Daniel soon learned that this particular strategy meeting had nothing to do with the WEP encryption project he’d been assigned to work on. Owen introduced him to the room at large.
“Daniel is here as an observer today. Let him see what happens when all these great minds merge.”
This was yet another part of the immersion-style employment strategy Trendsetters utilized. Instead of a typical employee handbook, they plopped new hires directly into situations that allowed them to experience different aspects of how the company operated in real time. He was told to expect several such instances over the next month or so, until they felt he was settled into the job. But if all went as planned, he would be in and out of Trendsetters in a couple of weeks.
Owen started talking about a potential new client, and Daniel let his eyes travel around the room. Not surprisingly, they landed on Samiah. Extremely surprisingly, she was staring right back at him. She quickly looked away, but then returned her gaze to his and smiled the subtle, embarrassed smile of someone who had been caught.
An answering grin drew across his lips.
Dude, what the hell?
He knew better than to engage. His normal modus operandi was to come into a job, lie low, complete his assignment, and get out. Landing on anyone’s radar wasn’t just foolish; it was potentially hazardous to his career. People talked. If he stood out at any particular company, word could spread and he wouldn’t be able to operate as he had for the past year.
But as he searched for a reason to tear his gaze away from the magnificent dark brown eyes staring back at him, Daniel couldn’t seem to come up with one. As long as he didn’t get distracted from the real reason he’d come to work for Trendsetters IT Solutions, what harm was there in being friendly to one of his fellow coworkers? And just because she wasn’t on the list of people he’d been tasked with keeping an eye on, did that mean he should ignore her?
Hell, he couldn’t ignore her if he tried. He was aware of her every breath whenever he was near her.
He’d spent the past couple of days pretending that he just so happened to want coffee whenever she did, but Daniel had no doubt that by this morning she’d caught on. He was a good actor—he had to be in his line of work—but he wasn’t that good.
The fact that she hadn’t called him on it gave him way more to think about than was healthy. Had she written it off as mere coincidence? He couldn’t buy that. She seemed too smart not to have noticed what was blatantly in front of her. The other possibility—the thought that she might enjoy their “chance” encounters—accelerated his heart rate.
The meeting ended and everyone started to file out of the room. Daniel lingered. What point was there in pretending that he wasn’t waiting for her?
“I’ll bet you’re happy this meeting’s over,” she started. “This must have been torture for you.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Why would you say that?”
“I know your type. Programmers want to program. Having to sit through meetings like this one is like being forced to listen to fingers down a chalkboard on repeat.”
He dramatically shivered. “Too graphic.”
Her smile brightened and the meager resolve he’d built up to keep his distance from her all but dissipated.
“It wasn’t all bad,” Daniel answered. “There were a few bright spots to being here.”
The crests of her deep brown cheeks darkened as she blushed.
That was it. Game over. As far as his power to resist was concerned, he would just stop trying. Figuring out how to best navigate this attraction would be a far more effective use of his mental energy when it came to Samiah Brooks.
Mercifully, an all-day meeting that kept her behind the closed doors of Trendsetters’ largest conference room saved him from further encounters. He could use some time away from her while he determined how he would pilot his way through these feelings.
Instead of hitting the gym after work, Daniel changed into a pair of basketball shorts before leaving the office, then parked along the banks of the Colorado River that meandered through downtown Austin. His feet pounded the pavement in time to the rhythmic beats of the eighties Run DMC track that had just come up on his “Short Runs” playlist. He accelerated his pace after recognizing that he’d adjusted to match the song’s slower tempo. Concentrating on his breathing pattern, he inhaled for every three steps, exhaled for every two. The sweet burn flowing through his quads and hamstrings signaled that he’d finally hit his stride.
He took to the grass to bypass a woman pushing a double stroller on the concrete path that wound along the riverbank. Families who’d come out to enjoy the relief the early cool front had brought packed the greenbelt lining both sides. They reclined on blankets strewn across the ground, their barking dogs leaping about. College students from UT or one of the other half-dozen colleges and universities nearby tossed Frisbees, Rollerbladed, or studied on the freshly trimmed grass.
Daniel mentally smacked down the complaints his brain conjured regarding the crowds. He could have easily gone to the gym to exercise, or picked one of the running paths near the apartment he’d been issued. He was the one who had chosen to come here.
He slowed to a stop and bent over, pulling the earbuds from his ears. He flattened his palms against his thighs, drawing shallow breaths.
This shit was getting out of hand.
He straightened and peered out into the distance, surveying the buildings of downtown Austin. His eyes focused on the upper floors of one glass-and-steel high-rise in particular that sat a few blocks from the river.
God, what was he doing?
He’d already decided that he could no longer pretend their coffee station encounters were by chance, but relegating them to a harmless morning ritual made him seem quirky, not creepy. Did he think Samiah would find it harmless if she spotted him jogging in her neighborhood?
“She’s going to think you’re a fucking lunatic stalker,” he huffed out underneath his labored breaths.
