“Three suspects.” Harvard turned deadly serious. “Samantha, Charles, and whoever’s wearing the Gucci shoes.”
“So, we have nothing.” Rachel folded her arms over the blood-red pantsuit she’d donned for the day. She’d styled it with her standard black pumps and a killer black leather belt to cinch in the waist. It was her “don’t piss me off” outfit, and it matched her manicure perfectly.
“No, we’ve got a lot more than that.” Harvard ran a hand over his smooth bald head, making her wonder what he’d look like if he didn’t shave. She shook off the thought, reminding herself that she didn’t care. He’d be out of her life soon. And that’s exactly what she wanted. Mostly…
“We know,” he continued, “that someone’s phone is connected to the memory card reader in your mom’s office, and also to the signal jammer on the camera. All we need is to check everybody’s phone and see which one it is.”
Rachel pulled out a chair and plopped into it. She folded her legs and swung her foot. “You might as well ask people for their firstborn. No one is going to hand over their phone for inspection.”
“They don’t need to,” Ryan said. “They just need to leave them at security in a building that doesn’t allow them inside. Then I can check them.”
“And how do we do that?” Rachel said. “If I have a meeting in another building, I lock my phone in my desk drawer. I don’t take it to the building because I know it will end up sitting in security, being stroked by someone’s grubby fingers.” Three sets of identically incredulous eyes stared back at her. “Don’t try to tell me it doesn’t happen,” she said.
Ryan started to say something but shook his head. “To hell with it. I give up; she’s your problem now, Harvard. Good luck.”
“I’m not anyone’s problem,” Rachel told the man-child.
“So,” Elle said, “is there no way we can get everyone to bring their phones to one of the secure buildings?”
“What if we told them that all phones need to be handed in and scanned as a security measure?” Ryan mused.
“Won’t work,” Elle replied. “If I got a heads-up, I’d wipe my phone before I came to work. Or bring in a backup to hand in instead.”
“Then how the hell do we get hold of their phones?” Ryan was beginning to lose patience.
Harvard and Rachel shared a look and, for a second, it felt like they were tuned in to the same wavelength. It was almost as though she could hear his thoughts.
Breaking eye contact, he said, “There’s a board meeting on Monday.” And it felt strangely right that he should speak for both of them, because it almost felt like they’d had the discussion and come to an agreement.
Honestly, her life was becoming stranger by the day.
Rachel continued where he left off, “We can stop everyone on the way into the building. We’ll tell them there’s been a security breach, and phones have to be left at the desk until we get on top of it.”
Harvard nodded. “We keep it under wraps and spring it on them when they come in. That way, nobody has time to swap out or wipe their phones. In the meantime, I’ll call headquarters and see if they have some free bodies we can use to watch Samantha, Charles, and our Gucci-loafer-wearing suspects—Preston, Marcus, and Rupert.”
“You want them all watched?” Ryan looked at Rachel. “Will TayFor pay for another five team members?”
“Yes.” If they argued about it, she’d personally make her father and brother suffer for the rest of their natural lives. She needed this investigation over. She needed to get back to her life. And woe betide anyone who was a stumbling block to that plan.
“Okay.” Harvard turned to her. “Want to get some lunch?”
Before she could answer, Elle shouted, “No!”
When Rachel looked at her, Elle flushed as her eyes went suspiciously wide. “I mean, it’s too early for lunch. We need to go over this footage a little more anyway. See if there’s anything we missed.” She was making bug eyes at Harvard now, as though trying to get him to read her mind.
Rachel considered them both and spotted the second Harvard realized what Elle was trying to tell him. “Yeah, you’re right. Lunch can wait. Bring up that footage of the shoes again.”
Honestly, they must think she’d been born yesterday. “Have fun.” She stood and headed for the door. “I’m finished here.”
“No.” Elle shot to her feet. “We need you.”
Rachel sighed. “Please, for the love of Yves Saint Laurent, never ever try to bluff anyone for money.” With that, she threw open the door, took two steps into the corridor, and ran straight into Harry Boyle.
“Hey, Rach,” he said with a sheepish smile. “How’ve you been?”
And at that point, her head spun and her eyes shot bolts of lightning as she shouted, “Harvard.”
“I tried to warn you,” Elle hissed as Harvard strode across the conference room. “Didn’t I tell you he was arriving now? The IT department’s right across the hall. All you had to do was keep her in here for five more minutes.” She folded her arms and glared at him. “You can deal with the fallout on your own.”
Ryan sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the conference table. “I propose a new bet. Five hundred pounds says Harvard’s back in his own bed tonight and Rachel announces the engagement is off.”
“Twenty-five on him sporting a black eye when we see him next,” Elle said.
“There’s nothing quite like your team having your back,” Harvard muttered as he passed them and strode out into the hall. He hooked a hand each through Rachel’s and Harry’s arms and dragged them back inside the conference room. Once he’d locked the door behind them, he asked, “What part of undercover do you people not get?”
Rachel narrowed her eyes at him. “The part where you’re partnered with a backstabbing, interfering Neanderthal of a man who should have minded his own business.”
