Sleeping With My Boss: A Standalone Novel (An Alpha Billionaire Romance Love Story) (A Dirty Office Romance) (76 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE

Ryan

"
Here
, you're in charge of this until
we get there," Cece said tossing me her phone as she headed toward
TriCorp. "I can't afford to get pulled over, but I need to know what's
going on."

Her phone was
buzzing like crazy with messages from people who wanted things and men who were
offering things that she'd obviously indicated she needed. I shook my head as I
watched the messages scroll by without stopping.

"How in the
hell do you keep up with this thing?" I asked as I tried to identify any
messages that had to do with our mission.

"It's not
hard once you decide to let the technology work for you rather than you working
for it," she said as she made a right onto Broadway. "There's a lot
that I don't pay attention to, honestly."

"It's
overwhelming, but it looks like you have a lot of ardent admirers," I
laughed as I read a message from someone who was offering to do things that
made me look away. "Holy shit, Cece! This guy just..."

"Yeah, ignore
him," she said shaking her head. "He talks a great game, but there's
no follow through."

Her phone
continued to vibrate as we drove through the streets of Manhattan on our way to
try and find what we needed to rescue Echo. Halfway there, Cece snapped her
fingers and looked over at me with a gleam in her eyes.

"Call
Echo!" she shouted.

"What?"

"Call
Echo!" she repeated. "Do it! Now!"

I pulled up Echo's
contact info in Cece's phone and punched the dial button. The number rang and
rang until the call went to voice mail. I looked over at her confused until it
dawned on me that it was possible that Echo still had her phone on her.

"Holy shit!
We can locate her phone!" I yelled as I pulled mine out and called Echo's
number again. The phone rang many times before being dumped into voicemail
again. This time I waited for the beep and said, "We're coming for you,
Echo. Don't loose hope. We're going to find you and bring you home."

"What
the—," Cece started before a grin spread across her face. "Good
thinking! Either she hears it and knows we're looking for her or the bastards
who took her hear it and know we know she's being held."

"I'm going to
see if she's got the Find My Phone app set up," I said as I reached in
back and pulled out Echo's computer. I turned it on and began typing in the
information. "Are we almost there?"

"Just a few
blocks," Cece replied as she turned left on to 16
th
 
and hung a right on 6
th
 
Avenue. "We're almost there. You
ready?"

"As ready as
I'll ever be," I said a holding out my hand. "Keys, Echo, lab,
cypher."

"Keys, Echo,
lab, cypher," she repeated and slapped my palm. "Let's roll,
Seal!"

We exited the van
and quickly walked up 19
th
 
and headed down the back
alley to a door that led to the building's generator. Cece stopped and aimed
her spray paint can at the camera pointed out into the alley and quickly
covered it with silver paint before picking the lock on the door. I pushed
through and led the way to the back stairs. Cece hit each camera with a shot of
paint as we made our way up to the fifth floor where we snuck into the records
offices and hit the elevator up button.

"So far, so
good," she whispered after painting the cameras. "I don't think
anyone's seen us yet."

"Don't count
on it," I warned. "It's possible that they've seen us and are just
waiting to see what we're going to do."

"Keys,"
she whispered as the elevator doors whooshed open and we stepped in. Cece hit
the button for the sixteenth floor and quickly headed for my father's office
once we reached it. She picked the lock on the door and we made a beeline for
the door to my father's office.

"Where
sentient beings display emotion," she whispered. "Where the hell is
that? I've already torn most of this office apart."

"Shhh, let me
think a minute," I said holding up a hand. Cece went silent as I thought
about what that line meant. Where did sentient beings display emotion?
Feelings? When it came to me, I let out a laugh before covering my mouth and
heading out to the closet in the outer office.
 
I thought of my mother and smiled as I remembered her trying to give me
insight into my father on her deathbed. I yanked open the door and started
rummaging through the clothing hanging in the closet running my hands over
every inch of every coat and jacket. I finally found what I was looking for in
an old windbreaker that had been shoved to one side of the closet. I pulled it
out and unzipped the pocket on the sleeve. Inside were two keys on a small
heart shaped key ring.

"What the
hell?" Cece said.

"Wearing your
heart on your sleeve," I whispered. "It was one of those things my
mom told me about my dad. She said he might not wear his heart on his sleeve,
but he cared just the same."

"Um,
okay," Cece shook her head. "If we're done playing emotional family
trivia, can we please find Echo?"

"You're such
a hard ass," I said as I shoved the keys in my pocket and pulled out
Echo's laptop. I opened the cloud program on her desktop, typed in her password
and hit enter.
 

