Kiki saw the man first. A giant bear of a man wearing faded jeans and black leather boots that gave the impression he’d just come off the huge motorcycle she could just see out the glass doors behind him. He had a black leather jacket covering a slightly western-looking button-down shirt. She would have expected a T-shirt under that leather, but this man was more than a bit out of the ordinary.
To her very minute magical senses, he fairly glowed with strength of purpose. He had innate magic of his own, of that she was sure, but whether he used it for good or evil was still an open question.
“Can I help?” Kiki asked, moving closer to the front desk. The man looked up, and his gaze caught hers.
Light brown with golden flecks danced in his gaze, proclaiming him something special to her inner vision. He had brown hair, also with strands of gold mixed in. It was on the longish side but still managed to look businesslike and somewhat conservative, even after being squashed inside a motorcycle helmet.
“As I was just telling Cindy, here,” the man smiled, oozing charm, “I’ve been sent by the home office of SeaLife Enterprises to have a look around the operation. My name is Jack Bishop.”
He stretched out his hand for a shake, and she found herself moving closer to take it. When their hands touched, sparks flew. It was hard to keep her reaction to herself, but she had to do so with Cindy watching. Kiki was ninety-nine percent sure Cindy had been one of those wearing the creepy Halloween costumes the previous week in the warehouse. Kiki didn’t trust anybody in the office anymore. Not a single one of them.
But this man was a stranger. A newcomer. He’d been sent by the parent company. It remained to be seen whether or not he could be trusted.
Still, if his handshake was anything to go by, he was intensely magical. And the gleam in his eye said he recognized a bit of the magic in her, as well.
“I’m Kiki Richards,” she introduced herself, trying to keep things businesslike and professional. “I’m somewhat new to the company. I came on board to work on government compliance. Maybe I can check with my boss for you?”
“Who would that be?” Jack asked, seemingly reluctant to release her hand, but he did, finally.
“Bob Boehm, head of operations. Is he who you wanted to see?” she asked, trying to be helpful and discreet.
The man tilted his head to the side. “Sure. I wanted to start with whoever’s in charge, then work my way down the chain of command.”
Jack smiled, putting her at ease. At that point, Cindy seemed to come to her senses and started doing her job.
“I’ll call Mr. Boehm,” Cindy announced.
Jack was floored by the woman who’d come out from one of the offices behind the reception area. She was gorgeous. And her eyes sparked with intelligence. Her hair was golden, as if sunlight danced among the strands, and her eyes were clear blue. Innocent, yet knowing.
When he touched her hand, his magical senses exploded with awareness, and when he caught her scent, his bear stood up and took notice. Damn. He’d had to scramble to hide his powerful reaction to the woman. He’d never before felt this kind of punch to the gut on first meeting a lady. What could it mean?
For one thing, he got the distinct impression that she would be important to his mission here. He hoped, for both their sakes, that she was on the right side of things. Even after such a brief meeting, he knew it would hurt him deeply if she turned out to be a traitor to the Light.
While he was contemplating the luscious Miss Richards, a pale man with thinning red hair came out from the office area. He bustled over to them and started talking right away.
“I’m Bob Boehm. What’s this all about?”
Jack noticed the other man didn’t hold out his hand for a handshake. In fact, he seemed more belligerent than friendly. Well, if that’s the way he wanted to play it, Jack would give it back to him, in spades.
“Jack Bishop, troubleshooter for SeaLife Enterprises. The home office sent me here to check the books and review your operations. You are the operations manager, are you not?”
Old Bob started sweating. Jack hid his smile.
“I wasn’t given any notice of anyone coming down from corporate,” Bob protested. “I’ll need some proof of who you are. Bishop, did you say?”
Jack reached into his top pocket and flicked out a business card they’d had printed up especially for this trip. He handed it to Boehm.
“Call Ezra Tate. He’ll confirm that he sent me. I’ll wait.” Jack looked around as if he had all the time in the world and took one of the cushy chairs over by the window.
Boehm bustled off without another word, leaving the delectable Miss Richards staring after him. The receptionist, Cindy, sounded angry, which seemed odd. Jack took a mental note to keep an eye on her.
Kiki just looked confused and concerned as she watched her boss but seemed to shake it off and moved closer to Jack.
“Can I offer you a cup of coffee?” she asked, a pleasant smile on her face.
“That’s kind, but I’m all set,” he replied. “Perhaps you can tell me more about what you do here while I’m waiting.” He wanted to keep her around. He wanted to know all about her. Not for the mission, just to get to know her.
His inner bear sat up and watched the woman with avid concentration. Jack was fascinated by her on every level.
