The Carbon Trail by Catriona King Read Free Book Online

annual barbeque last weekend? Do you remember that?”
    Mitchell screwed up his face in concentration then nodded hesitantly. A meshwork of images formed slowly in his mind; picnic rugs on the grass and a small baseball diamond with people all around. Karen and Emmie were there and he was on the rug beside them drinking beer.
    “Vaguely. But Wednesday’s hazy. Tell me what we did.”
    Devon poured the coffees then unwrapped his sandwich, staring curiously at his boss.
    “It was pretty much like any other day. In early and work all day, except for breaks. When I left at six o’clock you were still here. You said you had some stuff to finish up. You don’t remember any of it?”
    Mitchell shook his head. “Nothing.”
    Devon scanned Mitchell’s face then gave a wry smile. “Maybe you were working on that new stuff you told the Board about.”
    There was a huff in his voice but Mitchell let it pass. He turned Devon’s PC screen towards him and typed in some words. A table flashed up and he scrolled back through the logs till Wednesday night. Devon was right. He’d logged-on to his computer at 18:26, but there was no activity after that. Mitchell had a bad feeling about it.
    “What did security say?”
    Devon shrugged. “That you must just have forgotten to log-off. There was nothing new on your screen and your files were untouched, but they changed your password just in case. You know what they’re like.”
    “Why didn’t you mention this to me before?”
    “I was busy this morning, supervising the new intern, and you had to leave early yesterday so I didn’t want to call you at home. What was that about anyway?”
    “Emmie’s new kindergarten. Karen wanted me to take a look.”
    As Mitchell said the words he felt more ownership of his family than he could ever recall. He was proud of them. The realisation pleased him, but the thought that he hadn’t felt it before nagged at something in the back of his mind. Devon’s next words pulled him from his reverie.
    “Great…Look, Jeff, I don’t want to make a big deal of this, but shouldn’t we check the tapes in reception and the lab just in case? If your computer was wide open someone could have accessed our results.” He paused and then continued. “And you still haven’t told me about your new carbon allotrope.”
    Mitchell stared at him, not reacting.
    “What you told the Board about yesterday. It was as much news to me as them. I really want to hear about your work on carbon-based organisms.”
    A surge of anger flooded through Mitchell and he fixed his deputy with a cold look. He felt furious but he didn’t know why. All he knew was that he wanted to reach across and choke the life out of his friend. Mitchell raced through the possible reasons for his anger. He didn’t mind Devon questioning him about his poor memory, or even theorising about new allotropes as they done before they’d gone to see the Board- that wasn’t it. And checking the security tapes was just routine.
    Mitchell found the reason for his ire quickly. Discussing carbon theory the day before had been fine, but he didn’t want Devon asking anything about the actual research on carbon-based organisms that he’d told the Board about. Mitchell knew instantly that he would kill his deputy if he did.
    With a huge effort Jeff Mitchell re-arranged his face into a smile and patted the young man reassuringly on the arm.
    “I just exaggerated to the Board yesterday to get them off our backs. It’s only theory, Devon, just like we discussed. It hasn’t got off the page, but if it ever does then you’ll be the first to know.”
    “But if it’s something for the company surely they should have been told before?”
    Mitchell’s forced smile widened. “To be honest the concept is so far ‘out there’ that I didn’t want to tell anyone and look stupid. I only mentioned it yesterday because the Board backed me into a corner. And you heard them, they’re happy to give me time to firm