Grace had no trouble getting the man at the café table to talk to her. Hell, she couldn’t get Jordan to shut up. When the text came through from Declan, she’d been hard-pressed to read it without appearing rude.
His message set her heart racing.
Declan had swiped a badge from one of the women he’d been sitting with and placed it in her purse?
Her breath caught in her throat and her pulse pounded so hard against her eardrums, she could barely hear the man talking to her across the table. “I’m sorry,” she interrupted him. “I’m not feeling very well. Please, excuse me for a moment.”
Jordan leaned forward, his brow furrowing. “Do you need me to go with you?”
“No, really. I don’t think you’d want to go to the ladies’ bathroom.” She gave him a weak smile and patted her flat belly. “Stomach issues.”
The waitress chose that moment to arrive with their food and set it on the table.
Grace pushed to her feet. “I need to go.”
“What about your meal?” Jordan asked.
She dug in her purse for her wallet, feeling the hard plastic of the employee badge against her fingers. After tossing a bill on the table, she gave her tablemate another smile. “Thank you for the company and sharing your table. I’m sorry, but I think I’d better leave now.”
As she passed the two women Declan had been with, one of them was looking at the table, a frown denting her forehead. “I know I brought it with me.” She opened her wallet and looked inside, shaking her head. “It’s not here.”
A wave of guilt washed over Grace, making her stomach roil. She wasn’t cut out to be a spy or secret agent. She could barely function with the guilt of knowing she possessed someone else’s property. Especially when that someone was clearly disturbed by the loss. She almost went back to her and handed over the badge.
But she didn’t. She was doing this to find Riley. The woman would get her badge back eventually; it was just a piece of plastic. Riley’s life was more important.
With that in mind, she entered the café, weaved her way through the tables to the rear, where the bathrooms were and the back door.
Once outside, she walked down the alley, passing several buildings before emerging on the sidewalk leading to Quest. She fell in step behind a group of women walking the same direction. All of them had Quest employee badges clipped to their clothes or on lanyards around their necks. When they reached the gate, they swiped their cards at a reader before a turnstile. When the light on the reader turned green, they entered the campus.
Her hand shaking, Grace swiped her stolen badge and held her breath. The light turned green. She pushed against the turnstile, but it didn’t move. Her pulse pounded and she thought she might pass out.
“Push a little harder. It can be a little stubborn at times,” a woman said from behind her.
Grace pushed harder. The turnstile moved, allowing her to enter. Once through, Grace drew in a deep breath, bringing a rush of air into her oxygen-starved lungs. She’d made it.
The woman who’d been behind her smiled and passed her. “See? Just needs a little more oomph.” She winked as she walked by.
Grace followed without catching up and blended in with others returning from lunch. Once inside the building, she headed for the elevators like everyone else. Riley had said she worked on the eighteenth floor. Before she reached the elevator, a man in a delivery uniform stepped out of a hallway and approached her from the side.
“Excuse me, miss.” He carried a large box that covered half of his face. “Could you hold the elevator for me?”
Grace entered the elevator, scooted to the side and pressed the button to hold the door open.
The delivery guy stepped in next to her, a little closer than she would have liked, but because of the crowd returning from lunch, she couldn’t move over.
She pressed the button for the eighteenth floor. “What floor are you going to?” she asked.
“It’s already lit up,” he said, sounding vaguely familiar.
Afraid someone would say something about not recognizing her, Grace kept her head down and waited as they stopped on what seemed like every floor in between the ground and the eighteenth.
At the sixteenth floor, everyone but the delivery guy had exited.
When the doors closed, Grace noticed the only button lit was for the eighteenth floor.
“I thought we would never be alone,” the delivery man said, his voice so familiar, Grace shot a glance to his face.
“Declan.”
He shook his head and tipped it toward a corner of the elevator car and whispered, “Security camera.”
Her heart pounding, Grace had to focus on not looking toward the corners of the car. “Do you have a plan?” she whispered.
He chuckled and said equally softly, “I was hoping you did.” Then he added, “Actually, my plan is simple. Gather info. Let’s find her office. Ask some questions. Make observations.”
