DAVIS TOSSED HIS button-down on the floor and kicked out of his slacks, trading them for the jeans and T-shirt he preferred. He probably wouldn’t be wearing the office attire again anytime soon. He doubted he’d go back to Petrov Armor on Monday morning. When he’d said goodbye to Leila in her office, it had felt final.
He was closing in on a suspect. As much as he’d hoped it would be Theresa, because it would be least devastating to Leila, it looked like Eric Ross was the traitor. After talking to Joel, he’d come back to the office and dug through the security records a little closer, going back much further than he had before. What he’d found was a pattern of unusual access. It wasn’t a slam dunk, but it was enough.
The most logical next step was to send in a team with warrants in hand, and he expected that would happen before Monday morning. Joel had just thought he was helping Davis with a little career advice, then venting a bit about a guy he didn’t think was good enough for his niece. But he’d given Davis the final pieces he’d needed to send his team in the right direction.
Joel had solidified the motivation for why the man who’d thought of Neal Petrov like a father would try to steal from him, then kill him. Jealousy and revenge. It was the thing Melinda, ever the profiler, would want to know when they asked for warrants. Why would Eric Ross do it? Well, he finally knew.
No way had Eric worked with someone else, least of all the man who’d forced him to break up with Leila. Eric had been in it alone.
It was time to get out. Davis still wasn’t positive what had happened to make Leila suddenly stop trusting him, but as he’d thought back on the timing, he’d realized she’d started avoiding him after his phone call with Kane at his house. They’d mostly talked about the BECA side of the investigation, but Davis’s progress at Petrov Armor had come up briefly. Still, once he’d remembered the few words he’d spoken about it, he’d known. That had to be what had changed. He’d been whispering, but Leila must have somehow overheard him say the people she cared about most were suspects in his investigation.
She hadn’t denied him access, probably still believed the truth would come out and exonerate them. It physically hurt him that he was going to shatter that belief. But they couldn’t go on like this. Especially not with Eric probably getting suspicious that Leila suspected something, which might explain why he’d suddenly sought her out at every opportunity. If she hadn’t already, eventually, she’d let Davis’s identity slip and Eric would start to cover his tracks. If that happened, he might do a good enough job that the FBI couldn’t prove it, or he’d run off on a convenient “vacation” to a country without extradition.
The whole drive home, Davis had reached for his phone over and over, wanting to call Leila, wanting to explain that he’d never intended to hurt her, that he’d never intended to fall for her. But he couldn’t tip her off that he was finished at Petrov Armor.
If she didn’t hate him already, she was going to hate him soon.
Davis took a deep breath, trying to calm the urge to hit something, because he didn’t have time to go to the gym and work out his aggression on a punching bag. He grabbed the attaché case he’d tossed on the floor and took it to his desk, dumping out the contents. Notes on relevant information about Eric. He needed to put it all together and present it to Pembrook so they could make the strongest case for the warrants. He wanted to serve them as soon as they could, get this over with, then move on with his life.
He was going to have to do it without Leila. Davis rubbed his temples, where a headache had suddenly formed. How had she gotten to him so quickly, so completely?
Focus, he reminded himself. He couldn’t control what happened after those warrants were served. Couldn’t control whether or not bringing down the person who’d swapped out the faulty armor dragged down the entire company with him. Couldn’t control whether Leila’s career and the legacy she’d tried so hard to preserve for her father crashed down around her.
All he could do was his job. He’d sworn an oath as an FBI agent to uphold the law. And he’d made a personal promise that he was going to find the person responsible for Jessica’s death.
Gritting his teeth, Davis lined up his notes on Eric with the time line of possible illegal arms sales Kane and Melinda had put together. When his phone rang, he scowled at it, debating not answering. But it was a local number. Maybe Leila, calling from her office?
“Davis,” he answered curtly, still in FBI mode. And trying to put as much of a barrier as possible between himself and Leila. Because if she asked him straight out, he wasn’t sure he could lie to her and not hate himself.
But the voice that came over the line wasn’t Leila. “Davis, it’s Joel. Look, I’m sorry to call you after hours like this, but I’ve found something.”
“What is it?” After Joel had shared that he thought Eric was out for Leila’s job, Davis had acted like he was hesitant to say anything, but finally blurted that he’d felt something odd was going on at the company. He’d said he suspected it was preparation for a hostile takeover of Leila’s CEO position, that maybe Eric had cut some corners in ways that would come back to her. Joel had promised to look into it.
When the end of the day had come and Joel had just headed out without a word, Davis figured the man had either been humoring him or hadn’t found anything. But the
