“Technically, I am injured.” And just mentioning it made his thigh thump.
But they had a bigger issue to deal with. His heart took off in a hammering run the second after she said the word “kiss,” and the sexy touching only added to his building excitement. Between the near heart-attack beat of anticipation and the pressure pushing against his zipper there was no blood left for his head. “As for the kiss—”
“Forget that.”
“Admittedly, your timing on this subject sucks.”
She nodded. “It’s been that kind of day.”
No kidding. “Except for that timing thing, I’m in.”
She leaned against him with her head dipping in close. “Are you sure? Because I’m probably going insane.”
The more the idea of kissing tumbled around in his head, the more desperate he became to taste her. “It’s meant to be.”
“My impending insanity?”
“The kiss. We’ve been circling each other since the first day I walked into the shop.”
“How romantic.”
This time her smile lit up her face. But he remembered the forced calm and the flash of fear from earlier, and the memory sucked the life right out of him. He knew he had to grab on to his control and stick to his training no matter how his body begged for the opposite result.
He lifted their joined hands and kissed the back of hers. “Can’t lie, I’ve wanted to throw you on that counter since that first morning you handed me a coffee of the day, but that was the wrong time and so is this.”
“Who are we kidding?” Her shoulders sagged. “It’s adrenaline. We’ll get over it.”
She definitely didn’t understand some very important facts about him. But she would. “Yeah, I’m not likely to let that happen.”
“You kiss all the people you protect?”
How she missed the signs and threw herself into the category of the easily forgotten or just like every other woman was a mystery to him. Time for a wake-up call. “You’ll be the first, but later, when I can really concentrate on the task.”
A forced cough crackled over the comm. “Do I get to listen in then, too?”
Pax wanted to curse, but he had no one to blame but himself for this one. “Joel, I swear I—”
“Okay, kids. Let’s finish this job before we start celebrating.”
Kelsey held a hand over her mouth. This time her wide-eyed stare had nothing to do with fear. “For a second I forgot he was there.”
Joel chuckled directly into their ears. “I love hearing that. You’d be amazed what I pick up from back here.”
Gathering all of his concentration and dropping her hand, Pax got back to the operation. It was either that or risk both of their lives on a simple box retrieval. “What about the company in the street?”
“Still there. He’s down the alley a bit and pacing.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
The tapping of the keyboard served as background noise to Joel’s side of the conversation. “No idea but even with Connor on the way, the quicker you two finish whatever it is you’re doing, the better off we’ll all be.”
She exhaled as she stood up and held out a hand to Pax to have him join her. “You heard the man. Let’s get this done.”
Chapter Nine
A knock sounded at Bryce’s office door. At this time of night, hours after most of the staff went home and the nightly cleaning crew moved in, his visitor could be only one person. At least it was someone he could tolerate for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Come in,” he said without taking his attention away from the computer programs running on the monitors.
The door opened a fraction, and Glenn stuck his head inside. “Sir? Did you need anything before I leave for the day?”
The man was loyal to the end. He’d grabbed his briefcase two hours ago in a rush to get to a dinner date and then dropped it again when Bryce announced he was staying to look deeper into the Sean Moore situation. Glenn mumbled something about canceling and sticking around. Soon after that takeout food containers appeared on Bryce’s desk and files were placed on the edge of his desk. He combed through it all, reviewing Glenn’s report on Sean Moore, including a list of places to look for him.
Glenn produced good work. Some holes existed, but Bryce filled those in on his own. He went beyond the paperwork and the investigator’s report. He knew where Sean wasn’t at the moment and how few resources he had. That meant the young man would be feeling desperate soon.
Having gone to expensive prep schools and lived in Daddy’s gated mansion for most of his life meant Sean’s survival skills were likely pretty limited. He didn’t have a web of friends or a stash of secret cash. Like many people he depended on a base level of intelligence and comfort to get by, and when something shook the latter the former suffered.
Sean would make a mistake. It was just a matter of time. Bryce just had to wait and find the right way in, which led him to an area in which he was an expert. Electronic surveillance. If Sean so much as burped in the D.C. metro area, Bryce should be able to hunt him down.
For extra insurance, Bryce put behind-the-scenes pressure on Sean’s family, which consisted of a half sister and his infamous father. Neither had been contacted by Sean through any of the usual channels Bryce now monitored. He used strategically placed cameras to be ready if Sean found another way.
Which uncovered this evening’s most interesting piece of information. Not that Bryce had figured out the connections. It would all be in the details. He needed to gather those.
He glanced at the program running on his main computer. Photos of faces raced by as the program searched for an identity match. But maybe there was an easier way. Maybe Glenn could offer some insight, see something Bryce missed since Glenn spent more time on the floor and dealing directly with employees.
