Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,3

the evidence-gathering types, searching the web, wearing jeans and T-shirts. That would place the lab-coat guys at the actual lab itself down the road. Possibly.

She sighed again and walked into the building on one more Monday morning, already feeling the cramping tension going up her spine to the back of her neck. She’d been so happy to get this job, but now all she could think about was the fact that everybody was hiding something, and she hated it. She was very much a straightforward, up-front, easy-to-get-along-with kind of gal, but don’t screw her around either. Now she felt like something was not quite right with her job, and nobody would talk to her about it.

How was she supposed to do her job if that was the case? It was frustrating, and she wasn’t sure what the answer was. If there even was an answer. Half of her realized that this was all a big mess, and, having moved to town three months ago, she should have another job in her pocket already; yet it had taken her six weeks to find this one. Her sigh came out as a moan this time.

Using her security code to enter her floor, she walked in and headed to her back office in the dungeon level, grateful to find it empty. She normally shared it with two other women, who should arrive shortly. Joy dropped her sweater over the back of her chair, slipped her purse in her bottom drawer, sat down, and logged on to her computer. Except that, as soon as she brought up her screen, the log-in screen wasn’t there, suggesting she was still logged in. As if she hadn’t logged out on Friday.

She sank back in her chair, staring at the computer screen in horror. It was possible she hadn’t logged out, but it certainly wasn’t her normal procedure. Because that was against the security policy of the company. And the last thing she wanted to do was get fired, and, right now, this screen was not what she wanted to see.

She wasn’t terribly techie oriented, but she figured there had to be a way to see if anybody had been on her computer over the weekend. But, when she tried to bring up documents, it seemed like only her own documents surfaced, just as she had last seen them. She brought up a web browser, but a lot of the pages were blocked normally anyway. She checked the browser history, but nothing seemed to be any different. Feeling relieved, but, at the same time, a little worried, she checked her email, but nothing terribly important was coming in either.

Still, it left her with an odd feeling. Like someone was checking up on her. She rose and headed to the break room to grab some coffee, hoping that some was made, because there wasn’t always, and she ended up putting on a pot 90 percent of the time. But, of course, this early in the day on a Monday, there wasn’t any made yet. As she stood here and looked out the small windows placed high in the wall—like a basement window in a house—she could see several other vehicles coming in. A couple hundred people worked at the company in various locations. They were developing drugs, and, although they supposedly weren’t doing any tests on animals, it wasn’t odd for Joy to travel to and from her parking spot and see a steady stream of animals coming through the main lab building, just down the block, getting treatments—special cases where owners were willing to test a new drug in order to save their furry family member. And, if Joy had been in that situation, then she’d try anything too.

Even if she were a human cancer patient, with some rare form of the disease, and somebody had a medical trial running, she would do everything she could to get that last chance too. It was hard to blame anybody who wanted to get their pets and other animals, much less their family, in on a special deal. How strange to think about that here, in the context of her new job in a new state. When she first took this job, she had hoped to never deal with death in any way.

She was technically an ER nurse but had burned-out almost eighteen months ago now. After some of her friends had come in after a car crash one night, she had done everything she could to save them, but