Page 34 of Gabe (Blue Team #2)

“I do. And it’s unfortunate because they never listen.

I give sound advice from the start—glove up, don’t fight it, or do, just don’t bring your shit to work.

It’s easy but they bring that shit into the office, then have a coronary when I try to run an op.

I’m having Ivy draw up a new employee handbook.

I have three more assholes after this and I want it in writing that any woman involved in any drama is off-limits. ”

“Good luck with that.” Tex chuckled and at the same time Cooper said, “Where do I sign?”

“I followed Evette’s hunch and she was damn near spot-on.”

Evette perked up and smiled.

“Are there minerals on that plot?” she asked .

“There are. Silicon. It’s the semi-conductor needed in the manufacturing of integrated circuit boards.”

“I knew it. Abrams is trying to get their new cognitive radar to market before anyone else. The hold-up was on the manufacturing of the monolithic microwave integrated circuits. So that’s why they wanted the land. To mine it.”

“That and it makes for a good dumpsite.”

“Makes sense,” Garrett cut in. “You need to dope the chemical composition of silicon.”

“Um…sorry, you need to dope what?” Evette tilted her head and blinked.

“To make the circuit and the connecting circuits from the same string of silicon you need to alter the composition. Some of the dopants bond with silicon crystal and give up one electron…” Garrett paused and glanced around the room.

I didn’t look but I was ninety-nine percent sure everyone had the same dumbfounded expression I had.

“Never mind. Bottom line is, the dopants used are arsenic and gallium. Both highly toxic. Not only when they’re being used but stored and disposed of as well. ”

Dumpsite.

Abrams was planning on using the civil unrest and low environmental standards to exploit the land then make it into a toxic wasteland.

“That’s concerning,” Tex continued. “But I took a closer look at the pictures Delilah Watts emailed Evette and that’s where the real issue is.”

Zane sat up in his chair and I watched as his overly-large frame stiffened. Then I praised all things holy that Kyle was still on vacation and not in the conference room. A threat against his wife would have his head spinning, which would translate into an ungodly amount of carnage.

“Who’s the target, Piper, Kalee, or Anaya?” Zane’s voice was edging toward the danger zone and his brother Linc perked up.

“None of them. I couldn’t figure out why Delilah sent those images.

Nothing stood out so I looked at the EXIF data.

Normally this information has the camera used, shutter speed, location, aperture, things of that nature.

But Delilah’s smart. She changed the GPS location to documents hidden on the dark web. A case study by Dr. Ramon Gates—”

“Dr. Gates? The decapitated-pig-brain-experiment study?” Garrett inquired.

“No. Though I found that as well. Dr. Gates is in the beginning stages of experimenting with bio-circuits. Abrams is funding his research. The doctor believes biological circuits will improve the cognitive radar and jump Abrams into a whole new realm.”

When Tex finished, the room went silent until Evette sucked in a breath.

“Now I remember.” She slammed her hand on the table and shook her head.

“When you mentioned El Salvador something was pricking my brain but I couldn’t remember.

Now I do. A colleague wrote an article about a scientist from Santa Ana, El Salvador.

He went missing after successfully finding a new way to engineer brain cells by reprogramming skin cells to become stem cells.

The article was on biological computing.

Neil—that’s the guy who wrote the piece—said it was going to be the wave of the future. ”

“Did you help research this article?” I asked and prayed she didn’t.

“No. I just read it after he was finished. I had nothing to do with any of it.”

Then Delilah’s email disappeared and a picture of a young man appeared.

“Dr. Ramon Gates.” Garrett pointed to the screen but kept his head bent, reading from his laptop.

“His mother is Croatian and currently resides in Dubrovnik.

Incidentally, that is the city where Abrams is in the process of leasing twenty acres of government land.

For those of you who failed world geography Dubrovnik is in southern Croatia and borders Bosnia.

His father was American, died in a car accident when Ramon was ten.

He has a Ph.D. in cognitive sciences and a master's in neuroscience. IQ is one-seventy-nine. Never been married, no children, no siblings.”

“Jesus. He looks fifteen,” Owen muttered.

“Oh, sorry. He’s thirty-five,” Garrett added .

“Well, I’m with Owen,” Cooper joined. “The evil brain doctor looks like a teenager.”

“What’s your take on Dr. Gates? Is this Abrams exploiting a young, ambitious doctor or is the doctor using Abrams to further his creepy-ass brain experiments?”

“No clue,” Tex answered honestly. “I’m far from stupid and I had to use a dictionary to read half of the research papers I looked up.

I will say, this guy is highly respected even if there’s an ethics committee looking into the pig brain experiment.

But that’s not surprising considering it could redefine the meaning “brain dead” and there are long-reaching ramifications to that.

What I do know is, Delilah Watts is in a buttload of trouble, and the kind of trouble she’s in means if the wrong person finds her, she’s dead.

She also stuck her neck out there and tried to get this information to Evette.

So I’d say, she knows something’s not right with why Abrams wants Dr. Gates’ brain research.

Do not let her get off the phone when you call her until she agrees to let you help her.

And personally, I’m shocked as shit the woman’s not dead.

I’m also surprised that Abrams sent the halfwit Forrest Lawson to take out Evette considering what she was in possession of.

My guess is they didn’t know what she had, just that she was snooping around and they didn’t like that.

Watch your six with her, too. No doubt Abrams isn’t done yet. ”

Evette’s hand squeezing mine barely registered. Owen murmuring something to Tex went unheard.

Abrams isn’t done yet .

I struggled to keep a lid on my growing panic. My instincts screamed at me to take her and run.

My gut was never wrong. And it wouldn’t be this time either. Only I wouldn’t know it until later and by then it was too fucking late. And even I couldn’t’ve predicted how bad it would be.