She slid her phone into her pocket, pleased to shed that persona. It had been interesting but she had no use for it now. She had personal access to Kathleen.
Today, she had to plan her next date with her on Wednesday. There could be no more lapses like last night.
Marise cleared the bourbon glass and set it in the sink, then unwrapped her tool roll containing her instruments: micro screwdrivers, SIM extractor, signal sniffer and flash jacks. Everything she needed to dissect secrets without leaving a mark.She moved quickly—she’d tracked corporate surveillance tech before. Most had black-market SIMs and cheap directional mics.
She picked up the bug she’d extracted from Kathleen’s phone and turned it over in her hand. It was small, flat, and matte black. Designed to blend in and not cheap. She clipped it to a micro-USB adapter and opened the burner laptop she kept as a spare. The screen flared a dull green as she ran a passive diagnostic. There was no interface, merely lines of raw code and signal data. The bug sent out short bursts every six hours, recording audio and tracking location. Everything was packed into encrypted messages before being sent out.
She opened a terminal window and dumped the last few logs into a folder and ran a scan. The server it was talking to was masked—routed through three relays, the final endpoint landing on a familiar hostname: apexa-data.com.
She pulled up the registration record.
The domain belonged to a holding company: Torcal Services Ltd., registered in Wyoming, backed by a silent partner with a listed office in Houston, Texas. On paper, it was an independent logistics firm. But Marise knew better. Torcal was a known shell. She’d crossed paths with it two years ago during an intel contract in Alberta.
It funnelled money for Pelmax Petroleum.
A private oil consortium—old money, politically connected, and aggressive when it came to emerging energy threats. Pelmax operated quietly behind lobbying groups, but they had a history of coercing or buying out promising tech before it could disrupt their dominance. In one case, they’d bankrupted a startup that had developed super batteries. They bought the patent and buried the research.
Pelmax must believe Kathleen’s invention could be a viable replacement for energy sources. That’s why someone planted a bug in her phone.
It wasn’t about gathering data. It was about getting control of the product. And when money didn’t work, the company was known to use more forceful means.
Marise leaned back in her chair. If Pelmax was worried, she may be under surveillance from other companies.
She snapped the laptop shut, stood, and stared out the window at the city’s lights chewing up electricity. If Kathleen could come up with a cheaper and better alternative to producing power, it would be worth trillions. If she walked away now, they’d send someone else who wouldn't care how brilliant or sweet or strange Kathleen was, only what she was worth if silenced.
She crossed to the closet, unlatched the floor safe, and dropped the bug inside. It was time she found out exactly what Kathleen was doing in her lab.
Marise spent the rest of the day on her laptop, surrounded by coffee cups. She trawled everything she could find with Kathleen’s name on it: academic listings, old grant records, committee minutes, obscure conference abstracts. She read through dry white papers on soil conductivity, chloroplast repair, and hybrid moss ecosystems.
Nothing connected.
No patents. No test trials or open datasets.
The woman had left fewer digital footprints than a ghost. Even her academic citations were vague. “Collaborative ecological systems” was the most concrete description she could find, if that signified anything at all.
Marise knew what this meant.
Kathleen’s work was deliberately shrouded. Unpublished yet and almost certainly unregistered. Hidden even from colleagues and her board. Pelmax had employed her on hearsay, since no one outside the lab had any idea what was going on. Maybeit had nothing to do with energy replacement—it might be a different product altogether.
Marise pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. No amount of trolling through university records was going to help. Kathleen had built walls around her work that only physical access could breach. The woman wasn’t anyone’s fool; she knew how to hide her work.
Marise needed to get inside the lab. That meant a passcode, a keycard or something.
And the only realistic way to get that was through Ted.
He was enthusiastic, and liked her a lot. At dinner on Thursday, he’d probably tell her the lab security policy between appetizers and dessert if she played it right. He’d also know what firm cleaned the lab.
Marise closed the laptop with a click.
There was still Wednesday night with Kathleen.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kathleen stood at the kitchen bench, fussing with the salad tongs for no good reason. The vinaigrette had already been whisked, the table set, the wine uncorked. She’d even folded the napkins neatly. Twice.
Veronica wasn’t due for ten minutes, but her nerves had arrived early.
This wasn’t new anymore. It wasn’t awkward or experimental for they’d crossed that threshold. What lingered now was expectation. Not pressure exactly—Veronica never pushed—but it was a weight Kathleen placed on herself. To show she could meet the intimacy, not submit to it but to reciprocate.
