Under Cover (v1.1) Read online

  Thea strode down the hallway, paused to deposit her briefcase in her office, and then headed for the lab. The door’s electric eye scanned her and, reading the correct biosignature, obligingly opened.

  Her staff was clustered around the play computer like a knot of lemmings trying to decide when to jump. They looked up at her, and she saw a blur of anxious expressions.

  “Good morning,” Thea said.

  “Hi, boss.”

  “Morning, chief.”

  “Have you heard anything?” That last from her wide-eyed protégé, Jessica Lorentz. Jessica had been working for Anodyne for eighteen months and had been out of graduate school for eighteen and a half. Right now her blue eyes were quite round with distress, and her reddish brown curls were in wild disarray. She looked like a harassed Orphan Annie. “About the new owner?”

  “Just that he’s meeting with all the teams today. He’s due here in another five minutes, so you might consider looking as though you are working instead of researching him on the Internet.”

  As one, the group straightened and backed away from the computer, which was used strictly for games, Internet searches, eBay bids, and online gambling. Thea pushed her team hard, and if they wanted to take a break and play a little blackjack, who was she to argue?

  “There’s not much to work on, “Jack, one of her techs, pointed out. “I mean, with PaceIC gone, we don’t have anything near ready—”

  “I know.”

  Jessica elbowed Jack in the ribs. “Duh, she knows.”

  “Perhaps Dr. Scrye will give us some direction,” Thea suggested.

  “You ever had the big boss be younger than you? “Jack asked.

  “In this field?” Thea smiled. “Frequently.” And it was true. Her team leader at BioSine had been twenty-four, with a managing budget of two-point-two million. At thirty-three, Thea was an old lady. “I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about—”

  She cut herself off. No need to give the team more to fret about.

  “You must be worried,” Jessica teased. “I don’t think you’ve ever used the word, much less felt the emotion. Our IQ.”

  Only Jessica could get away with the Ice Queen thing, though others had tried. Thea was well aware that she came across as aloof. OK, cold. OK, frozen like Antarctica during a rough winter. She gave not a rat’s ass. Results were what counted. If people called her IQ behind her back, that was fine. The important thing was that the work got done and into the field, to maximize aid.

  Not Anodyne’s bottom line, though the former CEO had disagreed with her on that one. And where was he now? Facing charges of conspiracy to kidnap, among other things.

  It was almost enough to make her grin. Twice in one day!

  “Well, what did you find out about our new fearless leader?” Thea asked, pretending she hadn’t been up until 3:30 A.M. researching the hell out of Scrye.

  Her team chimed in with answers, but nothing new: Born in Southern Pines, North Carolina. Orphaned at sixteen via a house fire, got his MD at nineteen after only three years, started his first biofirm at twenty-two, sold it for billions at twenty-five, made a practice of rescuing ailing biotech firms and turning them around. Today was his twenty-ninth birthday.

  “Maybe he’ll fire us all as a b-day present to himself,” Marshall said gloomily.

  Thea scowled at him over the tops of her glasses. “None of that, Miss Marshall.”

  As always, her cross-dressing research tech brightened when she referred to him in the feminine tense. “Sorry, Dr. Foster.” Marshall fiddled with his pearls. “It’s just—OK, I get that our shares are pretty much in the toilet now, but I really like this job. I wasn’t here to get rich and move on… I like it here, OK? I wanted to stay and do stuff. I don’t want to be looking for work. I mean, jeez…” Now he was actually nibbling on the necklace in his agitation. “You’re the only boss I’ve ever had who lets me dress up for work.”

  “I’m sure it won’t come to anything like that,” she said automatically, but of course she was in no way certain. Scrye could fire them all and start over. Or he could fire half of them and rebuild the other half. Or he could leave things as they were. It was anyone’s guess. And her research hadn’t helped her formulate a plan, which was frustrating. What would a twenty-nine-year-old former prodigy do with them? “I think the best thing to do is—”

  “Happ… eee birth… day… to… youuuuu-uuu… happ… eee birth… day… to… youuu-uuuuuuu…”

  Thea covered her eyes. “Oh, dear God.”

