A mélange of bright pinks and blazing oranges streaked across the mirrored windows of the high-rise next door as the setting sun continued its leisurely plummet below the horizon. The nightly ballad of file drawers sliding shut, desk lamps clicking off, and computer monitors drifting into sleep mode played throughout the office as, one by one, his coworkers wrapped up their workday. By his count they were down to less than ten people in the entire office. He could work with that number.
Daniel maintained the appearance of being swamped at his desk, all while discreetly monitoring the stairs that led to Trendsetters’ second floor.
“Are you trying to make the rest of us look like slackers?”
He jerked around. “Hey, John!” Daniel tried to cover his surprised flinch by reaching for his water bottle. “Didn’t realize you were still here.”
“I have to pick the oldest kid up from football practice. Makes more sense to hang around the office instead of driving up to Round Rock then driving back down.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve heard stories about how seriously Texans take their high school football.”
“Almost as seriously as we take our barbecue,” John said. “My fourteen-year-old freshman made the junior varsity team. My wife doesn’t like it, though, which is why I’m tasked with all football practice duties.”
“Ouch.” Daniel searched for his best good-natured laugh.
John peered at his Apple Watch. “I need to get going. Hey, I’m sorry about this new twist with the Leyland project. That’s how these things go sometimes. It’ll make for late nights for all of us.”
“Whatever the customer wants.” Daniel hunched his shoulders in a what are you gonna do shrug. “That deadline is looming. I figured I’d stay late tonight and make as much headway as possible.”
“Man, am I happy Justin put you on this team.” John clamped him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Take it easy.”
“You too. And good luck to your son’s team this year.”
“Not my son,” John said with a proud smile. “It’s my daughter. She’s the placekicker.” He pointed at Daniel. “Don’t stay here all night.”
Playing the part of the dedicated night owl willing to sacrifice his evening for the sake of the job might score him a few brownie points, but this wasn’t about impressing Trendsetters’ upper management. There was only one reason he remained in this near-empty office. It was time he make a true attempt to enter the security division’s inner sanctum.
Today marked eight weeks since he’d started at Trendsetters. Call him cocky, but he’d figured by now he would be back in Virginia getting briefed on his next assignment. The fact that he hadn’t gotten past the damn door of the Security Department was in-fucking-conceivable.
There were only two people in Trendsetters’ Cybersecurity division tonight, but they hadn’t left the room unmanned for a second. Earlier in the evening, Daniel had downloaded malware to his desktop in an attempt to draw them out. He’d waited until one of them went to the restroom, then quickly deployed the malware and put a call in to security.
He had no way of knowing that, at the time, the remaining guy happened to be helping a Trendsetter employee who was working remotely. Daniel’s malware problem wasn’t considered a big enough issue to elevate it, so he’d had to wait for the employee who’d gone to the restroom. It was a completely wasted effort. Worse, it eliminated that option from his toolkit. If he employed the malware again security would most likely flag him for being careless.
Realistically, he knew his chances at breaching security tonight were nil, but Daniel still wasn’t ready to go home. Quentin was there. He’d done his best to avoid his “roommate” since running into him at the Latin dance club on Saturday. He knew the censure he’d get—the censure he deserved—and he wasn’t in the mood for it.
Earlier, before he’d decided to take a run at breaching the Security Department, he’d asked Samiah to dinner, even though he knew her Monday nights were earmarked for binge-watching the few television shows she allowed herself to watch. But she wasn’t watching Grey’s Anatomy tonight. She was having dinner with her parents who’d driven in from Houston. When she told him about her plans, he’d immediately started to mentally thumb through his closet, trying to figure out what he was going to wear. And then he realized that she hadn’t invited him to join her.
For a large swath of his afternoon, Daniel hadn’t been able to focus on anything other than what it meant that Samiah didn’t want her family to know about him. Apparently, she didn’t want her friends to know about him either. Not that he wanted to intrude on her girls’ night out Friday rituals—he would decline if she ever asked him to tag along—but she had yet to suggest he stop by to meet Taylor and London. Was he mistaken in thinking that a woman would want to introduce her new boyfriend to her friends?
Unless she didn’t consider him to be her boyfriend.
They hadn’t discussed official labels or anything like that. And just because Joelle had paraded him around like a live-action G.I. Joe doll to her friends didn’t mean Samiah would do the same. Maybe he was reading too much into this.
No matter what, the fact that he wasn’t meeting her parents, or her sister and brother-in-law, or even her friends, was a stark reminder of where things actually were between them. Fuck, it was a reminder that there shouldn’t even be anything between them at all. What excuse could he give if anyone back at FinCEN discovered what he’d been up to with Samiah? It was in only the rarest circumstances that any kind of romantic involvement with a subject was allowed—those cases where an agent’s cover had the possibility of being blown.