Reality was Bryce made it a priority to know every face in the building. He didn’t hire them all, but he had a sense of who should be here and who shouldn’t. But the man he was trying to identify could be tangentially related to Kingston or someone who worked there—possibly a delivery guy or someone in the building or associated with a competitor—and Bryce might miss the connection.
He sat back in his chair and pointed at the large computer monitor on the credenza perpendicular to his desk. “Do you have any idea who this is?”
Glenn frowned as he stepped farther into the room. “What are you looking at?’
“Footage.”
Glenn’s hand tightened around the notepad in his hand. “Of what?”
“Private citizens walking around.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
Bryce hoped Glenn didn’t bring up a lecture on the web of privacy laws that added unnecessary jumps to simple searches but also made Bryce a great deal of money by defeating those barriers...for the right price, of course. “It’s the camera in front of that coffee place Sean’s sister runs.”
“Owns.”
That grabbed Bryce’s attention. “What?”
Glenn waved his hand in the air as he continued to stare at the screen. “She owns it.”
“I don’t care whose name is on the deed.” Bryce barely cared about Sean, and that disdain was quickly spreading to his family. From what Bryce could tell, none of them had managed to amount to much of anything, and Sean blew the one chance he had of making a future for himself. “This footage is from more than a half hour ago.”
“We have a camera outside of her shop?”
“We have cameras everywhere.” A satellite system saw to that. So did the network of police and security cameras Bryce set up throughout the entire region thanks to low job bids he instinctively knew would serve him well in the future. Where he didn’t have eyes, he could usually hook into someone else’s system and ta
ke a look around.
The back door he kept open for his continued use on the systems he designed paid off now. Even now he reversed and fast-forwarded to find the exact frame he needed.
Glenn dropped into the seat across the desk and studied the footage. “I had no idea.”
“That’s the point.” Figures moved across the screen and Bryce stopped the picture on an outline of two people walking down the street, stopping and then turning back again. It was the turn that gave him their faces. He tapped a key to zoom in. “There. The woman is Kelsey Moore or someone who looks a great deal like her. Who’s the man?”
“I don’t know.”
“Here. This will help.” With a few more keystrokes Bryce clarified the photo and cropped it to highlight the man’s face. “I’m running the facial recognition software but no hits yet.”
“Never seen him.”
“Think about it. Has he been in the building or with Sean or any other employee?”
Glenn’s eyes narrowed. “Not that I know of. What are you thinking about this guy?”
“Sean answers to someone. He’s not smart enough, or dumb enough, depending on how you look at it, to pull off this information dump on his own. He knows his way around computers, but we have checks and fail-safes. He bucked them all until he got to the lie detector test. I found the rest when I backtracked after that, but he would have gotten away with it, at least for a while.” A fact that continued to burn through Bryce every minute of the day.
Thanks to Sean and his betrayal, Bryce got stuck dealing with people like Dan. Sean would pay for that when Bryce made him pay for everything else.
“And you think the guy on the screen is the person who helped Sean steal data?” Glenn asked.
“I think Sean is looking for a big check, and this man might be the one writing it.” Someone pulled the strings. The person at the head of this thing wanted money or propriety software or highly sensitive passwords, or all of it.
“But why would someone involve Sean’s sister?”
A simple question. One Bryce found beneath Glenn’s skill set, and he scowled to make his position clear. “Why not? We have.”
“True.” Glen straightened. “I can check into it.”
“No need.” This project Bryce needed to handle on his own. He’d delegated too much responsibility, and now he had a personnel disaster that could blow into something much bigger. After he cleared out the employees who failed him, he would impose stricter rules to ensure a security breach like this never happened again. “We’ll let the computers do the work for a few hours. If this program doesn’t work, I may need to call in some favors and access a more intricate system.”
“You’re talking about something like at the NSA or CIA?”
Bryce would do whatever it took to secure his company’s future. He’d worked too hard for too long, balancing his father-in-law’s expectations and risking his wife’s wrath to gain a solid reputation and foothold in the market. He would not go backward now. “You can go home.”
Glenn’s gaze bounced from screen to screen. “If it’s okay with you, I’d prefer to stay.”
Bryce thought about Dan and his threats. He was the type of employee Bryce didn’t need. But Glenn, he was starting to prove himself very capable. “Take a seat.”
* * *
KELSEY HAD BEEN AWAY from her apartment for exactly one afternoon, but it dragged on as if it were months. She opened the door, expecting the dank scent of the apartment being closed up all day in the humid weather to hit her. Instead, everything looked and smelled normal.
Well, what she saw of it. Pax pushed her into the hallway and put a finger over his lips. The same lips she came within inches of kissing. Yeah, talk about a dumb idea. The man was her assigned bodyguard and even now stalked around her shadowed apartment with his gun up and his attention trained on every corner.
The only light came from a small lamp on an end table. She left it on whenever she was out. Now it shone a soft yellow glow over everything. She reached for the light switch, but his finger snapping stopped her. So did the curt nod of his head.
