“Look at me.” He curled his finger under her chin and lifted. His eyes twinkled as he smiled. God, how she loved his smile. “If I go upstairs with you, we both know we won’t get a lot of work done.”
“Especially if you keep looking at me like that. I’ve always had a soft spot for that wide grin.”
“Right now, there’s not much on me that’s soft.”
Her eyes flew open as she dropped her jaw. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me.” He laughed, the sound rumbling from deep in his chest. “I can’t believe I just said that to you.”
“Neither can I. You definitely aren’t the Jeremy I remember.”
“No.” His smile faded along with that twinkle. “I’m not.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” she explained, not liking the way his expression had darkened. His gaze grew hooded. “The Jeremy I remember would have never kissed me the way you just did. I like this Jeremy.”
His grin returned, warming her from the inside out. She accepted her bag from him and opened one of the doors. Using her hip, she propped the heavy door to maneuver her bag over the threshold. By the time she stepped inside and glanced up, Jeremy was already at the car.
Bree stood inside the lobby and watched as they drove off, neither glancing her way as they passed. Frowning and trying not to think too much into their dismissal, she rolled her bag across the shiny marble floors. Her heels clicked against the hard surface, echoing through the empty lobby. After checking her mailbox and sorting through what to recycle, she moved to the elevator and tucked what little mail worth keeping into the front of her suitcase.
The thought of Jeremy’s kiss consumed her thoughts as she stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for her penthouse suite. Sure, it was bigger than she needed and far too overpriced, but it had an incredible view of the city’s waterfront and was close to everything. She’d watched the construction of the Seattle Great Wheel and had been one of the first to ride it. She lived walking distance from the aquarium and Pike Place Market. The art museum. The library. She had it all and loved it.
The elevator doors opened to her floor. Slowly, she approached the double doors leading to her condo and held up her key, glaring at it. “You’d better work for me this time.” It took some juggling and a few cusses, but eventually she got the key to turn.
Once inside, she tossed the keys onto the table to the right of the doors and left her bag in the short hall. She checked her watch and shrugged. Close enough. She needed a drink and went into the kitchen to fetch it. Maybe a hair of the dog would kill the pounding in her head.
Her Pendleton on the rocks in hand, she kicked off her shoes and padded into the study to check her email. Settling into the plush, high back leather chair, she rolled up to the desk and shook the mouse to wake the computer.
Odd. It didn’t start up. She hit the spacebar. Still nothing. A quick cursory search explained it. It wasn’t plugged in. TREX must have unplugged it when they swept for…well…whatever it was they swept for. Either that or she’d forgotten to plug it in in her haste to get to the class reunion.
She laughed. A lot of good that did. One brief encounter with Jasmine Gray, glares all around when she left the bar on the arm of Jason Bowman, and then sharing a drink with Jeremy in another bar. After all that, she’d ended up back at her hotel before ten o’clock. It was safe to say she wouldn’t be attending another reunion.
Plugging in her laptop, Bree started it up and leaned back in her chair, sipping her whiskey as she waited for the system to prompt for her password. Thoughts of last night conjured up, giving her the chance to argue with them in her head.
She may have overreacted when she’d kicked the Bowmans out of the hotel. She’d been so mortified that she literally rode Jeremy’s hand to climax. And Jason, the wicked twin that he was, had eased a slick finger deep into her backside. She’d never been taken anally. Did last night count? Could she even say that anymore?
Regardless, being sandwiched between the brothers was like a fantasy come true. She’d had a hard time thinking of anything else, both last night after they’d left and now. If Jeremy had come up with her just now, would they have a repeat of last night? Would Jason have stayed away? Somehow, she doubted it. He wasn’t front-and-center, vying for her attention. He stayed on the sidelines, making sure Jeremy received all the attention. It was a complete role-reversal from high school.
She logged into her computer to do a little tactical retrieval of her own. TREX agents weren’t the only experts at finding things. Now to see if everything the Bowmans had told her held up against Goggles. If they had any secrets, she’d find them.