Samiah’s tangential affiliation with Hughes Hospitality didn’t come close to justifying what he was doing. Allowing himself to get in too deep with her could lead to detrimental consequences.
“You’re already in too deep,” he said with a groan.
He needed to break this case open and get the hell out of Austin. It was the only way he could see himself giving up the drug that was Samiah Brooks.
Daniel forced himself to put her out of his head. He wouldn’t make any more attempts to access the database tonight, but he still had legitimate work he could be doing right now, both for Trendsetters and for FinCEN. The final specs for the Leyland Group’s new customer management system were due within the next week. And, back at FinCEN, Preston had asked for help on a case that was tied to one Daniel had worked on last year.
He forwarded the old emails and voicemails to Preston, then returned to working on the back-end architecture for the Leyland Group’s WLAN design. Their team had been told just this morning that Leyland’s upper management decided to go with this configuration, which, coincidentally, was the same one Hughes Hospitality had used for their wireless local area network. Suddenly, being placed on this team worked in his favor. He now had access to information that had been previously out of his reach.
As he read over the details of the initial design, a name on the original team popped out at him.
“What the—?”
Daniel switched between screens, his heart suddenly thumping with enough bass to rival every track on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic album.
“No way,” he whispered.
He looked over each shoulder to make sure he was alone, then pulled out his tablet and clicked on the folder that contained the dossiers he’d been briefed with before starting at Trendsetters. He scanned the file names and, once he found the one he was looking for, tapped to open it. The work history section went back only two and a half years. FinCEN had gathered as much information on Trendsetters’ employees as possible, but he’d been told before leaving Virginia that some files were incomplete.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Daniel whispered. Why hadn’t he made this connection?
He shut down his computer, quickly packed up his gear, and left the office, all thoughts of avoiding Quentin forgotten. If the man still wanted to rail at him over his relationship with Samiah, he could do it once he and Daniel talked through this newest revelation.
When he opened the door to the apartment, he found Quentin in his usual spot, on the sofa surrounded by files and reports.
“Well, well, well,” Quentin sang, his eyes still on his case files. “Look who decided to make an appearance.”
“Mike Epsen worked on the Hughes Hospitality account when it first came to Trendsetters.”
Quentin set the file folder on the sofa and turned. “Isn’t that the guy who got hit while riding his bicycle? The one whose place you took on that new project?”
Daniel nodded as he walked over to him and handed him the iPad with Mike’s dossier.
“Hughes Hospitality had been on FinCEN’s radar for months, but it was an anonymous tip that drew our attention to the Trendsetters connection. Dwyer said the tipster kept in regular contact, never revealing himself or a name, just making sure they knew the laundering was still going on. About two weeks ago the tips stopped coming. Just went completely dark.”
“Around the same time Mike Epsen’s bicycle had an unfortunate meeting with the front fender of that bus,” Quentin said. “But, seriously, do you think a city bus driver is somehow connected to this?”
“No, the bus driver wasn’t at fault.” Daniel shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you? I got the whole story a couple of days after the accident. A car encroached on the bike lane, which caused Mike to swerve into the bus. But the driver of the car never stopped. Everyone has been going on the assumption that the person driving the car was texting or distracted in some way and just didn’t see what happened. But now?”
“My old boss had a saying, coincidences are just connections that haven’t been made yet,” Quentin said. “I think this is a piece of that connection.”
“That accident was no accident. It was meant to scare him into silence.”
“Mission accomplished.” Quentin looked up at him. “Do you think your girlfriend can shed some light on it?”
Daniel dropped his head back. Staring up at the kidney-shaped water stain on the ceiling, he released a deep sigh. “You couldn’t wait to go there, could you?”
“I’m just saying.” Quentin held his hands up. “If you’re going to violate rules, at least make it work in your favor. Find a way to bring Mike’s name up in conversation. Ask her how his department is handling his absence, if coworkers have had to step in for Mike in the past. Maybe she can give you some clues that can help you figure out if he’s your tipster.”
“Or maybe I can go and see Mike for myself,” Daniel said.
“I’d clear it with FinCEN before taking that step.” He gestured at Daniel’s iPad. “Let them know about that ASAP. It may be all the evidence you need to convince Dwyer that you need to take this investigation to the next level. Who knows, you may be on your way back to Virginia sooner rather than later.”
Daniel nodded, but the sudden onset of nausea in his belly was telling.
He was here for one reason only, to uncover who had been using Hughes Hospitality as a front to launder money. He should be euphoric at the thought of catching a break in this case. That Vegas job—the prize—was waiting for him, like a golden ticket sitting behind protective glass, just out of his reach. This possible connection between Mike Epsen’s accident and the money laundering could be the key to unlocking that glass box.
So why did the thought of bringing this case to a close leave such a horrible taste in his mouth?