Harry, who turned out to be about six foot of lean muscle and overgrown sandy brown hair, held up his hands in an effort to appease her. “Don’t be mad with the Yank. This was my idea. I didn’t give him a choice.”
“Ha!” She threw up her hands in disgust. “You forced him?”
Harry looked Harvard up and down, taking in his size and bulk. “It happened over the phone. It was more of a mental challenge than a physical one.” He stuck out a hand at Harvard. “Good to meet you in person. You look like Grunt. Only black. And you talk way more.”
It was like meeting a puppy. A genius puppy who could hold a conversation, albeit a bizarre one. “Grunt and I aren’t related.” He kept his tone deadly serious so that Harry wouldn’t know if he was joking or not.
“Are you sure?” Harry said. “I read an article once about a set of twins who were born with different skin tones. One black, one white. It was fascinating.”
Ryan groaned as Elle smothered a giggle.
“I’m sure,” Harvard said.
Rachel stepped forward and poked a finger into Harry’s chest. “Will you pretend to be normal for five seconds? What are you doing here?”
Harry blinked a couple of times, as though it took great effort to stop hypothesizing what a reality would look like where Harvard and his taciturn behemoth of a friend were twins. “I came to find your rapists.”
The air became so thick that Ryan choked a little.
“And how do you plan to do that?” Rachel’s voice was pure ice.
“Um.” Harry split a nervous look between Rachel and Harvard. “I thought I’d hack the server they use to store historical data to see if it gave me any clues as to who stole the drug they used on you. Then I thought Harvard could, I don’t know”—he shrugged—“torture the person to find out who else was involved. To be honest, I didn’t really think past the hacking part.”
With a look of pure naivety, he asked Harvard, “You learned torture and interrogation techniques in the CIA, right? Or do we need to call in Grunt? He scares the crap out of people just by being in the same room.” He snapped
his fingers. “That’s what’s different about you! You’re way friendlier than Grunt.”
“Yeah,” Ryan drawled. “That’s the difference.”
“I am surrounded by imbeciles,” Rachel said of an MIT graduate, a tech billionaire and sought-after hacker—and whatever the hell Ryan was. “Go back to Scotland, Harry.” She sounded suddenly weary. “We can handle this, and you can’t leave your wife alone for long, or she might bite someone. And rabies is a death sentence.”
Harry grinned. “Magenta says hi too.” He turned somber. “I can’t let you do this alone, Rach. You didn’t abandon me when I was a scared kid in uni. If you hadn’t taken me under your wing, I would have dropped out and moved into my parents’ basement forever.”
“I didn’t take you under my wing,” she snapped. “Do I look like a mother hen? I simply organized you. Goodness knows you needed it.” She glared at his hair. “You still do. Doesn’t Magenta care that you’re going around looking like that?”
“What? I’m growing it long so I can wear a leather queue.”
“A queue?” Ryan said.
“It’s what guys call a hair tie, so it sounds manly,” Elle said.
And yet again, Harvard felt like he was Arnie in Kindergarten Cop. “We about done here? Because, in case you guys forgot, we have two cases we need to get sorted. And time’s a-wastin’.”
“You don’t have two cases,” Rachel said. “You have one.” If looks could melt your face off, his would be gone.
“Rachel,” Harry said, “if you let me do this for you, I’ll make Magenta name our first child after you.”
“I need popcorn for this,” Ryan muttered.
For a long time, Rachel stood fuming at him, and then she pointed at Harry’s chest. “I don’t want a baby named after me. But I do want Magenta to swear that she’ll be nothing but sweet and delightful every time we meet.” Her eyes narrowed. “No matter what I say or do.”
Harry ran a hand through his hair, making it look even worse. “I don’t know if I can pull that off. She kind of hates you.”
That revelation was stated in such a matter-of-fact voice that it took a minute for it to register with Harvard, who then barked out a laugh. Which earned him a smack to his chest from Rachel.
“Give me your word that you’ll make this happen, or you can go home right now,” she told Harry.
“Fine.” He sighed. “But this sucks.”
“Whatever.” She waved a hand toward the door. “You may hack to your heart’s content.”
“Thanks!” Harry wrapped Rachel in a hug, and she patted his back like she didn’t quite understand how touching worked.
“Okay,” Harry said when he was done. “I’d better get going. It’ll take a while to go through all this stuff, so I’ll call when I’m done.” And with a cheery wave, he disappeared through the door.
“Do you think he realizes that he just promised a debt in order to do you a favor?” Elle asked, sounding bewildered.
“I don’t think Harry knows what day it is, let alone what just happened,” Ryan said.
“I’m going to my office.” Rachel swept past them. “Please don’t follow. I’ve had enough of you all.” And then she was gone too.
Ryan let out a long sigh. “I am the only normal one here,” he said.
Chapter Nineteen
After a long, annoying day, full of people that irritated her, all Rachel wanted to do was go home. But Harvard had other ideas.
“We’ve got to eat,” he said as he drove them toward Soho instead of Kensington.
“That’s what ordering in is for.”
“This place doesn’t do takeout.”
“Well, order from somewhere that does.”
He ignored her. “Can you walk in those shoes?”