Great. They were inside a building they had no business being in, headed for the floor Riley had worked on. They had no guarantee they’d get any farther on the employee badge Declan had swiped. Riley had been working in Special Projects and she’d been adamant about the level of secrecy for the project. To the point she didn’t share any details with her closest friend, Grace.
The elevator tone sounded and the door slid open.
Fear gripped Grace, freezing her feet to the floor.
“We’ve got this. What’s the worst they can do?” Declan whispered. “Kick us out?”
“Throw us in jail? Shoot us? Make us disappear like Riley?” Grace listed in a voice so low, she doubted Declan heard her.
His soft chuckle assured her he had heard and wasn’t too worried.
Having him there bolstered her confidence enough so that she was able to move, placing her foot outside the elevator door, onto the smooth marble tile of the eighteenth floor.
The stark white walls and the white marble made her feel as if she were walking into a futuristic science-fiction movie. At any moment she expected an alien to appear in front of her and lead her to a special room where humans were dissected or probed.
A hysterical giggle rose up her throat. Grace swallowed hard to keep from letting it escape.
“Which way?” Declan asked.
“This is as much as I ever got from Riley. Eighteenth floor. That’s it.” Grace turned right. “She worked in Special Projects.”
Declan pointed to a sign on the wall to the right. “This must be the place.” The sign read SPECIAL PROJECTS.
At that moment, a man stepped through the door.
Grace caught a glance at his name tag.
Moretti.
She had to catch herself to keep from grabbing the man and shaking the truth out of him.
“Sir, could you hold the door? I have a delivery for Special Projects.”
The man seemed distracted and in a hurry. He paused for a moment and backed into the room to hold the door.
“Thanks. I’ll hold it for him,” Grace offered.
“Good. I have work to do,” Moretti said and then quickly left them in the open doorway.
Grace breathed a sigh as she walked past the ID-card scanner beside the door. Had she tried to use her stolen card, it might have set off alarms.
As it was, Moretti had probably just broken a rule by allowing them to enter without scanning a badge. He’d practically sprinted down the hallway to the elevator.
Grace let the door close between them in case he decided he’d made a mistake and came back to demand identification.
The room they’d stepped into was a huge bank of cubicles with five-foot-high walls.
Declan leaned toward her ear. “Was that Moretti, your roommate’s supervisor?”
She nodded.
His eyes narrowed. “Let’s start in his office.”
“Would be good to know where that is.” Grace glanced around.
“Follow an outside wall,” Declan said. “He’s bound to have a door.”
Grace turned right and walked along the outskirts of the cube farm, careful not to make eye contact with anyone in the aisles between the cubicles. She passed an office with a woman’s name on a placard beside the door. The door was open, but no one was at the desk inside.
The next office had a sign indicating it was the duplication room. Inside were a couple of copiers, plus a large printer like those used to generate engineering or architectural drawings. It, too, was empty.
The next door was to a break room. The smell of coffee wafted out. A woman stood at a coffee maker, pouring a mug full of the dark brew.
At the corner of the large room was a larger office with a placard on the side of the door that read Director of Special Projects Alan Moretti.
The door was closed.
Grace reached out and twisted the handle, fully expecting it to be locked. It pushed open as if Moretti had left in such a hurry, he hadn’t pulled it completely closed.
A quick glance around assured her there weren’t any people close enough to notice her and Declan slipping into the office. And if they did, Grace would tell them that they were delivering a package for Mr. Moretti.
She entered, held the door for Declan and closed it as soon as he stepped through.
Once inside, Declan set the box on the floor and crossed to the desk.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Grace asked.
“Anything that might give us a clue as to what happened to Riley. A file, computer records, something belonging to Riley herself. Just look.”
Grace twisted the lock on the door in case someone happened to hear them rummaging around inside the office.
Moretti had a fairly large office, with bookshelves on one side, a massive desk in the middle and a mini-bar with decanters filled with amber liquid. Huge windows stretched from floor to ceiling, with a view across the river of downtown Washington, DC, and some of the government buildings.
Declan sat behind the desk and tapped the keyboard.
