Before he could think harder on it, he took the plunge. “Part of my responsibilities was to oversee portfolio management for a subset of their drug products.” It’d been a challenging, interesting position at first. But as with any project management, departmental politics and personality conflicts had gradually numbed him to the good the drug products were actually meant to do. “The company had shipments of biological materials coming in by sea from Korea and other places. It was standard procedure to have those supplies tested to find out if they had expired due to various shipping delays.”
The traffic light turned and Lizzy tugged him forward when he didn’t move. He wanted to drag his feet the same way he wanted to delay in telling her his story. “If the supplies had expired, the shipping containers were illegally dumped at sea and reported as ‘lost’ so our company and our vendors could collect insurance without worrying about proper disposal. Those materials were potentially biohazards.”
He watched her face, looking for a sign of judgment somewhere. But her face was serene, a study of polite attentiveness. A mirror to the tourists around them. “You went over that pretty fast earlier, so I hadn’t thought about the premeditation involved. The way they went about it demonstrates an established procedure. There’s a lot of proof of forethought there.”
“All of that, into our ocean, and I knew,” he confessed. “I’ve never been overly interested in environmentalism. It all seems very much removed from day-to-day living. It didn’t seem wrong to me until I was faced with the idea of family coming back into my life. Then suddenly, smart business wasn’t as important as doing the right thing. When I was approached to provide testimony to corroborate the evidence, I agreed. I gathered what documentation I could. The manifests, especially, are suspect. They don’t match up well with what should have been in those shipments. I mentioned smuggling before and I refused to be even tangentially involved. I wanted my nephew to be able to trust and respect me when he came to live with me here.”
He fell silent then, letting the babble of the tourists cover over the silence between them.
Finally, Lizzy spoke, “What I think about what you did isn’t important right now. There’s still a piece missing. They could be smuggling drugs but that’s a stretch. There are much closer suppliers. It doesn’t add up yet.”
She continued her train of thought. “The level of effort they’re putting into flushing you out into the open is way beyond that. Something about what you’re going to prove in your testimony is worth a whole lot more.”
“Yes.” He paused. “And once we find out, it will be helpful in getting my family to safety, I hope.”
“The trick is figuring it out, not waiting for it to become obvious. Timing and context are everything when it comes to intel.” Lizzy pulled him into the chocolate store with the rest of the group. “You need to think harder. Beyond you and exactly what you’re going to testify. What could you be tangentially related to?”
Her hand was still firmly on his arm. There was no rejection in her touch, her posture. She was still focused on helping him. Admittedly, he’d been afraid she’d pull away from him right out there in the open. But she hadn’t.
And he was grateful.
As the crowd pressed them together, he ducked his head and pressed a kiss against her temple. “Biohazardous materials dumped in the ocean repeatedly and there’s something worse. What could be worse?”
*
The store was small so space was tight once they stepped inside. As the tour group gathered around the counter, she led Kyle past to the chocolate bar at the back.
The employees were all occupied but her package wouldn’t have been left with any of them. A human could get confused, give it to the wrong person, or worse, get curious all on their own.
Lizzy passed her hand under the customer-facing side of the bar, far enough from the edge that a random hand wouldn’t encounter it. She found what she was looking for stuck to the underside, almost against the base behind a disgusting couple of pieces of gum.
“Ugh.” She grimaced. Nguyen had his own ways of sticking it to a person when they gave him attitude. She had to give him that.
“Not the usual sound you make in relation to drinking chocolate.” Kyle leaned casually against the bar next to her, studying the daily specials board. “So this is where you get your drink of choice.”
“Recently, yes.” She studied her prize.
Not a flash drive as she’d expected. It was a package wrapped in waxed paper.
“We’ll be with you in just a moment!” One of the employees called over from the main register. They were still buried under tourists as they handed out samples of chocolate truffles.
Kyle flashed a charming smile and gave them a wave in acknowledgement.
Lizzy huffed out a laugh. “You’ve got the cool and calm covered. But you’ve got a handicap.”
“What do you mean?” Kyle’s brows drew together in his confusion. “And what is that?”
“I mean it’s great to put people at ease, be immediately likable. But you’re too memorable. We’re not going to come back here again.” Keeping the package under the counter, out of view, she unwrapped it. “And this stuff is something a friend uses to line boxes when she’s packing sandwiches or candies.
“Maybe whoever left that for you is a baker.” Kyle was trying to be all sorts of helpful.
She scowled at him.