“You’re dismissed, everyone. Let’s jump on this.” Pembrook turned toward him. “Follow me, Davis. Let’s have a chat.” Before he could reply, she was out the door.
Davis was slower getting to his feet. As he passed Kane in the doorway, the other agent offered him a raised eyebrow and a sardonic grin, but Davis didn’t care. Not about Kane’s opinion and not about whatever warnings Pembrook was about to level at him.
He was on the case. Whether it was new CEO Leila Petrov to blame or someone else, he wasn’t stopping until he brought that person down.
He glanced skyward as he stepped through the threshold of the director’s office, saying a silent goodbye to his old friend. Promising to avenge her death.
“THE SOLDIER YOU see died at the scene. Army captain Jessica Carpenter, who took the video, also died when she was shot through her bulletproof vest. The army is looking into the circumstances. Keep watching for updates on this story and more. Next up—”
Eric Ross turned off the TV and Leila Petrov had to force herself to swivel toward him. She tried to wipe the horror and disbelief she was feeling off her face, but Eric had known her since she was a lonely thirteen-year-old. He’d been her first kiss two years later. Three years after that, he’d broken her heart.
He read her now just as easily as he always had. “Maybe it’s not our armor.”
“Maybe it is.” Petrov Armor had supplied the military with millions of dollars’ worth of guns and armor in the past thirty years. Their accounts had started out slow, with her father barely showing a profit in those early years. Now, the military not only kept them in business with their big armor purchases, but those sales also allowed her to employ almost two hundred people. It was her father’s legacy. But it was now her responsibility.
The numbers said there was a good chance those soldiers had been wearing some version of Petrov Armor. But logic said they couldn’t be. Petrov Armor was serious about its testing. Any tweak, no matter how minor, was checked against every bullet and blade in its testing facility. Every single piece of armor that left its building was inspected for quality. If the armor was damaged, it went in the trash. The company could afford the waste; it couldn’t afford to screw up.
Leila breathed in and out through her nose, praying she wasn’t going to throw up. Not that she had much in her system to throw up anyway. She’d barely been eating since her dad had stood up to that mugger instead of just handing over his wallet. In a single, stupid instant, she’d lost one of the only two close family members she had left. Tears welled up and she blinked them back, not wanting Eric to see.
Maybe once he’d been her first confidant, her closest friend, and her lover, but now he was her employee. The last thing she needed was for anyone to doubt her strength as a leader.
It had been an uphill battle for a year, getting her employees to take her seriously as CEO. She thought it was working until her dad died. Then she realized just how much resentment remained that she’d succeeded him. She’d come in every day since, not taking any time off to mourn, in part because she’d known her father would have wanted her to focus on work. And in part because work was the only thing that could take her mind off her crushing loss. But it was mostly to prove to the staff that she’d earned her position. She couldn’t afford to lose her cool now, not when so much was at stake.
Leila took a deep breath and tipped her chin back. She spotted the slight smile that disappeared as quickly as it slid onto Eric’s lips, and knew it was because he recognized her battle face. Ignoring it, she said, “We need to get ahead of this. Start making phone calls. Anyone you’ve made a sale to in the army in the past year. Find out if it’s ours, so we can figure out what happened. And we’d better see if we can track down the actual shipment. If there are any other problems, I want to find them first.”
“Leila—”
“I need you to start right now, Eric. We don’t have time to waste.”
“Maybe you should call your uncle.”
Joel Petrov, her dad’s younger brother and the company’s COO, hadn’t come in yet. If somehow he’d managed to miss the news reports, she wanted to keep him in the dark as long as possible. He’d handled so much for her family, keeping the business afloat all those years ago when her mom died and her dad had been so lost in his grief he’d forgotten everything, including her. Her uncle had picked up the slack there, too, making sure she was fed and made it to school on time. Making sure she still felt loved.
Right now, she could use a break. Hopefully they’d find out those devastating deaths weren’t due to their armor. She’d worked hard to transition the company from producing both weapons and armor to solely armor. She wanted Petrov Armor to be known as a life-saving company, not a life-ending one. This incident put that at risk.
Maybe the panic Leila was feeling over the whole situation would be a thing of the past before her uncle climbed out of whatever woman’s bed he’d found himself in last night and she’d be able to tell him calmly that she’d handled it.
“We’re looking for Leila Petrov.”
The unfamiliar voice was booming, echoing through Petrov Armor’s open-concept layout, breaching the closed door of her office. Even before that door burst open and a man and woman in suits followed, looking serious as they held up FBI badges, she knew.
Petrov Armor was in serious trouble.
She stepped forward, trying not to let them see all the emotions
