Tempt Me (8 page)

Banner. Damn it, they’d have to report the theft to Banner. So much for being done with the odious bastard.

Banner might be able to help them figure out who’d stolen the computer if someone was foolish enough to actually use it, but engaging Banner in any way was risky. Rising from her crouch, she closed the cabinet with a snap. “Nothing missing here, either. Let’s go talk to the guys.” In the other room, Rafe spoke in a low rumble.

God only knew what he was saying.

Rafe stopped talking as they entered. Lukas, leaning on the postage stamp-sized counter from the kitchen side, straightened abruptly, striking his head on the suspended light fixture. Jack was near the love seat, hanging up her landline phone.

“I notified Banner that your computer was stolen,” he said. “I don’t want you blamed for any crime someone might commit using the machine.”

“Better you than me.”

“
Always
me. Do not contact Banner directly. Ever.” He joined them at the breakfast bar. “You said it yourself a couple of days ago. His interest in you isn’t going to end simply because you’ve completed the terms of your probation. Nothing’s changed.”

She closed her eyes. Now that she’d paid her so-called debt to society, she had less freedom than ever.

Would she ever stop paying?

Jenny cleared her throat. “So, just so I’m clear. You don’t want this Banner’s help to help get the computer back.”

“No.”

Lukas rested his elbows on the countertop. “Send Jack a copy of your report, and we’ll take it from there.”

Jenny nodded. “Bailey, are you certain nothing else is missing?”

“Not that I can see.” During her time as a consultant, she’d pretty much lived in hotels, stopping home only to wash clothes before repacking her suitcase and leaving again. Since starting work at Sebastiani Security, she’d moved pretty much every possession she cared about, plus a healthy stash of cash, to The Bunker.

“Okay. I’ll zap both you and Jack a copy of the report. We’ll keep an eye out, but—” Jenny shrugged fatalistically.

“Yeah.” It wasn’t likely the computer would ever be recovered—especially if her suspicions about who’d taken it were accurate. “Thanks, Jenny.”

“Do you feel safe here? Do you have a place to stay until the locks are beefed up?”

“We’re on it,” Lukas said. “Thanks, Jenny.”

“No problem.” A series of beeps shrilled from the pouch attached to Jenny’s belt. Opening its Velcro closure, she snatched up a small black gadget and read, her expression going grim. “Domestic. Gotta go.”

Lukas straightened. “Need some backup?”

“Nope. Got it.” Picking up her jacket from the floor next to the door, she jammed her arms in with a whoosh, stepping into her boots on the move. “Bye.”

The door closed behind her. Jack reached into the refrigerator, snagging a can of Coke. Lukas threw his shoulders back and his chest out, like he was about to enter the sparring cage in Sebastiani Security’s basement. Rafe looked...vaguely guilty.

What the hell...

“Wyatt Cooper,” Jack stated as he opened the can.

She blinked at his unexpected conversational detour. She should have realized that their thoughts would run along the same track. “Likely.”

“Outsourced.”

“Probably.” Wyatt always kept his own hands clean. His specialty was exploiting gullibility, and convincing someone else to take the fall.

As she very well knew.

Rafe sat up straight on the barstool—some feat, given how badly the thing tilted. “Who,” he asked, “is Wyatt Cooper?”

She stared, mesmerized by the controlled violence in his soft tone. His glorious cheekbones stood out in taut relief. His fingers twitched, like he wanted to hit something.

A sudden wave of lust about buckled her knees.

“How much time do you have?” Jack responded.

“Not tonight,” Lukas said around a jaw-cracking yawn. “Let’s get some sleep and regroup tomorrow morning.” He looked at Jack, then Bailey. “Eight o’clock?”

Jack thought a moment. “Yeah, I’m open.”

“Me too,” she sighed. She knew her schedule was clear because she’d specifically blocked out the morning to work on some projects that were woefully behind schedule. She sighed again, jamming her hands into her overly-long hair. Personal errands like haircuts and—she flicked Lukas a guilty side-eye—doctor appointments had completely fallen off her radar. Hopefully the doctor appointment would fall off his.

“We don’t think you should stay here tonight,” Lukas said.

So that’s what their low-volume pow-wow had been about. “I hadn’t planned on it. I’ll stay at The Bunker. My futon’s there, there’s a shower in the locker room downstairs...”