"Seal, I
don't have the luxury of being anything but a hard ass," she said as we
held our breath and waited for the program to tell us where Echo was. The
compass swung wildly on the screen as it waited for a signal. When it finally
pinpointed her location on the map, Cece and I both gasped.

"She's
here," Cece said gripping my arm. "She's in this building."

"Hold on. Are
we sure it's her?" I asked as my heart pounded wildly in my chest.
"What if they stole her phone and are holding her somewhere else?"

"That's a
really good mystery twist, Seal," Cece said. "But we don't have the
luxury of spending a lot of time trying to calculate the odds. We need to go
big or go home."

"That's
good," I said with a wry grin. "What movie did that come from?

"I cobbled it
together from a variety of sources," she grinned as she tapped a few keys
on the laptop and got the map to magnify the location of Echo's phone. Cece
turned and looked at me, "It's on the upper floors of this building. What
do you want to bet that it's on the seventeenth floor?"

"That would
be way too easy," I said shaking my head. "It's a trap."

"What if it's
not?" she asked. "What if the kidnappers didn't know we were planning
to break in and get the hard drive? What if they thought that Echo already had
the drive and now they're trying to recover it?"

"It sounds
like a whole lot of what ifs," I replied as I started at the computer
screen.

"When have
you SEALs ever been about playing it safe?" Cece asked.

"Lady, we're
all about safe," I said. "We never go in unless we know we've done
everything we could to ensure the safety of our team members and the people
we're rescuing."

"Uh
huh," she nodded telling me that she was completely unconvinced.
"Well, I'm not a SEAL, so I vote for taking a risk and going in."

"Cece, this
is not a fucking movie!" I exploded. "We're talking about someone's
life! You can't play fast and loose like you're in some gangster video! What if
the kidnappers are holding her somewhere else and we go bursting into whatever
it is they're doing and they decide to kill her? Have you thought about that?
Or what if they decide to kill us? Did you think about that?"

"I did
not," she admitted. "Then what do we do?"

"We plan out
our attack," I said as I visually measured the distance between the
stairway and the door to the office where the signal appeared to be coming
from.

"And then
what?"

"And then we
slip in and take them by surprise," I said looking up at her grinning,
"And if things don't go our way, then we go out guns blazing."

"You're
crazy, Seal," she laughed.

"No, just
determined," I said as I clenched my jaw and explained the plan to her.

CHAPTER
THIRTY

Echo

"
You
guys are going to have to untie
my hands and let me sit up, if you want me to find the drive for you," I
said in as calm a voice as I could muster. I could feel my phone buzzing in my
back pocket ever few minutes, and I knew that Ryan and Cece knew that I was
missing. I just hoped that they were smart enough to figure out that I had set
my phone up so that they could track it on my computer.

"Nice
try," said the sinister voice. "But you're not getting loose."

"Then you're
going to have to take a crash course in computer programming," I said.
"Because one of us has to type in the program codes."

I listened as the
two kidnappers whispered quietly for a few minutes, and then the goon said,
"Okay, I'll type. Tell me what you want me to do."

I quickly began
reeling off the most complicated programming language I could remember from my
senior thesis seminar just to test their level of computer knowledge.
Thirty-seconds into my instructions, the goon yelled, "What the hell are
you even talking about?"

"You guys do
understand that programming if far more complicated than doing a simple Google
search, don't you?" I replied in as condescending a manner as I could
muster.

"Yeah, but I
don't even understand what language your speaking," the goon said.
"Is that English?"

"No, it's
coding language," I sighed. "It's akin to being fluent in a foreign
language."

"Well, I'm
definitely not fluent," the goon said.

"Then we're
going to have to figure out another way to do this," I replied.
"Either you're going to have to learn the language quickly or you're going
to have to let me get up and program the computer to access the files. Your
call, gentlemen."

Again, they
whispered, and as their voices rose and fell, I knew I'd hit a nerve. They were
going to be forced to let me up if they wanted to locate the drive. If they
didn't let me up, they were going to be hampered by the fact that neither one
of them were coders. I threw up a little prayer that they would not call in
someone who did know how to code because then I'd be screwed.

"Fine,"
the sinister voice said in a clipped tone. "We'll let you up, but you're
going to be tied to this chair while you do your job."

"Fine,"
I said as waited for them to loosen the straps that were holding me down. I was
expecting the sinister one to undo me, but it was the goon who did it.

"Don't try
and be sneaky," he warned as he loosened the ties around my shoulders.
"I'm going to have my gun on you the whole time, so one wrong move and
you're toast."

"Gee,
thanks," I said as he undid the strap around my waist and I sat up.
"It's so reassuring to know that one wrong move and I'll be shot."

