Christmas Data Breach Read online

  Recognition washed over him. “Mya? What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

  “Help. Please.” Her thin voice sent a stab of fear through him that only sharpened when her dazed eyes met his.

  He pushed the hair from her face and nearly gasped at the sight of her. The beautiful brown eyes he still regularly dreamed about were unfocused. Cuts and scrapes marked the smooth brown skin on her face and arms. He could feel her tremble, whether from the cold or shock, he couldn’t be sure.

  “Hang in there, baby. I’m going to get you to a doctor.”

  “No doctors. No police. Just you, Gideon. Only you.”

  The words sent his heart thumping in his chest. He pushed the swell of emotions down. Mya was clearly in some kind of trouble. Big trouble if she’d come to him. He couldn’t let lingering feelings get in the way of helping her.

  He would help her. And make whoever had done this to her pay. That was a promise.

  CHRISTMAS DATA BREACH

  K.D. Richards

  K.D. Richards is a native of the Washington, DC, area, who now lives outside Toronto with her husband and two sons. You can find her at kdrichardsbooks.com.

  Books by K.D. Richards

  Harlequin Intrigue

  West Investigations

  Pursuit of the Truth

  Missing at Christmas

  Christmas Data Breach

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Mya Rochon—Director of the TriGen cancer research center.

  Gideon Wright—Security expert at West Security and Investigations and Mya’s ex-husband.

  James West—The eldest West brother and co-owner of West Security and Investigations.

  Irwin Ross—Former director of TriGen and Mya’s mentor.

  Brian Leeds—Mya’s research assistant and second-in-command at TriGen labs.

  Rebecca Conway—TriGen’s receptionist.

  Shannon Travers—Former classmate of Mya’s, now vice president of TriGen’s rival, Nobel Pharmaceuticals.

  Tessa Stenning—Private investigator at West Security and Investigations.

  To Daphne Dennis. Thank you for everything.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Excerpt from Christmas at Colts Creek by Delores Fossen

  Excerpt from Trapping a Terrorist by Caridad Piñeiro

  Chapter One

  Mya Rochon had a bounce in her step as she strolled the short distance back to her laboratory. She sipped her gingerbread latte, enjoying the Christmas lights draping the topiaries in the office complex. The starry Sunday night wasn’t the reason for her upbeat mood, however. She’d spent the last several weeks subjecting the final part of her cancer treatment to rigorous testing, and at every turn it had responded as she’d hoped. After years of study and research, it finally looked like she’d successfully developed a treatment for glioblastoma brain cancer.

  The building that housed her laboratory sat at the back of the office complex and was smaller than the other office buildings. Dr. Timothy Ott’s office took up the first floor. TriGen Labs, which she helmed, occupied the second floor.

  She headed around the building to the side entrance. There was no security guard on duty on weekends and tenants could exit from the lobby door on the weekend, but there was no entry from that door. She swiped her building identification, which doubled as a keycard, over the security panel by the door and headed down the hall to the elevators.

  A man’s deep baritone voice from just around the corner in front of her had her pausing. Tenants had twenty-four-hour access to the building, but she couldn’t remember Dr. Ott ever coming in on a Sunday night. Nor did the voice she heard sound at all like the tenor of the kindly sixty-three-year-old dentist she knew. No, the tone of this man’s voice was chilling.

  A shiver snaked down her spine. There was no doubt in her mind that he was dangerous.

  Definitely not Dr. Ott.

  Curiosity demanded she peek around the wall, but fear rooted her to the spot. She chucked the nearly empty coffee cup and listened.

  “I’ve looked all over for her. Her car is in the lot, but she’s not here.”

  Mya glanced back at the door through which she’d entered. Entry from the outside was granted electronically, but the door was opened from the inside by a metal bar that clanked loudly when pushed. She doubted she could make it out the door and away from the building without being heard.

  “I’ve already started a fire in the lab. I need to get out of here before this place goes up in flames.”

  Heavy footsteps moved away from where she stood. She waited until she couldn’t hear them any longer, then bolted for the door to the stairwell, the laptop in her oversize messenger bag bouncing against her hip.

  There were years of work in that lab, not just hers, but her mentor’s life’s work too. She couldn’t just let it all go up in flames.

  The lab took up most of the second floor, but she’d carved out space for a reception area and offices for herself and her assistant. On the second-floor landing, she dialed 911, ignoring the dispatcher’s order to get out of the building immediately. She tucked the phone into her pocket and charged forward.

  Mya burst out of the stairwell into the office’s small reception area. Nothing there seemed out of place, so she kept moving toward the lab and offices.

  She heard the crackle of flames as she approached her office door. The man had set the fire in her trash can. Fire leaped from the bin and climbed the inexpensive cloth blinds she’d installed to brighten up the sterile office.

