“Am I that obvious? Take the stairs to your right. The stairwells only require keycards on the ground floor,” MaeBe advised. “Also, you’re totally alone. There are a couple of people working late on the second floor, and some dudes hooking up hard on ten. They would not notice you even if you walked in. They’re totally into each other.”
It was good to have eyes on the building. MaeBe was at the McKay-Taggart building on a server that had been secured by Hutch and overseen by the goddess of the Internet, Chelsea Weston. She was safe. He, not so much. It had been a long time since he’d felt this kind of jangly anxiety that came with a boots-on-the-ground mission. Adrenaline made him chatty. “And you’re not obvious, but I know you pretty well. I’ve seen how you look at him, and you’re interested. I’m telling you to be careful, and that’s all I can say.”
“Huh, there’s one other person in the building. How did I miss her?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it was the two hot dudes hooking up,” Hutch quipped.
“It’s weird. She’s on the fourth floor, walking toward the elevators. I think she’s heading home.” MaeBe’s voice had gone totally professional. “Hey, speaking of the devil, I got a text from Kyle. It’s a list of names. What am I supposed to do with this? He is not very communicative.”
It was good to know Kyle was succinct. “Those are the names of the people who are taking a meeting with Jessica even as we speak. She changed all of her plans to meet with those people. I haven’t seen the names yet.”
“Well, there seems to be an international flair to her guests. Dimitri Sidirov. Igor Krupin. Saeed Nasir.”
Hutch stopped. “MaeBe, I need you to run those names now. Text Kyle and ask him for the name of the restaurant and figure out a way to break into the feeds around it. I want to know who they are, and I want recognition to confirm it.”
“What are you thinking?”
His mind was racing, making connections. “I think the fact that she dismissed Kyle says something. She thinks Kyle lives with Noelle, and she’s meeting with Russians and someone who could potentially be from the UAE. I want you to see if you can connect those names with natural gas companies.”
He could hear her typing as he moved down the hallway.
“Wow, that was fast,” MaeBe said over the line. “Okay, uhm, Mr. Sidirov represents a Russian energy company.”
“They all do. I need dossiers on every one of them.” Hutch took the stairs two at a time.
“Will do,” MaeBe said. “It looks like Nasir is also with an energy company. Is this about natural gas?”
“No. It’s about helium.” Noelle’s research was promising. He hustled up the next flight. He had to get the data he needed and then get Noelle out of here.
With her research. Every single file, every experiment. He could take it all and then erase it from Genedyne’s servers. Then he would get a good lawyer because hell would be coming for her, but if he was right, it might be the only way to save Noelle’s work.
“But Noelle’s research isn’t about finding helium,” MaeBe said and then a gasp came over the line. “Oh, shit. Her research is about conserving helium. If she’s right, the price goes down, and anyone who uses helium on their machines invests in her recycling techniques. You think Layne’s selling Noelle’s research to the people who will bury it.”
“Think about it. What’s really come out of Genedyne?” It was a question Cara had posed during the debrief today. “There’s been a whole lot of press, but what’s made it to market?”
“These kinds of innovations can take time,” MaeBe offered.
“I don’t think Jessica Layne has any plans to spend time and money to bring anything to fruition. Why would she when she can sell the process to someone who will or someone who will bury the whole thing? And she’s got the right to do it because she owns it.” This was why she hired young, hungry geniuses. She took their talent, made money off of it, and then buried them in legal fees. She was taking the best and brightest minds of a generation, wringing them dry, and tossing them out.
Anger thrummed through him, and he was happy he was about to take this whole house of cards down. If he could find what he needed in time.
“I’m approaching the server room.”
“I can see that,” MaeBe replied. “You should get in fast because the woman on the elevator pushed the number of your floor. She’s going up, not down like I expected.”
“Do we know who she is?”
“She hasn’t looked up from her phone, so I haven’t run her through facial recognition,” MaeBe admitted.
He didn’t like the sound of that. One thing went right though. The door to the server room came open, proving that days of learning this system had paid off. He slipped inside and immediately found what he needed. He pulled out a small drive and started to run through the company’s financial records, copying everything he could and taking a virtual picture of what the server looked like in that moment. He would try to get in and out quietly, but there was always the possibility someone would figure out he’d been inside and try to flush the system. He needed proof of what was on this system at the moment.