“The guys who deliver takeout to the building. The concierge buzzes them in and they go straight up to the floor.” She knew for a fact that they often breezed right through the foyer of the building without attracting much attention. It would be the perfect cover.
“Okay, good. That’ll give us something to look for on the surveillance footage.” Logan bobbed his head. “From my search, it doesn’t seem as if the guy has done anything here other than the delivery of the note. So I think that and the security cameras should be our area of focus.”
“What else can I do to help?” Owen asked. For the guy who was always laughing and joking, his face was uncharacteristically serious.
“Head back to the office and update Rhys, but keep it quiet. We’re only telling those who need to know—no sense in worrying the troops.”
Owen nodded. “Good call.”
“My full focus is on figuring out what this guy wants and ensuring that Addison is kept out of harm’s way,” Logan said. “So I have to ask you to step up and take care of the day-to-day stuff, okay?”
“Consider it done.” Owen raked a hand through his shaggy blond hair. “If there are any problems, I’ll check in.”
“Good. We’ll touch base on Monday morning.”
Addison stayed on the couch as Owen left. She’d kicked off her heels and tucked her feet up underneath her. Her life was feeling further and further out of her control by the minute.
“I don’t understand what this guy wants,” she said. “An eye for an eye? What did Dad do that was so bad?”
“He put the bad guys away for a living. Think about how many people might have been sent to jail because of evidence he gathered in the course of his career.” He shrugged. “I know for a fact that he received threats on a few occasions.”
He’d never told her that. Neither of them had. It was simply one more thing they’d shared that she hadn’t. One more thing she wasn’t allowed to be part of because she needed to be “protected.” She swallowed against the bitter taste in her mouth.
“It comes with the territory, unfortunately,” Logan continued. “You go up against dangerous people and they bite back.”
“But why now? Dad’s been gone for two years and he was out of the action for a good twelve months before that because of the cancer.” A lump lodged itself in her throat, but she jammed the emotions down. He would want her to focus now, not grieve. “Why would someone come after me out of the blue for something my dad might have done more than three years ago? It doesn’t make sense.”
“There has to be something we’re missing. A catalyst.”
She rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”
“You being so testy about everything doesn’t help the situation.” He frowned at her. “I know this is an imposition and I’m sure you’d love to kick my ass out of here—”
“I would.”
“But that doesn’t change the fact that there is someone after you who’s most likely unhinged and who has already proved to be dangerous. Addi, I don’t care if this makes you hate me. I’ve fucked up too many times in my life to let your annoyance get in the way of doing what’s right.” He sighed. “Your dad was the only thing that kept me from ending up in jail after my mom died. I don’t take my promise to him lightly.”
She tilted her head, intrigued in spite of her bad mood. He’d never talked much about how he came to work for her father. “Why do you think you would have ended up in jail?”
“I was on a bad path back then.”
“After you left the army?”
“After I got kicked out, you mean.”
It didn’t surprise her; his stubbornness wouldn’t suit military life. But he’d never admitted it before. “Why were you kicked out?”
“I went AWOL. When I found out my mom had died I just...” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t handle being on base, I couldn’t handle my commander screaming at me. I took off, like a coward.”
“You were young.” She reached out to him, her fingers curling over his hand. “That was enough for them to kick you out?”
“Yeah, because I was gone longer than forty days and the commander had it in for me from the start. That was all he needed to give me an administrative discharge. He could have disciplined me, but he said I had ‘no viable future’ with them. That I wasn’t fit to be in the army.” Logan’s eyes were fixed on something in the distance, as though the answers to his personal turmoil were located high in the late-afternoon skyline. “He said that no good would come of a messed-up kid like me.”
“That’s awful.” Her chest clenched as though her body were trying to absorb his pain. “Why did you take so long to go back?”
“I had only intended to stay for the funeral, but...” His face became marble-hard. “I found out my dad had already shacked up with another woman. His wife’s body wasn’t even in the ground yet and he was already fucking someone else. And he’d invited her into our home. They were there when I arrived.”
Oh God. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must have been like. Her own father had never even looked at another woman after her mom passed. He’d been as devoted to her as a widower as he’d been as a husband.
“I lost it, just about smashed every plate in the house. He’s still with that same woman now, so you can see why I’m not too welcome at family gatherings.” He shook his head and let out a bitter laugh. “A friend referred me to your dad, said he had a security gig and was looking for muscle. When I started working for him, it was the first time I felt like I might have a future after all.”
There wasn’t an ounce of emotion in his rigid expression, but Addison knew that was a sign of a storm raging inside him. He’d tempered himself over the years, learning to react internally first. To use his poker face as protection. To hide the anger and sadness that had been brewing in him for years.
But she knew where to look for the truth.
