Chapter 32

A cell phone rang and abruptly cut off. Seb looked at Alexis, and she shook her head. It wasn't hers.

"The security guard. Listen," Emery said. They could hear the faint murmur of a telephone conversation at the other end of the hallway, but no one was in sight. The man had to be standing at the top of the stairs. "How long did you say it would take you to pick the lock?"

"Too long." Seb searched the hallway for a hiding place.

"Women's restroom," Emery pointed to the door at the end of the hallway near them.

They hurried down the hallway. Alexis opened the restroom door, but Emery stopped at the Lost and Found box placed along the wall beside the door. She bent down and rummaged through the clothing.

"We don't have time for this," Seb whispered, and gently placed his hand on her elbow. She shook it off and pulled out a wrinkled, stained lab coat.

"This should do it," she murmured and plucked the key card out of his hand. "I'll take care of the lab door."

Seb stared at her as she undid her ponytail, scooped her hair into a bun, and then pulled random strands loose. The rushed and hurried appearance gave her a harried look, as if she'd had a hectic day with no time to fix her hair. She rubbed her eyes with her fists, turning them beet red.

"What's she up to?" Seb whispered to Alexis as she tugged on his arm.

"Trust her. Women's restroom. Now," Alexis said and tugged again. He followed her into the bathroom.

She opened the restroom door a half-inch once they were inside and peered through the crack. Seb stood behind her. More than a full head taller than her, there was no need to jostle for a position.

"You've got to be kidding." Emery jiggled the lab's doorknob, yanked at the door. She swiped the key card. "Open. Come on, open."

She jiggled the doorknob again and yanked several more times.

"Let me in," she wailed and swiped the key card again.

"Is there a problem, Miss?" Seb could hear the security guard, but the angle kept him hidden from view.

"The door is busted. I can't get in." Emery swiped the key card and tried the door, then repeated the process. "It worked this morning when I met with Dr. Butler." Her voice rose as she spoke and the words came faster. "I'm in the middle of an experiment Dr. Butler asked me to run. If I don't get in the lab, three weeks of work will be ruined. I'll have to start all over."

"Are you using the right key card?" the security guard asked, his voice calm.

Emery turned to the man outside of their vision, her voice a pitch higher. "Right key card? I'm not an idiot. There's only one, and it worked this morning when I dropped stuff off."

"Dr. Overlin asked for the door to be programmed with a separate key card. It was done this afternoon."

"Why didn't anyone inform me? I was here this morning. I told you I dropped stuff off." She sounded on the verge of tears.

"You're working with Dr. Butler, right?" Sympathy infused the security guard's voice and Emery nodded. "You know him, typical absent-minded professor. He probably forgot it was happening. I'll use my master to open the door. Stop by the security office tomorrow and pick up the second card."

"Thank you so much," Emery stepped back and a man in his mid-twenties, dressed in the university security team's uniform, stepped into view. He slid his key card into the reader and held the door open for Emery.

"Do you often run experiments late at night?" he asked.

Emery bopped her head up and down. "My timetable this semester is a nightmare, and it's the only time I have."

"Call the security office when you're done tonight and tell them to let Hank know you're ready to leave. I'll walk you to your car. It's too late to be walking alone."

The guy was hitting on her.

Alexis closed the door, leaned against the wall, her lips rolled between her teeth, trying not to laugh. Seb looked at his feet and swallowed his chuckle as he imagined the guy's reaction if he found out he'd help them break into the lab.

When they came out of the restroom, Emery looked at them. "What are you two waiting for? I thought we were in a hurry."

They followed her into the hallway, neither of them speaking. Emery opened the lab door and picked up her shoe she'd used to prop it open.

Alexis flicked on lights as if it were routine and pointed to a door at the back of the medium-sized office. Bookcases crammed with various sizes of books, boxes, and stacks of paper lined the walls. The identical desks sitting to either side of a window gave Seb the sense that Butler and Overlin considered themselves equal partners in their research, despite Javier's feeling Butler did the heavy lifting.

"I'll find a pad of paper and pretend to be working in case Hank drops in to check on my progress." Emery's mouth twitched with amusement as she moved to the desk closest to the door.

"Let's hope we're out of here before the end of his shift," Alexis said as she strode across the room. "He's bound to show up or offer to stick around until you're finished to buy you a coffee."

Emery snorted and pulled open a desk drawer. "He's a baby. I'm into older men."

If he'd known, Orlan would have been disappointed she hadn't stayed. Then again, Seb got the impression the python hunter was serious about Ruby Anne.

Seb followed Alexis into a large lab. Equipment he didn't recognize sat on counters topped with cupboards, and on a long lab bench in the middle of the room. Shrimp filled two enormous fish tanks at the back of the room.

Alexis went immediately to one of the two fridges in the room's corner. She opened one, closed it, and then opened the second. "There are several racks with test tubes."

"Does it look like anything is missing?" Seb asked, thinking about the insulated cooler the man they couldn't identify had carried.

