Honeymoon To Die For (29 page)

That last word must have done it, because Ryder turned to her with a strange expression. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have spoken for you.”

Hubrecht watched the byplay. “I like her, Ryder.”

Ryder said, “I do too.”  

Those three words didn’t stun her so much as the honesty in his voice and the warmth heating his gaze. Had he meant that?

Ryder winked at her and she lost any idea of what was going on around her.

“Bianca?” Hubrecht said, snapping her attention back to business.

She smiled at Hubrecht. “What did you have in mind?”  

“I want both of you to do something specifically for me,” Hubrecht stated. “I believe someone has been selling our plans to Kearn. Our weapons have shown up in the wrong hands, and that’s the only logical reason I can come up with for how they got there. I’ll give you what you need to uncover the traitor, but I don’t want anyone to know that you’re doing this for me. That means no one here, and in particular, no one in the family.”

Bianca’s lips parted. She hadn’t seen that one coming.

This could be a golden opportunity.

Or a deadly trap set to catch her and Ryder if they made a mistake.

CHAPTER 28

Ryder lifted his gaze from the printed pages he reviewed and watched Bianca roll her shoulders for the twentieth time. “That’s it. We’re out of here.”

“No, I still have more to check,” she murmured and kept typing on his keyboard.

The constant overhead music was making him nuts. “You may be able to take being in an office all day, but I hate it in here.”

She muttered, “Me, too. I go a little loony trapped inside too long. I’ll take a day hiking in the woods over this anytime.”

She liked the outdoors? He was head over heels in lust now.

He stood and walked over behind his chair where she’d been sitting for hours. When he started massaging her shoulders, she stopped typing, dropped her head back with her eyes closed and moaned, “Okay, I’m yours.”

No, but he wished she was.

Ridiculous thought generated by an exhausted mind.

“It’s after ten. Let’s go home and get dinner, some rest and we’ll come back early.”

“We can’t waste this opportunity. Tomorrow’s Friday. Will Hubrecht let us come in this weekend?”

“You’re in and with Hubrecht’s blessing. The hard part is over. I’m sure he’ll be fine with us in over the weekend and you’ll do better if you’re fresh.”

“I suppose you’re right.”  Her stomach growled. “I am hungry.”

“I’ll call Edward on the way so we’ll have food waiting.”

“I could so get used to a life of luxury.”

He could get used to pampering her. If he ever saw the day he was free, he’d reconsider tapping into the funds that had been put aside for him at his mother’s death. Since he’d left the Van Dyke household to join the Army, Ryder had lived on whatever pay he made in the military or at his job with Slye Temp. During those years, more often than not, he’d been on missions and slept in the dirt or on an army cot or in a sleeping bag holed up somewhere.

He appreciated the nice things money could bring, but the bottom line was that being wealthy had never mattered much. He was just as content to live on a little as a lot, but now he realized how nice it would be to treat Bianca to special things.

If she found a clue to who killed Kearn, Ryder might have that chance.  

Her unmarred brow scrunched.

He worked his fingers deeper into her tight muscles. “What’s wrong?”

“Guess I got my hopes up ...”

He dropped his head down next to her shoulder when her voice trailed off
,
and kissed her slender neck. He smiled when she shivered. Bianca might have been concerned about being heard in spite of the music playing in the background so he kept his voice soft. “Got your hopes up about what?”

“Finding something tonight that would point us to the real killer.”

His fingers stilled on her shoulders. His breath caught.

She’d said that so casually, he was stunned.

She believed he hadn’t killed Kearn? Was he dreaming?

He started breathing again, then started massaging again, but he wanted to yank her out of her chair and kiss the breath out of her. He was unbearably touched to hear
us
and
real killer
come out of her mouth. Did she really,
finally
believe he was innocent?

Better to let it go and not push her for more right now.

Bianca’s neck and shoulders were getting looser by the minute. He’d like to finish this massage with her stretched out on the bed. Full body. No clothes.