TWELVE
“Are all of these credible?” Jason asked as he flipped through the stack of threats against Bree they’d picked up from TREX’s HQ on their way home. Jeremy barely glanced at his brother and instead focused on today’s chatter. He threw in yesterday’s chatter for good measure. He didn’t trust his brother’s analysis in the car. Some things he had to see for himself. Sunday chatter was a lot like Sunday drivers—slow, boring, and easily passed over. It seemed even tangos took days off.
“All threats against her are credible.” He clicked on a link and read the story. It came up on the large TV as well, something his brother had insisted on and now no longer paid attention to. Some guy saw her on the cover of Forbes Magazine and swore they’re soul mates. Gritting his teeth, Jeremy closed the story and scrolled to the next link.
“Wait.” Jason stopped him and scooted forward from the spot on the couch he hadn’t moved from since they’d returned home. “Go back to that last one.”
Apparently he had been paying attention. Jeremy did and poised his fingers over the keyboard, anxious to dig into whatever his brother’s instinct had caught that he’d missed. On any other find, it’d piss him off that he’d been one-upped, but not on this one. Not when it came to protecting Bree. Everything took a backseat, including his pride. “What do you see?”
“A smokin’ hot SILF.” He nodded at the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty queen smiling seductively, like she and the photographer had a secret.
“She doesn’t have a sister.” Jeremy rolled his eyes as his brother practically panted.
“Okay, fine. A SILILF.”
“A what?”
“A sister-in-law I’d like to...” Jason whistled. “Who is she and where has she been all my life?”
“Peter Harrington’s sister and Bree’s best friend,” Jeremy said, not bothering to read off the display. With nothing to do but listen to his brother snore in the backseat, he’d stayed up most of the night memorizing everything he could on Bree’s life these past ten years. The path she jogged every morning. Where she went for her morning coffee and how she ordered it. “She’s Bree’s right hand at the company. Goggles was featured in Forbes Magazine last month and listed them as two of the most up-and-coming influential women in technology.”
“I can see why. I’d do anything they told me.” He whistled again.
“It wasn’t long after that article came out the board hired TREX to find the missing money, according to the date in the database.” An entire month had gone by before the agency pulled him in? He’d have a little chat with his boss. McKoy should have brought him in the instant TREX discovered the threats. “Intel picked up the chatter on the threats against Bree right around the same time. What are you thinking?”
“Any threats against the SILILF?”
“Would you quit calling her that?” He tapped at the keys to bring up the intel he’d already gathered on her. “Nothing as solid as what we’ve found against Bree. No stealing money, but some unflattering emails about a crash and burn relationship where the boyfriend kept what he called a Paris Hilton video on her. Interoffice romances rarely work. That’s why most companies forbid it. This crash and burn is a perfect example why. They weren’t even dating that long.”
“No shit? Ballsy dude. Is the video still in play?”
&nbs
p; “No.” Jeremy shook his head. “From what I’ve been able to dig up, every time he attempted to post it, it comes down within minutes. My guess is Whitney Harrington has the metadata plugged into Goggles and gets alerts every time the video surfaces. She may even have a bot that takes it down as soon as it comes up.”
“I literally tuned out the instant you said metadata. Speak English, man. You’re such a geek.” Jason leaned back on the couch, taking the stack of papers with him. “Maybe it’s the boyfriend wanting his revenge. Just because the chatter didn’t hit TREX’s radar like it did with Bree doesn’t mean it isn’t any less real.”
“And you lecture me to speak English,” Jeremy muttered, earning him a bemused look. He wasn’t about to explain it. Scrolling through the remaining tips, nothing jumped out. He made a mental note to talk to Whitney Harrington. Jason would turn it into a date. That was the last thing they needed—Jason dating Bree’s BFF. They’d end up on double-dates and pretending they were normal.
They were anything but.