"As disorganized as Dr. Butler is in his personal life, he's meticulous in his research." The fridge door muffled Alexis's voice as she examined the contents on the shelves. "I'd say a rack of vials is missing. Twelve vials if it was full."

Twelve. Potentially twelve buyers, worst-case scenario.

She stood and closed the fridge door. "Rodriquez took a photograph of the guy with the insulated cooler. What did he look like?"

"Average height and dumpy. It could have been anyone." She was thinking along the same lines as him. The man had retrieved the twelve vials with the algae samples.

"It was more likely Dr. Butler than Kyle." There was more in her voice than disappointment at another black mark against Butler. It was as if she would be eager to pin this on Overlin, even though she'd insisted he didn't have the drive or intelligence to engineer the algae.

Kyledidn't sound like someone Alexis had had a passing acquaintance with, as she'd claimed.

"How well do you know Dr. Overlin?" Seb asked as she moved equipment from the countertop to a lab bench.

"We had a few classes together." She shrugged a shoulder and yanked open a drawer, the contents inside shifting. Then she pulled out microscope slides, obviously familiar with the lab's setup. "He helped with some of Dr. Butler's research when I was Dr. Butler's teaching and research assistant."

"Is there something I should know about Overlin?" Seb asked as she took a rack filled with vials out of the fridge. There was something more. He could sense it.

"Other than he's a jerk?" Alexis picked up a vial, read the label, and then traded it for another. "Nope."

Jerk?Whatever the guy did, Alexis took it personally. Seb wanted to know what it was.

"You don't like the guy?"

She didn't answer. Seb moved closer to her and leaned against the lab bench. He could see the red flush roll up her neck into her cheeks.

"You're distracting me." Alexis switched out racks. "And you're not giving me space to work."

And she wasn't answering the question.

Her reason for disliking Overlin, correct that, hating the man was personal. He took out his cell phone and texted Javier for the detailed background check they did on Kyle Overlin.

"I'll figure out which desk is Butler's and see if there's a way for Javier to get into his computer." Seb stepped away from the lab bench.

"Desk closest to the door," Alexis said, bent over a microscope. "Dr. Butler… doctor spelled out in full, capital D and B with a period after doctor. He kept forgetting his password until I suggested this one. It's too simple for someone to think of using."

She was right. Seb wouldn't have considered it as a choice.

He left her to work and joined Emery.

"She kicked you out?" Emery asked as she typed on Overlin's keyboard. "Someone needs to explain to this guy how to organize his list of favorites. Scrolling down the list takes at least a minute."

"You got into Overlin's computer?" Seb stared at her as she moved the mouse and clicked on an icon.

"It was on a sticky in his desk drawer—nobelprizewinner." She raised an eyebrow. "He's into positive affirmations or is an egocentric jerk. From the tone of his emails, I'm leaning toward the latter."

Alexis had already confirmed that.

Seb turned on Dr. Butler's computer and opened his document folder. Everything was saved on the Cloud. The password was the same. Other than a folder with presentation slides and one with copies of scientific papers, the rest were research notes. Seb didn't understand most of what he was reading. Alexis would need to go through the files.

He clicked on the email icon and skimmed through the emails. The majority were answered with a sentence and the standard university email signature. Occasionally, there was an attachment. Butler often referred the sender to his research partner for a more detailed response or forwarded the email with the instruction to respond as Overlin saw fit.

"I've got lots of emails from an aqua farming company," Emery said, not looking up from the computer. "From what I can tell, the algae the two profs are working on could turn Overlin's login password into reality."

"It's that big of a breakthrough?" Seb asked, as he skimmed more emails.

"It's significantly increased the shrimp size in their studies. Yeah, it's Nobel Prize winning big, even in the developmental stages. Overlin received a couple of emails from a pharmaceutical company in February, asking him to contact them about research and development they saw stemming from their genetically engineered algae. Company's name is Pharmceut."

"Overlin must have been dealing with that. I haven't come across anything in Butler's email." Seb scrolled through the inbox. Butler rarely moved things to a folder and the files in his trash folder dated years back. "Nothing from February to present."

"Dr. Butler's involved," Alexis said as the lab door closed behind her. "I found test tubes with the algae. I need to look at his research notes."

Seb stood and stepped to the side. Alexis replaced him in front of Butler's computer and began clicking through the research notes.

"You can barely tell it apart from the algae he's genetically engineered to feed the shrimp. I took a quick look at the shrimp. They're not quite double. Impressive." She shook her head as she read. "None of this makes sense. I know he's desperate to make his mark before he retires, but the algae he's created to feed the shrimp will have scientists world-wide talking about his achievement. Why would he get involved with something that might destroy the entire freshwater ecosystem?"

"Money," Emery said. "It's always money."

"Here it is." Alexis pointed at the screen. "It was an old trial about a year ago. Dr. Butler even documents the consequences if it entered a freshwater environment." The rapid click of the mouse was the only sound in the room. "The formula to kill off the algae isn't on the computer."

"We need to see Dr. Butler," Alexis said as she closed files and folders.