She’d recapped all things Steele had already learned about Robles.
“Where did he go to school? Any degrees in archaeology? Other interests in that area? There’s a bank on that island in the Caribbean where his vacation home is, can we find out how much is in that account? I want a list of withdrawals and deposits in the last six months. No, make that a year.”
Steele watched as her fingers continued to move over not just the keyboard to her left, but another one on her right. Her head turned from one screen to the next, long, straight black hair swishing over her shoulders with each motion.
“Cordone College in a town called Lufet. That’s in the southern region. Was born here in Burgess and returned with a Bachelor’s degree in Archaeological Studies, with a minor in political science. His father had been a senator, as well. It’s gonna take me a minute to get into that offshore account,” she said.
Steele sat back in the chair, rubbing his fingers over his chin. “That’s fine, just get it to me as soon as possible.”
“Why? I thought Robles was our client? My preliminary background check on him was included in the packets sent to your communicator yesterday morning.”
“I got it. But I need more information.”
She looked directly at him now. Resting her elbows on her desk, she clasped her fingers together and eased her chin onto them. “And I’ll ask my question again, why?”
There was only so much information Steele wanted to divulge to Isla, even though she was the information and technology guru of their group. If there was anything to be found, she could get it even if she had to use her power of mimicry to make it happen. Luckily for Steele, the only way she’d get all the information he had was to transform herself into him, and even that wouldn’t give her access to his mind, only the body that others could see.
“The item that was stolen from his house was an Egyptian dagger. I looked through a few books that were online and found out it was stolen from King Tutankhamun’s tomb. I want to know how Robles got his hands on it and who might be willing to steal something so expensive from him.”
“Ohhhhh,” she said with a nod. “Got it. I’ll start a search. And while I’m at it I’ll also trace Robles’s political dealings. Maybe he’s in debt to someone and needs the money his insurance company will likely pay since the dagger’s been stolen, to pay off that debt.”
Or maybe he’d secured the dagger for another purpose, a murderous one.
Steele wisely kept that thought to himself and logged off from the call with Isla.
By now it was barely eight o’clock in the morning. He got up from the chair, went into the bedroom to put on socks and shoes and then made his way down to the hotel gym.
His beast was itching to be free and if he was back at the Office, it would have been as simple as heading out the back doors to the secluded space designed for the Drakon to roam. In the city there was no such place, but pushing himself to the limits—which for a two-hundred-and-ninety-year-old dragon, was pretty far—would have to do the trick. The physical exertion would help shave the edge off the sexual hunger already building inside him again. What had he expected? It’d been at least ninety years since Steele had been with a woman. Celibacy was his choice. Connections of any kind for him had been off limits. Last night was a temporary reprieve, but it wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t.
He walked through the gym, all the way back to the weights and added all the weights stacked to the bar before lifting it over his head, one, two...sixty-seven times. And still, he wanted her again.
Ravyn woke alone.
Her eyes opened slowly and her body moved sluggishly as she rolled from one side of her bed to the other. It was morning, she could tell because there was light music playing in her room. Waking—even from the not quite sleep zone she was always in—to an alarm clock made her jittery all day, but the slow melodic sounds of instrumental music filtering into the room were a calm reminder that it was time to get up.
Extending her arms and confirming emptiness was going to be her jolt for the day. She rolled over and lay flat on her back, staring up at the pipes in the ceiling.
“Was it all a dream?
“It had to be. He couldn’t have gotten in here, strong-armed me to the floor and then convinced me to have sex with him. That was ridiculous!”
Lifting an arm and letting it drop down over her eyes, she chuckled. That was one hell of a dream.
But wait, to dream she had to have been sleeping and there hadn’t been a full night that Ravyn had lain in this bed, or any other bed for that matter, and slept. Not one. At least four to five hours in the middle of the night, she was up. She didn’t get out of bed—General Walsh had been adamant about bedtimes and obeying rules—but she didn’t sleep either. Many of her best ideas had come in the hours of her half-sleep, half-awake twilight.
“Did you really believe that guy was gonna give you a half million dollars?”
With that question spoken into the air, Ravyn didn’t think about the so-called dream again, instead she sat up and pushed her hand under the pillow.
“Good,” she said with a deep sigh. “It’s still there.”
But there was also something else. Pushing the pillow aside she looked down at the dagger and then at the slip of paper beside it. She rolled over and reached