“Do these look like walking shoes to you?” They were four-inch pumps, and yes, she could wear them all day, but not if she had to walk a marathon through London’s streets.
“I’ll try to park as close as I can then.”
“Good luck with that,” she scoffed. Even on a Thursday night, Soho would be packed.
Of course, he found a spot not two doors down from the restaurant he insisted on eating at. Typical.
He jumped out, rounded the car and opened the door for her. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’m starving.”
With a sigh, she climbed out of the car. Honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do other than comply. Her usual tactics for getting people to keep their distance didn’t seem to work with Harvard. She’d yet to figure out what did.
As they walked to the restaurant, he took her hand.
Rachel tried to tug free of his hold, but it was useless. “There’s no one around,” she told him. “We don’t have to pretend we’re in a relationship.”
“Rachel,” he drawled, “I’ve told you a good spy never breaks cover.”
It was completely maddening that he had an answer for everything.
The tapas bar had barely any frontage and a sign that needed a good repaint. It wasn’t reassuring.
“There’s more space in back,” Harvard said as though that would ease her mind.
He placed a hand on the small of her back and led her through the open door. The décor was “explosion of color”, with a variety of bright tablecloths on different-sized and -shaped tables, small vases of flowers sitting on each one, and mix ’n’ match paintings depicting all things Spanish crowding the walls. The chairs, floor, and table legs were all the same dark wood. Which just made Rachel think how easy it would be to hide stains.
She shuddered. If she touched anything sticky, she was going straight home. “Do you deliberately hunt down all the places in London that decorate by throwing everything they have at the room?”
“No, but now that I think about it, maybe I should.”
A cheery blonde waitress with a Polish accent led them to a table right at the back of the room, where the space widened out to three times the size of the frontage. Their table had a bright blue cloth, yellow flowers and, thankfully, no sticky residue anywhere.
“How about we do one of everything?” Harvard asked her as the waitress offered them the laminated menus.
If it meant she didn’t have to touch those, she’d agree to anything. “That’s fine with me. And wine. Dear Gucci, I need wine. A bottle. Sealed.” She didn’t trust anything that came in a glass. Who knows what they were serving and calling a decent vintage. Actually…
She glanced at the drinks menu, which sat propped up against the flowers. It was worse than she thought. The wine only came in red or white.
“Forget the wine,” she said. “I’ll take a bottle of beer. Something light. And please open it at the table.” To her credit, the waitress didn’t so much as blink an eye at Rachel’s instructions.
After the waitress disappeared, Rachel watched Harvard shrug out of his jacket and hang it over the back of the chair beside him. With a sigh, Rachel placed her handbag on the seat next to her and did the same with her jacket.
“Just once,” she said, “could we eat somewhere that’s regularly inspected by the health department?”
He threw back his head, laughing deep and long. Rachel glanced at some of the nearby diners, who were smiling at him. Noticing one or two of the women had speculation in their eyes, she glared at them. It had nothing to do with her pretending to be his fiancée; it was just plain rude to size up another woman’s dinner date.
Of course, Harvard caught her actions. “Getting a bit possessive?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I be possessive? Because we had sex?” She made a little scoffing sound. “I don’t know you well enough to want to keep you.”
“You could. Know me, that is.” He spread his arms wide, making his shirt tighten at his shoulders. “I’m an open book. Ask me anything. I dare you.”
She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “I’d have to be interested to ask.”
He leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table, his ey
es pinning hers. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
He was bloody well amused again. “Fine. Tell me about being a spy—if that’s what you really did. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone. And make me believe it.”
“You think I’d lie to you.” His eyebrows shot up.
Rachel let out an exasperated breath. “Actually, I don’t think you’d lie to me. I’m fairly certain you’d just skirt any topic you didn’t want to discuss.”
Her answer seemed to please him. “For your information, I was definitely a spy. Not a desk-jockey analyst. Although I started out doing quite a bit of that.” His smile was self-deprecating. “It came with my area of expertise—data mining, pattern analysis, statistics, that sort of thing. But I also have other skills.” He winked at her, and she felt heat travel through her body.
Damn cocky man.
“What other skills?”
“Languages, the ability to make friends and win confidences, staying calm when other people are stressed, and hand-to-hand combat training.” He shrugged as though it was all nothing. “I was kinda born to be a spy.”
Against her better judgment, Rachel found herself intrigued. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Sure, there were parts I enjoyed. Mainly I got a kick out of the challenge. The puzzle, the game, the adrenaline rush of trying not to get caught.”
She folded her arms and rested them on the table. “Were you ever caught?”
Dark, somber eyes met hers. “Yeah.”
Rachel knew other women would back off at his tone. They’d demur and tell him he didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to. She wasn’t other women. The man knew practically everything there was to know about her life. As far as she was concerned, that meant share and share alike.
“What happened?” she asked, wondering if he’d tell her. Wondering what it meant if he did.
“I spent three days being interrogated by Al-Qaeda extremists in northern Africa.”
He seemed perfectly relaxed, calm, no tension at all. But somehow, Rachel knew he didn’t mean a few questions in a back-country jail.
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