Jeremy still needed his brother’s help when it came to Bree. He couldn’t win her over alone, at least not until he could talk to her without sounding like he had a speech impediment. It sucked he couldn’t be with the girl of his dreams without his brother’s assistance. Maybe someday he’d get the balls to be the dominant one. Until that day, Jason would have to be there to push him into the role.
“That’s it for chatter.” Damn it. That wasn’t nearly enough for them to identify the threats, let alone take them out. Frustrated and annoyed he couldn’t be in the office where he had four monitors to scan, he slammed the lid of his laptop down and flopped back in the chair, crossing his arms and clenching his jaw.
“You seem tense,” Jason pointed out the obvious. Jeremy threw him a glare that had him shrinking back in dramatic over-exaggeration. “Maybe we should hand this one to another team.”
“Giving up?” Jeremy’s glare narrowed. This time Jason shrank back for real.
“Jesus, dude. Learn to tame that look.” He stood and padded into the kitchen. “Pick your poison.”
“Coffee.”
“Yeah,” he chuckled. “That’s just what you need. More caffeine.” He approached and set a beer in front of Jeremy. “Allow me to administer to your dietary needs. Sixteen ounces of nutrition in a convenient, easy to carry bottle.”
“You should do commercials,” he mused and took a swig from the bottle before opening the laptop and starting from the top of the list. There had to be something here. There just had to be.
“I’d get paid better, that’s for sure.” He fell to the couch and stretched out. “I should get hazard pay for partnering with you when you get in moods like this. As if being stuck with you in the womb for nine months wasn’t enough.”
“TREX thanks you for your sacrifice.”
“I’ll send them a bill.”
He circled the conversation back to why they had the agency’s database up on the TV. “You didn’t see anything in the chatter we should follow up on?”
“Nope. Nothing blew my skirt up.”
“We need to have something to report to HQ.”
“What? We approached the client and debriefed her. Literally.” He laughed at his own joke and tipped back his beer. Jeremy glared at him. “Okay, okay. Jeez you’re a pain in the ass. We can talk about Bree if you want.”
“I know about her.” She married too young. Became a widow too young. And he, not knowing what else to do, had watched it all happen from the sidelines like a coward.
“I’ll take the SILILF.” He rolled his eyes when Jeremy growled. “Fine. Whit-ney.” He over-annunciated every syllable. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic. As much as I’d love for you to size her up, I need you on security detail. Let Bailey check into Whitney Harrington. If there are any credible threats against her, she’ll find them.”
Jason sat up and spun around to hang over the back of the couch, beer in hand as he faced Jeremy. “I’ll have her check the boyfriend, too. It may be nothing.”
“But you don’t think so.” It wasn’t a question. Jeremy recognized that spark in his brother’s eyes. He sensed something. God, what he wouldn’t give to have a sixth sense like that. Jeremy tracked down every threat to determine the credibility. It took days and sometimes weeks to follow every link. Most turned into huge time sucks and dried up. There were those few, however, that yielded the leads TREX needed to stop threats globally before they materialized into attacks.
Jason, on the other hand, could read the summary and trust his instincts to know whether he needed to hunt down the lead. He called it his twintuition. If only Jeremy had that same twintuition.
“You could, you know.” Jason jumped into his thoughts, picking up on them as usual. “You ignore the signals.”
“There are signals?” How’d he not know that?
“A lift of your hackles. Déjà vu. Doing a double take without knowing why. The sudden need to check your watch, or the temp outside, or anything for that matter. It’s your gut, your intuition telling you something is off. I look for the odd sock. Even when I don’t see it, my instinct does. I know you, bro. You have that same gut instinct. You just ignore it.”
“The hell you say.”
He stood and joined him at the table. “How about a little test?”
As much as Jeremy wanted to continue tracking down every potential threat against Bree, he had to pass this test. If he had a way to tap into this twintuition, it wouldn’t take him weeks to run out a dead-end lead. He’d know the right one to hit out of the gate.
