Claire sat down with a thump on the armchair in the corner and ran her fingers through her hair, making the wild tangle even messier. “Nitro’s theory is scary, but it’s the only one that makes sense of what has happened.”
Daniel put the list he’d been holding down on the desk and curled his fingers into fists, using techniques he’d taught himself to control his inner rage. The whole situation was really starting to piss him off. First these miscreants blew up his and Tyler’s merc school before Daniel had even had a chance to work out how he was going to turn wannabe mercenaries into soldiers. They tried to kill his business partner, and then they broke into Josie’s home while he was elsewhere.
He didn’t even want to think about the fact the woman whose body gave him so much pleasure would probably be dead if she hadn’t been out taking a midnight stroll in the forest the night of the explosion.
“I have to agree with you two. Whoever broke in here took a lot of stuff to make it look like a regular burglary, but they dismissed too many things a real thief looking for easy cash would not have left behind.” Josie’s worried expression did nothing for Daniel’s temper.
“Which means they aren’t going to fence the stuff.” From the despondent tone of Claire’s voice, Daniel figured she was thinking of her grandmother’s necklace. “They’ll probably just throw it away.”
Josie got up and went across the room to put an arm around Claire’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“You lost stuff, too.”
“Not my mementos.”
“At least we weren’t home,” Claire said, her voice stretching for a positive note.
Josie didn’t say what Daniel was sure she was thinking, because he was thinking it, too. If Claire had been home, she wouldn’t have had a chance against the perpetrators.
“I wish I’d been here,” he said.
Claire’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. “I don’t think I could keep living someplace a person had died.”
“I don’t want to kill them,” he said to Claire, wondering what the suddenly impassive expression on Josie’s face meant. “I want to know who they are and why in the hel—blazes they tried to kill my business partner.”
“I have every intention of figuring that out.” Stubborn determination radiated off of Josie like the afterglow of a nuclear explosion.
“We’ve got pretty much nothing to go on.” And he was a mercenary, not a trained detective.
Wolf was the tactician expert, and Hotwire knew more about searching out information than the ground staff for black ops, but Daniel knew best how to fight and win. If he couldn’t identify his enemy, he couldn’t fight.
Josie stood up, her pretty body enticing him, even though he knew making love should be the last thing on his mind right now.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You must see something I don’t.”
“We now know our enemies are worried about something Dad has in his records, worried enough to kill to make sure it stays buried.”
“So?”
“All we’ve got to do is go through those records with a fine-tooth comb.”
“We don’t have them to go through, and from what you remember, there’s nothing suspicious in them anyway.”
“I wasn’t looking for it when I computerized the files. And we do have a copy of the records.”
“You have a backup?”
“Yes.”
“But they took all your storage media.”
“Not my jump drive. I keep it with me all the time.”
“Everyone should. It’s the most efficient form of backup,” Claire said, sounding like a female version of Hotwire.
“What’s a jump drive?”
“Hold on a sec, and I’ll show you.” Josie grabbed her hot pink backpack-style purse from the hardwood floor beside the door and dug in the outside pocket.
She pulled out a small silver object about the size of his finger. “This is my jump drive. It holds 256 megabytes. I keep my whole document directory on it all the time.”
“And you’ve got the school’s records on it?” He knew about bombs the size of pens that could blow up buildings, but the idea that a tiny thing like that held all the records stored in several filing cabinets made his head hurt.
“We don’t have a computer to pull the drive up on,” Claire said dejectedly from her chair.
“No problem.” This was a logistics problem he could handle. “Hotwire should be here soon, and he always travels with his laptop, but is there any reason we can’t just buy you two new computers?”
“Hotwire is coming?” Claire and Josie chorused at the same time, ignoring his suggestion to buy new laptops.
Claire looked dismayed by the prospect, but Josie looked overjoyed, and that did nothing for Daniel’s temper. “Yes, he wants to help with the investigation,” he bit out.
Josie smiled. “That’s so sweet of him.”
She hadn’t thought Daniel was sweet when he’d offered to help. In fact, she’d tried to talk him out of it. His temper slipped one more notch.
Josie put the vegetarian lasagna in the oven and turned back to the counter to grate carrots for the salad she would serve with it.
“I didn’t know you could bake the lasagna without boiling the noodles first,” Claire said from the table, where she was spreading garlic butter on a loaf of French bread.
“It’s a trick Wolf taught me.” She sprinkled the grated carrots over the salad and then smiled at Claire, knowing anything she told the other woman had almost no chance of being used in practical application. “You increase the sauce a little bit and cover it for the first forty-five minutes of baking.”
“So, Wolf is giving you cooking lessons while Hotwire teaches you how to be a computer geek?” Daniel leaned against the counter, so close to her that she could feel the heat of his body luring her.
Only he’d been acting as if he’d never had an obsession with her body, as though they hadn’t spent the night before making love. He’d said he wished he’d been there when the thieves came, implying he regretted the night they’d spent together. She couldn’t regret it, and knowing he did, even if his reasoning was more than justified, hurt.
“Wolf gave me a few tips, but labeling Hotwire as a mere computer geek is like calling an Olympic triathlete a Sunday jogger. Did you have a question about that?” she asked, nodding toward the list of missing items he was holding.
He’d come into the kitchen when she started making dinner and had been holding the list then, but so far, he hadn’t said anything about it. He hadn’t said anything at all until just now. He’d been standing there all broody and masculine, putting off male pheromones her body was reacting to despite his lack of overt encouragement.
Increased tension emanated off of him in indecipherable waves. What had him so uptight?
“Did you leave the journals off on purpose, or did you forget about them?” he asked.
Josie was puzzled by the question. She’d never said the journals had been taken. “They aren’t missing.”
Chapter 10
“What?” Daniel asked as if she’d said his fly was undone.
She frowned, thinking the answer should be obvious. “I hid them in the top of my closet before we left yesterday.”
“Why?” Claire asked, and Josie realized her roommate might assume she’d been worried about Claire looking through her things.
