can absolutely pull my lower bowels out and feed them to your dog. I’ll help you.”
Noelle gasped. “Who the hell is talking that way to him?”
Kyle seemed to relax, putting his gun down on the TV tray that sat between the two loungers. He sagged down onto one. “Ah, that would be my kindly uncle Ian. You met him, right?”
She had, but she’d spent most of that time thinking about Hutch during her meeting with Taggart. “I don’t like the way that sounds.”
Hutch had moved into the kitchen, and she couldn’t hear him anymore.
“Don’t worry about Ian,” Kyle assured her. “His bark is worse than his bite. He’s softened up with age and a whole bunch of children. Once he was a pretty ruthless bastard. He was a legend.”
“In the security business?”
“In the…military,” Kyle replied. “He was in the Army. I was in the Navy, but we still knew about him. Mostly because his brothers, Case and Theo, were in the Navy, too. But like I said, he’s not the same Ian Taggart. Hutch is calming him down. He can get upset when things don’t run smoothly. You understand what happened, right? Hutch used a whole lot of professional terminology. I didn’t get about half of it, but I do know the basics.”
She’d gotten the gist. “Someone turned on functions of my smart home that Hutch had turned off. They were the functions that allowed the system to monitor things. Someone could watch me through the TV.”
“Not just the TV. Pretty much anything with a screen,” Kyle corrected. “And that includes your fridge. They could watch and record.”
“Why would anyone want to watch me?” It was what she still hadn’t figured out. She was boring. Even her research was considered boring.
“Because you work for Jessica Layne, and I fear she’s involved in some dangerous things,” Kyle replied.
“Like what?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“What could she possibly be involved in?” Noelle sank down to the seat beside Kyle. She sagged back because it was pretty comfy. “I know she’s harsh and she’s quick to sue, but she’s had to be. It can be hard to be a woman in STEM, much less a woman at her level.”
“There are plenty of women in STEM who don’t screw over everyone that they come in contact with. You heard the rumors about her former partner, right?”
“Of course. And I don’t agree with how Jessica treated her, but I figure it’s a lot like Jobs and Wozniak. Jobs screwed over his chief engineer so he could take control of the company.” The fight for control of Apple was legendary in the world of high tech. “That’s what Jessica did. It’s not right, but it happens all the time in business.”
“I don’t think that’s what’s happening here,” Kyle admitted. “What do you know about Jessica’s plans to take Genedyne public?”
“I don’t think she wants to. She’s got investors, but it’s not the same as having a board to answer to. If she went public, she would have far less control.”
Kyle nodded and sat back. “Well, we know something’s happening there, and you’re involved in some way. You said she’s now interested in your research?”
“Yes.” She had a lot of work to do. She hoped Hutch didn’t think she was going to be staying home for a few days. “Jessica got a look at my initial results. They’re promising. She can raise money off it if I can reproduce the results.”
“Did she raise money off Madison’s research?” Kyle asked.
“Of course. Madison’s research was flashier than mine. She talked it up all the time.”
“And Jessica’s still got that research?”
“Some of it, certainly,” Noelle replied. “I’m not sure how much was lost in the fire, but she had backups for the initial research. She should have almost everything up to the night of the fire. But I do know the experiment Madison was working on was lost during the accident. So anything she tweaked that night would be lost.”
“How much do you think Jessica raised on the hope of that research?”
Noelle didn’t pay much attention to the business side of things. It was one of the reasons she wanted that sweet tenured position at a university someday. She loved science. Business was the awful part of her job. “No idea. Though I do know she had investor meetings about it. The rumor around the office had Madison on the cusp of a breakthrough.”
“One has to think losing the head of the research would upset the people who invested