Job Hunt (33 page)

The large open-plan office was dark and deserted as he dragged himself through the door. With luck, it would stay this way for at least another hour. By which time Jack hoped to have woken up enough to pass for human.

He hadn’t fooled either Skylar or Raf at breakfast. And Gareth’s mother had merely set a glass of water and a couple of Nurofen next to his plate and told him that Nico had slept peacefully for the rest of the night.

No need to guess where Gareth had learned to take care of people.

Settling at his desk, Jack glared at the tangle of colored lines on his screen. The image reminded him of leftover spaghetti and the taste of failure. While finding Mitrovic was his priority, he hated leaving the fraud case even temporarily unsolved. Maybe an hour of tracing data would grant him enlightenment. Or at least enough peace that he could face Gareth without his insides squirming with guilt.

Before he got started, though, he needed fuel. Nothing good would come of trying to do this without the presence of stimulants. Jack started the coffee machine and waited with barely leashed patience through the minutes it took to brew a batch of chemical assistance. He added three spoonfuls of sugar to his mug before he gave it a cursory stir. Minutes later he was deep in cyberspace and lost to his surroundings.

“H
EY
, I’
VE
got it!”

Frazer blew into the office with a shout. His enthusiasm ruffled Jack’s hair like a gust of fresh air and pulled him from his contemplation of spaghetti salad in four dimensions.

“You got what?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the screen or his fingers from the tattoo at his temple. He was still a long way from awake, and the familiar touch helped him stay focused.

“A way to find out who is behind the leaks!”

The Scot bounced on the balls of his feet, making Jack feel a hundred years old. “You hit your head or something?” he grumbled. “Dial it down, it’s early.”

“Looking at you, it’s before coffee.” Frazer was irrepressible. “Come on, take a break. Get a caffeine fix.”

“And listen to you yodel.”

“I’ll wait until you’ve finished your second mug…,” Frazer wheedled.

Jack had already had three, and headache pills, but Frazer had clearly picked up on Jack’s habits, and Jack felt he should encourage situational awareness, especially after the Gorish incident. He didn’t relish scraping his colleagues from the carpet just because they didn’t see the blow that took them out. He rose without complaint and followed Frazer to the cafeteria, deciding to soak up the excess caffeine with a freshly baked custard danish.

“So you see, the trace should be able to tell us—”

“What?” Jack hadn’t been paying any attention to Frazer’s words, but a few of them registered almost by chance, and Jack’s head snapped up in surprise.

“I said I could—”

“I heard you. When did you think of that?”

“This morning, why?”

“Because it’s genius, that’s why.” Whether due to the caffeine or Frazer’s idea, Jack was now wide-awake and buzzing. “You thought of that
before
you had coffee?”

“Well… yeah….”

“You’re never allowed coffee again. Come on, man, don’t dawdle!” Jack was up and on the way back to his desk, not caring that Frazer had to run to keep up.

The spaghetti snarl was where he had left it, and Jack glared at the mess. He
loved
geometrics and used them every chance he got. The mess currently on his screen offended his sense of the aesthetic on multiple levels. “Pick one,” he invited.

“What?”

“Pick a trace.” Jack turned to Frazer. Interfering in any way with a hacker’s data—even to offer assistance—wasn’t considered polite, but the Scot had come up with a brilliant plan. Jack wanted him to realize that. “Pick one,” he repeated.

“Purple,” Frazer said after a moment scrutinizing Jack’s screen. For the outcome of their experiment it hardly mattered which data set he picked, but his cheeks were pink with pleasure, and that was all Jack needed to know.

“Purple it is,” he confirmed as he sat down. “Meet you on the other side.”

I
T
TOOK
127 minutes to locate the final destination of the leaked data. Jack’s issue, once he’d found the first lead, had been one of too much data and a scarcity of time to chase down every lead he had until a pattern emerged. Frazer’s idea promised to take care of that.

Right now, the Scot sat at the end of his trace, IP address glowing brightly on his screen, waiting for Jack to reach the exit point of the spaghetti snarl.

“Wait,” Jack cautioned when Frazer opened his mouth to speak. “Let’s get this confirmed before… I’m almost….” He read out the IP address on his screen, not needing to hear Frazer’s whoop to know they’d hit pay dirt. Frazer’s idea had
felt
right, and Jack had a thing about trusting his gut.

