She sensed deep down, that those plants in the tanks could prove to be the biggest scientific breakthrough of the twenty-first century.
And her contract was petty in comparison.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Marise sat at her kitchen bench, staring at the screen of her laptop.
The message had arrived in her secure inbox ten minutes ago, buried beneath layers of encryption. It looked innocuous enough. A quarterly e-newsletter from a fictitious travel agency. But the phrase"Change of itinerary: effective immediately"triggered the decoding protocol in her custom software.
The real message appeared in pale blue font over a static background:Cease all contact with subject. Do not engage further. Your contract is finished. Funds have been transferred.
She read it twice, then a third time. She felt queasy. They were pulling her off the job and paying her anyhow. Whoever gave her the contract must have very deep pockets. She didn’t come cheap.
The message didn’t say why, but it didn’t matter.
The directive was clear: cut ties. Walk away without looking back.
She closed the laptop and leaned back in the chair. The night in the lab hadn’t answered her questions, only posed more. What were those strange glowing plants—alive but rootless, pulsingfaint blue in their tanks? She had no idea what Kathleen had genetically built and now she was being told not to find out.
Marise got up, paced to the window. Outside, the city shimmered under rain-washed light, indifferent as always. She usually welcomed leaving, but not this time. She was too invested in the outcome and in Kathleen.
She glanced at her phone to see if there were any messages from her. There were none, of course. What did she expect? That Kathleen would forget her scruples and forgive her?
Fat chance of that.
She should leave but she couldn’t. If her contract was terminated, it could mean three things. One—they were no longer interested, two—they knew what she had engineered, or three—they decided to force Kathleen to give over her secrets.
She had to assume it was number three, which meant Kathleen was in danger.
She shrugged on a coat and went to see the real estate agency and to hire a car.
At six the next night, Marise, dressed in her black shirt and jeans and a dark hoodie, drove to her temporary rental on the opposite side of the street from Kathleen’s apartment block. From there, she had a partial view of her building. Not close enough to be seen, but enough to watch. She settled down in a chair with a pair of binoculars to wait.
Kathleen didn’t appear from work, nor was there any light on in her apartment on the fourth floor.
A few minutes after eight, a black SUV nosed past Kathleen’s apartment block and parked a few doors down. Not directly out front, but half hidden beneath a low-hanging tree. Marisetrained her binoculars on the windshield and caught a silhouette in the driver’s seat through the tinted glass.
The car didn’t leave until an hour before daybreak.
The next night, she returned at the same time. Kathleen still didn’t come home. At 8.15 pm., the SUV came back and parked in the same spot. This time, Marise was ready. She jotted down the rego number on the plate, snapped two photos, and noted the make: late-model Land Rover Defender, black trim with out-of-state plates. The vehicle stayed until nearly 5 a.m., then pulled away without headlights.
This wasn’t a coincidence. It was surveillance.
The watchers were probably waiting for Kathleen to return to make their move.
Marise went back to her apartment in the Alderidge after the car left. Once there, she pulled the curtains and switched on her desk lamp. She opened her laptop and slipped a USB key into the port. The program she’d written for bypassing encrypted login portals still fooled department servers.
She accessed the New York Department of Motor Vehicles under a proxy shell and typed in the license plate.
After thirty seconds, a file blinked open.
Registered Owner: Claude S. Fahey.
Company: Lantrak Holdings LLC.
Address: Manhattan, NY.
Classification: Commercial Vehicle (Private Security).
