A Dangerously Sexy Affair (14 page)

He closed the drawers quietly and made his way over to Joan's office just as she walked out.

“I thought you were right behind me,” she said, laughing. “I was talking to myself like a big old doofus assuming you were right there.”

“Sorry, I got distracted.”

“Never mind.” She thrust a stack of papers into his hands. “This is the report. All the cards that have been activated and deactivated are listed on the first page. Then the last month's usage report is behind that. It's long, though. We have a lot of comings and goings 'round here.”

“That's fine. I have an eagle eye.”

Her lips formed a tight smile and she nodded. “I'm sure it serves you well. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and offer someone a job.”

“That must be the best part of your day.”

She shrugged, the smile slipping from her lips. “Another one of Walt's nephews mooching off him and taking away jobs from people who deserve them. There's no joy in supporting that.” The minute the words slipped out she blinked and waved her hand. “Oh, don't mind me. I'm a grouchy old lady. Please don't say anything to Walt.”

“I didn't hear a thing.” Aiden tapped his free hand against his leg as he walked back toward the meeting room, his mind whirling.

There was an important piece of the puzzle missing, and it wasn't just the name of the person leaking information. He had a feeling that everything was laid out in front of him; all he had to do was figure out how it fit together.

14

I
T
WAS
SEVEN
O
'
CLOCK
before Aiden realized that the office had cleared out. He'd been poring over the reports Joan had given him for hours, trying to figure out if someone had accessed the building to get information.

So far, nada.

The access cards also activated the printing and scanning machines, and every item was logged with a time stamp. All emails to external addresses were run through a filter to catch any sensitive information leaving the company. And no laptops, tablets or mobile devices had been reported stolen for months.

He had access to piles and piles of data, but none of it pointed to a leak.

It was possible the informant had passed the information on via a call from a personal cell, or perhaps they'd taken a photo of the document with their phone. But trying to find evidence of that would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

He couldn't fail at his first assignment. There
had
to be a clue somewhere, and if the “how” wasn't presenting itself, then he'd have to dig deeper into the “who” and “why.”

Motivation. That was where people always tripped up. It was easier to cover a paper trail than it was to hide intention...at least in his experience. The simplest reason for leaking information would be for financial gain. Perhaps someone was paying an employee for each bit of data that left the company.

But in his gut he knew that wasn't it. There was something more going on here.

That suspicion had only been confirmed when he'd interviewed Christopher again earlier in the day. The guy had sweated a bucket, and Aiden was positive he was hiding something.

Tapping at the keys on his laptop, he pulled up LinkedIn. Christopher's profile was sparse, and his picture looked like it had come from a wedding where he'd cropped out the person standing next to him. He had only fifty-seven connections. Aiden clicked on the list. One name jumped out at him like a jack in the box.

Alana Peterson.

Aiden switched over to Alana's profile. Quinn's friend had over five hundred connections, most of them female, from what he could tell. Looking at her job history, he couldn't see how she would know Christopher specifically, but then again, they were both in the technology industry. Maybe it was nothing.

“Doesn't feel like nothing,” he muttered to himself. He drummed his fingers against the desk.

Instinct told him that Alana was connected to this whole thing somehow. He'd had a niggling suspicion about it that first night at the cocktail party before he'd started with Cobalt & Dane.

But he had nothing solid that connected her to the leak. And he'd been
positive
that Quinn was telling the truth about Alana's reason for being angry with Third Planet Studios. So what did her beef about their lack of female protagonists have to do with the information about the game design engine? The two things seemed completely separate.

“What is your deal, Alana?”

He continued to scroll through her connections until another name jumped out at him. Sarah Newell.

One click confirmed that Sarah had worked at Third Planet Studios for eleven months and hadn't taken a job since. She'd listed one freelance job for Alana's website and Alana had written her a glowing recommendation for her LinkedIn profile.

Aiden checked Alana's website and quickly found two articles detailing exclusive information on the design plans Christopher had been caught sending to his home email address. Two weeks apart, but the articles must have been small enough that no one at Third Planet Studios had picked up the connection.

