Free Passionate Immunity by Elizabeth Lapthorne

room, and without touching anything, she took the cramped space in a glance. She noted from the corner of her eye Tristan closed the door to the corridor behind them. Cords on the table indicated a computer had been removed for the evening—presumably a laptop the nurses used to keep their appointments on and connect to the network of online medical files and patient data.
    Requests for testing, however, always had to be printed out in hard copy and signed, as did laboratory results.
    “Shall we start with the nurses’ station?” Kimber asked as she tested the filing cabinet next to the desk.
    Locked.
    “I just want to check the lab is clear, first,” Tristan said in a soft tone as he passed her and moved cautiously through the open door.
    Kimber looked for the cabinet key, fairly certain it would be nearby. With casual staff, temporary staff and everyone presumably on rotation throughout the days and weeks it wasn’t logical that there would be more than a few copies of the cabinet key. It would be far more likely for there to be one communal key for the majority of staff to use and it would have to be kept in easy grabbing distance.
    After checking on top of the filing cabinet, under the potted plant on the desk and on the carpet either side of the cabinet she opened the top drawer of the desk. It was clearly a ‘junk’ drawer. She was greeted by pens scattered everywhere, sticky notes, a half-filled box of tea bags, numerous latex gloves and an assortment of astounding proportions of day-to-day debris.
    In one corner under a pile of over-the-counter, low-strength painkillers were two shiny keys on a ring.
    “Ha!” she crowed, amazingly proud of this small achievement. When Kimber tested the key in the lock it fit perfectly and turned easily.
    Tristan returned as she pulled open the top drawer. She threw him a brilliant smile, riding high on the thrill of success.
    “This is awesome fun,” she gushed. “Do you think we’ll get really lucky and find a folder titled Project Immunity?”
    “I doubt it,” he replied before kissing her forehead. “But you know what they say about beginners’ luck. Budge over a bit so I can see too. Do you have that list, love?”
    While they prepared themselves for this very moment, Tristan had jotted down the list of nine names from the folders Emma Henley had copied. Kimber felt certain she could recall them all, but Tristan had insisted that they write them out.
    “You’d be astonished how oddly people react to a small thing like breaking and entering,” he had warned her. “In the heat of the moment people forget their own names, let alone small details like this. It’s better to have everything organised as much as possible. That way you keep errors to a minimum.”
    Kimber pulled the scrap of paper out of the back pocket of her jeans and read the names aloud.
    “Jeremy Bowmen, Karol Oldfield, Olive Carragher, Ennis Farlough, Talone Ondra, Abigail Turner, Asher Wevell, Dolores Kienl, Mather Niese.”
    “Right. You take Neil through to Talone and I’ll take Abigail through to Mather,” Tristan said as he bent to the task of searching the records.
    Kimber placed the paper on the corner of the desk where they could both see the neatly printed names. Struck by an idea, she pulled a random file out to make certain it was personal files. She opened ‘Alcock, Jean’.
    A hasty mental calculation told her the fifty-seven-year-old mother of four had most recently had her flu vaccination along with her annual pap smear four months ago here at the nurses’ station. After putting the file away she then pulled out another quickly, to confirm her suspicions.
    ‘Brandy, Steve’ had last been in three years ago according to the notation and had had blood drawn for an iron and haemoglobin count as well as a general battery of tests like cholesterol and blood glucose levels.
    His sample had been contracted out and the official report was stapled behind the doctor’s standard