“He cared about you a lot,” she said, moving closer to him on the couch and leaning her shoulder on his shoulder. “You were the son he never had. I was so jealous when you came along.”
His head snapped in her direction, his dark eyes burning intently into hers. “Why on earth would you have been jealous of me? You were his pride and joy.”
“Because you shared things with him that I couldn’t. You talked shop, you chased the bad guys together, and I had to sit at home like some delicate little bubble girl.” The catch her voice belied her calm tone. “You did all the things that I could never do. You had a place by his side because he wanted you there.”
“Addi.” The tension around his eyes softened. “He wanted you by his side. Why do you think he brought you into the business? He was so proud of you.”
“Not enough to let me do the real work,” she said bitterly. “I wanted so bad to be in the security side of things, but I let him talk me into business school. I thought it was because he valued my skills in those areas but I’m not so sure about that now.”
“You believe he manipulated you?”
“It sounds so bad when you say it like that...but, yeah.” She swallowed. On the surface she should have been mad at her father, but she couldn’t bring herself to give in to resentment. He’d done what he could to raise her right—being a single father couldn’t have been easy. He’d had to play both mother and father to her, doing everything from helping her with her homework to braiding her hair to wading through the atrocities of puberty. And never once had he complained.
“Did you really want to work on the security stuff, or was it about being closer to him?” Logan asked.
The question stalled her. Logan was right; it wasn’t that she was particularly passionate about security. It was something much deeper than that. “I wanted to be equal. I wanted to be respected instead of being the paperwork girl.”
The words hit her like a freight train to the solar plexus. “What?”
“Remember that day we switched over the payroll system and we almost wiped out all the employee data?”
She groaned. “God, do I ever. I thought we were going to have to key it all in manually and that we’d miss the deadline to pay everyone that month.”
“Your dad said to me that if it wasn’t for you managing those areas of the business, that he would never have been able to expand the company the way he did. You were the reason we could grow, because you kept the lights on when things got bad. You made sure that our bills got paid, that we always had an office space, that we kept track of our money.”
“Just doing my job.” She tried to make light of his words, but the truth was she could barely breathe. Of course she knew her father loved her, but he was a tough man. One who’d never spoken his emotions aloud.
“No, Addi. You’re the heart and soul of Cobalt & Dane. You’re the only person who could fill your father’s shoes and...” He raked a hand through his hair, suddenly looking like that boy she’d fallen for all those years ago. “Thanks for not walking out on me after what I did.”
Guilt trickled like poison through her veins. Never once had he acknowledged that she’d stuck by him—in a business sense—even after the personal stuff had gotten messy, much less thanked her for it. Why did he have to start being a good guy now?
“My pleasure,” she whispered.
* * *
ADDISON DIDN’T MAKE eye contact, her hands toying with the hem of her dress. He would have seen less confusion on her face if he’d announced aliens were about to land on the planet.
This is why you don’t do the touchy-feely stuff. You can’t even give her a compliment without fucking it up.
“Anyway.” He paused to clear his throat. “We should probably go through some of the old case files.”
“You think we’ll find something there?”
“It’s a place to start. The security footage is probably not going to give us any more than it did before, so we have to get creative. The note has to mean something.”
“Why would he leave a note if it could possibly give us a clue as to his identity?”
“Maybe he’s getting frustrated at his lack of progress. Or maybe he wants to toy with you. Guys who do these kinds of things can get cocky, thinking they hold all the power.”
“Right.” She nodded. “Well, let me get changed. I don’t want to be digging through files in this dress.”
She was still so close to him on the couch. So close that he wanted to bundle her up in his arms and keep her safe and warm and close to him, where she belonged.
She doesn’t belong to you, idiot. You blew that chance.
He watched as she stood, her long, lean limbs so graceful in movement. Like a dancer. What he’d give to wake up to that body every morning. To that smile. To those loving hands and lips and eyes.
“Addi?” He reached for her hand.
“Yeah?”
“I swear on my mother’s grave that we’re going to find this guy. I will take personal pride in nailing him to a wall for you.”
A smile quirked on her lips. “That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“I guess I’ll have to try harder then.”
Her rich brown eyes didn’t reveal anything. She was too careful for that.
* * *
HALF AN HOUR later Logan and Addison walked into Cobalt & Dane’s archive room. It was on a different floor from their main offices. The dusty little room was full of cardboard boxes and needed to be dragged into the current decade.
“Aren’t you glad I forced everyone to come through and label all these boxes correctly?” Addison tossed a smug smile over her shoulder as they walked through the door. “At least now we’ll know what we’re looking at.”
He was grateful for her system, but he wasn’t about to admit it to her. “I bet you have dirty dreams about organizing things. Just you and some hot stud with a calculator.”