“Let’s do it.” Pushing away from the laptop, he grabbed his beer and nodded at his brother. “What do I need to do?”
“The fact you even have to ask worries me, bro. You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling, dude.”
“I’m going to end you,” Jeremy growled and shot forward.
Jason laughed as he jumped away from the table in the nick of time. “You’ll have to catch me, which we both know you won’t.”
Jeremy launched from the table and wrapped his arm around his brother’s neck. It wasn’t as strong as Jason’s chokeholds, but it did the job. “What was that about me not catching you?”
“I let you,” he grunted and struggled to break free. “Just like I let you take Rose Rawlings to Homecoming.”
“I asked her first.”
“Did you?”
“Goddamn you.” Jeremy squeezed, pissed his brother still found ways to dig into his head and shake his confidence. As if he didn’t have enough trouble holding it together. “Stop treating me like some charity case.”
“Good thing Rose and I didn’t last long. Man was she pissed when I broke up with her. It wasn’t like we were planning a life together or anything.”
“You broke her heart,” Jeremy reminded him. It was all she talked about for weeks after it happened. She’d used Jeremy’s shoulder to cry on and tell him how much she hated his brother. When she threatened to tell everyone Jason had hit her, Jeremy talked her out of it. Thank God. A rumor like that could have ruined Jason’s life. She didn’t want to ruin him. She didn’t want him to hurt. She just wanted his attention again. “Good thing she never went through with her threats.”
“It’s always the brokenhearted ones you have to watch. They feel betrayed, like it’s the other one’s fault for their pain.” He grabbed Jeremey’s forearm and pulled it away from his neck. “Dude, I can’t breathe.”
“That’s the point.” He shifted, making sure he had a firm grip on his brother as he related the story to their current situation. “The boyfriend doesn’t want revenge.” The epiphany hit hard. He dropped his hold and hurried to the table to search the database. “Every time the video surfaces, it goes right back down. He’s trying to get her attention.”
“A sex tape is the wrong way to go about that.” Jason grabbed his beer and drained half the bottle.
“Ten-to-one there is no tape. It’s just a threat. He doesn’t want to hurt her.�
� Jeremy fell back in the chair as it all clicked into place. “He just wants her back.”
“Like I said, it’s the ones who feel betrayed you have to watch.” As he returned to the couch, he commented over his shoulder, “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“For?”
“Keeping your brain occupied with choking me so your intuition could connect the dots. The video was the odd sock. Someone in Whitney’s position wouldn’t be stupid enough to let herself be taped.”
Son of a bitch. He hated when his brother did that, proved he was the smarter twin. Without a leg to stand on, Jeremy conceded. “Thanks.”
“Believe it or not, turning off your brain can actually get you better results at times.”
“I’m sure you have no problem turning yours off.”
“Rude,” he quipped.
Jeremy chuckled. “Getting inside the company is the best way to handle this. We need a way in without it being too obvious.”
“You think it’s an inside job?” He straightened out on the couch and watched the giant TV over the fireplace.
“At least the embezzling.” It always was. If they’d been hacked, a software company like Goggles would have already discovered it. “The threats against Bree may have nothing to do with the missing money.”
“Agreed. You need an in to track that money. I’ll track the hitter. If he already ran a background check and has her under surveillance—and any good hitter would—your name would pop up. The boyfriend cover works. No one will give you another thought. It’s the perfect plant. The high school reunion rekindled the romance.”
And then some.
As much as he hated to admit it, the idea didn’t suck. It needed a little modification, however. “The boyfriend angle only works outside of work. We need more of a cover if I’m going to spend time with her at work.”
“Good point. Let’s see if Goggles is hiring, shall we?” Jason sat up as Jeremy displayed Goggles’ human resources department. He scrolled through the jobs. “There! A job opening in the building’s maintenance. I’ll be able to get in and out of every room without anyone noticing me. Now to find you a boring, paper-pushing job.”
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