Grace crossed to a door on the left. It led to a small closet. Inside was an umbrella and a freshly laundered suit and starched shirt still wrapped in the thin plastic from the dry cleaner’s. An extra pair of patent-leather dress shoes rested on the floor of the closet. On the shelf above was a flashlight and a hard hat. Nothing that would indicate Riley’s whereabouts.
Grace backed out of the closet and attempted to open a dark mahogany file cabinet, but it wouldn’t budge. “Know how to pick a lock?” she asked.
“Know how to hack a computer?” Declan responded.
“As much as I know about picking a lock.”
“Switch for a minute. Maybe you’ll have more luck.” He rose and passed her, touching her hand as he went. “It’ll be okay. We’ll find her.”
“I hope you’re right. The longer she’s missing, the harder it will be.”
“True. But we have to keep positive. For Riley.” He pulled up his uniform pant leg and slipped a knife out of a scabbard strapped to his calf. He glided the knife between the lock and the drawer of the cabinet and popped the cabinet open.
“Show off.” Grace shook her head, wishing she could slip a knife into the computer and pop the screen up.
She sat at Moretti’s desk and wiggled the mouse. Most people couldn’t remember the myriad of passwords required to function in the modern-day technical environment. Moretti couldn’t be any different. He had to have a place he kept his passwords to include the one that got him onto the system.
Grace opened the top drawer on Moretti’s desk. Nothing but pens, paper clips and business cards. She checked the drawers on either side and found a golf ball, a tee and golf gloves. In the drawer on the other side, she found a stack of magazines about airplanes, the space program and country living.
The man had a strange mix of reading material, but no bits of paper with computer passwords written on them. She ducked her head and checked the bottom of the desk. As she came up, she noticed something yellow beneath the keyboard.
When she lifted the keyboard, nothing was there. Turning the keyboard over, she found a yellow sticky note with the word trinity written followed by what appeared to be a date. Maybe a birthdate? She studied the name and the date.
“I can’t see anything of interest in these files. It’s mostly evaluation and training records of employees.”
“Is Riley in there?”
“Yes, but all her folder has are some outstanding annual evaluations.”
Grace set the yellow sticky note next to the computer keyboard and brought the screen to life by wiggling the mouse. The log-on popped up. She keyed in trinity and the date and waited.
Username or password failed
Grace tried again without the dashes in the date.
She waited for the computer to churn.
Seconds later, the same failure notice popped up.
Afraid to push the limit and lock out the log-on, she abandoned the computer and rose from the desk. On a cabinet behind her was a printer and supplies. The printer had a single sheet of paper lying in the output tray.
She lifted the sheet, turned it over and read.
Declan walked up behind Grace and looked over her shoulder. “What is it?”
A ripple of awareness washed over her. When Declan stood so near, Grace couldn’t think straight. “Looks like the location of something,” she said. “Let me plug it into my phone and see where it is.”
Declan read off the number and street, while Grace keyed it into the map application on her cell phone.
“It’s the Blue Gill Bar & Grill, about thirty minutes from here.”
Voices sounded outside the door.
The metallic rasp of a key being pushed into the door lock alerted Grace and Declan.
“The closet.” Declan grabbed Grace’s hand and bolted for the only other door in the office. They had just ducked into the closet when the office door burst open.
Grace eased the closet door closed, leaving just enough of a crack to allow her to peer into the room.
Moretti hurried in, walking past the large box Declan had left in the middle of the room.
Grace held her breath, waiting for the man to say something about the box. If he’d expected the door to be locked, surely he would wonder how the box made it into the room.
But he didn’t stop. Again, he appeared to be preoccupied. He walked across to the printer, snatched the paper with the address out of the tray and folded it to fit in his pocket.
He stopped at his desk and stared down at the screen, a frown furrowing his brow. He tapped the keyboard and shook his head. “Who am I kidding? I don’t have time to go through my email.” He turned toward the closet.
Grace shrank back against Declan, pressing into him, trying to fade into the farthest corner of the tiny space.
Declan’s arm circled her waist, the solid muscles like a band of steel around her, making her feel a little safer.
A cell phone rang in the office. Moretti answered, “Yeah. I got the message. I’ll be there. Seven thirty, tonight.” His voice sounded as if he were coming close to where Grace and Declan hid.
