“Boom,” Kole finished for her.
Kat nodded. “Exactly. The particular combination created a highly explosive compound.”
Jake asked the same question she’d been wondering ever since it happened. “Are we talking an accident, or do you think the explosion was intentional?”
“That’s the thing. I-I can’t be certain. I can’t imagine they would, nor can I begin to fathom a reason why they would. What I can tell you is, my people would’ve known the risks of having those chemicals together in one workspace.”
“What about someone not on the team?” Jake continued to question her as he took down some notes. “Does anyone else have access to the lab?”
“Only a couple of the higher-ups in the company. But they hardly ever come in, and when they do, it’s usually because some important investor is visiting. It’s been weeks since our last visitor, and authorities checked the building security footage. The only ones in or out of the lab that day were my three teammates and myself. No one else.”
“In whose area did the fire start?”
A pang of sadness and guilt struck inside Kat’s chest. “Todd’s. His station was behind mine.”
“Is it possible he could’ve grabbed the wrong thing by mistake? Like, maybe he got distracted?”
“Possible, yes. But highly improbable.”
“If it wasn’t a mistake on his part, how do you think those chemicals ended up there?”
“I wish I knew.” She shook her head. “Actually, what I really wish is that I’d never left.”
“You needed to use the bathroom, Kat,” Zade tried to appease her. “Not like anyone can fault you for that.”
Kat appreciated the man’s attempt to empathize, but she knew she’d never forgive herself for leaving when she had.
“The explosion originated in Todd’s workspace, and you said he was directly behind yours, correct?
She looked over at Jake. “Yes.”
“So it’s safe to assume that, had you stayed, you most likely would’ve died alongside your teammates.”
“Maybe.” She’d thought of that, too. “But had I stayed, maybe I could’ve noticed the chemicals in time to prevent the explosion in the first place.”
Gabe’s deep voice rumbled as he advised her, “Kat, if there’s one thing we’ve learned in this business, it’s that you can’t torture yourself with what-ifs.”
She knew he was right. Didn’t ease the pain in her heart any, though.
“So you receive the odd text and the next day the lab explodes, killing nearly everyone on your team,” Kole spoke evenly, summing everything up so far. “What else?”
Kat hesitated to answer because saying it out loud made it real. She looked at Kole and the others.
“With the lab in shambles and my team…anyway. The project has been put on hold until Sloane can get a new team established and the lab back in working order. I went into work yesterday to see what, if anything had been recovered. After that, I stopped by the hospital to check on Amy before going home. When I walked into my apartment, I found the place trashed.”
The engrained image of her shredded couch and broken lamps still caused a shiver to run down her spine.
“Was anything taken?” Zade asked.
“My personal laptop and a stack of old notebooks I’d kept from past research projects. Everything else was just…destroyed.”
Kole thought a moment. “Anything of value on the computer?”
“Not to anyone else. Like I said, it was my personal computer. The ones we used at the lab are highly encrypted to protect the research. That one was your average laptop. It was never used for anything work-related. Of course, whoever took it would have no way of knowing that.”
“Whoever took it and the notebooks were looking for something specific,” Gabe noted. “What were you guys working on at the time?”
“For the past four years, we’ve been developing and fine-tuning a special project. It was in its final stages, but it wasn’t quite perfected to the standards it needed to be. We were coming up on a pretty solid deadline, so the team has been working non-stop with barely enough time to eat or sleep. When it gets like that, I pretty much live on coffee, which is why I was headed to the restroom in the first place, and…” Kat stopped herself and took a deep breath. “Sorry. I have a tendency to ramble when I’m upset or nervous.”
