GAMBLING ON LOVE (Travis Series) (33 page)

“You never saw him again?”

“Only at the trial.”

“But the way you reacted
…
”

“Sam, you know I haven’t felt well all day
.
I promise you, the only feelings I have for Stephen DeBay are loathing and disgust
.
He burned my home to the ground and nearly killed
my
best friend
.
God knows what he was going to do to my company.”

“Holt said they searched his car and didn’t find anything DeBay could start a fire with or make a bomb out of
.
They didn’t find anything more threatening on him than a pocket knife.”

They pulled into the parking lot of her office
.
I
only a little after one
and already Beth was exhausted
.
If Vic wasn’t gone, she
would
have taken the rest of the day off
and slept for the next twenty-four hours
.

“Do you think you’ll be late tonight
?”
she
asked wearily.

Sam didn’t like how tired she looked
.
The events of the past week
had
really taking their toll on her
. When this was all over,
he
made a silent
promise
to
take her away for a nice long vacation.
 

“Are you sure I can’t take you home, honey
? You
look like you could use some
serious
rest.”

Beth smiled thinly
.
“I look that bad?”

He leaned over and kissed her
.
“You look beautiful, just tired.”

“I’ll be fine
.
Sam…
try
not to be too late, okay?”

Promising
to leave his office as soon as he could
, Sam
waited until she
was safely
inside the building to take off
.
As soon as he
arrived at
work, he asked not to be disturbed and closed the door
.
He
started making phone calls
.
By two o’clock
,
he’d collected quite a dossier on Stephen DeBay via e-mail or fax and had printed
it off.

He was still waiting for a call from his friend Jake but decided to read what he had so far
.
He’d ask Jake to see
whether
he could get any information from DeBay’s parole office
r
as far as his movements over the past few months and Jake promised to call back as soon as he had it.

Sam had obtained information on DeBay’s education, his family, and his subsequent employment at Gordon Technologies in upstate New York
.
He’d worked his way up the ladder to CEO fairly quickly
. A
pparently
,
DeBay
wasn’t satisfied with the power he wielded or the money he was making because five years ago he’d been caught stealing company secrets and selling them to a competitor
.
Sam pulled out the court transcripts, his mood taking a serious downhill spiral when he read Anne’s testimony.

Anne stated she and DeBay had been dating and that just previous to her discovery of the e-mail
,
she’d spent the entire weekend with him
.
When asked if she suspected him at that time, Anne told them no
.
The defense attorney had drilled her
mercilessly in an attempt
to get her to admit she and DeBay had a falling out and that she
had
fabricated the e-mail to get even with him, but she remained unbending in her story
.

When
DeBay’s attorney asked
whether
she had any proof other than an e-mail that
any amateur computer geek
could have constructed, Anne stat
ed
she did
.
Sam could imagine the shock on the attorney’s face, having expected her to say no.
 

She produced a signed document by the
president
of the company
that
DeBay had sold the information to
.
They openly admitted
to paying for
certain technological information from DeBay, but it was their understanding
that
he was acting with the
knowledge
of Gordon Technologies
.
Very clever, Sam thought with admiration
.
She nailed DeBay and saved the competing company from any
possible
legal action against them
.

Of course, DeBay denied it and said the company knew full well he
had
obtained
the information illegally, but Gordon Technologies wasn’t about to drag the embarrassing situation out any longer by trying to go up against another large corporation
.
In the end, Stephen DeBay was sentenced to five years in prison
. I
t was Anne’s testimony and production of the letter that put the nail in his coffin.

Sam gathered the information he’d
collected
and slipped it into his briefcase
.
It was ten to four
.
Jake hadn’t called yet, but Sam had his cell phone with him and wasn’t worried about missing the call
.
He just wanted to get Anne home and let her relax
.
It wouldn’t take twenty minutes to reach Sweeney Enterprises, but that was twenty minutes too long as far as he was concerned.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                        *
**

When Beth got to work, she’d nervously eyed the stack of mail before picking it up and taking it to her office
.
She’d closed her door and asked not to be disturbed
.
She
sat
at her desk and
sift
ed
through the mail, looking for an envelope with no return address
.
When she found it, she’d held it in her hands for several minutes before opening it.
 

