Ihadstolen his sponsorship.
Did it warrant tire slashing? Well, no, obviously, did anything warrant that? But in his mind, would he find it reasonable? This was the man who thought five guys and baseball bats were the answer to a sexual predator.
Yup, Onyx would definitely be the kind of man to slash my tires if he thought I deserved it, and probably even if I didn’t. Butwouldhe do this to me? Yes. Butdidhe do this to me? Probably not.
I still didn’t take his name off my list.
Above his head was the black sphere that was the camera, and I fixated on it as I thought of what I had told the police. There were cameras everywhere. Someone had to have access to the feed.
Moving with intent, I walked quickly to the back stairs, and I made my way down the levels to security. When I got there, the door was locked, with a sign saying they were doing their rounds. How very nineties of them.
Rattling the door handle again, I was unimpressed to find it didn’t even jiggle. Looking around, I realized I hadn’t ever been this low down. There were lots of doors, and, curious, I went exploring.
The first room was a conference room with a wall-mounted screen, a rectangular table, and several chairs. I also noticed the coffee machine. Of course, the coffee snob would have a top-class machine in an empty room. Prick.
Walking around the room, my fingers trailed over the desk, and I couldn’t figure out when it had last been used. Noticing a stain on the wall, I investigated it more closely. Coffee? On the wall? Looking at where the machine was and the stain, it wasn’t a coffee spill from there. Looking over at the table, I raised my eyebrows in surprise.
Thrown?
Huh. They must have even more heated debates down here than we did. I wondered if he let this space out. It was a decent size, so it would be a good room for by-the-hour use.
We were in a twenty-nine-story building. I didn’t really know who we shared the space with. I saw the names on thedirectory in the foyer, but I didn’t study it. Realizing it may be anyone in this building made me feel nauseous. Then I scolded myself for being narcissistic. I’d been working with the Devil for too long; his arrogance was rubbing off on me.
Leaving the conference room, I tried the next few doors and found them to be locked. The next door led to what must have been the plant room. It was full of comms cabinets and techy things. I closed the door without going inside.
The next door opened to a shower room, and again I was surprised. Did he have showering facilities down here? What for? As far as I knew, any of the floors that had gyms had shower cubicles within the bathroom areas. It was strange to have so many down here. Was there some form of play area down here? Maybe racquetball? The thought of Onyx playing racquetball made me laugh.
The next room stopped all my laughter. The room was dark and looked very much like what a police interrogation room would look like. There were no windows, and I didn’t need to look too closely to recognize the marks in the wall where restraints could be hung. Staring at the floor, I felt my body still as I looked at the floor. Was that a stain? Oh my God, was it blood?
“What the fuck?” I whispered as I decided I didn’t want to know, and turning around, I came face to face with the Devil himself. “Shit!” I yelled as he leaned against the door. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“Why are you down here?”
“I was looking for security.”
“You won’t find them in here,” Onyx said dryly. “What were you really looking for?”
“Security,” I told him again. “And then I realized I’d never been down here before,” I added. “So I looked around.”
“You are employed upstairs. This is not your workplace.”
“What are you hiding?” I challenged him.
“Apart from three dead bodies, a sex-trafficking ring, and my BDSM playroom?” He shrugged. “Nothing.”
“It scares me more that I don’t know which part of that is the lie.”
“Who says I’m lying?” Onyx asked me with a smirk. “I’ll take you back upstairs,” he added.
I hesitated. I really did need to get into security. “Can I get access to the security room?”
“If I let you have access to the security room, it’s therefore no longer secure, so . . . no.”
“I’m not stealing the building’s secrets,” I snapped. Looking around the room, I gestured to our surroundings. “I mean,thishas to be the secret, no?”
His smile was slow and sinister. “Poor, sweet, deluded innocence . . . what’s that like?”
“You wouldn’t know,” I growled at him as I shoved past him. “Do you need to personally escort me upstairs?”
