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“Okay.” Harvard turned to her. “Want to get some lunch?”
Before she could answer, Elle shouted, “No!”
When Rachel looked at her, Elle flushed as her eyes went suspiciously wide. “I mean, it’s too early for lunch. We need to go over this footage a little more anyway. See if there’s anything we missed.” She was making bug eyes at Harvard now, as though trying to get him to read her mind.
Rachel considered them both and spotted the second Harvard realized what Elle was trying to tell him. “Yeah, you’re right. Lunch can wait. Bring up that footage of the shoes again.”
Honestly, they must think she’d been born yesterday. “Have fun.” She stood and headed for the door. “I’m finished here.”
“No.” Elle shot to her feet. “We need you.”
Rachel sighed. “Please, for the love of Yves Saint Laurent, never ever try to bluff anyone for money.” With that, she threw open the door, took two steps into the corridor, and ran straight into Harry Boyle.
“Hey, Rach,” he said with a sheepish smile. “How’ve you been?”
And at that point, her head spun and her eyes shot bolts of lightning as she shouted, “Harvard.”
“I tried to warn you,” Elle hissed as Harvard strode across the conference room. “Didn’t I tell you he was arriving now? The IT department’s right across the hall. All you had to do was keep her in here for five more minutes.” She folded her arms and glared at him. “You can deal with the fallout on your own.”
Ryan sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the conference table. “I propose a new bet. Five hundred pounds says Harvard’s back in his own bed tonight and Rachel announces the engagement is off.”
“Twenty-five on him sporting a black eye when we see him next,” Elle said.
“There’s nothing quite like your team having your back,” Harvard muttered as he passed them and strode out into the hall. He hooked a hand each through Rachel’s and Harry’s arms and dragged them back inside the conference room. Once he’d locked the door behind them, he asked, “What part of undercover do you people not get?”
Rachel narrowed her eyes at him. “The part where you’re partnered with a backstabbing, interfering Neanderthal of a man who should have minded his own business.”
Harry, who turned out to be about six foot of lean muscle and overgrown sandy brown hair, held up his hands in an effort to appease her. “Don’t be mad with the Yank. This was my idea. I didn’t give him a choice.”
“Ha!” She threw up her hands in disgust. “You forced him?”
Harry looked Harvard up and down, taking in his size and bulk. “It happened over the phone. It was more of a mental challenge than a physical one.” He stuck out a hand at Harvard. “Good to meet you in person. You look like Grunt. Only black. And you talk way more.”
It was like meeting a puppy. A genius puppy who could hold a conversation, albeit a bizarre one. “Grunt and I aren’t related.” He kept his tone deadly serious so that Harry wouldn’t know if he was joking or not.
“Are you sure?” Harry said. “I read an article once about a set of twins who were born with different skin tones. One black, one white. It was fascinating.”
Ryan groaned as Elle smothered a giggle.
“I’m sure,” Harvard said.
Rachel stepped forward and poked a finger into Harry’s chest. “Will you pretend to be normal for five seconds? What are you doing here?”
Harry blinked a couple of times, as though it took great effort to stop hypothesizing what a reality would look like where Harvard and his taciturn behemoth of a friend were twins. “I came to find your rapists.”
The air became so thick that Ryan choked a little.
“And how do you plan to do that?” Rachel’s voice was pure ice.
“Um.” Harry split a nervous look between Rachel and Harvard. “I thought I’d hack the server they use to store historical data to see if it gave me any clues as to who stole the drug they used on you. Then I thought Harvard could, I don’t know”—he shrugged—“torture the person to find out who else was involved. To be honest, I didn’t really think past the hacking part.”
With a look of pure naivety, he asked Harvard, “You learned torture and interrogation techniques in the CIA, right? Or do we need to call in Grunt? He scares the crap out of people just by being in the same room.” He snapped
his fingers. “That’s what’s different about you! You’re way friendlier than Grunt.”
“Yeah,” Ryan drawled. “That’s the difference.”
“I am surrounded by imbeciles,” Rachel said of an MIT graduate, a tech billionaire and sought-after hacker—and whatever the hell Ryan was. “Go back to Scotland, Harry.” She sounded suddenly weary. “We can handle this, and you can’t leave your wife alone for long, or she might bite someone. And rabies is a death sentence.”