I
 
lost my job because of you
.
 

Well, that was to be expected, considering Stephen had been caught trying to break into her office
.
Beth set the letter aside and listlessly picked through the other mail until
gradually
, she’d worked through the pile
.
Intending to delegate the work to various employees, she popped out of her chair and felt the same swirling darkness she’d experienced at the police station just before
she had
passed out
.

Beth remained still for a few minutes, drawing air slowly into her lungs
and
then letting it out
.
When the dizziness
subsided enough to
feel
functional again
, she hurried off to disperse the mail
.
Returning to her office,
Beth closed
the
door,
and
decided
it might be better
to stretch out on the sofa in the cozy conference
until the vertigo passed
.
As soon as she closed her eyes, her mind started drifting, caught in that drowsy state between sleeping and waking.

As h
er mind flitted through the events of the past week
,
it seemed almost impossible
that
such a short period of time
had passed
since first meeting Sam
.
He was s
uch an integral
part of her life now,
Beth
felt as if she
had
known him forever
.
Was it only l
ast Friday
that she’d experienced the
thrill of being
held
in
his arms
as
they danced
?
A smile tugged at her lips when s
he recalled those
first sweet stirrings of desire
and the sprint to Sam’s room where they’d made wild, passionate love
.

She
pictured
Sam
:
Plucking
his briefcase from the floor and plopping it in the spare seat on the airplane
.
His
eyes gazing at her with undeniable sexual hunger when he met her at the
C
arous
e
l
.
His
hand closing over the keys she’d dropped
and
then taking her back to
his
hotel room
.
His
smile
.
His laugh.
The
depth of emotion in those hypnotic green eyes when
ever
he
professed his love for her
.

Sam
.
Always Sam
.
O
nly Sam
.
A man whose persona filled a room with power and energy
;
a man who demanded respect and
wasn’t afraid to go after
he wanted
with ruthless determination, refusing to
take no for
an
answer
.
A man who talked a young girl out of aborting her child, who’d paid for her college education and held her up until she could stand on her own
.
Beth loved him
with all her heart
, every amazing facet that made
Sam
the man he was.

I lost my job because of you
.
 

Beth’s eyelids snapped open
.
Sam said when the police arrested
Stephen,
he didn’t have anything on him
:
nothing to set fires with or construct a bomb with, nothing more threatening than a pocket knife
.

Why not
?

Why
didn’t
he have anything on him
?
Beth sat up, her mind working furiously to uncover the answer
.
Maybe the police hadn’t discovered Stephen trying to break in at all
.
Maybe he’d already been inside and was caught as he was leaving.

She stood slowly, rolling the idea around
.
If Stephen had been inside the office, that meant he could have already set up a mechanism that would trigger an explosion
.
An icy fear wound its way around Beth’s heart
.
Anything
could set it off
.
It was electronic after all, which meant anything from resetting the thermostat to turning off the coffee pot could
spark it
.
She had to get her employees out of the building
!

Beth
rushed from
her office to the receptionist’s desk.
“Rosie, I
need
you to send an urgent global e-mail telling everyone to shut down for the day.”

“Shut down?”

“I don’t have time to explain
.
Just tell them we suspect a gas leak
.
I want everyone out of the building and on their way home in five minutes
.
I also want you to tell everyone
…
”
Beth paused for a moment
.
“No, forget that, Rosie
.
This is what I want you to do
.
I’ll take the investigators, you take the rest of the
employees
and we’ll talk to them personally
so they understand the urgency of the situation
.
Tell them to leave the building immediately and under
no
circumstances are they to turn
anything
off or on
.
Leave the computers running
,
as well as anything else electrical
.
I want them to pick up their purses or briefcases right now and walk out of the building.”