Back at Bleaker Street, Samuel was busy trying to work through the conversation he had earlier with the director about Foster. For the better part of the last twelve hours, this mystery man and his even more mysterious work had been eating away at his mind like an infection. Knowing so little about Fitz Hume’s reclusive genius was becoming a familiar problem for Mosley.

  During his time at CERN, Mosley ran into an interesting problem trying to prove the existence of boundaries separating multiple dimensions. Upon arriving in Geneva, he had made the bold prediction that he would unravel this enigma before the year was out. Most staff researchers saw this declaration as just another example of American arrogance.

  But it wasn’t arrogance behind the statement. Mosley was just supremely confident in his abilities. And after six straight days in the lab, he cemented his academic standing by solving the problem.

  That same tenacity was now being brought to bear on a new puzzle in the form of overlapping Google searches, DOD database queries, and three hours on both the FBI and CIA mainframes. When all those efforts came up short, Samuel scoured through every university graduation list and entrance roll for the last twenty years. Most of his night was spent glued to three different laptops running simultaneously.

  Finally, all his hard work culminated with a single reference to the name Foster Evers. A blurb from a 1998 MIT school newspaper: “Foster Evers: The Youngest Graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

  Excited and renewed, he finished off the rest of the edition but found nothing else. Undeterred, he checked issues from ten years back to ten years forward. Still, nothing more about his prey. With access to the whole internet and some of the most powerful computers in the world, the best he could come up with was eleven little words that led him nowhere.

  His next plan of attack was to wait and hope to catch a glimpse of this walking enigma entering the building. The only problem was he didn’t have a picture of Foster. And without a picture, identification would be nearly impossible.

  So his plan was simple.

  Wait for an FBI agent to drop off a prisoner, then use the building’s numerous security cameras to ID Foster. The NSA’s powerful facial recognition system kept extensive records on anyone that was of interest to national security. And Mosley was reasonably confident that someone like Foster would fall squarely within those parameters.

  The only wrinkle in his plan was that it required him to have an accomplice.

  Celesta Elango, 33 years old, beautiful and exotic, had initially studied Applied System Networking at Columbia University before transferring to John Hopkins. After completing her post-graduate studies, her original aspirations of heading up a government think tank got sidetracked by the Pentagon’s new biometrics division.

  Eventually, Celesta’s successes there intrigued the NSA enough to recruit her to run the physical and cyber security at Bleaker.

  The wrinkle?

  Samuel had been casually dating Celesta off and on since arriving at the NSA almost a year ago. Usually, this wasn’t a problem because he loved to date women, lots of women. And most women didn’t seem to mind being a part of his rotating menagerie.

  Celesta, on the other hand, was the odd outlier that detested the fact that the two were not exclusive. Her anger would require a deft touch.

  “I thought we were going to spend some time together.” Celesta cooed from the edge of the desk, legs crossed, trying to get Samuel’s attention. “All you seem to be interested in is that monitor.”

  Having fended off her advances for the past hour, Samuel finally allowed his eyes to wander away from the screen long enough to look at her. With the top of her silk blouse unbuttoned, Celesta playfully tugged at the garment just enough for him to see her red lacy bra, which they both knew was his favorite.

  Instinctively, his hand brushed across her leg, which caused Celesta to shudder. She leaned in to kiss him, but he stopped her cold. “Celesta baby, I have to concentrate on this.”

  “What you should be doing is concentrating on me.” She fumed and buttoned her blouse back up. “Why are you even looking for this gentleman?”

  Explaining everything that had happened during the last 48 hours had always been an option. Celesta was the head of building security after all, but there were still some things above her pay grade.

  “Fitz Hume is bringing some hotshot in from Pennsylvania to work on one of our projects. I’m in charge, so I want to get the heads up on him. Maybe even meet the guy.”

  Celesta huffed as she plopped down in a seat beside him. “If he is such a hot shot,” her thick British accent made every bit of American slang she used sound weird. “Then how come you have never heard of him before? The circles you run in are very small.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Good question, he thought. How come he had never heard of such a brilliant scientist before now? Mosley didn’t have an answer, so he deflected. “This footage is how old?” He tapped his finger on the monitor to get her attention away from his lack of an answer.

  “As I explained before,” she rolled her eyes at his feeble attempt to sidetrack her. “The actual footage gets screened by the computers and my technicians in operations. This feed is nearly five minutes old.” She patted the handheld radio attached to her belt. “But if there were something important, a call would most assuredly reach me.”

  Just below the walkie talkie, Samuel could not help but notice her skirt. It had ridden up to the point where he could see the tops of her stockings. Celesta was starting to play dirty.

  “Celesta,” his voice was firm but wavering. “I need to focus.”

  “Who’s supposed to be bringing him in?” She ignored his attempt at subterfuge and hopped up on his lap. “I’m not trying anything. I promise.” She joined him in scanning the incoming feeds. “I’m just trying to help.”

