Josh gave in to temptation and decided to text Maddie. She might not see it if she had the phone hidden away, but it was worth a shot. He was doing a walk-through of the upper floors of the tower and intended to drop in on the archives when he got to twenty-one, unless she objected.
He tapped the button on the earpiece and dictated the text. He was still waiting for a response as he descended another flight of stairs to walk the next floor.
He’d told Ava he’d gone to see Maddie, and she’d flinched as if she was waiting for Josh to call her out. And he’d wanted to, but he didn’t think pushing would work when it came to his niece.
Ava would come clean. He knew it. But until she did, all he could do was pine for Maddie.
He was a damn evergreen tree, considering how he felt about her. Hell, he was even impressed with her dignity as she told him off.
It gutted him to realize just how deeply he’d hurt her by abandoning her right after she’d told him of her heartbreak with both her family and fiancé. But still, she’d stood up for herself with magnificent steel in her words and spine. Maddie knew what she was worth, and he didn’t think he’d ever known anyone who was quite so rational and clear and yet still so able to live in their emotions as Maddie did.
Josh had spent his whole life regretting where he came from and believing he couldn’t have a relationship because he’d repeat the patterns of his father and brother. He’d spent his adult years wishing he could fix his brother and childhood years wanting to save his mother. He probably even wanted to fix his father, but he’d always known he was a lost cause. Still, Josh had blamed himself for those failures.
He’d found himself in the Navy and the SEALs. Hell, he had an ego as big as any of them, but ego wasn’t the same as centeredness, and Maddie was a perfect dot in the middle of the most perfect sphere.
He didn’t deserve her. Not at all. But he wanted her just the same, and for once in his life, he wasn’t going to get in his own way. Or, at least, he’d stop getting in his own way, considering he’d already screwed up royally. But he’d get her back. Convince her he was worthy, even though he didn’t believe it.
All those years he’d thought he was in love with Trina? That had been a fantasy. He’d idealized her in the extreme, probably because she was unobtainable.
Safe.
She couldn’t reject him, so he could never be hurt.
Plus, since he couldn’t have her, he could never hurt her. Not in the way Ari hurt Lori or his father hurt his mother.
And those feelings for Trina were nothing compared to how Josh felt about the very human and attainable Maddie.
He walked two more floors, noting potential security flaws, getting the vibe of the employees and building. He’d bring in ten guys to do the initial security work, then slowly roll in new hires as they worked out the kinks and patched the holes.
There were a ridiculous number of holes in this company’s security. Josh had managed to hack the computer system on his lunch break, which meant they’d have to start with a tech upgrade. He’d get Mothman here to comb through the system and weed out the backdoors. They’d standardize the name badges and RFID tags. Get rid of the app that unlocked doors and allowed elevator access to the upper floors. The app was a piece of crap that could be hacked by a bored fifteen-year-old or a security consultant while enjoying a pastrami on rye.
Simon Barstow and Apex had gotten dangerously lax. No wonder C-IV wanted a new private security firm. Josh might even be able to poach a few of Apex’s better employees in the process. They weren’t all bad, and Josh needed guards who knew the building and business.
Rav and Keith would get a kick out of that, after all the employees Barstow had poached from the Alaska compound a few years ago. Turnabout was fair play.
Josh glanced at the floor number. Twenty-one, at last. He couldn’t suppress a smile as he walked the floor as he had all the others. When he reached the archive suite, he came to a dead stop.
The lights behind the glass panels that flanked the door were off. The room was dark.
Closed-for-business dark.
Maddie couldn’t have left. She still had his phone. She could be waiting for him in the lobby, but Chase would have spotted her and radioed. Unless she gave Chase the phone and took off?
Which was entirely possible. Even reasonable.
But his gut offered up a hard no.
The back of his neck tingled. There was something off here. He’d entered the archives, and the guy behind the desk—who must be the archivist—had immediately turned, dropped his head. Like he was grabbing something behind the counter that was urgent.
What the hell could be urgent for a guy whose job it was to guard boxes of old papers? Had he been hiding his face?
And why the hell hadn’t Josh picked up on that before?
Because his focus had been on how good Maddie’s ass looked in that pantsuit, and he’d never considered a pantsuit hot before. He’d screwed up because he was thinking with the wrong head.
