would be able to find and access his drive.”
Caroline reached out to grab his hand. She squeezed it and waited until he turned his hand and squeezed hers back. “This is it. Let’s go.”
He drove as carefully as a man who knew the entire police department was looking for him should. Eventually they made it to his office and he parked across the street from the lobby entrance.
“Wait here” he said automatically.
“No,” she said clutching his arm before he could leave the car. “You can’t go in. There will be security guards inside, not to mention cameras.”
“I hired those guards.”
“Then you know that you recruited quality people. People who wouldn’t hesitate to call the police given what they think they know about you.”
He sighed and shut the door. “There might be a way in through the garage.”
“There’s a way in through the front door. You just can’t go through it. I can.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why? I’m not a suspect. I can tell them that I returned to town and that I suddenly decided I want a picture of us that you left in your office.”
The idea seemed ridiculous.
“I’ll cry when I tell them,” Caroline added. “Men never know what to do with a sobbing woman.”
Great. He was turning his wife into a con artist. Unfortunately, she was right, and a few tears might work. “Okay. Let me draw you a map of where we keep the server. The backup cartridge that’s in there will work.” Dominic reached behind him for a brown fast-food bag that had been tossed in the backseat, and Caroline found a pen in the glove compartment.
He indicated the floor, showed her the elevators and stair wells, and directed her through two turns, then put an X over the room where the network server was stored. “You’ll see a large black tower. It’s the only computer in the room. There’s a small blue button that will eject the cartridge. Get it and come back.”
She nodded confidently and opened the passenger door. This time, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. He couldn’t say everything he wanted to say, not here in a car right before she was about to break into his office on his behalf. Instead, he leaned forward and kissed her. “Be careful.”
She nodded again and scurried across the street and toward the building.
“Okay, now I’m giving up,” Mark groaned. “We’ve been at this for hours.”
Nora looked over her shoulder at him. He was sitting in one chair with his feet up on another that he’d taken from the office next door. He was halfway through a recent edition of
“Do you want to find the program or not?”
“I’m thinking I would have better luck finding Santos at this point. Are you sure you haven’t missed it?”
“I haven’t missed it. There’s nothing of any significance on anything I checked.” It made her think, though. There was nothing of any significance at all. Not only couldn’t she find the “magic” program, all the standard encryption work he would have been doing wasn’t there, either. If Denny wasn’t saving any of his work on memory sticks, then it was a good bet that he was saving it somewhere else. She was about to suggest another course of action when a knock on Denny’s open door got their attention.
The security officer from downstairs stood in the doorway with a pensive look on his face.
“Can we help you?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know if it matters to you but it seemed strange,” the older man began. “Mrs. Santos came in to get a picture from Mr. Santos’s office.”
“Caroline Santos,” Mark said pushing one chair back and leaping to his feet. “She’s here?”
“Yes, she said she wanted a picture. She was really upset. I thought it would be okay. But Mr. Santos’s office is on the fifteenth floor and the elevator stopped at the tenth.”
Mark and Nora exchanged a glance. Instantly Nora rolled back from the workstation and followed Mark at dead run down the hall.
Which really wasn’t easy in three-inch platform heels.
Caroline checked the map hastily drawn on the bag. She stopped in front of a closed metal door and used the security code Dominic had given her. A light on the panel flashed green. She opened the door to find a small room with a tower of what appeared to be stacked computers enclosed behind glass. Lights flickered and wires ran from every orifice, but as Dominic said it was the only one in the room.
She opened the glass door and spotted the Eject button. She hit it and immediately heard a whirling noise until the cartridge popped out.
She snatched it up and quickly left following the hall back to the elevators when the
“What are you doing here, Caroline?” Mark shouted down the long hallway.
There wasn’t a good answer to that. Logic told her to walk toward them, hand them the cartridge and let them find what they were looking for, but instinct had her rooted to where she stood.
Adrenaline flooded her system. This wasn’t supposed to happen, she and Dominic needed the answers first and then they could go to the police. If they were caught now Dominic would be put in a cell. A cell he’d already told her that he didn’t know if could handle. She had to protect him. Had to try.
Panicked and uncertain, she bolted.
Clutching the small tape in her hand, she turned and sprinted in the opposite direction. She found another corridor and turned, having no real idea where she was going. But when she reached the end of the hallway she spotted a red sign marked EXIT. She pushed against the door and immediately started down the metal stairs as fast as she could. She’d made it three flights, then stopped to catch her breath. She could hear clicking from above now.
“Caroline, you don’t have to run. We’re trying to help,” Nora shouted down to her, her voice a little wheezy.
Caroline looked up and saw Nora leaning over the rail, gasping for breath.
“You have to let me get him out of here,” Caroline shouted, hearing the desperation in her voice echo in the stairwell. “Then I’ll give you what you need. All of it, but you can’t bring him in.”
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Nora said. “Not now. He needs to talk to us so we can end this.”
No. Caroline couldn’t let it happen. She needed to get to Dominic, needed to make him go, then she would hand over the tape and tell Nora what to do. She picked up her speed, taking the stairs two at a time and heard a loud curse as someone fell over above her.
“Damn heels!”
The large L printed on the door came into view and Caroline reached for the metal bar that ran across it. Hurtling into the lobby, she was ready to outrun the security guard, too, if he’d still been there. She threw the glass doors to the building open and stopped as soon as she hit the sidewalk.
The rain poured down around her and instinctively, she shoved the cartridge down the front of her jeans to protect it.
Too late. She was too late.
Dominic was spread-eagled over the hood of her BMW. Mark stood behind him, snapping a second cuff into place. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she saw Mark’s lips moving and she knew Dominic had just been read his Miranda rights.
Something inside her snapped. This was wrong. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. He was innocent and she couldn’t let him go to jail. She wouldn’t let him go to jail. She wouldn’t lose him again.
He was her family.
“Let him go!”
Taken aback by her shrill scream, Mark lifted his head and stepped away from the car. He felt two flat palms hit his chest with a power that stunned him and sent him stumbling back another few feet. He had to work to keep from falling on his butt.
“What the hell?” He hadn’t expected this from Caroline. Nora, maybe, but not Caroline.
“Caroline, stop it!” Dominic shouted at her as she geared up for another attack.