Stop thinking with your dick.

That was asking a lot when he had his hands on
this woman
. Sabrina and Margaux were hot women and, yes, his sex-deprived body had taken note of both, but for no more than a mindless release after a long dry spell.

Touching Bianca was becoming addictive, a craving so strong he should be backing away because he had a real fear that once he had her he’d never be cured.

He already dreaded withdrawals once this was over and he never saw her again.

She yawned. “We’re missing something, but I don’t know what it is.”  

“You’re beat. Let’s go. We’ll tackle it in the morning.”

Not making a move to leave yet, she kept pondering. “There has to be another file, a link to a bank account, something. If not here then
in
someone’s personal files.”

“That’s going to take some digging.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “I know it sounds overwhelming, but this is what we did in my department. This is what I did.”

The fire in her eyes reminded him of her on the witness stand and her passion. Sabrina’s attorney had hammered Bianca for being obsessive in her research, suggested a personal vendetta. She’d held her own with the seasoned attorney, impressing the media.

Now—with less subjective eyes—Ryder understood why the judge had believed her. It was the desire to find the truth that drove her, not obsession.

“We still have a few more days,” she pointed out.

Five days. Sounded like a lot of time, but Ryder knew better. Unless they got a break soon or Bianca hit on files that might not even be in the system, that time would be gone faster than it took to snap his fingers. “Right. Let’s get moving. You’ve had a tough day.”

Once Bianca had her purse, she stepped out of the office into the hallway. Ryder locked the main door and trudged behind her to the elevators.

He’d watched her dig through files for the past five hours and nothing had shown up. Not the first hint of anything illegal or a communication that would indicate who had been contracted for the hit on Kearn.

Hubrecht was going after clients of Kearn’s company. Was that just one step before he went after the entire company?

Would the FBI ever believe Ryder wasn’t involved in Kearn’s killing? Ryder’s only defense at this point was lack of motivation, regardless of his being a Van Dyke. Based on the way all this had gone down, he had a sick feeling that an
unexpected
motivation
might
be discovered right before
the
trial.

 As unbelievable as that seemed, it was no more bizarre than hi
s
being arrested for murder and held in prison. With enough money involved, anything was possible.   

Ryder hadn’t told Bianca about Hubrecht going after Kearn’s clients yet. Not when she was finally thinking someone else could have killed Kearn.

Besides, he had bigger concerns.

Was the killer in this building?

If Hubrecht
was
behind the contract killing, he could be testing Bianca and Ryder with this “search for a
traitor
” task.

Either way, the minute Bianca found anything concrete in the files, Ryder had to be ready to get her out of here.

This time, he’d have an exit strategy.

~*~

At the elevators, Bianca’s pursed buzzed. She dug out her phone, but it stopped ringing before she could answer it.

“Who was that?” Ryder hit the button for the elevator.

“Has to be Mama since no one else has this number.”

The elevator doors slid open.
Bianca stepped in and turned to see Ryder’s hand when he ran his card through the security keycard slot. “Where’s your ring?”
 

“Damn. I left it on the credenza. Not used to wearing it. I’ll run and get it.”

“I’m going down to the lobby so I can call my mother back,” Bianca said. “I
t’s awfully late so I’m worried that something’s wrong.”  
Better to talk to Mama now than later when Bianca might be in the middle of something important
.
“I lost a call in this elevator earlier today so I don’t want to start talking with her and deal with starting the conversation over every time the cellular signal drops.”
And she didn’t want to have this conversation on the Van Dyke floors where, if Ryder was right, the walls had ears.
 

Ryder had his finger on the door button, holding it open. He looked like he was going to ask her to wait with him.

“Just go, Ryder. It’ll be quicker this way.”  And she’d have the elevator ride over without him seeing her turn into a wus while riding down.

“Okay, but just go down as far as the lobby, and stay in sight of the guard and wait for me to take you down to the garage.”  Ryder stepped all the way out.