He needed to find Quinn—if she knew anything at all he wanted to give her the chance to come out with it before he took this information to Rhys. He'd be pissed if she was keeping information about the case from him, but he owed her the benefit of the doubt.

Snapping shut the lid of his laptop, he packed up his things and slung his satchel over one shoulder. Hopefully, he could get her to trust him.

She's got too much baggage.
His brother's voice circled around in his head.
She'll complicate your life.

And what if she spilled the beans to everyone else at Cobalt & Dane about his connection to Logan? He'd lose their respect before he'd even had a go at building his own reputation. Then what? He could hardly go crawling back to his father
or
the FBI.

The sound of his footsteps echoed around the quiet office. A few workers remained. One guy chatted into a headset as he typed, and another was scribbling madly on a whiteboard.

“Quinn?” He stuck his head into her pod but no one was there.

It
was
after seven, no surprise she'd gone home. Still, that wasn't going to stop him from trying to find her. He pulled his phone from the depths of his satchel and dialed her number as he walked down the rows of desks. The “Super Mario” theme music cut through the air. He stopped dead in his tracks.

The sound pulled him back toward her desk until her voice mail cut in.
This is Quinn. Leave a message...unless you're trying to sell me something. Then don't leave a message.

He yanked the chair out from her desk and found her backpack stashed on the ground. It was unzipped, her pink headphones trailing out of the opening as if she'd been interrupted halfway through putting her stuff away. Unease prickled up the back of his neck, the cold grip of intuition closing in around his stomach like an unrelenting fist.

It's nothing; she's probably gone to the restroom.

But she would have taken her bag with her if she was on her way out. At the very least it wouldn't be open like that...would it?

Sighing, he kneaded the hard knot of muscle in his neck. There was a logical explanation, something so simple he'd laugh at how worked up he'd gotten. How irrationally worried.

“You looking for something?” A short woman with curly red hair and thick-framed glasses stopped beside him.

“Some
one
. Have you seen Quinn?” He inclined his head toward her desk.

Two large eyes blinked at him behind the thick lenses as she scrunched her nose up for a moment. “No, I don't think I have. At least not this evening.”

Damn. He scanned the open-plan office. You could see the whole floor, other than the management offices and the conference room. Even the reception area was only partially blocked. And the meeting rooms had glass walls in keeping with the “open and transparent” working environment that Walt touted.

“What about Zach?” he asked the woman, walking into the other man's pod and inspecting the empty desk.

A bag sat propped against a small set of drawers, but his laptop was still in its docking station. The screen was filled with an angry-looking character who had fire for hands and a manic, toothy grin.

“I overheard him saying something about going to the testing room a little while ago.” She scrunched up her nose again, but this time she had the distinct look of someone who'd caught a whiff of something rotten.

“What's the testing room?”

“It's like a computer lab where they test the games. All the individual screens hook up to a big projector so they can troubleshoot problems as a group and show off new designs.” She pointed in the direction of the elevators. “It's on the next floor up. Didn't they give you a proper tour?”

“It seems not.”

“Want me to show you around?” she asked with a hopeful smile.

“I really appreciate the offer...” Shit, what was her name again?

“Natalie.”

“Right, Natalie. Thank you for that, but I don't want to keep you from your work. I know Walt has high expectations of you all.” He nodded and made his way toward the elevators.

He resisted the urge to run. Drawing attention to himself wasn't smart, although he stuck out like a sore thumb without even trying. People seemed to give him a wide berth here.

When he made it up to the next floor—taking the stairs two at a time because he couldn't bear to wait for the elevator—his heart was thundering in his chest. And not because of physical exertion.

A strange thing happened to him whenever he entered a dangerous situation. His senses narrowed and sharpened, though his hearing was still useless as shit in his bad ear. But the ringing seemed to stop enough that he could focus on the environment around him.

This floor had a corridor at the front. At one end, a glass door bore the logo of an accounting firm. It was locked. Another door—white, no window—simply said: Testing Lab. He tried the handle. Also locked.

A pin pad blinked at him innocuously. He hadn't been issued a key card—no matter, he'd bust the door down if he had to.

Pressing his good ear against the door, he strained to hear any sounds inside. Nothing.

