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Raul and Pierce agreed, though both ofthemwanted to go track that fucker down and beat him to a pulp themselves.
It baffled him. Felicity and Hope were so gentle and friendly. Whip smart. Incredibly hard workers, doing their very best for the guys in the field. And their best was amazing. ASI now was one of the most tech-forward security companies in the world, thanks to them. How could anyone harass them? Try to browbeat them? Do them harm? At least at ASI they were treated right. If anyone from the outside world even looked at them cross-eyed, he’d have twenty-five furious, armed and combat-ready SpecOps guys to deal with.
So, Raul prepared himself for a tale of harassment or nastiness.
But it wasn’t that. It was worse.
3
Emma looked around the upscale coffee shop, with its well-dressed people speaking quietly, efficient elegant wait staff, huge pristine ultra-chic premises. All orderly and functioning. Just the way she liked things. From a young age, with a depressed mother who took to her bed with pills and a bottle of wine every time her husband told her a lie about other women—which was often—Emma had trained herself to be in control of her environment, her emotions and her life.
She liked things to be well organized and rational. Even her job was rational, understanding numbers and data.
Instead, she found herself in a maelstrom. What was happening was frightening and chaotic. From the gyrations of the market to the disappearance of Toby, she felt like she was in uncharted waters. Lost in the ocean at night, bobbing in the water, looking at darkness to infinity, and she didn’t know how to swim.
But … Raul was a SEAL.
Maybe he’d know how to navigate this.
She looked at his handsome face, soberly watching her. Serious. Earnest, even. He’d been sent by her two best friends to help her and she knew they’d choose wisely. It seems they had.
“Okay.” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, yoga 101. “I’m going to give you some blurry data points that might or might not make a pattern.”
“Fine.” Raul nodded without looking away from her eyes. “Let’s see what’s there.”
Not much,she thought. “For a while now, I get the feeling that people have been coming into my office. But there’s a security cam across the corridor and nobody has that I didn’t know about.”
“There are ways around that, Emma.” Raul’s dark eyes bored into hers, sober and serious. “You know that better than I do.”
“Yes, I know, but –” She looked down at her empty coffee cup that had no dregs to read. Pity she hadn’t ordered loose leaf tea. Maybe the tea leaves would have told her something. “I checked the log. Nothing.”
“But?”
“But I think someone who knows what he’s doing has tampered with the log. Someone with a high degree of access. So, it is entirely possible that someone has been in my office without my permission. And more—a few things have been shifted slightly. Not by much. More or less as if someone who wasn’t as detail-oriented as I am put things back the way he or she thought they’d been. But the fact is, Iamdetail-oriented and I’m fairly meticulous about the objects on my desk. And sometimes there is a smell.” She wrinkled her nose.
“A bad smell?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not at all. Slightly … citrussy. Not a widely commercially available perfume, but a perfume nonetheless.”
“Or an after shave?”
“Exactly. Not definitely female, not definitely male. I like scents but I couldn’t identify it. And it was never strong because my office is well ventilated. But definitely there.”
“Was it there in the early afternoon or in the morning when you first got to your office?”
“Precisely. Both.” Emma met his gaze and knew what he was thinking. Someone who had come into her office over the lunch hour or early in the morning before she got to the office? “And then there’s the question of Toby. I’m just not convinced that he’s left. I, um, checked the agency he used to lease his apartment –” hoping Raul didn’t understand ‘checking’ meant hacking, which she’d definitely done, “and he hasn’t cancelled his lease. He isn’t answering his phone or emails, and except for that one email – run – I haven’t heard from him.”
Raul waited a minute, watching her. When he spoke, his voice was gentle.
“You’re worried. You’re really worried.”
She nodded her head jerkily.
“And you’re right to be.”
She let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.Thank you, Raul,she thought. Because she wasn’t insane. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
“So … you said you decided against contacting his family.”