“You’re the man,” he declared. Then he stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

Gareth’s door flew open at the sound, and both Gareth and Aidan Conrad came storming into the office.

“What?” Conrad asked as soon as he drew close. “You got the pimp?”

“Frazer’s come up with a way to confirm the destination of the finance leak.”

“Who?”

Jack had scribbled the name and IP address on a Post-it note. But rather than handing it to Gareth, he looked at Frazer until the Scot caught on.

“Donovan Nancarrow,” Don Frazer informed them. “Julian’s cousin.”

T
HE
REST
of the day blurred into noise and frantic activity punctuated by mugs of hot, sweet coffee and headache pills. The corporate security office erupted into controlled mayhem as Frazer once more drafted in everyone present to help identify business-confidential information that had been compromised.

Jack watched as work groups formed and shifted, as evidence was secured and data shared across the room, as Frazer strategized and planned with a new, more overt confidence that looked good on him. Most of all, he watched Gareth Flynn, who stalked the office wrapped in a near-visible cloud of black anger.

Jack followed the remaining traffic to ensure all the data ended up at Donovan Nancarrow’s IP address. He took a call from Lisa and Clive, officially confirming how the information on the recording had been obtained. The small conference room grew crowded with ghosts while he answered questions, and when it was finally over, he turned off the phone, closed his eyes, and rested his head on the table. Just for a moment.

Gareth found him at some point and steered Jack to the sofa in his office. Jack went under so promptly he barely noticed Gareth removing his boots and draping a blanket over him.

He slept fitfully, Nico’s words buzzing through his mind like a swarm of insects, stirring memories and fears he’d kept under lock and key for years, until Aidan Conrad’s angry snarls interrupted the uneasy dreams.

The big man sat in the chair in front of Gareth’s desk. His scowl matched the one on Gareth’s face, and the bottle of Glenfiddich on the desk between them had a hefty chunk missing. Betrayal clearly wasn’t easy to swallow, not even with a mouthful of fine scotch as a chaser.

“Sorry, kid, I didn’t mean to wake you.” The lawyer half turned in his chair when Jack sat up and rubbed his face.

“It’s okay. I’ve slept long enough.” Jack stood and stretched, assessing the two men. According to Donald Frazer, Aidan Conrad had recruited Tim Gorish to Nancarrow Mining, just as he’d recruited Gareth. If that was true, it was no wonder Aidan was sore about Gorish’s betrayal.

“Did Gorish tell you why?” he asked and watched Aidan Conrad wince. “Money—really?”

“Yep,” Gareth confirmed after another swallow of whisky. “Apparently all he was after was cash.”

“I’m not usually vindictive, but I feel like changing my MO just for him,” Aidan declared and held the bottle in Jack’s direction.

Jack shook his head at the offer. He’d had his share last night. Besides, someone had to stay sober enough to drive the two men home, or at the very least stuff them into a taxi. “There’s nothing wrong with being vindictive,” he said, remembering all the times he’d taken out pimps or would-be molesters without feeling a shred of guilt for not going by the book. “They get the message much faster if you show that you’re willing to break the rules.”

All of a sudden, he had both men’s full attention. It didn’t feel good.

“What?” he queried.

“Interesting comment you made there.”

“Yeah?”

“It was. Especially given that you’re talking to a lawyer and a corporate security specialist.”

“Because you two are so wedded to the rule book, of course,” Jack quipped in a deliberately bored tone. “So what?”

“So what, indeed,” Gareth murmured and reached for the whisky bottle to refill his glass, while Aidan Conrad stared at Jack.

“I know things,” Jack said simply. “Fancy getting some food to soak up all that booze?”

T
HEIR
DINNER
was excellent, and the idea to go out even better. Gareth stayed tense and quiet, but Aidan flirted with the waitress before he began quizzing Jack about the things he knew. Jack answered maybe two of the two dozen random questions the lawyer fired at him before he shook his head.

“Give it a rest, Conrad. You know how this works.”

Aidan Conrad—six foot five and built like a brick shed—actually pouted. “I want to know how you can find a suspect who’s been on the run for five years in less than a week. When nobody else could.”

“Maybe he’s just that good,” Gareth suggested.

“I
am
that good. And you better tell Raf Gallant that he’s talking out of school.”