She snorted. “And what do you dream about? Having a girl on her knees while she submits to you in every possible way? Oh, wait. That’s probably true”
Damn right it was. The thought of getting Addison down on her knees made his cock stir. He’d love to bind those delicate wrists and bend her over the rickety little table in here.
He cleared his throat. “You said it, not me. And don’t be putting ideas in my head. We’ve got work to do.”
When he’d seen the outfit Addison had changed into back at her apartment—her gorgeous body poured into a pair of tiny denim shorts and a tight white tank top—he’d wanted to throw her onto the couch. They’d acted like the conversation about their families, about their regrets, had never happened. Because that’s what he did. Avoiding emotion was the only way to go, because a bleeding heart had never served him in life. He had to be careful around Addison because she had a way of making him open up like a tap.
“Where do we even start?” She threw her hands up in the air.
The room was lined with metal shelves containing box after box of files. Not all of them were case files, though, they had boxes of records to keep for tax purposes. Old employee files, training documents. The list went on.
Thanks to Addison, the different types of files had been sorted into areas and labeled. Case files were marked with a big red C in the top right-hand corner of the box, followed by the month and year the case was closed. Cases that hadn’t been closed were marked with a U for unresolved.
“My guess is that we can leave the unresolved cases for now,” Logan said, placing his laptop onto the table in the center of the room. “We’ve got the basic records in the case management system, so let’s look for cases that resulted in a handoff to police and go from there.”
She nodded. “That seems like a logical approach.”
“I do come up with some good ideas,” he teased as he pulled up their case management database.
It wasn’t a fancy one like some of the bigger companies might use, but it allowed them to keep track of the important information for each case—like the date Cobalt & Dane was engaged, which consultants worked on the job, the initial request, the date the case was closed and a brief description of the outcome. Each case was assigned a type to indicate whether it was an ongoing or onetime service, and the outcomes were sorted to allow them to analyze how the company was most commonly being utilized. The entire system had been Addison’s design, her knack for information and organization making their lives easier in situations like this.
“Okay, so we’ll narrow the search to find only closed cases.” He clicked the appropriate checkbox and Addison hovered over his shoulder. The end of her long ponytail tickled his shoulder and he tried not to be distracted by the scent of her perfume. “Let’s cut the date off around the time your father stopped working. We’ll keep it open from the very beginning, although I think some of the earlier cases don’t have much information.”
“No, Dad had the same approach to paperwork as you do.”
He ignored the dig. “We’ll look only at cases that resulted in a handoff to police.” He stared at the screen warily, knowing how many cases would still show up in the search. “Let’s filter it also by cases that were assigned to your dad.”
“This seems like a lot of guesswork.”
“There’s a good deal of guesswork in what we do. Besides, if this thing spits out ten thousand records, is that going to get us anywhere?”
“No,” she admitted. “But filtering out the right records won’t help us, either. It’s like a wild-goose chase.”
But sitting around worrying would also be futile. Logan was still waiting to
hear from Rhys if he’d uncovered any further information on the person who’d created the Trojan. He made a mental note to call Rhys once Addison was distracted with the case files.
He clicked the search button on the computer system and the screen filled up with prospective cases for them to look at. “Okay, now we start searching. Let’s work from the most current cases and go backward.”
Addison stared forlornly at the boxes lining the walls. “This is going to take forever.”
He read out the dates from the first few files and they pulled the corresponding boxes. Dust plumed as they tossed the lids onto the floor. Each box was filled with slim folders labeled with case numbers. The plan had always been to digitize the old files, since they’d now moved to a paperless system, but no one had gotten around to it.
“What exactly should I be looking for?” she asked.
For once, she was seeking out his advice. Small step though it might be, the fact that he could help her with something pleased him.
“The sheet on top of the file should have a summary of the case. Look for anything that references a conviction or punitive measure. Something bad enough that might cause a crooked guy to seek revenge.”
“I hope we find the guy in these more recent files,” she said. “We haven’t been doing the summary sheets for all that long. Dad thought they were a waste of time when I first suggested them.”
“Stubborn men can be resistant to change.”
“You talking about yourself or about him?” She tiptoed her fingers through the files in the box until she found what she was looking for. “You seemed to think it was wasted effort as well, if my memory serves me correctly.”
“Sounds like something I would say.” He pulled a file from his own box and leafed through the information inside. Nothing.
“I still haven’t managed to figure out if you’re difficult on purpose or if it’s just something that comes naturally.” A smile quirked on her lips.
“Me, difficult? Never.” He pulled another file. “Now, you on the other hand...”
“Only someone who has as strong a personality as I do would be able to put up with having you as a business partner. So really, our stubbornness makes us well matched. Two perfectly difficult peas in a pod.”
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