The one that said, You shouldn’t be here.
As soon as he’d closed the door behind him, Harvard pulled out his phone and stepped into the outer office. He dialed Ryan, who answered immediately. “I need cameras inside Rachel’s office. Today.” He kept his voice low, so Rachel couldn’t overhear.
“What happened?” As usual, when it came to work, Ryan was completely professional. No hint of amusement in his voice at all.
Harvard flicked on the coffee machine that sat on the counter against the far wall. While it did its thing, he turned and leaned back against the counter, facing Rachel’s office. “If I had to guess, I’d say some sort of flashback.”
“Who had a flashback?” Ryan sounded confused.
“Rachel.” He shook his head. It didn’t make any sense. Her history was clear of trauma—unless it was from something that’d happened since she joined Benson Security. The team hadn’t exactly lived nice, safe lives these past few years. “Has she had any counseling? Treatment for PTSD? Any help with processing the stuff that happened in Peru?”
“What stuff? You mean when her dad’s plane was blown up and we got into a gunfight with the cartel?”
“Yeah, that stuff.” He kept his eye on the door to Rachel’s office. It was silent inside.
“We all had counseling. We were all cleared. Are you sure you saw what you did? Rachel doesn’t suffer trauma; she causes it.”
“I know a flashback when I see one.” Hell, he’d had enough himself to recognize them. “Has she ever spaced out at the office? Started sweating, closed down, looked like she might pass out?”
“Not that I know of, and if she had done something like that, the word would spread fast. The general consensus is that nothing affects Rachel.”
“Then it has to have been triggered by coming back here.” Which put a whole different slant on her argument not to be involved in the investigation.
“Harvard, my man, are you sure you aren’t just overreacting because you’ve got the hots for her? Maybe she hasn’t woken up properly yet. Or maybe she was just thinking about something else. There doesn’t have to be a sinister reason for her checking out for a minute.”
“She said the word no.” He closed his eyes tight at the memory. “Never gonna forget how she said it. Like she was pleading. Like she’d given up and it was hopeless.”
“Well, hell.”
That about summed it up. “I’ll get Elle to dig deeper into her background. In the meantime, you get surveillance up and running in her office.”
“I’m happy to do that, but I need to ask—is investigating Rachel’s past the best use of Elle’s time right now? We’re in the middle of an investigation. You sure you want to derail it by making this a priority? It’s only happened one time. Maybe you should try talking to Rachel before you go crazy.”
Harvard barked out a laugh as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Have you ever tried talking to Rachel about anything? If she doesn’t want to tell you, it ain’t getting told.”
“Then we need to hope she tells you sooner rather than later, because we’re up to our ears in this investigation, and we can’t stretch our resources too thin.”
He let out a sigh. Ryan was right. “Okay, just install cameras for now. I’ll bring in Elle if it happens again. But I have a bad feeling about this whole thing, and I’m beginning to regret making Rachel come back here.”
“She isn’t alone,” Ryan said. “We’ve got her back. She might use us for target practice if she finds out we’re looking out for her, but she’s still one of ours.”
“Yeah. You’re right.”
“Wait,” Ryan said. “Can you say that again? I need to hit record first.”
Harvard hung up and turned to fix his coffee. There was no denying something was going on with Rachel. Something that might affect the job they were on. And Harvard didn’t want his team to be blindsided by whatever she was hiding, which meant he had to talk to her about it.
It would be easier to squeeze blood from a stone.
Chapter Seven
Just before lunch, when Rachel had given up on her PA ever turning up for work, she bounced through the door to her office.
“Should I have knocked?” Elle Roberts, Benson Security’s resident hacker, said. “Do PAs knock when it’s their own boss’s office? I’ve never been a secretary before. Guess I’ll have to make it up as I go. How do I look?” She held her arms out and twirled. “I’m calling this outfit Office Minnie.”
She was dressed in a full red skirt, à la nineteen fifty. It was covered in white polka dots and teamed with a short-sleeved black cardigan that fit her like a glove. She’d buttoned it right up and wore it as a top, with a silver Minnie Mouse brooch pinned to it. There was a black and white polka dot bow in her bright red hair, which, if Rachel wasn’t mistaken, was a wig. To finish the outfit off, Elle wore reading glasses with cat-eye-shaped frames.
“I thought the glasses made me look more secretarial.” Elle was obviously proud of herself.
“I would never in a million years hire a PA who came to work dressed like that,” Rachel said.
“I know.” Elle looked particularly pleased. “It will help our cover. We aren’t supposed to get on. People will take one look at you in your boring black Gucci dress and me in this awesome outfit and instantly know that there’s no way we’re best buds.” She grinned at Harvard, who’d gotten out of the seat he’d been parked in all morning to offer it to Elle. “I rock,” she told him as she plopped into the vacated chair.
“I’m getting more coffee,” Harvard said with an amused shake of his head. “Want some?”
“Totally.” Elle bounced in place.
“It looks like you’ve already had too much caffeine. And this dress is Chanel, not Gucci,” Rachel felt the need to point out.
“My mistake.” Elle didn’t sound contrite. “Anyway, I’m going to ignore the fact you’ve sent me about a million texts—some of which were pretty damn insulting—asking why I wasn’t here catering to your every whim. For your information, I got in at five this morning and spent the hours before the IT department turned up checking their protocols. After that, I was given a tour of the facility as part of my orientation. I didn’t complain as it was a good way to scope out the place. And now I’m here. Not playing video games, as you so rudely suggested.”
Rachel sat down in her desk chair again. It was like sitting on rocks. Slippery, jagged rocks. The shiny leather meant her backside kept shifting forward, while hard little lumps under the cushion made it painful to move. Or stay still. The chair had to go. She could put up with everything else—the furniture that looked like it had been used in the production set for the movie Wall Street, walls painted a delicate shade of vomit green, and overhead lighting that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a government building. But she could not sit on that damn chair a second longer.
She grabbed her phone and stood while she opened the website of a reputable office supply company. “One second,” she said, as she ordered a top-of-the-line desk chair—in red. “Okay, carry on. What were you saying?”