“No,” Davis replied, frowning. “I mean you returning to the office late at night, after you’d already left for the day.”
Theresa shook her head. “That’s wrong.” Then she stood and crossed her arms over her chest. “I work late plenty. But I don’t leave and come back. Sounds like a system error.”
“You weren’t here late at night, three weeks ago, on Friday night, about midnight?”
For a minute, he thought she wasn’t going to answer him at all. But then, Theresa’s eyes rolled upward and she shook her head. “No. Three weeks ago, on Friday night, I was at a concert. Here.” She dug around in her purse, then pulled out her phone. She tapped something onto it, then held it toward him. “I don’t know why I need to prove myself to Leila’s assistant, but here’s a picture from the concert. You see the date stamp?”
He studied it, then nodded and handed it back. She could have faked it, but how would she have known to have it ready? Unless she’d put some kind of electronic tag on the records, so she knew when the data was accessed? To give herself a heads-up if anyone ever suspected? “So, how was your card used that night then?”
“I don’t know.”
He stared hard at her, trying to read her, and she actually fidgeted.
“Look, I know Leila isn’t my biggest fan. I’m not hers, either. Don’t get me wrong—I think she’s done a pretty good job as CEO. Believe me, I was skeptical. The truth is, she never would have had this job if her father didn’t start the company. Everyone knows it.”
“Word is that you told Leila’s father not to recommend Leila her CEO,” Davis said.
Theresa scowled, but nodded. “Yeah. She didn’t have enough experience.”
“Who did you think deserved the position? You?”
Theresa laughed, sat back down. “Maybe. If we’re talking pure experience at the company. But all the boring administrative work of running a company?” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “That’s not my idea of fun. I like to make things, and make them better. I’d never leave R and D.”
“But at the end of the day, you don’t get to make the final decisions on what gets made, right? That’s Leila.”
Theresa nodded slowly, studying him now as closely as he was watching her. “Like the guns? Yeah, that’s true. I think it was a mistake, shutting down that side of the business. But so does everyone else here. Even her father. He just didn’t say it publicly.”
Davis frowned. That was what others at the company had told him, too. Which fit with the idea that Leila’s father had been illegally selling guns, but willing to trade it in for the sake of his daughter’s success. No matter what kind of man he’d been, he had loved her. The more time Davis spent here, the less he believed Neal Petrov had helped put his daughter in the role of CEO to be his scapegoat.
Maybe that was what had gotten him killed. Maybe he’d tried to go legitimate, to protect her, and his partner hadn’t wanted it.
But was his partner Theresa? Maybe. Maybe she just hadn’t had enough time to work things out with BECA if they were pressing for arms she couldn’t yet deliver. According to everyone he’d talked to, it was Neal’s support of Leila’s plan to move solely to armor that had made it a reality. Maybe Theresa had hoped to use Neal’s death to get gun production going again. That would make it easier for her to return to the illegal sales.
He frowned, not quite liking the logic or the timing. It still seemed like someone who was willing to kill to restart gun production would be willing to tell their contacts where to put the blame for it shutting down in the first place.
He must have stayed silent too long, because all of a sudden, Theresa blurted, “Look, I don’t know what Leila thinks I did, or what’s going on with my access card. We’re not best friends, but when I told her dad that I thought she wasn’t ready to be CEO, he made me promise to support her anyway. So, I’m not sure how you heard about what we discussed in private, but it’s not common knowledge. Neal, Joel and I have known each other for a long time. Heck, I’ve known Leila since she was a kid. After Neal died, I committed to protecting Leila for him. And I have.”
She stared at him with such intensity as she spoke, telling Davis that she’d done something she felt was big in order to protect Leila for Neal. Had she really killed Neal for letting their illegal business get screwed up and then thought she could make up for it by not selling out his daughter?
As Davis stared back at her, he realized it was a definite possibility.
Theresa Quinn had just shot to the top of his suspect list.
Chapter Sixteen
“What if it wasn’t just a matter of cheaper materials getting swapped out so someone could pocket the extra cash?” Eric suggested.
“What do you mean?” Leila asked. It was strange, this secret investigation they were running. He’d helped her make an excuse for the armor shipments that weren’t going out this week—claiming delays on the military’s side. Her employees had seemed to buy it.
Instead of making her feel like they were in on something together, her time with Eric was just making her uncomfortable. She needed to repeat what she’d said earlier, that her feelings weren’t the same as when they were younger. But she didn’t want to dive into that discussion when there were so many more important things to figure out right now. The future of her company—not to mention justice for the soldiers who’d been killed—depended on her rooting out the traitor.
Pushing her worries about hurting Eric’s feelings to the back of her mind, Leila tried to focus on what he’d said. What if it wasn’t just
