“Fortunately, Fiona takes after the better-looking parent.”
Fiona poked at Nikolai’s silver-and-black goatee. “Are you a gwandpa?”
“No. Unfortunately, I never will be. I have no children.” He gave her a noisy kiss on the cheek.
Everyone in the room laughed except for Miranda, who lifted Fiona from Nikolai’s arms and caught her by the hand. “She gets her smarts and curiosity from her father.” Her warm smile included each of the guests in the room. “You all have business to discuss, so we’ll, um, go do some exploring.”
Quinn wondered at the lack of a smile when her eyes reached him. The double shifting of her gaze toward the door sent a clearer message, however. “Excuse me a moment, gentlemen. Elise? If you’d be so good as to pour our guests some coffee?”
“Of course. Mr. Titov…” Elise took over the meeting for a moment as Quinn slipped away to meet Miranda at the door.
“What is it?” he asked in a whisper.
Miranda pulled her ponytail from the front of her shoulder and flicked it down the middle of her back. She answered in an equally hushed yet urgent voice. “Mr. Titov’s
accountant
is wearing a gun in an ankle holster.”
An armed man in his office? Quinn stiffened his neck against the impulse to turn and confirm her observation. But the more rational side of his brain wouldn’t let him panic. “He wouldn’t be the first wealthy man to hire a bodyguard.”
Her eyes blanched wide as she remembered her own position, then narrowed. “Once we’re out of here, I’m calling Mr. Damiani down in the security office to make sure he checked these guys out thoroughly.”
“Get her out of here.” Quinn hurried them out the door and readied to close it behind them. “Don’t stray too far,” he called after them for the benefit of the others in the room.
He appreciated her firm grip on Fiona. “We won’t.”
Quinn adjusted his glasses at the temple, giving himself a moment to blank the suspicion from his face before returning to his guests. Putting out fires with a primary investor was not how he wanted to be spending the day. But Nikolai Titov was worth millions to GSS. And he’d only be separated from Fiona for the ten minutes it took to reassure him of his importance to the company.
“Nikolai, please.” He strolled back to the center of the room, positioning himself to verify the gun on the beefy accountant’s leg, and to see if he could spot whether anyone else was armed. “You’ve been on a flight for twenty hours. Sit and relax. We have plenty of time to talk.” He smiled as Elise carried a tray of coffee cups and a pot to the long table between the sofas. “You remember my executive assistant, Elise, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Nikolai actually took the tray and set it down for her. “You are looking as beautiful as ever, is she not, Quinn?”
Huh? Oh, yeah. Elise was a pretty woman. Talented. Skilled. Loyal. But she was, well, Elise. He’d never thought of her as anything but the boon she was to the company. She’d worked for him for ten years now. Elise he understood. Quinn’s gaze slid over to the door Miranda had just exited. Understanding that one, on the other hand…?
“Thank you, Mr. Titov.” Elise was blushing under the continental charm of their guest. “Well, if you need anything else…”
Nikolai frowned as she handed him the china cup and saucer. “You are not joining us for the meeting, Miss Brown?”
“Quinn?”
What the hell? Was Nikolai thinking of stealing his top assistant? Or did he just have a thing for brunettes? He had no reason to question Elise’s loyalty. And since she was privy to pretty much everything at the company, anyway… “That’s fine with me.” Perhaps Louis was right, and he needed to give their guests his full attention in order to stave off a different sort of threat to everything he’d built. Quinn refused a cup of coffee for himself and gestured to the sofas and chairs. “Please. Have a seat.”
“How was your holiday?” Elise asked, joining Nikolai on the sofa across from the men who’d accompanied him from Lukinburg.
Nikolai sipped his coffee and sighed. “I cannot celebrate at a time like this.”
“What’s wrong, Mr. Titov?” she asked.
“Nikolai, please.”
Quinn went to the window and looked out at the snowy white landscape, and the airport control tower and hotels on the horizon. “You should have called before flying all the way to the States, Nikolai.”
“This cannot wait. I do not like what I am hearing, half a world away.”
“What are you hearing in St. Feodor?” Louis asked.
Quinn heard the rattle of a cup and saucer behind him, and saw Nikolai’s reflection in the window as he approached. “I heard about the Kalahari plant being destroyed. Is it the work of terrorists?”