  Her phone clattered to the floor as she grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall outside her office and sprayed. The flames died just as a thunderous boom shook the floor. She ran back to the door of her office. Fire had shattered the glass separating her lab from the interior hallway. Shards littered the tiled floor.

  No way would her fire extinguisher stand up against this much larger inferno. Fire raced along the tabletops and up the walls. The square ceiling tiles curled as they melted, falling from the ceiling. Smoke filled the hall quickly. She tucked her mouth and nose into the crook of her elbow and stepped away, coughing. There was nothing she could do to save the lab and she had to get out now.

  Mya turned and hurried back down the stairs.

  Outside, she could hear the distant blare of fire engines. She looked back at the lab where she’d worked eighty-hour weeks for the last decade.

  She watched as the inferno moved in a cruel dance on the other side of the second-floor windows. Devouring her life’s work.

  Chapter Two

  Smoke billowed from the shattered windows of the research lab. Several firefighters battled the fire from the ground with a hose hooked up to a nearby hydrant. Two more ventilated the roof, sending smok
e billowing from holes made by their axes. Red-and-blue lights reflected off the sides of the gray brick office building nearby. The oversize candy cane decorating the small grassy area at the front of the building lay broken in the firefighter’s rush to put out the blaze.

  “Go through it one more time for me?”

  Mya studied Detective Padma Kamal. Although they shared similar medium-toned brown skin, the detective was nearly a foot shorter than Mya’s five eleven and more pear-shaped than curvy. Her brown tailored suit, green silk blouse and half-inch heels marked her as a woman in charge. Despite her size, or maybe because of it, the gun at her hip stuck out like a fly on a wedding cake.

  Mya sighed. “I’ve already told all this to the first police officer who arrived. And the second.”

  Detective Kamal speared her with a gaze. “I realize it’s been a difficult night for you, Miss Rochon, but if you could just bear with us for a little while longer.”

  “I stepped out to get coffee from the coffee shop a few blocks away. I entered the building through the side door and I heard a man talking in the front lobby.” She hated the shakiness in her voice.

  “And what time was this?” Detective Kamal asked without looking up from her notepad.

  “About six thirty. Maybe a little later.”

  Shouting from one of the firefighters carried over the din to where the women stood at the far end of the lab’s parking lot.

  Mya watched a firefighter direct water at the second floor from a hose mounted on top of a firetruck.

  “And do you normally work that late on a Sunday?” Detective Kamal asked, drawing Mya’s attention.

  “It’s not unusual for me to be here until ten or later. I like the solitude.”

  Mya didn’t miss the pitying look that flashed across Detective Kamal’s face. It resembled the look her friends gave her when she explained she wasn’t interested in dating right now. She ignored it.

  “Anybody else working with you tonight?”

  “No. We’re a small privately funded lab. There are only three of us. Me, my assistant, Brian Leeds, and the receptionist, Rebecca Conway.”

  “Okay, what happened?” Detective Kamal waved her hand in a “continue” motion with her hand without looking up from her notebook.

  “You can’t enter from the front entrance on the weekends, so I entered through the side door using my pass card,” Mya said, pulling a stray coil of hair from under the strap of the purse she wore slung across her body.

  Detective Kamal made the hurry motion with her hand again.

  Mya’s lips twisted in irritation. “As I told the other police officers, I heard a man’s voice in the lobby up ahead.”

  “Did you see this man?”

  Mya shook her head. “No. He was around the corner.” But she suspected she’d recognize the sinister voice if she ever heard it again.

  “And he never mentioned who he was looking for?” The detective stopped writing and peered over the tops of her glasses. “Never mentioned your name specifically?”

  “No. But I was the only one here. My car is the only one still in the lot.” Was. Now there were more than a half dozen police cruisers, two fire trucks and a dark green sedan Mya could only assume belonged to Detective Kamal.

  “Okay, what happened next?”

  “He said he’d started a fire in my lab. I couldn’t just let all the work I’d been doing for the last ten years go up in a blaze. I slipped into the stairwell and ran upstairs to put the fire out.”

  “You weren’t concerned about this man hearing you or getting trapped in a burning building?” Detective Kamal’s tone dripped with incredulity.

  “All I could think about was saving my lab.” It sounded foolhardy when she heard it out loud, knowing what could have happened, but it was the truth. “Anyway, he said he was leaving. I heard him walk away.”

  Detective Kamal exhaled heavily. “So you went upstairs to your lab and what?”

  “The lab and my adjacent office were on fire. I called 911 from my cell and reported the fire, then I grabbed the extinguisher from the maintenance closet. I think that’s when I dropped my phone.” A wave of anxiety at being without her phone, the twenty-first-century version of being caught naked in public, flowed through her.