  “Two FBI agents are escorting him in. There was a meeting on the books for two o’clock.” Samuel attempted to show her his watch. Again, Celesta ignored this gesture in favor of a friendly bum grind against his crotch. Under such duress, Mosley couldn’t help but squirm.

  Celesta, fully aware of what she was doing, smiled and opened her laptop slowly.

  Already up and running, a program entitled Secure Positional Location consisted of names listed alphabetically. Beside each name was either a checked or unchecked box. Near the middle of the list was the unchecked box of Edgar Fitz Hume. “He was due in at around 1:00. Unfortunately, the director‘s car was stolen again. Obviously, that’s put him a little behind.”

  “Again?” Mosley frowned. “Isn’t that the fourth time in the last six months?”

  “Actually, three…” At that moment, a face familiar to Celesta crossed onto the monitor. She nudged Samuel with her elbow and pointed to the screen. “I’m pretty sure she’s an FBI agent, though she’s alone.”

  In the main lobby, a young woman dressed in a set of shabby workout clothes patiently waited for security to check her in. “Who is she?” he asked.

  Usually, Celesta was quite adept at putting names with faces, but she had been too preoccupied with trying to get Samuel’s attention to think clearly. “I think her name is Justine… something.”

  Mosley lingered a bit too long over her image, causing Celesta to respond with a hard shot to his ribs.

  “What was that for?” Innocence permeated his face as he rubbed his fresh wound, but she knew him too well to let him get away with that kind of blatant ogling. “If you’re not going to look at me, then you are most definitely not going to look at her.”

  Mosley had a thought. “Is she the only FBI agent who checked in today? “

  Celesta brought up the security logs from earlier in the day and discovered that another agent had already arrived.

  “A senior agent checked in around noon. His name was Saunders.” She expanded the log to include guest passes issued around the same time. An image of a man who looked like a college professor just back from winter vacation popped up. “He was accompanied by a male, thirty-one, named…Foster Evers.” She pointed to the small image. “Is this the guy you’re looking for?”

  “Yes!” Samuel’s face lit up with more excitement than she’d seen all morning, and her heart instantly sank. Mosley slid his chair closer to the screen. “Where is he right now?”

  According to Celesta’s laptop, Foster Evers currently resided just outside the director’s office. Sensing Samuel would want to see for himself, she called up the corresponding camera feed. A second later, the image of a man sitting alone on a plush couch filled the center of the screen.

  “He’s waiting for the director just like you said he would. Didn’t you check Fitz Hume’s office before coming here?” Just then, Celesta’s radio alerted her to an incoming call. “Yes, Greg, what is it?”

  “The director’s cab has just arrived in the downstairs parking garage.” Greg’s voice was professional and to the point. That was precisely how she trained all her security personnel to act.

  “Thank you, Greg. Give me a heads up when he’s in the elevator.”

  She turned to Samuel who stared, mesmerized at Foster’s profile shot. “How long will facial recognition take to run his picture?”

  A few months ago, Celesta had overseen an upgrade to the system personally, so she was intimately familiar with the program’s capabilities. “Depends on how high priority he is. Anywhere from between ten minutes to a couple of hours.”

  Undeterred by the lack of precision, Samuel hit a button and the program activated.

  “It seems you have missed your opportunity. In ten minutes, the director will be walking into his office, and your window with this Evers person will have passed.” Celesta happily leaned in and started nibbling on his ear. Samuel could feel her warm breath on his neck, and the sensation curled his toes.

  “You’re right.” He reached up to cradle her face gently in his hand. “That train has left the station.” Samuel wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “I’ll just have to settle for some alone time with you. Won’t I?”

  “Settle,” Celesta play slapped him across the shoulder. “You’ll do more than that you cheeky bastard.”

  They tore into each other with wild abandon as time seemed to melt away. Soon, the haze enveloping them was so strong that the radio had been chirping for over a minute before she even heard it. When she did, one of the technicians from the lab was desperately trying to reach her.

  “Miss Elango,” a young woman said urgently. “We’ve just had a package delivered, but there’s something strange about it.”

  Mosley almost had all the buttons of her blouse undone when she swatted his lecherous hand away. “Did it set off the Hazardous Materials detector? Or did the dogs smell something?”

  “No, ma’am, the package came directly from Fort Meade Research and Development. No, the strange thing is the name of the addressee. No one recognizes the name, and it doesn’t exist in our internal database.”

  Growing impatient, Mosley ran his hand roughly up her thigh. Again, she halfheartedly fought him off. “Who’s it for?”

  “Someone named Foster Evers ma’am. Is there someone new on staff?”

  “No,” she said apprehensively. They looked at each other with shocked expressions. Mosley resembled a fox caught in the hen house, trying to decide whether to stay and eat the chickens or bolt for the door. Either way, he looked thoroughly guilty and ready to run.

  “Just hold onto it, Jackie.” Her tone denoted defeat. “We’ll be right down.”