“I will.”  The doors closed and Bianca tapped the phone against her leg as the car began it’s imperceptible descent. Her shoulders were tightening up again, but this time it was from nerves. She tried to breathe calmly, but a quarter of the way down she was breathing fast and hard.

She needed to carry a paper bag with her—or get in shape to walk thirty-two flights of stairs.

Fall down a well at twelve years old and fear elevators forever.

She’d been sure she could overcome this fear on her own, but she might have to go talk to someone about it after all.  

For now, she tried to focus on what she’d discovered today. She’d wanted to tell Ryder about finding a suspicious monitoring system inside the VDE computer network, but she hadn’t and her conscience was attacking her from all sides. Murdock had specifically ordered her to keep anything relevant she found from Ryder. That warred with the loyalty she felt for Ryder, and what would Murdock say about that?

Nothing she wanted to hear.

Murdock believed Ryder might be in league with Hubrecht, of course. Bianca had pretty much trashed that as a possibility. But s
he was still an FBI agent and had to
find a way for that to live alongside
her growing feelings for Ryder, which was why she
would
share anything with him that pertained to helping prove his innocence. At this point, she had no idea who was running the monitoring program or why, which meant the information was of no use to Ryder. Yet.

When it was, she’d cross that bridge.

But she was not telling Hubrecht a damned thing.

It appeared to be a custom security program and, if it had been presented as such, anyone in the company would accept that at face value and not tamper with it.

But she’d been given carte blanche to do some snooping and had paused the program long enough to observe it for all of a minute. When she’d activated it again, calendars for the executive level of VDE personnel opened in alpha sequence.

Someone
was
spying on VDE executives.

The panel of numbers slowly blinked on and off when the elevator passed each successive floor.

Bianca had not yet been given official security clearance or an access code, so she’d used Ryder’s, and she’d noticed something interesting. Hubrecht’s cyber-security personnel were tracking what she did when signed in as Ryder. She could have mentioned that to Hubrecht, but decided if she gave security enough to watch under Ryder’s sign in they wouldn’t see what she was really doing signed in as Sam Long.

Sam had stopped by to tell Ryder that Hubrecht mentioned a special project he’d given Ryder. He’d fished for details and when Ryder had stonewalled, it obviously did not sit well with Sam. Then Sam had made it clear that he would be watching Ryder for any suspicious activity.

That had been the perfect moment to locate Sam’s access code, while he was in Ryder’s office ranting, and not in view of a monitor where he could potentially see her lifting his password.

Sneaky? Yes. But her gut didn’t trust Sam, and she would stop at nothing to get to the hidden files she knew were there. They had to be there.

Because Bianca believed only one thing at this point.

Ryder had not killed J.K. Kearn.

Beyond that, he claimed he’d been trying to help the prison guard.

She had a feeling that if she reviewed that video with him, he could show her where to look for the truth.

Her mind might have just now decided that Ryder Van Dyke was innocent, but her heart had been leading the charge to prove it for a while now.

Stupid organ with a sketchy track record that had no place on this mission, but her body refused to listen to sound advice when Ryder was around. One look into those silver eyes and she wanted to take away all the pain hiding behind them, to feel him close to her.

She was not a one night stand kind of woman, but she was honest enough with herself to admit she wanted things from Ryder she shouldn’t. He’d awakened her libido when she’d questioned its existence and had her constantly wondering what was on the other side of those hungry looks he gave her.

At the tenth floor, the car hesitated and the panel started flashing.

Bianca’s stomach lurched. She reached for the emergency button, but the world dropped away beneath her.

She stumbled backwards.

Alarms screeched inside the elevator. A mechanical voice announced, “
Warning! Warning! Vehicle descending too rapidly
.”

She yelled, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

“
Warning! Warning
!”  Lights flashed on the panel.

Her feet felt light as the floor dropped faster.