“I suppose…” She looked in the direction of the office area, where her boss had disappeared. “I mean…”
“You’re very conscientious to want to wait for confirmation of my identity,” Jack told her, figuring that’s why she was hesitating. “Why don’t you just give me the public explanation? The things you could tell anyone you happened to meet at a party, about what you do for a living. We can start there, and once everything’s settled, we can get into the finer points.”
She looked relieved, and he gestured to the seat next to him. She sat down, perching on the edge of the chair, looking ready to bolt the moment her boss returned. Jack took that to mean that she wasn’t very comfortable with Boehm. Good to know. Jack hadn’t liked the look of the man, or the faint scent he’d been able to get from across the receptionist’s desk.
So far, he was disposed to not trust or like Boehm, while the luscious Kiki confounded his senses. Her scent was alluring. Seductive. It could be a trap—if she was on the wrong side of things—or it could just be that she was that attractive. Right now, he felt like his bear had sighted a honeycomb, just out of reach. That’s how tantalizing she was to his senses. He would have to be cautious until he figured out exactly what was going on here.
“Well, as you probably know, some of the specialized papers we produce here go into the healthcare industry, which is heavily regulated. We run all sorts of quality control tests on the batches. They have to test within certain tolerances, and I organize all that paperwork for reporting to the government. I’m essentially a paper pusher.”
“In a paper mill,” he teased. “Who woulda thunk it?”
She laughed, and the sound sent tingles that raced straight to his heart, doing something to that untouched part of him. It felt like rusty hinges were slowly creaking open inside him. A disused part of his soul was coming to life. Revealing itself. Making him aware of it for the first time, ever.
He was smiling as she chuckled. That’s how Boehm found them when he came back out to the reception area. Kiki noticed him and stood immediately, the smile leaving her face as if it had never been.
“You check out. Sorry about the lack of welcome. If I’d known you were coming—”
Jack stood, cutting off the other man’s words. “No point in informing someone of a surprise inspection.” Jack played the dumb hick cowboy part to the hilt, watching the entire situation very, very carefully from behind a façade of bonhomie. “No matter. I’m here now, and you know that I’m on the level. Shall we get started?”
Caught off guard, Boehm scrambled to regain control. “What is it you came here to see, Mr. Bishop?”
That had almost sounded a tad confrontational. Jack was surprised. He hadn’t thought Boehm the type to stand up to him even that much. Interesting.
“In short, everything. I want the grand tour of the operation, and then, I’ll need an office to work in where I can go over your books.” Jack enjoyed seeing the color come and go from Boehm’s face. He was alternately shocked, scared, then angered by Jack’s presumption. Good. Now, they were getting somewhere.
“I have a conference call in five minutes that can’t be put off,” Boehm said, surprising Jack, yet again. “Perhaps Miss Richards could start your tour, and I’ll join you when I’ve finished the call.” It wasn’t a question. More like an insult, but in this instance, Jack didn’t mind at all. More time with the lovely Kiki was high on his new list of priorities.
“That’s acceptable,” Jack told Boehm, looming over the much shorter man.
His inner grizzly enjoyed watching the pipsqueak unconsciously shy away. Boehm might talk a big game, but he wasn’t really in Jack’s league when it came to the larger fight. Boehm left with a grimace, stomping all the way back to his office and slamming the door.
Kiki looked surprised by the idea of taking Jack on a tour but acquiesced to her boss’s wishes without demur. She motioned for Jack to join her and led the way into the office area where Boehm had just disappeared, speaking quietly as they walked.
“Let’s just stop by my office. In some of the production areas, we’ll need to wear protective gear. I’ll pick up my set, and we’ll get you some new things from the lab storeroom, if that’s all right,” she said, leading him into a small office right behind the reception area.
Jack went in and stood just inside the door, opposite the desk, framed with multiple filing cabinets and two computer monitors. Paperwork was all over the desk surface, in neat piles. Lab reports, memos, and big binders of government regulations were everywhere, but in an organized way.
“Excuse the clutter,” Kiki said as she went behind her desk. “I was digging into some new regulations and trying to figure out where my predecessor left things.”
“How long have you been with the company?”
“Just a couple of weeks, so let me apologize in advance for the tour. I’ve only been to some parts of the plant once or twice, myself.” A look of consternation passed over her lovely face briefly, but she quickly regained her outward calm professionalism.
“Why don’t we start with the areas you know best, and hopefully, by the time we get to the areas you’re less familiar with, your boss will be free,” Jack suggested smoothly, hoping to put her at ease. His instincts were screaming at him to make her life easier. To protect her. To give her a free pass.
Which was exactly what he could not do. Everybody in this place had to be suspect until he knew more. Steeling himself, Jack went out of the tiny office as Kiki came around her desk. He had to be cautious here, even as he gave in to the desire of his inner bear to be around her.
She had a hard hat and white lab coat under one arm, a pair of safety glasses in her hand as she joined him in the wide hallway in the executive area. She smiled and started walking toward the back of the building as he fell in step beside her.
