was to call Hutch. She wanted to see him, to have him tell her everything was going to be okay.
But he’d left her. He’d left her and Kyle behind. She was starting to wonder if Hutch wasn’t the reason she was here in the first place. He’d been gone so long, and then he’d wanted to hustle them out of the building.
He’d told Kyle he was going to the bathroom. What if he hadn’t been? What if he’d been doing something else?
Trust me, baby. I’m going to take care of things no matter what. I’m going to put you first.
So much for putting her first.
“You can have your phone call, but I need you to answer a few questions first. Is there any way this is a mix-up? I’m surprised a nice young woman like yourself is involved in something criminal.”
“What exactly am I being accused of?” It would be nice to know why she was sitting here. She was a sheriff’s daughter. She knew she should ask for a lawyer, but the whole day seemed surreal. This was some kind of nightmare, and she would wake up soon.
“You and your boyfriend broke into a part of the Genedyne building that was off limits to you. They’ve had several problems there in the last couple of weeks with people breaking in.”
“I don’t have to break in. I work there. And tonight I never left my lab,” she replied. “I was in my lab from after lunch to a few minutes before you arrested me.”
“That is not what the security logs say.” He opened a folder that was sitting in front of him. “According to this, you used your security card to open the door to the server room at exactly nine forty-two this evening.”
She looked down at the security logs and sure enough, her keycard registered as accessing the server room. There was one big problem with that. “That’s impossible. I don’t have clearance to get into that room.”
“Yes, that’s what we’ve been told, too. The logs clearly show that your card was used to enter the room. From what we can tell your security clearance was changed an hour before.”
“I wouldn’t know how to do that. I certainly don’t have access to change security levels for an employee even if I did.” She hadn’t been able to find her card earlier. She’d thought she’d misplaced it. Hutch had distracted her from looking for it.
It had gone missing a few minutes after Hutch had brought her dinner and kissed her and changed all his previously important security protocols about her staying at work.
She was starting to get a bad feeling. Why wasn’t Hutch up here trying to get her out? She hadn’t seen Kyle since they’d put him in a separate squad car and raced off.
She was alone. Completely alone.
“I was in my lab. Someone else must have used my card. And Kyle isn’t my boyfriend. He works for Genedyne, too. He’s in security. He was in the lab at the time, too. As well as my engineer.” She had witnesses. “His name is Pete Moore. You can talk to him and he’ll tell you that Kyle and I were both in the lab.”
Except for when Kyle went to look for Hutch.
“I will certainly do that,” the detective said.
She wanted to say that he should check the security cameras that were all over the building, but then he might see that it had been Hutch who had crept into the server room. What had he done?
Why was she hesitating?
“I would pull the security camera footage, but somehow all the cameras mysteriously went out in the ten minutes before and after your card was used. Did you do that or was that…” He glanced down at the file again. “Kyle Hutchins?”
So they hadn’t figured out that Kyle Hutchins was Kyle Hawthorne. Should she point that out? She was confused about how to handle this. Hutch had explained to her that the security guard at her building was Dallas police, and they weren’t sure if he was investigating Jessica Layne or working for her. She didn’t know if she should lay everything on the table or if that move would get her in even worse trouble. Before they’d taken her in Kyle had told her to stay quiet. He’d promised her someone would come for them. She folded her hands together to try to keep them from shaking. “It wasn’t either of us. I wouldn’t begin to know how to hack a