“Not Gallant,” Aidan disagreed. “Alex.”

“Ah, crap!” More puzzle pieces slotted into place as Aidan’s words confirmed another of Jack’s suspicions. It had made sense, when he’d thought about it, that someone with Alexandra Marston’s skill set would only move sideways. He just hadn’t considered that she’d share what she knew, and now he had no idea what to say to Aidan Conrad.

“Ask her yourself,” he finally settled on. “I’m not gonna get myself locked up for your entertainment.”

Aidan’s mien grew sober, and he nodded once. “I hear you,” he said and returned his attention to his food and the conversation to the ongoing police investigation.

I
T
WAS
barely nine when Jack parked the Range Rover outside Gareth’s house. Gareth had said little during the drive, but his gaze was like a hot caress on Jack’s skin, arousing and insistent. It didn’t surprise Jack when Gareth was on him before the front door was properly shut.

Impatient hands pulled Jack’s shirt up to reach skin, and Jack didn’t fight when Gareth shoved him against the wall. He managed a single deep breath before Gareth’s lips were sealed to his. Jack shivered when Gareth’s teeth caught his lower lip. He wound one leg around Gareth’s thigh and pulled their bodies closer together, relishing the heat that shot through him as Gareth’s hands caught skin and held tight enough to bruise while he practically devoured Jack.

That Jack had seen this coming, had practically waited for it ever since he’d woken on the couch in Gareth’s office, didn’t make it any less arousing. Neither work nor alcohol nor dinner had done anything to soothe Gareth’s anger. The man was so tightly wound he almost clawed the ceiling. And Jack found that sexy as hell.

Their kiss grew into a messy, disordered onslaught of lips and teeth and tongues. Gareth’s palms cupped his ass and rocked Jack’s groin against his hip with every move, sending sparks through Jack’s body, tiny shocks of pleasure that rose and spread until he saw stars from the corners of his eyes.

Jack’s belt buckle clinked as Gareth yanked it open, and his hands reached for the buttons on Jack’s 501s.

“Don’t stop me, Jack, please…,” Gareth growled as Jack pulled his hands from around Gareth’s neck.

Why the man expected Jack to be any less enthusiastic about the impending explosion was a mystery Jack was too riled to explore. He ripped Gareth’s shirt out of his waistband, not bothering with the buttons. He relished the sound of the fine fabric tearing, and then he had skin under his palms and Gareth’s harsh breaths in his ear.

Denim scraped Jack’s thighs as Gareth roughly yanked his jeans down to his knees. A calloused palm grabbed his cock and squeezed just hard enough to drag a moan from deep in his throat. Gareth’s fingers dug into Jack’s hip so hard he knew there would be bruises come morning.

Gareth’s face was a study in heat and desire, and when he took a step back, reached for Jack’s shoulder, and spun him around to face the wall, Jack wanted to howl in glee. Gareth’s vaunted and often flaunted control wasn’t worth shit right now. Jack had fantasized about Gareth losing it, but seeing it live and in color… that was better than anything his mind could have cooked up.

Gareth wrapped an arm around Jack’s throat and pushed his chin up. The hold was tight, but it wasn’t even close to a stranglehold, and Jack’s memories stayed in their box. His mind was full of white noise, and his body only took note of pleasure. Teeth scraped along the sensitive skin of his neck, and Gareth’s fist was driving him insane with want.

“Gareth.” The word sounded strangled, desperate, but Jack didn’t care. “Please.”

The fist disappeared from around his cock, the arm from around his neck, and Jack groaned his frustration. Then the hands were back, both on his ass, kneading, massaging, spreading him. Even angry and riled Gareth wasn’t heedless, and a tiny part of Jack’s mind regretted that.

Gareth’s chest met his back, and Jack found himself pressed to the wall. He registered the welcoming cool of the smooth plaster under his cheek before his world was ripped apart by white-hot pain and pleasure so searing he almost lost his mind.

“Fuck! Gareth, move!” Jack demanded, breathless and crazy and without regard for anything but the pressure building in his gut. His balls tightened, and his thigh muscles spasmed until he shook. The pleasure was so intense it was almost painful, the pain so bright it was pure pleasure. Jack lost the ability to speak, to form coherent thoughts, to demand or even plead. All he could do was gasp at each hard thrust and slow retreat.