Mentally recoiling at the chance he’d taken by coming here, Daniel fitted the earbuds back into his ears and retraced the route he’d taken. Once back at the generic sedan he hated driving—what he wouldn’t give to slide behind the wheel of his 4x4—he called in an order to Franklin Barbecue, picking it up on the way to the square box he’d called home for the past two weeks. The two-bedroom apartment in the area of Austin known as the Triangle was one of many sprinkled throughout the country that was leased by the government under various guises. Even though his supervisor had registered him for a four-month stay, Daniel had all but convinced himself that he would be out of there within a matter of weeks. A month at the most.
Talk about a misread. If the first four days at Trendsetters had shown him anything, it was that this job would be much harder than he first thought. That’s what he got for being cocky.
Shoving the key in the apartment door’s dead bolt, Daniel shook his head at his own naïveté. He could hear his Marine Corps drill instructor back at basic. So young, dumb, and full of—
“You here already? Thought you were going for a run,” Quentin Romero called from the living room sofa, cutting off Daniel’s train of thought. Sheaves of paper covered the area that wasn’t occupied by the federal agent’s stocky build. A bottle of Powerade looked perilously close to falling off the edge of the cheap Ikea coffee table.
“I cut it short,” Daniel said, rubbing at the goose bumps that had already formed on his arms. Quentin always turned this place into an icebox. “I’ve got two reports I need to file with HQ before the end of the day.”
Filing reports was always a good excuse. It was a requirement of everyone in the field, no matter which government agency you called home. And everyone hated it.
“A call just came in. I need to head down to San Antonio for a couple of days.”
Daniel paused before setting his running shoes in the closet, then turned. “Anything I should be worried about?”
Quentin waved him off.
“It’s not related to the Trendsetters case. It’s an old investigation that’s been a pain in my ass.” He huffed out a laugh. “Probably since you were still in high school.”
Daniel had gotten used to the jibes about his age. It didn’t help that his part-Korean/part–African American heritage made him look younger than his twenty-eight years. It was also why the people he encountered in law enforcement were skeptical when they learned he already had a couple of years under his belt. Their assumptions that he was barely out of college often led to even more incredulousness when they discovered he’d put in four years with the Marine Corps before earning his degree from Stanford and joining the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
“I’m going to grab a shower.” He went over to the galley kitchen and set the bag from Franklin’s on the counter. “I brought back barbecue for dinner tonight. It’s a lot, so help yourself.”
“I was told if I do not show up to dinner tonight that I shouldn’t bother showing up at all,” Quentin said as he closed his laptop and slipped it into a leather messenger bag. “Which means I’m having dinner with my wife. But thanks for the offer.” He gathered the papers that were scattered around the sofa, stuffed them in with the computer, and stood. “I’ll see you on Wednesday at the earliest. Good luck getting into that database at Trendsetters.”
Daniel nodded toward him. “You too. Whatever’s going down in San Antonio, be sure to watch your back.”
“I always do.” Quentin gave him a casual salute, hoisting the bag strap onto his shoulder as he left the apartment. He had his own key, even though he used the space here only sparingly as he worked on the Department of Homeland Security’s aspect of the case.
Daniel stepped into the apartment’s compact bathroom for a quick shower. He pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and a Phillies T-shirt, then twisted open a bottled water and took it into the second bedroom—Quentin’s room, if, on the off-chance, anyone asked. Unlikely, since the only people who’d ever stepped foot inside this apartment were himself, Quentin, and a Grubhub driver who had gone the extra mile by delivering the Thai he’d ordered a few nights ago to the little two-person table shoved against the wall in the living room.
The second bedroom served as command central. They’d managed to squeeze two L-shaped desks into the eight-by-ten-foot space, along with a separate folding table, a filing cabinet, and a portable air-conditioning unit that ran twenty-four/seven to cool the computer equipment. Four twenty-seven-inch monitors rimmed the rear periphery of the desks. A fifth stood off to the side, its connection perpetually linked with a monitor fifteen hundred miles away, in a large room in a nondescript building in Vienna, Virginia.
Daniel sat and rolled his chair to the third monitor. He logged into his encrypted email—the one he wasn’t allowed to check on his cell phone, even though that was encrypted too. Some things were too sensitive to take chances with.
When it came to the US government’s handling of nefarious activity, people typically thought of the FBI and CIA. Few knew the US Treasury Department was the only government agency with its own in-house intelligence division. The extremely capable men and women out of Quantico and Langley were damn good at what they did, but when it came to financial crimes—especially those related to terrorist activity—there was no farming it out.
Daniel had just completed his second full year with the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network—FinCEN to those who worked there. With a vote of confidence he’d damn well earned from his superior, Lowell Dwyer, he’d been assigned to work on a joint task force with DHS in Austin.
Agents within FinCEN’s Intelligence and Enforcement divisions had detected activity that led them to believe a hotel chain based out of San Antonio, with properties across the Caribbean and Central America, was using software developed by Trendsetters IT Solutions to launder money. After further digging and bringing in Homeland Security, the two agencies determined that Hughes Hospitality wouldn’t be able to execute that level of concealment on their own. There had to be someone inside Trendsetters helping them out. Daniel was tasked with uncovering the connection between his new tech employer and the hotel conglomerate.
