Harlequin Holiday Collection - Four Classic Seasonal Novellas

She’d considered reporting the incident to Callie, but her boss hadn’t appeared to be in a very good mood this morning so she’d scrapped the idea.
    Olivia would watch when she left work. If she saw the car again she would call the police then tell her superior. It wasn’t totally outside the realm of possibility that the whole event was coincidence. The car hadn’t made any aggressive moves. The driver hadn’t even looked at her.
    It just felt…odd. Had her instincts on alert.
    There were people who had light sensitivities who wore protective eyewear at night. She may have made too much of that part.
    Bottom line, there was really no reason to get paranoid. Yet.
    She had a bigger problem today, anyway. Jacob was avoiding her again.
    He hadn’t said good morning. Hadn’t looked her way once. She shouldn’t have kissed him.
    Even now her face heated at the memory. The move had been a mistake. If she’d needed any confirmation, his actions today had given her all she needed.
    Just do your work, Olivia .
    She could sit in the corner wearing a dunce cap when she got home tonight.
    Bart Flemming and another of the lab’s forensic analysts, Bobby O’Shea, returned from a meeting in Callie’s office. Olivia had been a little worried when the meeting hadn’t included her, but Jacob hadn’t been at the meeting either. Meetings with Callie were usually about whatever case one was working. Olivia knew that, but she was feeling extra sensitive these days considering the mistakes she’d been making.
    And that was another thing—she’d never made mistakes before. She’d always been one hundred percent. A lead analyst at her former job. Maybe this whole distraction with Jacob was interfering with her work. She would need to think long and hard about that. Or maybe it was the holidays. Or a combination.
    “Olivia,” Bobby said as he passed her station, “Callie wants to see you.”
    “Thanks.” Olivia shut down her system, something she’d started doing whenever she left her station. She refused to believe anyone here would sabotage her work, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
    Ruthless . That was what Gerald had heard about the guys here. Olivia thought of her coworkers and honestly couldn’t bring herself to believe that rumor was grounded in any sort of reality. Probably just jealousy on the part of the MedTech personnel. But then, Flemming was a genius with computers.
    Olivia shook off the idea and tapped at Callie’s door; her boss motioned for her to come on in. “You wanted to see me?”
    “Have a seat, Olivia.”
    Callie looked tired. Olivia had noticed an additional layer of weariness about her for a couple of weeks now.
    “We have a problem.”
    Those instincts that were already in overdrive started to hum. “What sort of problem?” This couldn’t be happening again.
    “The file you sent me this morning,” Callie explained, “was empty. I checked the system and apparently you failed to follow through on the program before leaving yesterday and all your data was lost.”
    That was impossible. Olivia had double-checked her work before sending the data to Callie. “That can’t be right. I—”
    Callie shook her head. “Olivia, I’m not accusing you. Yet,” she qualified. “But something’s going on here. A glitch in your access code, maybe. I’ll have Bart check on things. Meanwhile, why don’t you print hard copies for me from now on? At least until we clear up this…situation.”
    “Of course.”
    Olivia moved blindly to the ladies’ room. She couldn’t go back to her station. Not yet. She had to pull herself together.
    Did Flemming and O’Shea know? Had Callie voiced her concerns to two of her more trusted staff? Were they all suspicious of Olivia? The new girl? The outsider?
    This was wrong.
    Very wrong.

Chapter Twelve
    It was past eight o’clock before she finished.
    Everyone else had gone already. Except the security personnel in the lobby.
    Olivia stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders. It’d taken her all this time to catch up with today’s work after redoing yesterday’s tests. But now, as Callie suggested, she was printing hard copies of everything. A copy for herself, which she locked in her station, and a copy for Callie, which she put in a large envelope and slid under the door of her office. She wasn’t about to leave anything lying around…to disappear.
    Jacob had left at six. He’d said good night to Olivia but he’d rushed to get away after