He was exactly the kind of man Nolan hated. He was the kind of man the world handed things to. He would bet not once had Deke had his head held in a toilet. No. He would have been the asshole on the other side, the cool kid, the kind who casually stepped on his smarter, better peers for the simple fact that he was considered more handsome. Even if he hadn’t been, he’d almost surely turned a blind eye.
“You’ll need to go over all of this with Jane,” Deke was saying.
“Of course.” He wasn’t exactly listening to the man, rather studying him. He’d made a direct hit with the news of Madeline’s wealth. Deke hadn’t known how well she’d done, and it had bothered him.
Nolan understood the impulse. He wouldn’t be in a relationship with a partner who was more successful than him. It created an imbalance, or rather the wrong balance. The power should be in his hands. Always.
As Jane would soon learn.
The question now was what would his little AI tech learn?
He’d been thinking a lot about just how Madeline had manipulated him into giving her those stock options. If she left the company or was fired before the launch, she would have to sell them back. Oh, she would still make a lot of money, but nothing like what she would after the launch.
He had to play his cards right, make the timing line up, because he still needed the bitch. But it might be good to have some leverage on her.
Or he could make it all up, and who would question him? Anyone who did could be handled. Permanently.
Including the man in front of him.
He let Deke talk, all the while planning on how to get rid of them both. After he had what he wanted, of course.
* * * *
Maddie opened the door to her office several hours later. Lunchtime had come and gone, and a quick glance at the clock let her know that the building would be emptying soon. The day had gone by in a rush. Between working on the problem Naman had presented and trying to track down the information she needed, she’d gotten very little of her own project work in. She’d found a thread and started to follow it through.
She was more sure than ever that something bad was happening.
“Lock the door, Maddie.”
She gasped and then breathed out a sigh of relief because it was Deke. He sat on the small couch that ran along the left side of her rather large office. She mainly worked in the tech lab on this floor, but she kept the office for when she needed quite time or to speak privately. “I didn’t think you would be here until five thirty.”
He stood, his big body uncurling with predatory grace. There was something dark in his eyes. “I finished up with your boss and then headed out to The Reef to update Kay and make sure she’s gotten all the paperwork we need to do a background check on Jane. Traffic was hell.”
“Welcome to LA.” She knew Dallas had its own issues, but LA was all over them in the traffic department. There were times she’d been stuck for so long that she’d thought about homesteading the 405.
His lips didn’t tick up even a centimeter. “When I realized I didn’t have time to make it back to your place and come to pick you up, I decided I would wait here for you.”
He seemed pissed about that. “Sorry to inconvenience you. I could have caught a ride with someone.”
“That’s not the problem. It’s not inconvenient for me to drive you. That’s a pleasure for me. That’s absolutely part of my job while I’m with you, and I don’t mean that in a professional way. Taking care of you is more than a business to me.” He frowned. “But we do have to talk about the job. What did you do today, Madeline?”
She froze at the deep sound of his voice. That was his Dom voice, the one she’d gotten so acquainted with over the course of the last week. It was the voice he used on her when he wanted to get serious about play. “I worked.”
“Not in this office you didn’t.” He stepped closer to her, and it took a lot to not cede her space. “Nor were you in your tech lab.”
Her first instinct was to ask how he knew she hadn’t been where she was supposed to be. Then she remembered what MaeBe had told her. “Someone was watching me.”
“All day. We told you that would happen when I ordered MaeBe to take over the CCTV cameras in the building,” he replied simply, looming over her. “I’ve been in touch with her this afternoon, and she had an interesting report for me. I understand why you went to the audio team. Byrne asked you to work with them. What I want to understand is why you spent time in human resources. You also went to two other floors and spoke with people who are not your employees. What happened?”
She wasn’t sure why he’d brought out the big bad Dom. It wasn’t like she’d left the building or done something dangerous. “I was talking to Naman, who leads the audio team now. He said he’s had a couple of his people get sick recently, and after what Drake told us about Havana Syndrome, I got curious.”
“Damn it. I told them only one thing would take you away from your lab. Of course you did. And that’s why you should have waited until you were out of this building and in a safe place to hand over the information to me or Drake or any member of the team. I’m only talking to you about this right now because I checked for bugs fifteen minutes ago. I’m still going to keep my voice down.”
“I can’t imagine he bugs his employees’ offices.” Deke was being paranoid. She’d asked a couple of questions. That was all. She’d found the connections between the people who didn’t work in audio and the others who’d gotten sick. Every single one of those people had been in the lab.
“I don’t care what you can or can’t imagine. That man is hiding a whole lot of his personality. Do not believe the happy-go-lucky persona. He’s a shark, and if he’s working with The Consortium, he’s a killer, too. He might not have pulled the trigger himself, but he ordered the killings. I got hold of the medical examiner’s report on Justin Garcia. He noted that Garcia showed no signs of long-term drug use. A casual drug user wouldn’t know where to find that flop house Garcia was found in, much less a first timer.”
A chill went through her. “It might not have been Nolan. He might not know.”
“Don’t be naïve. Naïve will get us both killed.” His hand went to her hair. “Tell me what you found out.”
There was a distinctly sexual air around the man. She could feel it, and the heat in his gaze went straight to her pussy. It was stupid, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. Her whole body was going soft. She’d only had a few days’ worth of training with Deke, and she already responded to him like she had in high school. All he had to do was walk into a room and her brain went on the fritz until she’d had him.
He had so much power over her. It scared her. It thrilled her.
“When I was talking to Naman, he told me there’s been some kind of virus going around,” she explained, her voice sounding shaky. “He said it was a lot of dizziness and nausea. Headaches. There were bad headaches and some disorientation.”
“Like the Havana Syndrome victims reported,” Deke prompted.
She nodded. “Yes. Just like that. But some of them didn’t work with the audio team. I wanted to find the connections. It could just be a virus, but I don’t think so after what I learned today.”