“We can go to the lab area first. They have spare safety gear we can commandeer for you. I spend a few minutes at the lab each day because their reports are key to my job. I usually go over in the afternoon with a pile of questions for the techs and lab director,” she admitted with a shrug. “I’m still learning, and my predecessor had some odd habits in the way he made notes. I don’t always understand his abbreviations and personal shorthand.”
“There’s always an adjustment when taking over from someone else,” Jack replied. He’d never really worked in an office, but he understood the challenge.
She led him through an office area with cubicles that were sparsely inhabited by people on phones or computers, working steadily, even as they eyed him. A few heads popped up from over the cubicle walls to stare at them. There was an air of hostility about the looks he was getting, but he pretended not to notice.
Kiki opened a door at the far end of the office area and led him through into another part of the building. This area had a more clinical look to it. He saw a few people in an open-layout office area to the right of the corridor. Most were wearing headsets as if they were manning some kind of call center. A row of windows preceded the doorway.
“This is the customer service section,” Kiki said, pausing by the doorway, a pained look on her face. “I’m not their favorite person because I’ve had to change some of the ways they handle complaints to comply with regulations.”
“We can leave that for later, if you prefer,” Jack offered. He’d taken a quick look at the people in the office, and none of them had raised any red flags in his mind—or tickled his magical senses. What was giving him a tingle of magic was farther down the hallway, and he wanted to investigate that before it had a chance to get away.
“Maybe it would be better if you met them with Mr. Boehm,” Kiki said, removing her hand from the doorknob. “I can take you to the lab. It’s just down here, and I know more about it than most of the rest of the plant.”
“That’ll be fine,” he told her in a calm voice. She was playing right into his wishes, though she probably didn’t realize it.
Jack took the precaution of putting up all his personal magical wards. He’d studied, first with a priestess, then later, with a shaman she had sent him to, about how to hide his true nature and abilities from even the most powerful mages. That skill was part of what made him such an effective hunter in these kinds of scenarios. He’d been called on to ferret out mages a time or two in the past, but this time was different because his brothers weren’t there to back him up. He’d have to be extra cautious here, because he was on his own.
Trying to seem as boring and human as possible, he followed Kiki down the hall and to the door of the lab. Whatever was setting his teeth on edge was still in there.
Kiki opened the door to the small office area that led to the lab proper. There were desks along one wall for the techs, and a small office for the lab supervisor. The desks were empty, but Carol was sitting at her desk when Kiki walked to the door.
“Hi, Carol. Do you have a moment?” Kiki didn’t wait for a reply, wanting to alert the other woman to exactly who Jack was before she said anything rash. In their past dealings, Kiki had come to realize that Carol often spoke before she thought through how her words would sound. Either that or she liked being deliberately rude. “This is Mr. Bishop from the headquarters of SeaLife Enterprises. I’m just taking him on a tour while Mr. Boehm finishes a conference call.”
Carol’s eyes narrowed as she looked past Kiki to the man who stood behind her in the doorway. There was a slight hesitation before Carol stood and invited them into her office. Kiki held her breath to see what Carol might say, but she seemed to be on her best behavior—very unlike the way Carol had greeted the state inspector Kiki had brought through just last week.
Of course, the inspector had been a short, older fellow, who hadn’t been all that friendly to begin with. Jack Bishop was tall, handsome and had a charming smile on his face as he walked into Carol’s domain. Kiki could easily see why Carol—who was rumored to have run through the male staff like a kid through a candy store—was reacting differently to this hunky guy from the corporate office.
“Jack Bishop, this is Carol Burns, the lab supervisor,” Kiki said, making the introductions.
Carol didn’t stand up but reached across her desk to shake Jack’s hand. Kiki felt a stab of annoyance when Carol captured the man’s hand and a little tug-o-war ensued when she held it for much longer than was socially acceptable. All the while, she was staring into his brown eyes as if issuing an invitation. Or trying to see down into his soul.
Kiki mentally chastised herself. She didn’t know where such sinister thoughts were coming from, but Carol had been helpful, if not friendly. She hadn’t interfered in Kiki’s work and had provided the necessary documentation Kiki needed for her reports, when asked. Why Kiki suddenly felt animosity toward the difficult woman—over a man she barely knew—was a mystery.
And it was something she had to nip in the bud. Right now.
“As I said, Mr. Boehm is busy with a call, so he asked me to show Mr. Bishop around. Only, since I’m so new here, I’m not very familiar with anyplace other than your lab and a few other sections of the plant where I go regularly for reporting purposes. I hope you don’t mind that I brought him here first.”
“Mind?” Carol was fairly purring as she sat back in her high-backed chair, not even looking at Kiki as she spoke. “Not at all. I’m glad you brought him to me.”