“No way to know yet. No factions I know of have taken credit for it.”
“I gave you a million dollars for that and pledged ten more. We were going to make military-grade drones. And now we have nothing.”
“My insurance will cover your lost investment, Nikolai.”
“But what about the future profit I have lost? Who will pay the millions you promised me?”
Quinn slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks and faced the shorter man. “Other than the tragic loss of life in the explosion and fire, this is something GSS will recover from.”
“But when?” Nikolai pointed a stubby finger at Quinn’s chin. “If you do not get that plant up and running soon, my investors in Lukinburg will be very disappointed.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “And these are not the type of men you want to disappoint.”
Did that explain the armed accountant? Had Nikolai received some sort of threat, as well?
Quinn shook his head and turned away, flattening his palm against the cool glass, struggling to maintain an equally cool, unemotional facade when everything inside him was arguing to end this discussion and get back to the work of tracking down the enemy who wanted to destroy him.
“It’s not like I can get the plant up and running again in a matter of days. Or even weeks.” The glimmer of an idea popped into his head. Days. Time line.
Make it right.
Had he offended somebody? Shortchanged anyone by green-lighting the Kalahari project?
Do I have your attention now?
Why wouldn’t destroying the plant be enough? Why come after his daughter? Why not just ask for more money?
Maybe it was just the countdown to New Year’s weighing on his mind and getting mixed up with Nikolai’s visit that made him think he was onto finding an answer here.
A little of that frustration crept into Quinn’s voice. “Whoever planted those bombs razed it to the ground. We’re talking about months of rebuilding.”
“My partners in Lukinburg were expecting to see results in a few months.” The strain of remaining civil raised the volume in Nikolai’s voice. “Now we are talking about delaying profits for a year or more.”
“You knew the risks.”
Louis joined them at the window and tried to play peacemaker. “Nikolai, your investors aren’t the only ones who lost money. Some of us here at GSS put our own funds into that project. We took a hit, too.”
“Then I have a solution for you, Mr. Nolan.” But Nikolai’s answer was aimed squarely at Quinn. “The GSS plant in St. Feodor that you closed last year. Move the drone-assembly operation there. The building and assembly lines are still in place. We have the rail lines and a small airport nearby. It could work.”
“We closed the St. Feodor plant because it was too small. And the cost for refitting it for a new product—”
“—would be offset because you would not have to rebuild the entire facility. And you know we have the skilled workers there.” Nikolai must have been planning this speech all the way from Lukinburg. “Many are still out of work since the plant closed. I think I could convince my investors to put up the money again if they know they are investing in the benefit of their homeland.”
Ten minutes and making nice was done. “I’ll consider it, Nikolai. But just now I have another issue that is quite urgent I must attend to. Let me call you after the New Year. Perhaps Louis could take a trip to Lukinburg to look over the condition of the plant and discuss it further.” He nodded toward Elise, who could read him well enough to know when he wanted to end a meeting and began ushering their guests toward the door. “He could take my assistant with him.”
Elise and Nikolai made some eye contact at the door. To Quinn’s surprise, but apparently to Elise’s pleasure, Nikolai raised her knuckles to his lips and kissed her hand. “That would be most agreeable.”
“I’d look forward to it,” Elise agreed.
Nikolai released her to hold a hand out to Quinn. “Do not wait too long, my friend. The investors I speak of are not patient men.”
The questionable nature of some of Titov’s investors had been another reason to close the St. Feodor plant. But Quinn didn’t have the time, nor was he in the right frame of mind, to bring up that topic or make any major business decisions right now.
He was reaching out to shake Nikolai’s hand when the elevator doors opened on the far side of Elise’s office and David Damiani came charging out. “Quinn? Quinn!”
“What the…?”
David was a linebacker, running straight at the quarterback. “I couldn’t risk calling your cell. We need to evacuate the building.”
“What’s wrong?”
Going on instant alert, Quinn wondered if Miranda would hear the shouting or feel the tension multiplying on the top floor. Was she drawing her gun? Getting Fiona as far away from the security chief’s alarm as she could?