Then he heard voices, but not from the Testing Lab. In a handful of long strides, he'd made it to the door of an accounting firm that shared this level with Third Planet, when he realized there was a wheelchair-accessible restroom right next to it. The restroom's white door blended seamlessly into the walls, and the only thing that told you it was a bathroom was a small silver lock with an icon of a wheelchair above it.

“What do you want, Zach?”

That was definitely Quinn's voice; she sounded frustrated, but the high pitch told him she was scared.

He didn't have a weapon, so he'd have to go in with his bare hands and hope that the idiot wouldn't try anything risky. But if he laid so much as a pinkie on her...

Pressing gently against the door, he tested it to see if it was open. Locked. Fishing out his wallet from his back pocket, he plucked his gym card out. He'd busted down his share of doors, but he wouldn't risk spooking Zach.

Sliding the card into the small crack between the door and the frame, he jimmied it up until the lock mechanism snagged. A soft click told him he was in.

* * *

T
HE
COLD
,
HARD
tile of the restroom lined her back, giving Quinn the support she needed to stay upright. The space was larger than a regular restroom, probably four to five times as big and designed for wheelchairs and mobility scooters. But there was nothing she could use to defend herself here, not a toilet brush or a metal dish...nothing.

If it came down to it, their struggle would be decided by physicality. And that didn't fill her with confidence. If only she'd worn her steel-capped boots.

“Why the hell are you here?” Zach waved a fistful of paper at her. Her notepad. “I know you're not a real employee. Didn't take much to figure out you're some little snitch.”

Her heartbeat drummed in her ears like a toddler letting loose on a set of pots and pans, each beat making her ears ring. Making her head ache. Making the fear push higher up her throat.

Don't give in; don't give up. You can fight him...you
will
fight him.

“Didn't you hear me,
snitch
?
” He took a step closer. In the already small space, claustrophobia grew like a weed inside her. “I know who you are. Did you think I wouldn't understand this gibberish?”

She winced. After she'd talked with Natalie, she'd jotted a few notes down, but she'd done it in code. Fragments. How the hell had he figured it out? How could she have been so stupid?

Just keep breathing.

“You're friends with
her
. Sarah.” He spat the word out with vehemence. “Did she hire you?”

She ground her back teeth together. “No—”

“Liar!”

“What do you want, Zach?” The catch in her voice betrayed how hard she was trying to keep her shit together.

Just as he started to speak again, the door swung open behind her.

“Do we have a problem here?” Aiden stepped into the restroom, and the air seemed to thin around her.

“Yes, we have a fucking problem.” Her heart thundered in her ears.

Zach turned, his hands balled into fists. “Stay out of it. This is none of your business.”

“Are you okay, Quinn?” Aiden asked, letting the door close behind him.

He filled the space, towering over Zach and making it clear that he was in control.

Nodding, her lips tightened into a small bud. Hot tears pricked the backs of her eyes and she blinked rapidly, her shoulders hunching forward. As the energy drained out of her, the room started to spin.

“Seriously, you need to get the hell out of here.” Zach's face was beet-red, his eyes wild as his head swung back and forth between them.

“Do you know what I need to do?” Aiden's voice was soft and low, a stark contrast to Zach's. He didn't have to yell because he had the upper hand. “I need to march you straight to your uncle so he can give you a lesson about what it means to be a man. Intimidating women does not make you powerful. It makes you a fucking coward and a disgrace to your family name.”

“Oh, yeah? Take me to Walt,” Zach goaded him. “See what happens.”

“Walt might feel differently when we talk about who's been leaking information out of this company.”

“It's not me.” He folded his arms across his chest.

“You don't think I could make him believe it?”

Silence.

Aiden's crisp blue eyes were like icebergs, cold and hard and immovable. “Let's see who he trusts more. I dare you.”

“Fuck you.”

Aiden held the door open and stared Zach down. “Don't let it hit your ass on the way out.”

Tension snapped in the air, the crackle of adrenaline running through her veins as she watched. Waiting. Hoping that Zach would leave.

When he stormed out, the breath rushed out of her lungs and she slid down to the floor, knees tucked up against her chest. She wrapped her arms around her shins and tried to shrink into nothing. Tried to stop existing.