She’d never been a fan of overly commanding men. She generally associated the trait with the jerky-male type. Those guys who insisted everything be done as they wanted it and slipped into rage-fueled, sometimes abusive fits when things moved off plan. She wondered now if that assessment had been too harsh or at least too general.
When Pax wanted something, he sure didn’t have any trouble being bossy to get his way. She should hate that, be on her guard, but from him it calmed her frayed nerves. Sure, sometimes she pushed back or wanted to roll her eyes, but she instinctively knew he’d accept either reaction.
Trust didn’t come easy for her, and it should be impossible with Pax in light of how they met, but the opposite proved true.
Even when he acted in a way she didn’t understand. Like now. He opened closet doors and ducked to check under furniture. The same furniture that likely served as home to dust bunny families because she sure never checked under there.
When he ducked into the bedroom, she had to fight the urge to follow him in there and check for underwear all over the floor. She wasn’t exactly expecting company, after all.
A minute later he stepped back into the family room. This time his arm hung at his side and his gun didn’t point at anything or anybody. “All clear.”
Her heart clunked as it fell an inch. “Did you think someone would be up here?”
“Let’s just say after the day we’ve had, I’m not taking any chances. That includes keeping the lights off so we don’t draw attention to your place.”
Since she was admittedly a below-average housekeeper, it probably looked better in the dark anyway. She tried to see the place through his eyes. To her, the exposed redbrick walls and bunches of plants near the front window were charming.
The open floor plan appealed to her. Standing at the door she could see the family room with the sectional she found on sale last year and the kitchen stretching along the wall off to her right. Only the bedroom and a small bath were tucked away from immediate view.
The whole space took up less than half of the first floor of the Corcoran place. It was small and cozy and all hers...hers and the bank’s. Mostly the bank’s.
He glanced around. “The box?”
She dropped the keys on the small table next to the door. “The kitchen.”
Pax spun around until he faced the breakfast bar on the family room side of the butcher block island. “You eat with the box? Is that some sort of woman thing I don’t know about?”
“I eat with the television. When the workday is over I want mindless entertainment.” She pointed at the couch and the flat-screen hooked to the wall. “And I engage in said laziness right there.”
That sexy smile appeared out of nowhere. “I approve of that arrangement. Have been known to engage in the same now and then.”
She couldn’t imagine him ever being lazy. “Just you and your gun, huh?”
“I’d rather try your couch and skip the gun.”
She chalked it up to the leftover adrenaline and the fact they stood in the middle of the most private part of her life, but all she wanted was to climb onto the couch and drag Pax there beside her. “Maybe I’ll show you sometime.”
“At breakfast?” He picked up the box. It was one of those Priority Mail kind you could stuff full and still pay only a set fee. “Once all of this is over and you’re safe, if you invite me, I guarantee I’ll be here.”
“Uh, folks? I’m still listening in,” Joel said in a monotone, almost bored voice.
Pax winked at her. “As if we could forget you.”
“I’m not the only one you should be worried about,” Joel said. “Alley guy is on the move.”
Pax’s smile disappeared as quickly as
it came. “Unbelievable.”
She didn’t know why he was surprised. Luck had failed them at every turn today. “We can’t catch a break here.”
“If he’s the partner of the one at the bottom of the staircase or the one you stuffed in the corner by the Dumpster, he’s probably getting antsy and looking around,” Joel said.
Pax tucked the box under his arm. “How close?”
“Right at the outside door downstairs. He keeps looking around and checking the lock. Tugging on it.”
Hope flickered to life in her belly. “Good thing Pax fixed it.”
“Not to scare you, but if the guy wants in, he’ll get in. That’s the dirty secret the security companies don’t like to admit.” Pax’s gaze fell on her phone on top of the bar. He held it up. “Your cell?”
What, did he think she had a boyfriend on the side and he dropped it there? “Of course.”
“Password-protected?”
She shook her head. It never dawned on her to lock her phone. Half the time she forgot to carry it, which explained why it was up here instead of downstairs in her office or in her back pocket, which would have been a help any one of the times she’d been attacked.
“Speaking of interesting security choices.” He tapped a few buttons before his gaze flew back to meet hers. “I don’t see anything on here from your brother.”
The words slammed into her, pushing her back against the wall. Her mind went blank but her legs suddenly weighed a thousand pounds each. “What does that mean?”
Pax slipped the cell into his jeans pocket. He wore a frown and wasn’t paying any attention to her. “I’m not sure yet. I’d just think your brother would call. I mean, how many people can he depend on?”
She wasn’t convinced Sean thought of her in those terms, but still...
“Remember our conversation about comfort and how you sort of stink at it? This right here, Pax?” She moved her hands around in small circles. “This is a good example of that.”
His head popped up and his eyes narrowed as he focused on her face. “I figured you’d appreciate the honesty.”
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