“Everyone needs to turn off their cell phones. Landlines only if you need to make a call.” The big man pushed past their guests, and ran to Quinn’s desk. “Have you checked your emails? We need to get these people out of here.”
“David. Answers. Now.”
“We’ve been monitoring all computer activity since that…glitch yesterday.” David flipped on the computer and pulled Quinn behind the desk, urging him to type in his password and pull up his files. “Phones off?” he prompted to the others in the room.
One by one, everyone but Elise pulled out cell phones and complied. “Mine’s in my purse at my desk,” she said.
“Get it,” David ordered.
“Quinn?” Miranda shouted from the hallway.
David saw her at the elevator now, too. “Elise, tell the nanny to turn off her phone.”
“Ah, hell.” Quinn looked through the glass walls of his office. No, no, no, no, no. Miranda was running toward them. She had her phone in one hand and Fiona in the other. “David, talk to me.”
“Here.” David highlighted an email and opened it. He turned the monitor to Quinn and pointed to the screen. “Ozzie Chang found this encrypted in the system. I verified it myself and evacuated the lab.”
Quinn frowned. “What’s Ozzie doing here? I told him to take a vacation.”
“Does it matter?” David tapped the monitor. “Look.”
“Son of a bitch.”
Another day of this nightmare. Another threat.
As promised, the message was a hauntingly clear photo of the GSS computer lab. And the open briefcase with the wires and timer and C-4 sitting on the table in the middle of the lab had nothing to do with computers at all. The picture was framed by a rotating word stream that read,
See? I can get to everything that belongs to you. Make it right. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock…
“Make it…?” The blood in Quinn’s brain drained to his toes before adrenaline pumped his heart into overtime. “What the hell do you want from me?” He swung around to the others. “There’s a bomb in the building. Everybody out of here! Now!”
“That’s the same picture I saw when I was talking to my brother.”
“Damn it, Miranda.” She was right beside him, looking at the same picture, reading the same threat. “Your job is to protect my daughter. Get out of here.”
“I sent her with Elise. She’ll be safe. That’s enough plastique to take out a couple of floors.” She picked up the corded telephone on Quinn’s desk. “Damiani, take those people down the stairs. We can’t risk anyone getting stuck in the elevator. Is there anyone else in the building?”
“Sir?” David was questioning who was in charge here.
Quinn plucked the phone from Miranda’s fingers and handed it to David as he pushed her toward the door. “You stay with my daughter.”
With a twist of her body, she freed her arm from Quinn’s grasp and hurried back to the desk. “Get real, Quinn. This is exactly the type of situation I’m trained for.
You
need to get out of here with Fiona and let me work.” She turned to David. “Is everyone out of the building?” she repeated.
The big man nodded. “Every person who signed in at the front desk has been accounted for now. There’s hardly anyone here over the holidays, but I’ve got my men doing a floor-by-floor search, just in case.”
“Have you called the police?”
“Already spoke to your friend Cutler. His team is on the way. Local cops are clearing a perimeter around the nearby businesses.”
She picked up the phone again and punched in a number. “Where is the lab located?” she asked.
“Fourth floor,” David answered.
Her call picked up. “Yes, sir, this is Murdock. I’m at GSS headquarters now.” Michael Cutler must be on the line. She was all business, all focus now, as she pointed to the computer screen. “Can we print this out?”
David hit the print command while
Officer
Murdock answered another question. “Nine souls on the top floor.” She stretched over the desk to see through the glass wall. “Four men, a woman and a child are coming down the northeast stairwell.”
Quinn remained a step behind her, unheeded, fuming. “What about Fiona?”
“You don’t think I can do more good for her dealing with the bomb than holding her hand?”
“What if that bomb’s a dummy and this is all a ruse to get Fiona outside, unprotected?”
She glanced up at David. He muttered a curse and shook his head, understanding the silent request. “My job is to protect this man and this company.”
As much as Quinn wanted Miranda out of here with Fiona, he knew what needed to be done. He motioned David to the door. “Your job is to do what I say. She’s right.”
“I don’t like leaving you up here.”
“We’ll be right behind you in a few minutes. I won’t have any other deaths on my conscience. My daughter is your top priority. Get her someplace safe. Go.”