“I’d like you to bunk in with Sasha and Antonia until we figure out exactly what’s going on here.”

Stay with Lukas’s sisters? They lived in one of the two penthouse units topping the Sebastiani Building, home of Underbelly, Crack House Coffee, and God knew what else on the floors between. Antonia had recently moved across the foyer from her father’s unit to her sister’s. She chattered incessantly about how much she enjoyed her new living arrangements. 

She opened her mouth to decline, but then reconsidered. With three Underworld Council members living on the top floor, it was an understatement to say the building had formidable security. Sebastiani Security was just down the street, so her commute to work would be negligible. She’d have access to a 24-hour coffee shop she could walk to in her slippers. In the deep freeze of a Minnesota winter, it was a considerable perk.

Perk.
She snorted with laughter at the weak pun. Yeah, it was time to get some sleep.

“Bailey?” Rafe’s voice was soft as a feather bed. “Are you okay?”

“Just tired.” She couldn’t stop from weaving toward him like he was a magnet and her body was composed of iron filings. “Too tired to argue with all three of you at the same time. I’ll go to Sasha’s.” Right now, she didn’t really care where she slept, as long as sleep was on the agenda.

What was she going to do to—um,
about
—Rafe? Did she have it in her to simply enjoy him, to wallow in the pleasure he would bring her, without getting emotionally involved?

She needed to think.

“Need anything else?” Lukas gestured to the duffle and computer bag he’d carried. “I’ll drop you off, get you upstairs for the night. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to update the security systems to recognize you.”

“I’ll drive myself. What’s already in the bag is fine.” Anything else she needed could be picked up tomorrow, once she got to work.

“Didn’t you say that Scarlett wasn’t feeling well?” Rafe asked Lukas. “Why don’t I get Bailey upstairs? I’ll swing next door and say hi to Dad and Claudette.”

Lukas considered. “Okay, thanks.”

Jackets rustled, boots were donned, and lights turned off. Following the guys out of her condo, she locked the door behind them, for what it was worth. When she reached the parking lot, she saw Lukas had put her bags in the back seat of Rafe’s already-running Jeep. Its bright headlights sliced through the lightly falling snow.

“Ready?” Rafe called from his open window. “Take it slow; these roads are pretty slick.”

She nodded and got into her car. The drive downtown would give her time to shore up her shaky boundaries, to get her brain back in gear. If nothing else, having Wyatt ooze back into her life was a great reminder that, when it came to men, her judgment could be very seriously flawed.

***

T
he pale winter sun barely peeked over the horizon when Rafe opened Sebastiani Security’s heavy front door the next morning. Between dropping Bailey off last night, visiting with his father and Claudette, and unpacking the Jeep when he’d finally gotten home, he felt like he’d barely rolled into bed before he’d had to roll right back out again.

His brother’s text, requesting that he attend this 8:00 a.m. meeting too, had been his alarm clock.

Lukas poked his head into the empty reception area from the inner security door. “Hey, come on back. We’re just getting started.”

Grunting a response, he followed. Lukas looked pale, and he reeked of worry. “What’s wrong?”

Lukas’s glaze flicked upward. “Scarlett’s not feeling well this morning.” After her sister had been killed, Scarlett had moved from the penthouse unit she’d shared with Sasha into Lukas’s loft so he could better protect her. She’d never moved back out.

“Did she pick up a bug somewhere?”

Lukas nodded, rubbing his neck. “Christ, I hate winter. Hang on a sec.” Detouring into the break room, Lukas opened the refrigerator, grabbed an orange and an apple, and then closed the refrigerator door with a tap of the heel of his work boot. “There’s coffee in the conference room.”

“Good.”

He followed his brother down the exposed brick hallway, passing Lukas’s cluttered office, Jack’s neat one, and several small conference rooms. In one of the rooms, a woman scribbled on a white board, wielding a dry-erase marker with rapier speed. Someone was making a phone call in another. When they reached the large conference room in the corner, Jack rose from his seat at the big oval table to connect his sleek laptop to the projector. Sebastiani Security operative Chico Perez leaned against the back wall. Antonia, wearing a sweatshirt that had mysteriously disappeared from his closet last year, sat next to Jack, sipping Diet Coke and nibbling on popcorn, flicking at a screen as she read. And there was Bailey, leaning over the credenza, pumping coffee from a stainless steel air pot with a soft vacuum hiss. She wore a black turtleneck sweater tucked into a pair of black skinny jeans that made the most of her subtle curves.