  “Happ… eee birthdayyyyyyyy… Missster Pres… ih… dent…”

  “Jeez, I forgot about Central being Marilyn today,” Jack said innocently, which was an utter lie, as his cousin was the head of the IT department.

  The door slid open, and a tail, balding man entered. He was dressed, surprisingly, in a sober black suit, with a light blue shirt and a blue bow tie with white polka dots. He looked more like a librarian than a hip young doctor.

  He stared at them through his gold wire rims and waited patiently for the computer to stop serenading him.

  “… tooooooo… youuuuuuuuuuuu. M-wah!”

  “Did the computer just blow me an air kiss?” the man asked pleasantly.

  “Uh—” was as far as Thea got. As God was her witness, she had no idea what to say.

  Marshall sidled up to her. “I don’t think that’s the new boss,” he whispered to her. “Unless he’s aged ten years in two days.”

  “After the nonsense here, I may well have,” whoever-it-was said dryly. “As it happens, my name is Don DePalma. James is—” He was interrupted by a blare of music, and sighed. “On his way.”

  It took Thea a moment to place the music. It was the theme from Superman.

  James Edward Scrye II burst into the room. He was bizarrely arrayed in khaki shorts—in January!—a red button-down shirt, no socks, and red tennis shoes with yellow laces. She had a blurred impression of dark red hair and freckles, and then he was clambering atop one of the lab tables.

  Oh, and the cape. She hadn’t noticed the cape right away. It, too, was red, and Mr. DePalma stepped behind Scrye, grasped the hem of the cape, and flapped it gently as if Scrye were flying.

  Meanwhile, the music blared on: “Daaaah dah dih duh dah, daaaaah, daaaaah, daaaaah. Daaaah dah dih duh dah… dah duh daah!”

  “People of Anodyne, hear me!” Scrye boomed. He had a surprisingly deep voice for a bio-nerd. “The forces of evil have been utterly defeated. I, Jimmy Scrye, have taken over this nest of evil-doers and from here on out, y’all are firmly on the side of good. Hear that? Repeat after me, please—”

  “—dah dih duh dah, daaaaah, daaaaah, daaaaah. Daaaah dah dih duh dah—”

  “—I will use my powers for good.”

  Stunned silence from Thea and her team.

  “Say it,” he threatened, “or I’ll turn the music up.”

  “I will use my powers for good,” they parroted.

  “All righty then,” he said, and leaped nimbly from the table. “Uh, Don, you can shut that off.”

  Mr. DePalma leaned over and pressed a button on the small boom box no one had seen him bring in.

  “Okey-dokey then,” Scrye said. He was bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet. His eyes were very green, the color of spring grass. He looked like he’d be carded to buy cigarettes. Heck, drain cleaner. But his quickness only exaggerated his feline grace, and she noticed his legs were ropy with muscle. “Which one of y’all is Dr. Foster?”

  “I am,” Thea said. She was trying very hard not to stare, and failing. “This is my primary team: Jessica, Marshall, and Jack.”

  “Right. You guys are the ones who thought up PaceIC.”

  “That was Dr. Foster,” Jess, Marshall, and Jack said at once.

  “It was a team effort,” Thea said quietly.

  “Bullshit. Sorry, Dr. Foster, but you know that’s not true,” Marshall said. He stomped his high-heeled foot for emphasis. Dr. Scrye raised his eyebrow
s. “You did something like ninety-eight-point-nine-nine percent of the work. We just sort of cleaned up after you.”

  “A gross exaggeration,” she told Scrye.

  “Don’t you dare belittle your efforts toward the greatest medical breakthrough of the decade to save our jobs,” Jessica snapped.

  “Yikes, y’all need to take a chill pill,” Scrye said, holding his hands up, palm out, in a gesture that soothed no one. “First of all, I’m ninety-eight-point-nine-nine percent sure that nobody in this room is out of a job. I mean, I gotta meet with Dr. Foster on some stuff, but I’m sure we’ll figure everything out.”

  The team looked at Scrye, then at Thea, who could hardly contain her irritation. Not only did she loathe tedious meetings, their new boss had as much as told her that she’d need to agree to whatever he wished if she wanted to keep her team.