  “You told the first officer on scene that you put out the fire in your office.”

  “I did. The fire in my office was in the trash can and hadn’t moved beyond.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Something exploded in the lab, so I got out of there.”

  “Better late than never,” Detective Kamal muttered. “Did you see anyone when you exited the building?”

  “No.” Mya ran her hands up and down her arms. The temperature had dropped since she’d gone for coffee and despite the heat emanating from the nearby burning building, she was freezing.

  “Tell me again what kind of research you do here?” Detective Kamal waved toward the burning building.

  Mya’s gaze followed the detective’s. Orange flames danced in the windows of what had been her lab. “Cancer research.”

  The fire was undoubtedly a setback. Thank goodness she’d instituted a failsafe system to protect her research. Her mentor, Irwin Ross, had been fanatical about protecting his research, to the point where he’d had a panic room–like safe built in his home. She wasn’t as paranoid as Irwin, but certain of his eccentricities had rubbed off. She kept her work on a private server in her home. And she always kept her laptop on her, a habit that had paid off in spades tonight.

  She ran her hand over her shoulder bag, reassuring herself that at least the formula was safe and sound.

  “Okay. I think that’s enough for now,” Detective Kamal said, closing her notebook.

  “Can I get my car now?” Mya asked, eyeing the chaos between her and her ten-year-old Volvo.

  “Sorry.” The detective shook her head. “It will be a while before you can get your car. Stay here. I’ll send someone to drive you home.”

  Another jolt of irritation flowed through Mya. This night had been awful, and all she wanted now was to take herself home, have a nice hot bath and sleep. None of that seemed to matter to Detective Kamal though, who strode away into the throng of uniforms unconcerned with Mya’s distress.

  Thank goodness she’d had her house and car keys on her. As she waited for her ride home she chewed her bottom lip, considering whether it was unprofessional to ask Brian to ferry her back to the building tomorrow to pick up her car. They had a collegial relationship, but she didn’t know much about either of her coworker’s lives outside of the lab.

  “Ma’am.”

  Mya jumped, spinning around.

  A sandy-haired police officer stood in the shadows behind her. His shoulders hunched forward and she could barely make out the blue of his eyes under the rim of his uniform’s cap. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” the officer said with a southern twang. “I’m supposed to take you home?”

  The officer gestured to a police cruiser just outside of the metal gates that surrounded the parking lot.

  “Right. Thank you.” She followed him to the cruiser and slid into the back seat. “My address is 875 East Randolph Drive.”

  The officer nodded but said nothing, for which Mya was glad. She was in no mood for chitchat, and she didn’t want to rehash the evening for the umpteenth time. It was bad enough her brain wouldn’t stop replaying every detail from the time she returned from the coffee shop until the first fire truck arrived.

  Who would destroy her lab? The medical research industry could be cutthroat, she knew. The stakes were high. Billions of dollars were spent each year on research and attempts to develop medications and therapies to treat everything from heart disease to foot fungus. And most failed, but that was just the cost of business. She couldn’t imagine anyone she knew setting fire to her lab. More than
that, only a handful of people knew her research had finally borne fruit, and she trusted each of them implicitly.

  None of this made any sense.

  She exhaled heavily, pushed the images of fire out of her mind and focused instead on how good it would feel to slip her sore bones between the Egyptian cotton sheets she’d splurged on last month.

  Mya glanced at the car’s dashboard clock, noting that it had been nearly ten minutes since they’d left the lab. Her townhouse was a five-minute drive from the lab, one of the primary reasons she’d bought the place over less expensive and larger options. The view outside the window confirmed her suspicion.

  “Excuse me. I think you’ve missed my street. If you just turn around here, I can direct you back—” she said, leaning forward between the two front seats.

  “Shut up and sit back.” The cop spat without looking at her.

  “Excuse me. I... This isn’t the way to my house.”

  The cop’s eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. “I said shut up and sit back!” he barked, the southern twang gone, replaced by a deep baritone.

  Fear stole her breath.

  It was the same voice she’d heard in the lobby of her building; the man who set her lab on fire.

  Not a cop. Or, maybe, a dirty one.

  Why hadn’t she demanded to see identification? She knew better than to get into a car with a man she didn’t know, even one in a uniform. But the destruction of her lab, the fire—her defenses had been down and now it was too late.

  Think!

  She reached for the door handle and pulled. Unsurprisingly, the door didn’t open. It was probably best since they were going forty miles an hour. Not fast enough to attract attention, but more than enough to cause serious damage if she tried to jump from the car.

  She had to get herself out of this somehow.

  They’d turned off the main road and onto a rural one, the headlights of the police cruiser the only light cutting through the darkness. The occasional house interrupted the woods that lined both sides of the two-lane highway.