“What are the doors?” he asked, going for the vital info first. Windows could wait, since they were on the second floor.
“Huh?” Fynn glanced at them. “Oh. One’s the bathroom. The other’s the airlock to a clean-room when I need one.”
Nolan crossed the room and opened the first door. A standard, single-use washroom, although containing a safety shower.Vents don’t look big enough to be an access point. Ceiling…He poked upward, his height letting him get a finger against the drop tiles if he stood on his toes. The tile lifted, revealing a space no more than eight inches high before the concrete of the floor above. Nearly impossible to crawl through.
When he let the tile settle into place and dropped his heels to the ground, Fynn was eyeing him, head cocked. “Looking for mice?”
Looking for ways someone might get to you.Memory of the panic-echoes in Fynn’s brown eyes made him say, “Something like that. What’s a clean-room?”
Fynn opened the other door, which swung toward them rather than away. The modest space beyond held a rack of white garments on hangers, a tray of booties, and a long bench. Another door with an inset window stood in the side wall. “If I want to isolate an outgassing compound in total purity, I can work in the clean room, at the laminar flow bench. This level of isolation is perhaps overkill, but nice to have.”
“Can I go in?”
“Don’t open the inner door.”
Nolan stepped around Fynn to inspect the first small chamber.No risks.Through the inner door’s window, he could see another modest lab with benches and a bare stainless-steel rack. No hiding places, no other doors or windows. “Is there a second way in there?”
“No, only through this antechamber. Deliberate design.”
A place to retreat, possibly. Not an entry.Nolan returned to the main lab and took a quick look at the windows.Sealed tight, over twelve feet up, no windows in the adjacent warehouse, possible roof overlook but a hundred feet away.
Fynn shut the anteroom door.“Happy now?”
“For the moment.” Nolan checked his phone, although Sheridan’s report should chime on arrival. Nolan would’ve liked to check the building himself, but he’d wanted to be first on their primary and by age thirty-seven, he’d learned to delegate.No report yet.Which meant no critical vulnerabilities so far.
“You can go if you have someplace to be.” Fynn folded his arms and stood frowning.
Huh?“The only place I need to be is protecting you, until you’re home safe at the end of the shift.”
“You can’t imagine I’ll be attacked in my own lab?”
“When my colleague reports on building security, I’ll let you know of any risks.” Nolan didn’t like the widening of Fynn’s eyes, so he added, “You wanted to talk to me about guacamole?”
The suggestion eased Fynn’s expression. “Oh, yes. Well, mainly the avocados. Everyone here’s pretty sick of them, so if you like them, you can always take some with you.” He pointed at the last fridge with a yellow Pac-Man sticker on it. “Anything in there’s fair game to be eaten.”
Nolan turned toward the row of fruit on the counter alongside the alien electronic-mating device. “What are you working on here?”
“That device is the ’CadoPlanner prototype. Well, a small version. If I can make it work with nine compartments, the design should be infinitely expandable.” Fynn went over, pulled on plastic gloves, and lifted one of the avocados. “The difficulty is in isolating and analyzing the outgassing of each piece individually. When a fruit ripens, it releases a variety of gaseous components. Ethylene, of course. Avocados are both sensitive and producers. But also a whole spectrum of molecules particular to the specific varietal—” He paused. “You can’t possibly be interested in this. Even Micah isn’t.”
Nolan might not care about avocado outgassing, which mostly made him think of his brother after a Mexican meal, but he did like seeing Fynn relax. For a guy who had to be in his thirties, he seemed rather tightly wound. Of course, strangers deliberately trying to hurt you could do that, for sure. “I’m not your brother.”
Fynn looked him up and down, mouthed as if speaking silently, then said, “He’d probably break a toe.”
“Huh?”
“Weightlifting. Never mind. Do you really want to know about this?”
“I really do.”
Admittedly, he listened with less than full attention to the list of critical biological components the device tested for, but he watched how Fynn gained confidence and animation as he spoke about his work. He made a mental note. If he needed Fynn calm in an emergency, a question about spectrophotometry might engage his brain and distract him.
When Fynn wound down, Nolan asked, “You do all this alone? I’d imagined a company as successful as RipeBox would have an army of scientists.”
To his surprise, Fynn flushed red across his cheekbones. “Well, there’s a full scientific staff, of course. I direct their research and development, once an idea pans out for me. They replicate my data and work on the practical equipment design. There are two large labs on either side of the main hallway.” He waved toward the door. “Back when we put the original product through beta testing, we had one common lab, but when we moved into this building, I asked for my own space. I find, well, that I think better without background interactions.”
“Nothing wrong with liking your privacy,” Nolan said. “Lots of folks do. I worked for one client who only communicated via written notes passed through their butler.”
“I’m notthatbad,” Fynn said. “But they all seemed to want background music playing and there was always someone with life stuff to discuss. I don’t multitask well.”
