Picking up my phone, I shoot off a text to Flynn.
I wait for his response as I set the parameters for my computer to search for Whitney as she leaves the apartment building. I have to get to the office to do better work since I don’t have all the same systems here. My access to certain things is protected under the realm of what I do for BBS and those things have to be kept in the office, no matter how much I want them at my fingertips right now.
I don’t remember the drive to the office, and that doesn’t bode well for me or any other driver on the road tonight, but somehow, I make it there safely, hating the eerie feel of the emptiness of the office. This may be the very first time in recollected history that at least two people weren’t found lounging in the breakroom.
I shouldn’t expect anything less. Even though my world is imploding right now and I’m terrified of what’s going to happen, all of my colleagues are still at Deacon’s wedding. Except for Brooks. I’m sure he was out the door moments after I left with that woman he couldn’t keep his mouth and hands off of.
“You should be at the wedding.”
I scream like a frightened woman and karate chop the air, but it’s Ignacio’s weighted chuckle that brings me back to earth.
“You left the party early,” I hiss.
“So did you.” He raises his eyebrows in challenge, and it reminds my pounding heart why I’m here.
“Something’s wrong,” I say as I clear the span of the room and shove open the door to my office.
“What’s up, fuckers?” Puff Daddy squawks the second we step inside, but I don’t even acknowledge him.
“Tough crowd,” he complains when I slide into my desk chair and move my fingers over the keys.
“What’s going on?” Ignacio asks, leaning his ass against the filing cabinet to my left.
He groans when I pull open the video of Whitney’s apartment door.
“This shit again? I thought you had that chick in the bag.”
Ignacio ignores the growl that escapes my throat, rather choosing to focus on the sight of her leaving her apartment. We both watch as a man steps off the elevator less than five seconds after she disappears into the stairwell. Without a care in the world, he kicks her apartment door open. He didn’t even bother to knock.
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” I whisper, my hands trembling as I pull up more video on another screen.
“Did you see that? Rewind it.” Ignacio is pointing to the screen, but while working on finding her leaving the building, I missed whatever it was he saw. “That.”
He points to the screen, and I pause the video.
“The gun?” It doesn’t surprise me that a man brazen enough to kick a woman’s door in would be armed, but it does rachet up my blood pressure another hundred points.
“The badge. Go back. There.”
Sure as shit, the goon has a badge clipped to his belt.
“Local?” Ignacio asks as I try to zoom in.
“I can’t tell.” The video feed is shit, and even though I could see the tears on Whitney’s face earlier, the contrast of how fast he’s moving and his clothes prevent me from getting a clear picture of the badge.
“That’s a federal badge.” We both jolt at the sound of Flynn’s voice behind us. “I know because I used to have one.”
“FBI?” Ignacio says with dismay in his voice. “Do they normally go around kicking in doors?”
It takes only moments to get Flynn up to speed on what I know.
“What’s she into?” Flynn asks, doing a better job of keeping calm than I am.
“Computer stuff.”
“As in like hacker shit that can land her in a federal prison?” He raises an eyebrow at me as Ignacio takes a step back, crossing his arms over his chest as the atmosphere in the room shifts.
“She’s not a criminal,” I insist.
“You’re sure?”
I know he doesn’t miss the way my throat works on a swallow. He takes it for what it is, doubt.
“I’m not sure at all.”
We’ve talked about a lot of stuff, but Whitney hasn’t been forthcoming about her work. I can’t really talk about what I do, so expecting that one-sided information doesn’t seem right.
“Find out,” he says before turning around to leave. “Deacon is going on his honeymoon and we aren’t going to bother him with this, but if it turns out that she’s a criminal, you’re going to have to cut ties. We can’t have that kind of heat on BBS. We’ll lose all the respect we’ve been building.”
I nod in understanding. Flynn has only been with BBS for a year, but it’s clear why he quickly became Deacon’s second-in-command. He’s a no-bullshit kind of guy, and even though my world could be crumbling right now, I have the utmost respect for him.
“Where are you going?” I ask before he clears the threshold.
“I’m going to reach out to a few contacts and see what I can find out.”
Ignacio follows him out.
“She’s too pretty to be a criminal,” Puff assures me, but the cackle that follows makes me think he doesn’t believe his own declaration.
I start with what I have, running facial recognition on an image I pulled of the guy. The ones of him entering the building like he owned the place were much better than the grainy images I got from the hallway. As that’s going, I hack her IP address, something I said I wouldn’t do again after spending an hour reading her forum posts.
Wouldn’t this just be my luck, that the woman of my dreams turns out to be a hacker hunted by the FBI? I can’t really feel contempt for