Bailey’s head whipped to the door. The pleasure, the desire she couldn’t disguise, flickered over her face momentarily, then quickly disappeared.

The display of mental discipline was...oddly hot.

“What are you doing here?” she asked when he joined her. She wore a pair of those clever fingerless gloves, with a foot of knit fabric bunched at her wrists but leaving her fingertips free for typing. Her breathing was fast and shallow, her pupils were dilated, and she clutched her coffee cup like a lifeline.

Relief bloomed.
I’m not alone in this.
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted, reaching for a coffee cup. “Lukas asked me to come.” When he filled the cup, the glorious scent of Crack House Blend filled his sinuses. “How’s your wrist this morning?”

“Fine.” A pause. “Okay, it’s a little sore.”

The tips of her fingers weren’t puffy or bruised, but who knew what damage was hidden under all that wadded-up knit? “Did you ice it last night?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Dad.”

His concern wasn’t the least bit fatherly, but now probably wasn’t the best time to bring that up.

“Let’s get started.” As he entered the conference room, Lukas flicked off the lights with his elbow and sat down, gesturing to Rafe to take the seat at his left. He set the apple in front of Bailey, who’d taken the seat to his right. He rolled the orange across the table to Antonia, who ignored it.

Jack snatched the orange before it hit the floor, and tossed it to Chico. “Let’s get everyone up to speed.” With a click, the wall-mounted flat-screen woke up, displaying what looked like a message board of some type. “Late last week, a poster named Coyote revealed Bailey’s association with Sebastiani Labs on a popular hacker bulletin board. Since that time, there’s been a noticeable uptick in malicious incursion attempts. The extra work has kept SL’s network staff a little busy this week.” Jack looked at Bailey. “Status on last night’s attack?”

Bailey stretched her neck. “Countermeasures held.”

She’d worked last night? Rafe shot Lukas an annoyed glance.

“Last weekend sometime, Bailey’s condo was broken into and a computer was stolen.”

As Chico asked questions about the break-in, Rafe skimmed the screen. “You’re The Queen Bee?” he asked Bailey.

She shrugged. “I was.”

“Cute. Who’s Coyote?”

Lukas abruptly stood, glancing at the ceiling again. “Excuse me.” He left the room without saying anything else.

“Code Red?” Chico asked Jack. Lukas had the ability to connect a perpetrator to a crime scene by an emotional taste or signature, and was on call to their police force 24/7.

Jack’s mini lay silently at his place at the table. “Nothing here.”

“Scarlett’s not feeling well,” Rafe offered. “He’s probably checking on her.”

“Let’s keep going. He’ll catch up.” Jack clicked a button on the small remote he carried, and the screen filled with a picture of a very handsome man, mid-to-late thirties, with pale skin, twinkling blue eyes, and black bangs that flopped over his forehead. His boyish charisma positively leaped off the screen.

“Coyote is a computer security consultant named Wyatt Cooper. He and Bailey have some history.”

Jack’s loathing for the guy leached into the room. Sitting in the projector’s milky backwash, Bailey’s expression was battened down tight, but her emotions roiled like a storm at sea.

They’d been lovers, of course. And he’d hurt her. An unfamiliar, wild tightness made his jaw clench and his temples throb.

He wanted to tear the guy apart.

“Get in line.” Chico clapped a hand onto his shoulder before dropping into Lukas’s empty chair.

Across the room, Antonia rolled her eyes at the lot of them, no doubt attributing their reaction to testosterone poisoning. Well, she was dead wrong. His sister might be a genius, but she lacked the chromosome necessary to assess the fine nuances of the situation.

It was unacceptable that this
Dead Poet’s Society
reject had caused Bailey even one second of pain.

Jack walked through Cooper’s educational background, financials, and current residence.

“Minneapolis,” Rafe noted with a scowl. “There’s a coincidence.”

“Now we have to go back in time a little bit.” Jack clicked, displaying an old picture of Bailey.

“Must we?” she muttered.

“You know we do.”

Rafe stared at the picture. She had the same haircut, was the same height and weight, and wore jeans and a sweater against northern California’s fall chill, but she looked...so damn young. It was all in the eyes. She looked brazen, confident, ready to kick the world in the ass—not yet knowing that sometimes the world kicked back.