Hearts Under Siege by Natalie J. Damschroder Page A

she pulled into the normal-looking parking lot. Did every SIEGE location have her data, or was it only programmed in here today because she was expected?
    The five-story office building in front of her looked totally nondescript, though she bet it had bulletproof glass and a security system so advanced it wasn’t available on the open market. She parked and walked to the front doors, kind of surprised not to see anyone else around. Wouldn’t some people be ending their workdays now? The parking lot was more than three quarters full. Maybe they used a typical seven-to-three, three-to-eleven, eleven-to-seven shift schedule. That would explain why there was no turnover right now. And of course they had to have support staff here around the clock.
    She found herself absurdly excited as she approached the main entry and a huge black guy in an impeccable suit opened the door for her. She lifted her badge, he matched it to her face and nodded, and as she passed through into the lobby, she felt like a real spy.
    Oh, sure, she’d been in SIEGE for several years. But her training facility fronted as a dojo—physical training in the main building, conduit training in a secret back room. She’d never been in any other company building. How deep underground did this structure go? Alias reruns flashed in her head.
    She approached the reception desk, where a very young-looking man dressed as a regular security guard sat behind a bank of monitors.
    “Sign in, please. Name?”
    “Molly Byrnes.” When she finished signing the electronic pad, he pointed to a scanner like the ones health clubs had for key-tag membership cards. She waved her ID badge in front of it and he nodded, checking something on his computer.
    “Fourth floor.” He tipped his chin toward the elevators. Molly swallowed her disappointment and decided that asking up or down would make her look like a dork.
    Once she was on the elevator, she dropped her geek self. Time to be professional. She started thinking about what she’d say when she got upstairs. She didn’t know who she was meeting with—if they’d give her a PR person tasked with appeasing her with glib-speak and sending her on her way, or someone who actually had answers, even if they didn’t want to give them to her.
    The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and a smiling fortyish woman with a dark ponytail that matched her suit and her eyeglass frames greeted her.
    “Please come with me, Ms. Byrnes.” The woman turned without waiting for a response.
    Molly gave a mental shrug and followed, looking around at nothing interesting as they went down a basic, light-gray walled, gray-carpeted hallway lined with closed doors sporting numbers or vague department descriptions rather than occupants’ names. The woman led her into a small conference room containing a narrow cherry conference table and gray fabric chairs on wheels. They matched the carpet but were comfortable, Molly found when she sat.
    “Coffee?” the woman who had not introduced herself offered, gesturing to a cart in the back of the room.
    “No, thank you.”
    “Okay, then.” She sat and folded her hands on the table, a practiced smile on her face, the room’s light angling off her glasses so Molly couldn’t see her eyes clearly.
    Okay, PR flack it was.
    “How can we help you today, Ms. Byrnes?” the woman asked, as if she were an attorney representing a hospital that had cut out the wrong organ.
    Molly dove in. “I want to know more about Christopher Fitzpatrick’s death.”
    The woman’s expression didn’t flicker. “Under what aegis?”
    Molly pressed her lips together to keep from gaping. Dixson had sent her to this ? Never mind about that thank-you basket.
    “Under the aegis of being a very close friend of the family, who happens to also be a SIEGE…member.” She’d almost said agent, but that would have been a bad move. Ms. Flack might not have the status to know Molly’s role in SIEGE, but if she did, she’d think