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“And everything we’ve worked for disappears. Bye-bye, stock options.” Kavita frowned and slumped lower in her chair.
“If Kingsley Tech fails, the banks fail, and we lose our jobs. Worse, we might not survive. These men aren’t afraid to kill or torture to get what they want.” After sharing the worst-case scenario, Tess paused. The mood in the conference room had visibly plummeted. Her scalp tingled like it was covered with live electrodes, and her stomach reeled. She swallowed hard and considered running to the bathroom.
“So, we’re screwed.” Groaning, Declan pressed his hands against his head.
The crisp white bandages under Kavita’s shirt cuff distracted Tess again, drawing her attention like a magnet. Glancing at her colleague’s face, she swayed, and the scene before her blurred, like a charcoal portrait with all the outlines erased. Her vision filled with spots, and the room spun like a carnival thrill ride before fading to black.
She slipped out of her seat and fell to the floor, unconscious.
Sometime later, Tess woke flat on her back on a carpet with her feet propped on a chair. People swarmed around her, and she detected motion in broken glimpses. Covered in sweat and with her heart pounding, she couldn’t identify the room. Worried, upside-down faces appeared, and the blurry faces shifted to reveal David and Declan.
“Tess, can you hear us?” David was asking. “Kavita called for a doctor.”
Not steady enough to move, she remained on the floor, and her head felt like a pile of bricks. Slowly, she sat up and accepted a glass of ice water from Declan, which she sipped in rapid swallows, grateful for the liquid sliding down her parched throat. The room still spun, though its velocity slowed.
A cacophony of voices in the hallway grew louder, and the club’s head server opened the door. “Dr. Miriam Patel has arrived,” he announced.
The doctor, a petite Indian woman wearing a polished but simple navy dress paired with low-heeled pumps, rushed to Tess and opened her leather medical bag. Pulling out a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff, she got to work.
With a thermometer stuck in her mouth and a cuff squeezing her arm like a boa constrictor, Tess mumbled and attempted to summarize her recent surgery and medications.
Dr. Patel thrust her hands on her hips and rocked backward and forward on her low-heeled pumps. She made tsk-tsk sounds while unwrapping the orthopedic boot to check for swelling. “You’re telling me you had emergency surgery days ago, got on a long-haul flight, then came straight to this meeting? Didn’t your doctor warn you against flying so soon after surgery? Dangerous.”
“Yes, I was warned. What do I do now?” Chagrined and more than a little embarrassed, Tess wished she’d followed Mark’s advice and stayed home in Seattle. Already regretting the risky, impulsive decision to travel, she accepted the rebuke without protest.
Dr. Patel assisted in moving Tess from the floor up to a chair, then smoothed a strand of her short, bobbed hair behind one ear and adjusted horn-rimmed glasses. “No work, period. Your blood pressure has fallen quite low, you have extreme dehydration, and worse, your leg wound is swelling. No fever, but you must rest, rehydrate, and stay off your foot for the next forty-eight hours. Ice it every two hours. No exceptions. Please look after yourself, Ms. Bennett.” She handed Tess a business card. “Call if your symptoms come back.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”Reprimanded, Tess acknowledged the instructions and watched as Dr. Patel exited, clicking her sensible pumps on the wood floor and still tsk-tsking disapproval.
Kavita and Declan had left the room during Dr. Patel’s visit, and only David remained. He shut the door and scooted his chair closer.“Tess, you’re not well, and it’s affecting your judgment, which you proved in spades by coming here in the first place. You need to recover.”
Lancinating pain burned down her leg, but she dodged explaining the extent of her discomfort. “I’ll be fine. Just a little jet lagged.”
“Stop bullshitting me. I need you at top form, not throwing glassware and collapsing in meetings. We will cover the business until you’re back.”
David rarely swore, and he’d never looked so stern. “Kavita wants my job.” Glaring, she spoke through barred teeth.
“She has always wanted your job, but you’re irreplaceable, Bennett. However, you’re coming off the rails, full stop.” Wrinkles bridged the expanse of his forehead, and he studied her at length. “What the hell happened to you at Cedarcliff?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Our captors were violent, and I got pretty beaten up.” Knowing she lacked the emotional fortitude to recount the ordeal, she declined to say more. The Canadian police’s decision to keep the investigation’s details private shielded her from having to rehash disturbing events or address triggering questions, which she appreciated.
“Sending you to Cedarcliff was my fault, and I take full responsibility. You suffered on my account, and I want to apologize.”
The remorse in his voice and his stricken look consoled her, even though she didn’t consider him at fault. “Look, I traveled because we had venture capital at stake, so it’s not like you sent me on a suicide mission.”
His features contorted as if she slapped him.
“I feel like a complete ass. You suffered because of me, and I should have been the hostage, not you, and not Dr. Nygaard. You didn’t deserve this, and I am so very sorry.”
“David, no one deserved it.” A surge of resentment made her throat tighten, and the injustice of the attack hit her all over again. “Why did the kidnappers want you anyhow? Ransom? Given your Silicon Valley days, I figured you’d be a prime target.” He belonged to the lucky club of overnight millionaires minted in the heady early days of the Internet, amassing an untold fortune he’d leveraged to start Kingsley Tech.
He opened his hands wide. “Server access. I can access our source code fast. If they only wanted money, Riku would’ve been a more lucrative target.”
“Yuri, the head gunman, said their motive was money, and we think the gunmen were all Belarusian. Don’t know the name of the terror group or who they worked for, but they’re under pressure to hack something and need our code to do it.”
Voices in the hallway grew louder, and someone knocked on the door. “David, everything all right?”
“Give us a minute, please.” David shouted at the door, then lowered his voice. “All criminals want money, but it could be for drug trafficking, revolutions, or anything. According to the police briefing yesterday, organized crime cells are proliferating like mad across Belarus. Many are small copycat groups, but others are dangerous rogue threats.”