"You know
what I'm saying," he said as he pulled off the strap that held my legs
firmly to the table. "Don't pull anything."

"I wouldn't
dream of it," I replied in a saccharine tone. "Where's the
computer?"

"Over
here," he said lifting me off of the table. My legs were a bit weak and I
felt light headed as the blood in my body flowed back where it belonged. I
stumbled as I walked toward the desk and the goon caught me tightly by the arm
and yanked me back to a standing position. "Ouch!"

"Walk
straight," he ordered.

"I'm a little
dizzy from being tied to that table for four days," I said overdramatizing
the time.

"Four days?
Hardly. More like twelve hours," he laughed. I nodded as I rubbed my arms
and did a few knee bends. Now I knew how long I'd been missing. Surely, Ryan
and Cece were looking for me. "Sit here."

I sat down in the
chair and surveyed the computer. It was older than my laptop, but I was
familiar with the make and model, so I quickly went to work pulling up screens
and starting to code a program that would make it look like I had a lock on the
hard drive.

"Can I have
some paper and a pen?" I asked.

"What the hell
do you need that for?" the good said.

"I need to
sketch out a few formulas before I input them," I said. The truth was that
I needed to sketch the room so that I didn't forget what it looked like or
where things were. My phone began vibrating in my pocket as I did, but I didn't
dare answer it. If the kidnappers hadn't taken it from me, that meant they
didn't know I had it and I wasn't about to give up my lifeline now.

"Here,"
the goon said as he pushed a stack of paper he pulled out of the printer tray and
a pen at me. I immediately recognized it as TriCorp stationary because of its
unique watermark, and suddenly I felt very hopeful. I had an idea of where I
was even if I wasn't certain. "Do whatever it is you do."

"Thank
you," I said as I began writing random formulas on the top sheet of the
pad.

"How the hell
do you remember all those numbers?" he asked as he watched me write.

"They're
codes, so they all fit together," I replied. "It's kind of like
asking how you know how to form a sentence."

"Huh, that's
interesting," he said sounding completely uninterested. I shrugged and
returned to writing formulas occasionally looking around the room as if
searching for the next equation. On the second sheet of paper, I wrote the
formulas in a rectangle the size of the room and put various formulas in places
where doors and windows were. My goal was to snap a picture of the drawing with
my phone's camera and send it to Cece and hope that she'd be able to interpret
it. I still had no idea where I was, but at the very least I could provide her
and whoever was going to rescue me with a blue print of the room.

"Are you
okay?" I asked the goon. He was slightly bent over in his chair with his
arms wrapped around his waist.

"Yeah, fine.
Why?" he said as he tried to sit up.

"You don't
look so hot," I shrugged. "Just being nice."

"My gut is
killing me," he confessed. "I need a bathroom, but I can't leave you
here."

"Why not just
anchor me to the desk?" I suggested. I knew there was no way I would be
able to escape, but at least I could get him to leave me alone with my phone.

"Good
idea," the goon said as he nodded and slipped a cable around my leg, then
around the leg of the desk and back around the base of the chair before locking
one end into the other.

"Did you just
use a bike lock on me?" I asked incredulously.

"Yep, good
catch," he grinned as he twirled the keys around his forefinger. I watched
him as he walked to the back of the room and into what looked like a supply
closet. "Don't go anywhere!"

"Wouldn't
dream of it," I said in a flat voice as I heard the door slam. I wasn't
sure if there was a bathroom back there or if he'd exited out a back door. I
quickly added the door to my formula drawing as well as a small verification
that only Cece would recognize before I reached into my back pocket for my
phone. I pulled it out and saw that there were fourteen missed calls from Cece.
She was probably frantic with worry and pissed that I'd gone missing.

I snapped a quick
shot of my drawing, then quickly texted the photos to Cece before deleting the
message, turning off the phone and shoving it back in my pocket. Behind me, I
heard the click of a safety being turned off.

"Nice try,
missy," the goon said as he crossed the short distance between us and
grabbed my phone out of my pocket. "What did you send?"

"Nothing!"
I protested weakly. "I just wanted to keep a picture of the formulas I've
written. It's like art, you know?"

"Don't
bullshit a bullshitter, babe," he said shaking his head as he turned on my
phone and held it out to me. "Unlock it."
 

I knew better than
to resist, so I unlocked it and handed it back to him. He began opening the
programs looking for messages I'd sent, but when he didn't find any, he eyed me
suspiciously before stuffing my phone in the pocket of his track jacket.

"We'll just
wait for the boss to come back and see what he has to say about this," he
said. "Get back to work."

"Yes,
sir," I said as I saluted and turned back to the computer hoping that Cece
had gotten my message and that she could decipher it before the boss returned.