Formula for Danger
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“It wasn’t much of a glimpse,” Edward muttered.
“I think I found something,” Alex said.
They leaned in to see. He held out his hand, in which rested some small electronic device that reminded Rachel of a crumpled metallic spider. “What is that?”
Alex shook his head. “Not sure, but it doesn’t belong in the music box.” He gestured to the mess on the table—the porcelain housing, an assortment of gears and screws and other things Rachel didn’t understand.
“Are you sure?” Aunt Becca asked.
“Alex is a whiz at electronic and mechanical things,” Edward said.
Rachel nodded. At the greenhouse, she’d seen him repair both delicate electronics and tinker with his car engine. “I trust his judgment.”
The doorbell rang. Everyone froze for a moment, then Aunt Becca laughed at herself. “That’s probably Horatio. He mentioned he was nearby when I talked to him.”
Rachel gave her statement to Detective Carter, whose gentle gray eyes seemed to understand how terrible she felt about everything that had happened. At one point, he even touched her arm briefly. “I hate to ask this, but have you looked through your room to see if anything is missing?”
“I haven’t even gone inside yet,” she whispered.
He gave a small smile. “After my officers have collected any evidence, try to steel yourself and start cleaning up. And let me know if you notice anything unusual.” He squeezed her forearm. “Buck up, Rachel. It’ll be okay.”
His kindness buoyed her.
“I’ll check on the UPS truck, too,” he promised her.
“Thank you, Detective.”
As he was leaving, he saw Edward hovering nearby. “Edward, I forgot to call you to ask—did you get around to figuring out if any plants were taken from your greenhouse?”
“Actually…” Edward’s face vacillated between pale and red. He placed his hands on Rachel’s shoulders as if to brace her. “I, uh, was going to talk to you about that before…”
Yes, he had wanted to speak to her when they first drove up to the house. She tried to answer, but her throat had dried. She swallowed painfully. “Well?” she croaked.
His eyes were pained—for her. “There are three plants missing.”
“Three? Are you sure?” Detective Carter asked.
“Alex and I cleaned out greenhouse four, and counted all the plants several times. We checked the grounds around the greenhouses, in case the plants were dropped by the intruders or by one of us.” His thumbs rubbed her skin once, twice. “There are three plants gone.”
As the shock wore off, Rachel became aware of a rising sense of hope. “They stole three plants. They needed to steal three plants.” Her breath started to come quickly. “That means they didn’t know what strain of basil it was. That means…”
Edward caught on. “We thought they only intended to sabotage your product launch. They shouldn’t have needed to take samples.”
“If they already had my research notes, they’d already have known the basil strain. Edward, that means they don’t know. That means they might not have stolen my research yet.” Rachel’s hands flew up to grip his forearms. “We still have a chance to save this product launch.”
FIVE
She had a chance, and she wasn’t going to waste it.
Rachel approached her research associate, Stephanie, where she was doing quality-control tests on the last batch of scar-reduction cream at her lab bench. “Stephanie, I need to use your computer.”
Stephanie paused in her pipetting and peered up at her through her owl-like glasses. “Jane is still working on yours?”
Rachel nodded and held up a flash drive. “And I have new clinical trial data to sort through that can’t wait.” Especially not now that time seemed to be slipping away like sand in an hourglass. She needed to finish the final verification on the formulation’s efficacy and ready it for mass production soon.
Stephanie gestured toward her computer at her desk. “Go ahead. Although I’ll have this quality-control data ready to download in a couple hours.”
“I’ll be done by then.” Rachel sat at Stephanie’s desk, amazed as always by the Spartan neatness. She could barely see the surface of her own desk for all the papers littering it.
After she’d been working for a little while, she heard the centrifuge fire up. Then a shadow fell across the screen and Stephanie leaned against the desk edge, obviously waiting for the separator to finish its run. “So, how’s the formulation coming along?”
For some reason, the innocent question jangled through her. Don’t be silly. Rachel had worked with Stephanie for two years, now, for goodness’ sake. Everything was making her paranoid. “I’m almost done. It’s hard to scale it up for larger production.”
“I figured.” Stephanie smiled. “This will be the first product launch that I have worked with you. The last formula didn’t make it this far.”
The ill-fated diamond-dust cleanser. Rachel couldn’t help the cloud over her soul at the remembrance of her father’s bitter words after that failure. “This is ten times better than that cleanser.”
“Seems that way. You spent an awful lot of time on the formulation for this.”
Again, that frisson of distrust that ran through her. Rachel glanced up at her assistant, but Stephanie had the same placid smile. Was it just her imagination that there was a faint edge to that smile, some tension around her eyes? Rachel’s hand gripped the computer mouse, her nails scraping the plastic. “The time I put in will be worth it,” she said mildly.
“Did you need any help?” Stephanie asked.
Something inside Rachel stilled for a long moment, her heart seemed to pound harder and faster than before.
Stephanie was a good research assistant, but never proactive or inquisitive about the formulation process. Her background was Quality Control and Quality Assurance, not chemistry or formulation, and certainly not dermatology.
And she had never asked to help before.
Rachel faltered. She should just be polite, tell her no and forget about it. But she didn’t want to forget about it. She wanted to ask Stephanie why she was suddenly so interested. The question bubbled up in her gut until it was almost at her lips. Then her office door opened.
“Rachel? I finished.” Jane’s smiling face peered around the door.
Rachel took the time to remove the clinical data from Stephanie’s computer even though it didn’t have anything critical, but her suspicions were buzzing too loud in her ears for her to ignore.
She closed the office door behind her and sat next to Jane in front of her computer. “So, what did you find?”
Jane bit her lip and glanced at Rachel. “I hate to tell you this, but your computer was hacked into two years ago.”
At first, the word hacked seemed to cut into her chest, but then she registered two years ago and breathed easier. “Not recently?”
Jane shook her head, her straight chin-length hair swinging against her jaw, drawing Rachel’s attention to the scars there. Or maybe Rachel was just sensitive to them.
After all, she had caused them.
But this scar-reduction cream would make up for that fire in the playhouse.
“I couldn’t find out who had gained access to the computer,” Jane was said, “and I couldn’t figure out which files.”
“I would just assume the hacker stole all my research notes.” Why else break into her office and her computer? She glanced at the door, guarded only by a doorknob lock. Stupid! Why hadn’t she gotten a dead bolt, or even better, installed a heavy card-key door like the ones guarding the lab area at the back of the spa from the front clientele areas?
“Whoever did it, however, didn’t erase the time stamp. A little over two years ago, September 19, 9:07 p.m.”
Rachel wrote it down, but as she did, each letter and number seemed to burn into the page.
Her greenhouse. Her bedroom. Her office.
Her life.
“This isn’t happening.” She was surprised at how tight her voice was, then realized her teeth were clenched.
Jane’s eyes and mouth softened. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’ve been talking about it, and it hasn’t helped. Because no one can do anything about it.”
“God can do something about it.” Jane touched her hand. “You’re not all alone in facing this.”
Rachel shifted her hand away. “I feel alone in this. My life has been violated and there’s nothing I can do to change how that makes me feel.”
“There is something you can do. You can pray.”
“How would that help anything?” Rachel retorted fiercely. “Why would God even care?”
Jane swallowed. “He does care, Rachel.”
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