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I didn’t regret the decision. As much as I felt in turmoil now, I couldn’t honestly pretend that I wasn’t happy about everything that had happened—the discovery of the evidence I was smuggling out of the building and the sex.
Yeah. Both had been amazing—but both now had me wondering what the repercussions would be.
The one thing I hoped for, above all, was that Brian and I would remain on good terms. I didn’t want to lose the excellent rapport we had going—to say nothing of the potential for future opportunities to get naked together.
But, ultimately, I knew I was going to act in my self-interest.
Brian could decide what he wanted to do, but I would be handing in this evidence as soon as I knew what I had.
I started my car and drove off, my mind teeming with thoughts.
Chapter thirteen
ALISON
Walkingintotheoffice,I felt like I was on display. Even though I’d stopped by my house to change into fresh clothes and comb my hair into some semblance of order, I was aware that I hadn’t had time for a shower. I could still smell Brian on me.
I had no desire for that scent to go away. I was walking around as horny as a teenager because of it. But a part of me wondered if everyone else around me could smell it somehow—if I were giving off a vibe of a person who’d spent the weekend locked in a building with the subject of her investigation and had let him fuck her twice.
If it had been anybody else, I would have been judging them for doing what I had done. I was judging myself for it. But I also had bigger things on my mind. Things like—
“Barrett! I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all weekend!”
Grummond. He crossed the floor toward me, looking like an angry pit bull, making me want to turn right back around and head out to my car again. If there was one thing I absolutely did not have the energy for today, it was dealing with my boss.
But I was going to have to face this eventually. I held up my briefcase between us, feeling shielded by the folder I knew was inside. “I didn’t have my phone on me,” I told him.
“Well, why the hell not? You need to be reachable at all times, Barrett. You’re not working for the DMV, you know. This high level government job requires a real commitment.”
“I understand that,” I told him. “I was working this weekend.”
“Working, but without your phone? You were at the beach, weren’t you?”
I had to laugh. “It was storming all weekend,” I reminded him. “You think I was at the beach in that? I was working.”
“Well, do you have results for me? If you were working all weekend, you ought to have something to hand in by now.”
“Not quite yet,” I told him.
I knew what I had. But I wasn’t ready to tell Grummond about it yet.
For one thing, there was the matter of figuring out the details. I was confident that Jack was responsible for the numbers that weren’t adding up, but could anyone else have been involved? Seventy thousand dollars was not an insignificant amount of money, and I couldn’t be sure whether this had been a solo crime or a joint heist. If other people were involved, it would be best to get that information together before presenting anything to Grummond. The more complete picture I could give him, the better this would go for me.
But I had more than just myself to think about.
There was also the matter of my father. The SEALs meant everything to him. And I knew I wasn’t taking down the whole institution, but even so, it would be painful for him to have his daughter’s name on this investigation of his military branch. He took such pride in being a SEAL, and now we would both have to live with the fact that I’d brought shame to the department. This wasn’t going to be kept quiet. I knew that. It would be in the news. People were going to know—and they were going to know that I was Henry Barrett’s daughter. I was sure reporters would have a field day with that fact.
Well, it isn’t my fault, I told myself firmly. I wasn’t the one who had abused government funds. And I knew Dad, with his firm code of ethics, would never have wanted to allow something like that to continue unchecked just for the sake of reputation. He would understand. It would just be difficult for a while.
I was a lot more worried about what Brian was going to say.
Of course, I’d known Brian all my life, but I would never know him as well as Dad. That wasn’t possible. I knew that what was happening now would hurt Dad but that he would eventually recover from it and that he would understand why I’d had to do what I had done. But I had no idea at all how Brian was going to take it.
He hadn’t given me the impression that he was open to the idea of something sketchy being found in the SEALs’ files. What would he say when he learned what I’d discovered?
And was there even a possibility he had been involved in it?
He couldn’t have been.