He tapped his headset to make a private call to Chase. “Chase, has Maddie passed through the lobby in the last hour?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Check and see if her phone is in the safe at the check-in desk.”
“Will do.”
Josh swiped his key card through the reader to unlock the door. He had a master key that would open every door except C-IV’s office. He’d get that key once he was officially hired.
The door didn’t unlock.
He swiped it again. Nothing.
He radioed Gretchen at the front desk. “My master key isn’t unlocking the archives.”
“That’s odd. It should work.”
Worry coursed through him, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from snapping at her. “Unlock it from the console. Use the emergency code.”
“I’m not authorized to do that unless it’s an actual emergency.”
“It is an emergency.”
“Mr. Warner, I know you might take over security, but you aren’t in charge yet, and I would be remiss in my job if I unlock that door without proper authorization. For all I know, this could be some sort of test you’ve devised and if I open the door, I fail.”
She wasn’t wrong. Dammit.
“Josh,” Chase said, “I’m at the desk, and Maddie’s phone isn’t here.”
To Gretchen, Josh asked, “Did Madeline Foster collect her phone and sign out?”
Her words sounded as if they were directed at Chase, but she answered his question just the same. “She must’ve taken it, because it’s not here.”
“But the log doesn’t show her signature. That scribble could be anything. Did you give her the phone?” Chase asked.
“She must’ve gotten it when I was on break. One of the security guards covered the front desk.”
“Who?” Josh asked.
“Karl Hoffman.”
“Where is Hoffman now? I need to talk to him.”
“His shift was over when my break ended. He left.”
Josh wanted to bash his head against the wall. He tried his key one more time in the reader. Nothing. He turned and bolted for the elevator, choosing the service one because it was closer and faster with less traffic.
Two minutes later, he was in the lobby. He went straight into the security room behind the front desk and shouted orders. “I want to see video feed for the twenty-first floor for the last hour, and the front desk for the same time period.”
The man monitoring the bank of screens cocked his head. “Is this some sort of test?”
“No. Every camera on twenty-one. From the moment I left Madeline Foster in the archives, on the left bank of monitors. The front desk and lobby entrance for the last hour on the right.”
“I’ll watch the front desk videos,” Chase said.
Josh watched six screens while Chase watched four.
“Pause front desk,” Chase said, adding, “Hoffman is alone at the desk.”
“Pause all screens,” Josh said so he could watch the video of Karl Hoffman. “Rewind front desk to when Hoffman first takes over.”
They watched the video at triple speed. A few minutes after Gretchen left, Hoffman reached under the desk and remained bent over long enough to retrieve something from the safe.
“He took the phone,” Chase said.
Josh nodded. “And there, he’s scribbling on the tablet, logging her out.”
“Resume twenty-first floor feed.” Several minutes in, the video showed the archivist pushing a cart carrying a giant box through the entrance to the archive. Cameras tracked his progress to the same freight elevator Josh had taken minutes ago. His entire body went cold. “Maddie’s in that box.” He turned to see Gretchen in the doorway. “What can you tell me about the archivist?”
She stepped closer to the screen. “For starters, that’s not the archivist. That’s Peyton Hoffman, another security guard. He’s Karl’s brother.” She shook her head. “Shit, I didn’t think Ben—the archivist—was working today. I was surprised when he responded to my message, agreeing to the appointment with Foster.”
“Were Karl or Peyton at the front desk when Maddie’s request to research in the archives came in?”
“Peyton wasn’t working today.”
That explained why Josh hadn’t met him yet.
“But he looks familiar,” Chase said. “I’ve seen him before.”
“Was Karl at the desk?” Josh persisted.
The woman closed her eyes in thought; finally, she nodded. “I think so.”
“So Karl could have heard the request and sent his brother a message to come in and pretend to be the archivist for an hour. With his security credentials, he could breeze right through after Karl changed the access code to block my master key card from working on the archives.”
She nodded. “But why would he do that? What’s the point?”
“Josh,” Chase said, “I know why.” He held up his cell phone. On the screen was a news article about the White Patriots rally from weeks ago. Peyton Hoffman was right there, next to Troy Kocher.