Personal Protection

“After the most recent events, the board of directors and I have decided you need protection while the police investigate who’s behind the threats,” Dr. Caldwell said. Dr. Caldwell, my boss and CEO of Florence Scientific, stood with his back to the door of the small conference room. The man was a generation older than me and known for demanding full commitment from his personnel. Crack the whip, nose to the grindstone and all that. That was fine, I was a workaholic with very little social life. Spending sixty-plus hours most weeks working on a drug that showed promise in dramatically slowing Alzheimer’s was consuming my existence and the last few weeks had been even worse because now I was getting death threats. Caldwell opened the door and another man walked in. “Ryan,” Caldwell gestured toward me. “I’d like to introduce Brendan Marek. He works for a personal security firm. He’ll be shadowing you round the clock for the next few days.” The first time I saw my bodyguard I wondered how he’d gotten the scar that ran from the edge of his mouth all the way to the back corner of his jaw. I also fell in instant lust with him. Taller than me by a couple of inches, wide shoulders and close cut dark hair; he struck me as absolutely humorless. His oval face and green eyes were solemn as we all sat down around the conference table. Marek leaned forward enough to shake my hand. It was a brief firm grip. “Dr. Bergstrom,” he said. “Can I ask you for the details of what’s been going on?” I was puzzled. Had they hired this guy blind? I guess I must have had a really stupid expression on my face because Marek gave me this quirky little half-smile. “Yes, they did tell me what’s been going on. However I’d like to hear it again from you. If you’re the target, your impressions might be slightly different.” I nodded. It did make some sense. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” said Caldwell and he walked out. “When did all of this start?” Marek asked. “A little over a month ago, I started getting phone calls both on my cell and here at work. It was usually just a thirty second tirade about how I was torturing living creatures and how I should burn in hell for it, or something along that line. It was irritating and I got a new cell number, so he, or they, took a different tack. I got letters in the mail. A single sheet of paper, typed, more of the same crap along with pictures of mutilated animals.” “But the past week…?” Marek prompted. “A dead cat was left on the hood of my car. An open can of red paint was thrown through the front window of my house, and someone sideswiped my car in the parking lot when I was working late one evening.” I shifted in my seat. I didn’t want to admit it but this whole thing had really started to get to me. “Do you believe all of this is linked to the same person?” I considered the question for a moment. “Nothing has made me think it’s a group of people.” “Do you think the sole reason behind this is your use of animals in research?” His tone was neutral but I was already on edge about the whole thing. What I said came out way more sarcastic than I’d intended. “How’d you like it if your aging mother was developing Alzheimer’s and we thought we’d found a really good treatment but, oh by the way, we’ve never tried it on anything other than neurons in culture? How’d you like her to be the first organism to ever get the drug?” He didn’t flinch or frown. “Which animals do you use?” he asked. “I’m trying to decide if the dead cat was relevant.” “Oh.” Now why hadn’t that occurred to me? “I don’t use cats. We went as far as we could with rats, then did one study with dogs, and the final phase involves six monkeys. Considering how expensive they are, I wish we could have stuck with the dogs.” “How long has the project been ongoing? Not the incidents, but the project itself.” “Fourteen months. The first four months were all just cell culture work, then three months of rats that overlapped slightly with six months of dogs, and we’ve only had the monkeys two months now. “That leads me to believe changing to the monkeys may be a key factor. Can you get me the name of your supplier? Also who feeds and cleans up after the animals?” Marek asked. “I thought Caldwell said you were from a security firm. This sounds like a police investigation, only they didn’t ask me these types of questions.” “Our firm often works with the police to come at these sorts of problems from several different angles. The police are usually short staffed and underfunded and to them it undoubtedly looks like a set of fairly minor incidents.” “I’ll have to look up the name of the animal firm. I don’t actually do the purchasing. I submit a request and a four inch stack of paperwork. Okay, rationally I know that the public thinks we just do whatever the hell we want to our research animals, but in reality we have to justify in writing every single step of a project from feeding to pain control, if needed, all the way to the method of sacrifice.” “Okay.” I think it startled me that he didn’t try to placate me. “It might take a couple hours. Caldwell’s personal assistant will probably have to pull up the records.” “That’s fine. Can you show me around your lab and then around the building in general? I’d like to get a feel for the layout and how easy or difficult it is to get in and out.” Marek stood up. “Yeah, sure.” I got up and walked out of the room. Marek followed. I glanced back as he came through the doorway. Lord…those shoulders filled way more of the opening than mine did. I wasn’t scrawny and I spent several hours a week in close personal contact with my Bowflex, but I didn’t have that level of musculature. Good genes or hours in the gym? It was hard to tell. I gave myself a mental kick. Get your brain on business. He was here to protect the assets of the company, namely me, and that was the extent of it. The next half an hour was devoted to a brief walk through of my lab, followed by the animal housing area, and then a stroll through the corridors that housed other labs and the admin areas. “Okay, what now?” I asked as we stood outside my lab. “You do whatever you usually do for the remainder of the afternoon. What time do you usually go home?” “Six-ish, it depends on if I’m in the middle of something.” “Today, I want you done by five fifteen. We need to vary your schedule a bit.” “What are you going to do for the next four hours?” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Speak with Dr. Caldwell about the building security features, read personnel files and make some phone calls. All of it’s background info. I’ll meet you right here at 5:15. If anything happens—phone calls, letters, emails—anything out of the ordinary, call me immediately. I’ll be in the building.” Marek handed me a business card. I watched him walk back up the hallway. He wore a gray V-neck sweater and dark slacks. Damn if those slacks didn’t hint at a really well-muscled ass. I stared at the ceiling. I needed to get a life. * * * * At 5:15 P.M. sharp, Marek stood in the open doorway to my lab. “Are you done?” he asked. “I guess I’m going to have to be. I have a half dozen more slides I was going to look at but I suppose they can wait.” I turned off my microscope. “Just give me a second to grab my briefcase.” I felt vaguely annoyed at being told when to quit for the day, but on the other hand I wasn’t thrilled with feeling eternally rattled by the things that had been happening either. “We’ll take your car to your house. I’ll leave mine in the parking lot here until tomorrow.” I looked at the large black gym bag in his hand, and it suddenly dawned on me that ‘round the clock’ meant he was going to be staying at my house. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I had a spare room with a bed in it (and a hell of a lot of bookcases too.) Somewhere in the back of my mind I had originally had this thought about jerking off tonight, visualizing what I was sure was an impossible fantasy, but if he was in the next room? Probably not a good plan. “Problem?” he asked. “No.” “Can I have your car keys then?” I handed them over and went to my desk, picking up the sheaf of data pages I’d printed out earlier. I shoved them into the briefcase and shut it. “Which door do you usually leave by?” “The one that goes out into the side parking lot,” I said. “We’ll go out the front and walk around.” Damn, this was going to get old real fast. There were those that probably didn’t consider me to be the most cooperative of people to start with. I was capable of being a single-minded obsessive bastard at times, but it was also the reason I had a high paying, sought after position heading a research project at Florence. As he drove, I decided maybe if I knew a little about him, maybe I would find it easier to have him around nonstop for the next few days. I hoped it was only a few days. “Have you always done this personal security thing?” I glanced across the car at him. “No.” Oh, that was profoundly helpful…Not. I tried again, more pointedly. “So what did you do before?” “I was an Army Ranger.” Jesus crap. This guy could probably kill me with his bare hands. I drew a slow breath. Calm down. His current job was protecting me, so maybe having somebody with that kind of background was a good thing. “Um, that’s cool.” It also lowered my already nonexistent chances of Mr. Hard-And-Tight ever having a non-professional interest in me to about the odds of hell freezing over. “What do you usually do regarding dinner?” Marek asked. “Most of the time it’s a toss-up between whatever I can fling in the microwave or take out. Once in a blue moon I get on a cooking bender.” “Since I’m supposing Dr. Caldwell gave you no warning about his intention to have me protect you, take out is probably a good choice tonight.” At least the guy used some fairly good logic, I’d give him that. The rest of the drive was very quiet; the radio playing some innocuous top forty. He pulled up in front of my townhouse and got out. I headed off the half dozen steps to my mailbox and tugged the little door open, and let out a startled, embarrassing half-shriek. In about two seconds flat, Marek was between me and the open mailbox, hauling me backward. Once he’d pushed me a good ten feet to one side, he turned and looked. You know what a squirrel looks like after it’s been hit by a car and flattened several times? Yeah, there was one in my mailbox. “You okay, except for the scare?” my bodyguard asked. I nodded, feeling stupid and rattled at the same time. “Leave it,” ordered Marek. “I’ll deal with it shortly. I don’t think it’s going anywhere.” He ushered me inside the house. “Do you have a pair of gloves and a gallon size Ziploc? I’ll take a standard garbage bag if you don’t.” I had to go downstairs to get a pair of gloves out of the closet I stored my winter stuff in, then back up to the kitchen. I handed him the gloves and the Ziploc. When he went back outside, I flopped down into a kitchen chair. God…not again. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen my share of dead animals. I’d dissected a few hundred over the years, but I hadn’t expected the damn thing in my mailbox, crushed and bloodied. f**k. I could use a beer. I got up and fished one out of the fridge. Marek came back in and shut the door behind him. “I bagged the thing and put it in your trunk for the moment. There’s a forensics guy I know that I’m going to call and see if he thinks anything useful can be gotten off the carcass. You look a little…rattled.” “I am so tired of this.” “Hopefully I’ll be able to put some additional pieces together over the next few days and find a way to stop it. Figure out what you want for dinner. I’m going to make that phone call.” He left me in the kitchen and went back out to the den. * * * * Lamb curry and garlic naan. I lived near a very good Indian restaurant that delivered. Marek and I sat in the kitchen eating. Truthfully I’d have rather been parked on the sofa watching TV, but the open can of red paint two weeks ago had ruined my sofa and I’d gotten rid of it. Luckily the sofa and the carpet had taken most the damage and not my TV and the stereo system, or the couple hundred books in that room. “Mr. Marek, what do we do with the dead squirrel in my trunk? Chuck it in the trash or pass it on to the police?” “My forensics buddy said he’d have a look tomorrow, so it stays in the trunk for now. And call me Brendan. You’re going to have to put up with me living in your back pocket for a couple of days minimum. Do you have an extra pillow and a blanket so I can bunk down later?” “There’s a spare bed upstairs.” I pointed upward with my fork. “My sister comes to visit every two to three months, and she gave me crap about sleeping on the sofa. Of course I don’t have a sofa right now.” “Casualty of the paint? I read the police report on that.” “Yeah. I probably ought to go shopping for a new one, but things have been…” I couldn’t think of an adequate descriptor.” “Busy and hellish?” Brendan suggested. “Yes.” “Think about people you’ve met, professionally or socially. Anybody strike you as militant, over the top, or maybe too interested?” “In other words, more than willing to stuff a dead squirrel in my mailbox? No, not that I can think of. I keep racking my brain, trying to figure out if there’s a reason, besides the obvious animal rights thing.” We finished eating and I went upstairs to check and see if I’d left boxes or something stacked on top of the spare bed.