  And the hell of it was, she would.

  Chapter Two

  James followed Thea Foster to her office. He was nervous as hell, and hoped to cover it up with the usual Hyper Boy Genius Bullshit.

  He’d known what Thea looked like, of course; he’d memorized her personnel file and seen her employee ID photo. But the scowling bespectacled face in the picture gave no clue that Dr. Thea Foster was a stone knockout, nor did it hint at the woman’s sheer presence.

  Foster was tall, almost as tall as he was—at six-foot-two, Jimmy didn’t run into a lot of ladies who could look him in the eye. She had the darkest, glossiest hair he’d ever seen… it tumbled past her shoulders, and curls escaped the headband she wore and fell across her forehead.

  Her eyes were a bottomless brown, so dark they were nearly as black as her irises. So dark, when she looked at him he thought he could feel himself falling into her gaze.

  Her skin was pale, like most people who spent their days in labs, but instead of the washed-out fishbelly white he expected, her skin was porcelain perfection, except for the beauty mark riding the bow of her upper lip. What they used to call the mark of a sorceress.

  Like most beautiful women in a brainy trade, she dressed to hide her assets—dark brown skirt past the knee, coffee-colored blouse, dark brown blazer. Sensible flats and sensible nylons. But the gold pin on her lapel was a small Tasmanian Devil, and the frames of her glasses were purple and tipped at the ends like the old-fashioned cat’s-eye glasses of the fifties.

  He knew she was brilliant. He’d followed her work for years. But he’d had not the faintest clue that she was utterly, amazingly gorgeous.

  It was too bad.

  It made everything harder.

  “Right, then,” he said with forced brightness, sliding her files aside and sitting cross-legged on the edge of her desk like an overgrown pixie. She arched dark brows and slowly sat down. “Let’s get to it I know you gave PaceIC to Renee Jardin in order to fuck over your old boss.”

  Her eyes widened, then narrowed. He felt the temperature of the room plummet—or maybe that was just the impression he got when her eyes frosted over and her mouth hardened. “That’s not true,” she said quietly.

  “No, really, it’s fine. I mean, I admire the shit out of you. It was a ballsy move, no question, but now you and I have to clean up your mess, capice?”

  “If my new employer has doubts about my past performance,” she said distantly, “he is welcome to peruse the security tapes.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. Her eyebrows arched higher until he expected them to climb off her forehead. “Riiiiiight, Dr. Foster. You were smart enough to think up the most important find in the last hundred years, but you were too stupid to doctor the security tapes.”

  She reddened, and he nearly fell off the desk. Jeez, she was even prettier when she blushed—the porcelain skin took on a faint pinkish undertone, like roses in the desert. “I’ll clean out my desk,” she said, and rose.

  He leaned forward and grabbed her wrist. For such a tall woman, her wrists were surprisingly fragile—delicately boned and not even two inches across. “Hold up there, partner. I’m not firing you. Repeat: Not. Firing. You. So don’t Get your panties. In a wad.”

  “My panties are none of your business.” She jerked her wrist away, and he let go with a yelp before she could put him through the wall. “But if you think I’m going to stand to be insulted in my own—”

  “Who’s insulting you? I told you: I think what you did was hot shit. Jekell was an asshole. Who hides a cure that can help millions of people just to make a buck? Shit, the guy was already rich. How much more money did he need? You can’t take it with you, right?”

  “I disliked Dr. Jekell,” she replied, “but I resent your insinuation.”

  “Oh, please.” He rolled his eyes. “What, you think this is a setup? You think I’m wired? That this is an elaborate sting to get you to confess so I can fire you?” He pulled up his shirt and saw her eyes widen in alarm. “See? No wires. Want me to take my pants off, too?”

  “Not unless you want to be beaten.”

  He was momentarily distracted by a visual of the formidable Dr. Foster in black lingerie and a riding crop. “Yow… look, I don’t need to trick you to fire you. This is my company now. Plus, in Minnesota all employees are at-will employees: I can pink slip you if I don’t like your breath. All I’m saying is I admire what you did, but the fact is, your actions cost Anodyne big bucks.”

  “As I said, if you doubt my word, you should terminate me.”

