. We will be watching you.”
“As we will all the staff,”
Muldoon put in.
“For what? You still haven’t even said what happened.”
“Some property of the lab was … stolen,”
Jameson said, watching her carefully. “Given the instability and potential danger of the item, our national security is at stake and the safety of the general public is at risk. We could offer protection and immunity to anyone who was coerced or forced into assisting in the robbery.”
Claire stared at him stonily.
“However,”
he went on, “anyone who had a hand in the theft or aided and abetted anyone who did would be in violation of numerous federal laws and would be subject to the harshest punishment our government has to offer to those who threaten our country.”
There had been enough news coverage over the years for Claire to know what he was saying. He was speaking of terrorists and federal indictments. Indecision lapped at the edges of her resolve but in the end she was too angry with Jameson to offer anything more than a shrug. “Well, I didn’t take anything, so I have nothing to worry over, do I?”
“We’ll be back if we have any more questions for you.”
Agent Jameson took a step toward the door before he turned back. “I would wager that I will have more questions.”