He’d thought the hardest part would be getting hired on by the firm. Their turnover and attrition rates were practically nil due to the attractive salaries and outrageous perks Trendsetters offered their employees. Once he’d jumped over that hurdle, Daniel had assumed the complexity of the assignment would be on par with the others he’d completed since joining FinCEN.
It wasn’t.
The tech company had a security outfit unlike any he’d seen, and in this first week he hadn’t gotten close to infiltrating it. He’d barely figured out where the damn security team was located, let alone gained access to their system.
“But I will,” Daniel murmured as he read over the emails that had come to his inbox since he last checked it. He made several notes and shot off a half-dozen replies. There seemed to be more activity than usual for this late in the day, but then again, there was no such thing as a normal nine-to-five at FinCEN. When he left Trendsetters in the afternoon, he gave himself a couple of hours to exercise and have dinner. But by eight p.m. he was in front of this wall of computers, hard at work. He’d take a day off once this case was solved and the proper people were behind bars.
Making sure he found the culprits should have been sufficient motivation to put Samiah Brooks out of his head. His sole focus had to be on figuring out who at Trendsetters had given Hughes Hospitality the means to clean their dirty money.
Daniel closed out his secured email and rolled the chair back to the main computer. He logged into another secured site and downloaded from FinCEN’s cloud server the report he’d started working on last night. Hours of analysis lay in front of him. He settled his headphones over his ears, fired up his “East Coast Hip Hop” playlist, and got to work.
Chapter Seven
Samiah slipped off her sunglasses and tucked them in her purse as she hustled toward the peach-and-turquoise door of the Tex-Mex restaurant in Austin’s Market District. She was the one who’d suggested this place for tapas and margaritas, yet she was the one running late.
After giving a brief description of Taylor and London to the hostess, she was led to the bar area. She spotted London’s bouncy coils first, then saw Taylor, who’d taken out her braids and now wore her hair in a sleek bob, the tips a dark magenta.
“Sorry I’m late,” Samiah said, climbing onto one of two unoccupied stools at the pub table. She nodded her thanks to the hostess and accepted a menu. “I rarely lose track of time, but today has been one of those days. I can use this drink.” She looked up at the hostess. “A watermelon margarita, please.”
“I’ll let your waiter know,” she said before taking off in the direction of the entrance.
“Forgive us for starting without you.” London gestured to the frothy concoction in front of her. “I was ready for my celebratory drink the moment I got here.”
“You forgot to mention what we’re celebrating,” Taylor said, holding up her cup of water with lemon for a toast. Samiah picked up the glass of water that had been waiting for her on the table and raised it.
“I performed a successful Meckel diverticulum resection today,” London said, clinking her margarita glass to their water glasses. “And the baby boy’s very grateful grandmother has promised me homemade banana bread for the rest of my life. Shower me with applause and I may send you both a slice every now and then.”
Samiah tapped the side of her water glass with her fork. “Congratulations on your Meckel…thing. And I’m not saying that only because I want banana bread, which I do.”
“I want banana bread too, but you still deserve props,” Taylor said. She clinked London’s glass again. “That’s for saving a life today. You are one of the good ones, Doctor Kelley.”
Samiah nodded her agreement as she dunked a chip into a bowl of salsa tha
t had been placed in the center of the table. How had she considered giving this up? Meeting these two was the only positive thing to come out of last weekend’s debacle.
“It’s good to hear this mess with Craig wasn’t able to suck all the joy out of this week,” she said to London. “Other than the successful surgery, how’d the rest of your week go?”
London relayed how her coworkers, like Samiah’s, had been all over the viral video, but that things had slowly started to die down later in the week.
“Of course, all it will take is some fool with five million Twitter followers retweeting it and it’ll go viral again.” London shrugged her slim shoulders. “That’s just how these things work.”
“Okay,” Taylor said, a pensive look on her face. “I know what went down last weekend was supposed to be a bad thing, but this week has been sick!” She turned to London. “Sick in the other way, not in an ‘I need a doctor’ way.”
“I know what the other sick means,” London said. She looked over at Samiah and mouthed, I don’t know what she means.
Samiah swallowed her chuckle. “What made this week so sick?” she asked Taylor.
“Okay, so ever since that video went viral, I’ve had so many people contact me that I can’t keep up with them. There’s no way I can take them all on as clients, which is crazy, because I need clients. But most of the people who have contacted me aren’t interested in having a full-time nutrition and exercise coach.”
“You ever thought about offering classes?” Samiah asked.
She shrugged. “I posted the YouTube videos for that. If all people are looking for is a fitness class, they can just watch one of my videos.”
“It isn’t the same as being part of a live class,” Samiah pointed out.
“Teach the classes,” London stated in that direct way Samiah was coming to learn was just London. “It’s a no-brainer. Not everyone can afford a personal trainer, and not everyone wants to belong to a gym or work out at home alone. You can provide an alternative.”
The Boyfriend Project Page 6