  He sighed. He’d known she would be difficult and stubborn, but he hadn’t thought she’d be thick. “You know, for a genius, you’re a little slow on the uptake.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We need to get to work, pronto, on something else you’ve been playing with. We need to get it perfected and into the market, and I’d like to get it to the FDA immediately. So we can’t waltz around holding each other’s dicks. We have to get to work.”

  Instead of crossing her arms over her chest, like most women did when cornered, she tucked her hands into her armpits, as if the thought of holding his dick was repugnant. “I must say, you’re different from most boy geniuses.”

  “Call me that again, and I really will fire you.” He snorted. “It was annoying enough when I was a boy.”

  She studied him with an assessing gaze. “In many ways, you still are.”

  “Sticks and stones, Dr. Foster. So. Are you on board? Or what?”

  “I’ll be glad to get back to work,” she replied quietly. “And so will my team. But what exactly do you want us to perfect?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I want you to invent skin. And I want you to do it in four months.”

  Chapter Three

  He pulled up his shirt and she gasped. Supergeek he might be, but Jimmy had the upper body of a weightlifter. His abdominal muscles were sleekly defined, and his chest was lightly furred with reddish brown hair, which tapered into his shorts.

  “Thea, I’ve wanted you from the very beginning,” he whispered, crawling across her desk. “I took over this silly little biotech firm just to get closer to you.”

  “Really?” she gasped.

  “Absolutely.” His warm hands clamped over her shoulders and dragged her forward. Dimly, she heard a stack of production memos hit the floor. His kiss was bruising, astonishing in its possessiveness and—

  “Dr. Foster?”

  —arousing in its pure animal—

  “Uh… Dr. Foster?”

  —pure animal—

  “Dr. Faster,” he whispered seductively, “what the hell is the matter?”

  “What?”

  She blinked. She wasn’t in her office, she was in her lab. Daydreaming in front of her team, who was watching her with not-quite-concealed alarm. Blast and double blast.

  “We can take it,” Jessica said bravely, fumbling with a broken Bunsen burner. She dropped it and winced. “Just tell us.”

  “Yeah, out with it, boss. Just stop staring at us like that. You look a little—”

  “Glazed,” Marshall finished.
/>   “I beg your pardon,” she said politely. “My thoughts were—” Being thoroughly overtaken by her annoying new boss. No, it would never do to say that. “—elsewhere. We all have jobs, in fact, we’re expediting one of my back projects—Faskin.”

  “Artificial skin?” Jessica asked. “Hmm.”

  “Our new boss has given this priority resources, including funding. So let’s pull all the back work and get started.”

  “Won’t be easy,” Marshall said truthfully. He tapped a high heel thoughtfully. “We shelved it because it was just about impossible to avoid host rejection.”

  “Yes, but I have some new ideas on that.”

  “That’s it?” Jack interrupted. He fiddled with his rawhide choker. Thea often thought he had the look of a man who shed his lab coat for swim trunks and a surfboard the minute the workday was over. “New Guy wants us to get back to work on Faskin? You were in there kind of a long time.”

  “Personnel issues.”

  “Oh.” He fiddled faster.

  “No one is getting fired.” Not even me. “He was quite—ah—adamant about that.”

  “Well, great!”

  “Yes, great,” she repeated sourly.

  Chapter Four

  She rapped twice and, upon hearing his exuberant, “Entrez, O lackey of mine!” opened the door and stepped into his office.

  The Boy Wonder had certainly made some improvements in seventy-two hours. Her former boss had favored mahogany furniture, duck prints, a hidden stash of Penthouse, vials of cocaine, and dark carpet.

  Now the office looked not unlike the toy store of the future… the carpet had been pulled up and replaced with dark blue tile, and there were Legos, toy robots, trucks, racetracks, giant easels, markers, chalkboards, a rainbow of chalk, and a popcorn machine.

  “For heaven’s sake,” she said, startled.

  “I know! Isn’t it great?” He sighed, a great gust of relief, and tossed the red marker down beside the legal pad. It promptly rolled off the table and across the floor, where a three-inch toy robot pounced on it. “Finally, I can get some work done.”