The closet door burst open and an arm reached in and snagged the bag of dry-cleaned clothes.
Grace froze. All Moretti had to do was look to the right and he’d see her as plain as day.
His arm retracted without him having leaned in far enough to see the two people hiding inside.
Still, Grace didn’t move. She leaned against Declan, her body melting into his. She had no desire to move—desire being the key word in the scenario. Being this close to the man made her body come alive, as if it was waking up from a long sleep. Her skin tingled where he touched her, and her core coiled and heated, sending warmth throughout her body.
“I think he’s gone,” Declan whispered against her ear. His breath stirred the loose tendrils of hair brushing across her neck and made her shiver with the strength of her awareness.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, his deep voice resonating in his chest.
Grace wasn’t so sure she was okay. She’d never felt quite so viscerally attracted to a man before. Not even her husband when they were together at the honeymoon phase of their marriage.
What was it about Declan that made her forget she was hiding in a closet in a building she’d entered illegally? Her gut told her to turn in his arms and see what happened next.
“Grace?” As if reading Grace’s thoughts, Declan turned her in the circle of his embrace. “Are you okay?”
She stared up at him in the limited light from the open door of the closet. “I d-don’t know.”
“You’re scared.” Declan swept a strand of her hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear.
Electricity fired across her nerves where his fingers brushed against her skin. She drew in a sharp breath, her gaze going to his lips.
“We’ll get through this together,” he whispered and bent to kiss her forehead.
“We will?” she said, her voice gravelly.
He smiled. “We will.” Then he touched his lips to hers. “I promise.”
Grace’s knees turned to liquid. If Declan hadn’t been holding her around her middle, she would have melted to the ground in a puddle of goo.
Never in her life had she been this incapacitated by a simple, meaningless kiss. And it scared the stuffing out of her.
She couldn’t let a man have that kind of effect on her. Marriage to Mitchell had been hell. Divorce had been her only option to get away from his mental and physical abuse. She would never let a man control her again. Ever. No matter how tempting.
Grace straightened and pushed away from Declan. “We need to go.”
“Were you able to get into the computer?”
“Sorry. I couldn’t figure out his password.”
“No worries. Let me try one more thing.” He gripped her arms and gently moved her to the side.
Grace inhaled deeply, her breasts rubbing against his fingers around her arms, setting off sparks of fire.
What was wrong with her? Her friend was missing, they were basically breaking and entering, and she was lusting after a man she’d met less than twenty-four hours ago.
Declan left the confines of the closet, hefted the big box up from the floor and headed toward the exit. “Go to the elevator and press the down button.”
“But—” Grace didn’t like being separated from Declan. They were a team. At least she felt like they were a team. And she also felt safer when he was around.
“I’ll be okay. If I’m not there by the time the car arrives on the floor, go down, leave the building and campus. I’ll meet you back at the parking lot.” He handed her the keys to her SUV. “Wait for me there.”
When she hesitated, he gave her a gentle smile. “What I do next is better done without worrying about what’s happening to you. If you’re out of the building, I can move more freely. I can run for an exit, if I have to. Now, please. Go.”
He didn’t wait for her to agree or disagree. He left the office and strode into the bank of cubicles. “Is there a Riley Lansing on this floor?” he called out.
Grace wasn’t sure what he was up to, drawing attention to himself. But she didn’t want to get in the way of his plan. She left the office, exited the Special Operations area and headed for the elevator.
Her heart raced and she strained to hear any sounds coming from the offices she’d just left. She braced herself for the blare of an alarm going off, indicating the building had been invaded and all exits should be closed off.
With that thought in her head, she punched the down key for the elevator and waited, her breath caught in her throat.
As soon as the elevator doors opened, she gave one last glance down the hall, willing Declan to come running from the Special Operations area. When he didn’t, she was forced to enter the elevator alone.
She prayed Declan would be okay. His boss, Mrs. Halverson, was a very wealthy woman. Even so, Grace wasn’t sure Mrs. Halverson would be able to bail him out of jail for unlawful entry into a secure facility.