Broken Build Read Free Page B

lot. No one there. She walked around the corner to where Rey had left his car.
    Gone. Strange. Guess the code wasn’t so important after all. Mark that she wasn’t important either. So much for saying he’d wait.
    She turned toward the building. A scattering of dried leaf fragments blew around her feet. Something moved to the right, and a large body pushed her into the wall. Jen screamed, but a gloved hand covered her mouth and yanked her head to the side. She kicked at his shins, but the man was too massive to dislodge.
    “Baby doll, hand over the memory stick.” The gruff voice didn’t belong to Rey, and the cinnamon breath mints provided scant cover for the reek of cigarette smoke, stale cologne and road tar. He pried it from her fingers and shoved her headfirst into the juniper bushes along the side of the building.
    A car’s engine idled nearby, and the door slammed.
    Jen brushed hair and twigs from her face. The taillights of a white sedan disappeared around the corner. She stumbled to the lobby door and ran into the building. Her heart racing, she pounced through the double doors of the lab and hid in the last row of servers and storage arrays.
    She bent her head between her knees, unable to catch her breath—the fluttering of her ribcage fanned like the dry, omen-laden Santa Ana winds. She had fucked up big time.
    By tomorrow, the code could be posted on the internet, and her fingerprints were all over the memory stick.
    * * *
    Jen turned on top of a coil of extension cords. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and stretched on the hard floorboards. The build servers were still flashing green lights and their humming fans blew warm air over her face. Her neck ached and her shoulders were tight. The screensaver on the lab monitor blinked 5:54 am. Sunday morning.
    The panic of the night before rose like a plume of acid. Jen went to the women’s room and peered into the mirror. Angry bruises encircled her neck, and her throat was raw and dry. She washed her face and walked to her desk. A flashlight lay next to the toothbrush in the corner of the bottom drawer.
    Praveena had a scarf on her coat rack. It was a flouncy polka-dotted knit with pink pom-poms, but it would have to do. After wrapping it around her neck, she left a note, bought a yogurt from the vending machine, and went back to the server room.
    She’d retrieve Rey’s memory stick and give it back to him without the code. Whoever took the stick from her last night would hopefully not tell where they got it. But Rey? He’d have another thing to hold over her. If it came down to it, she’d turn herself in. She wasn’t a criminal. Okay, withholding evidence, lying to the police and possible accessory to a kidnapping. Her eyeballs ached. Not going to think about it, nor the man whose life she ruined.
    Jen pried the floorboard up and shined the flashlight into the mass of wires. The red stick lay halfway between an outlet and a jumble of cables. She fished it out and shoved it into her pocket.
    The heavy double doors thumped and footsteps lumbered over the hollow floor. Jen’s hairs prickled. She lowered the panel slowly and hid behind the row of storage arrays. Their fans hummed quieter than the higher-pitched whine of the server farms. She peered around the cooling unit.
    Bruce’s broad frame stopped near the burned out power supplies. “Who left the fire extinguisher out?”
    The nerve of him! Where was he last night while she did his job?
    She stepped behind him, her hands on her hips. “I did. The data center could have burned down if I hadn’t come by to check on my servers.”
    He jerked around, his multiple rubber-banded ponytail swung like a baby rattlesnake. “You’re overreacting. They all had safety fuses.”
    “Well, you still have to thank me. I re-cabled my servers to the old supplies. You overloaded them and I couldn’t reload all of them, so I only have half my cluster working.”
    “Sure, thanks.” He tugged on his nose ring