Chapter 6

“You got something to say, just say it.” Joshua folded his arms as he stared down at his boss.

“All right, I got something to say.” His boss glared. “Director Stettler calls me up this morning. My behind gets reamed out because all my custodial staff wasn’t accounted for in the auditorium yesterday. When I got here, I saw your car just sitting there like it ain’t been touched all night.”

He sniffed. “Now I got the director going down my throat about your absence and you come waltzing up in here like everything’s okay.”

“Look, I got scared, okay?” Joshua admitted. “I ran like a bat out of a cave and hid for hours. By the time it was all said and done, everyone had gone home.”

“You make it sound okay, but you didn’t have Director Stettler busting your chops now, did you?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re going to. He wants to see you today.”

“Me?” Joshua repeated.

“Yeah. He didn’t say when because they’re still dealing with the aftermath of that explosion these dummies caused. But yeah, he’s coming to see you.”

“They’re not dummies,” Joshua countered, thinking of Ms. Wong and how she fretted over the fact that something had gone wrong with the experiment. “Those people smarter than most people.”

“How many smart people blow up a lab?” the man retorted. Then he sighed and his shoulders drooped. “Enough of that. You just be ready when the man comes. Ya dig?”

“Yeah, boss. I dig.”

Digging his own grave.

What did Director Stettler want with him?

Joshua received his assignment and found himself on the other side of the building, far away from where Ms. Wong would be. Pushing the squeaky cart down the hall, he went to the service elevator. He wished he had an opportunity to see Ms. Wong once more before he was banished to the other side of the building.

Was she doing okay? Did Director Stettler want to see her, too? Did he know they had gone home together? Did it matter if he knew they had?

Too many questions and not enough answers.

As he waited at the elevator, he glanced up and the object of his desire was coming toward him. Although it had been less than an hour since the last time he’d seen her, the sight of her still hit him like a fist to the chest.

Despite the fact nothing happened, there was a newfound sense of intimacy he tried very hard to suppress but couldn’t.

She looked up from the tablet in her hand and met his gaze.

Joshua’s heart thudded. How would she react? Would she ignore him? He could handle a distant friendship, but he didn’t want her to act as if he didn’t exist.

She smiled and slowed her steps.

“Hello, Joshua.”

Relief loosened all his muscles as she stopped by his cart. “Ms. Wong. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” he quipped.

“Been ages,” she responded in kind, a cool but welcoming smile on her face.

Okay, so she wanted to play it as friends. He could handle that.

“Everything okay with you? How are things in your department after the incident?”

She leaned on his cart, pushing aside a toilet paper roll. “Well, without going into a lot of detail, it looks like the scientists involved are all trying to figure out what went wrong. I was talking to Dr. Crossan and she said Dr. Teak was negligent which caused the explosion.”

“How so?”

“I’m no geologist—”

“Neither am I,” he reminded her.

“—but it seems as if Dr. Crossan had made it clear there were some negative probabilities and unknowns. Something about the resonant fields of the surrounding rock strata of the mountain. She shared some of her concerns, but they largely went ignored.”

“Would it have made a difference if they hadn’t been ignored?”

“Who knows? It’s a moot point as there are bigger things to worry about.”

“What do you mean?”

She bit the corner of her mouth. “Do you know Zeke Callahan?”

Joshua searched his memory and then grinned. “Oh yeah! He’s that technician over at Lab One. He always says hello and speaks to me.” His smile drifted away as the expression on Ms. Wong’s face clouded. “What?”

“He’s missing.”

“How do they know he’s missing?”

Ms. Wong looked both ways down the hall and then leaned forward. “Or, I hope to God he’s missing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s no trace of him anywhere.”

“Do you think maybe he left the building like Elvis?”

Ms. Wong allowed a small grin. “I wish. At least there’d be a sighting of him. But this isn’t that.”

“You don’t think ... the explosion...,”

Could the man have been blown to smithereens?

“I don’t know what to think,” she sighed and rubbed at her temples. “He just got engaged yesterday to Amelia Parker.”

Sympathy welled up inside of him. “Oh, that sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

He cleared his throat. “Ya know, apparently Director Stettler wants to see me.”

Ms. Wong straightened up. “He does?”

He nodded. “My boss told me this morning he got chewed out because I didn’t show up in the auditorium yesterday when he called everyone.”

“You were hiding.”

“Ya darn right,” he huffed. “If they’d seen what we seen, they would have crawled under the boards of the floor and hid, too.”

“But that shouldn’t be the case.” She stared at the elevator door. “Something else is going on here.”

“Just the two people I wanted to see.”

Joshua glanced behind Ms. Wong to see Director Stettler marching toward them. His eyes zoned in on them like he caught them stealing candy.

Ms. Wong’s hands shook a little as she turned to face the director. Joshua saw the way she clasped them behind her back, but they moved restlessly.

He didn’t like that. Sure, the director could be intimidating. The man’s military ways had something to do with that. But he didn’t like the way the man made his Ms. Wong nervous. She was too smart to let any man cause her to fear them.

Mind, he wasn’t all that keen on catching Director Stettler’s eye either, but he wasn’t going to let him hurt or say something out of the way to Ms. Wong.

“Good morning, Director Stettler,” Ms. Wong greeted once he approached them.

“Minerva. Joshua.”

The words clipped out of the man’s mouth like bullets leaving the chamber of a magazine.

“I understand both of you were here yesterday past normal working hours.” The question came out like an accusation.

“That’s c-correct,” Ms. Wong stammered.

“Why?”

“I was working late, sir.”